http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33490959
Labour's right-wing are taking fright at the prospect of significant support for socialist candidate, Jeremy Corbyn.
The link above reports the desperate attempt to unify supporters of the three pro-austerity candidates in order to quash Jeremy's growing challenge.
Interestingly, the co-thinkers in the trade unions of those for whom a serious socialist challenge for the Labour Party leadership is horrifying are also doing all they can to minimise support for the policies of their own organisations.
Someone must have briefed that UNISON's National Labour Link Committee (half of whom have yet even to be elected) will, on 29 July, back "Cooper or no one." Quite how that benefits any UNISON member not hoping for a Lordship is perplexing to say the least.
It's because the resistance to Corbyn from within the labour movement machine is increasingly as obvious as it is absurd that UNISON GPF payers wishing to be sure that their vote for Corbyn is eventually counted will be wise, first of all, to transfer to the APF.
We would be unwise to fail to foresee almost any disreputable move being made to weaken the socialist challenge for the Labour Party leadership.
The tragedy of Labourism includes the tragedy of a Labour Left so habituated to our subordination that there are many good people who, whilst agreeing with the politics of Jeremy Corbyn, will consider casting a vote elsewhere in pursuit of "electability".
It sometimes feels as if many socialists in the Labour Party feel that our socialism is something private, if not shameful, and that we must always choose leaders well to our right because what we believe is somehow inappropriate.
Nonsense.
None of the other three candidates for Labour Leader is any more electable than Corbyn.
The agonising death of social democracy across the European continent is dragging the sorry remnants of Blair's "third way" (and Brown's accommodation to it) down into the same abyss. Twentieth century Labourism is over.
No one knows whether democratic socialism can offer parties of the Left, and our movement, a path out of this destruction, but we may as well grab hold of that hope - which Corbyn offers us.
Trade unionists need a voice in the legislature. Burnham, Cooper and Kendall do not offer that voice - and their supporters in the trade unions are not supporters of trade unionism.
Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the EE network.
Never a good idea to work from fear rather than aspiration. The Blairite approach appears to be 'we must win power at any cost and, therefore, should adapt our values and beliefs to suit what we think the swing voters want to hear so that we get over the finishing line'. Surely, though, if what you are offering is values driven, namely seeking to create a fair society that treats all its citizens with respect, then the challenge is finding the best way to win people over to your argument, rather than change the values and beliefs on which that argument is based. What Nicola Sturgeon did was to talk about trying to create justice and fairness in every day language. Where both the Left and the RIght of the Labour Party fail is the way they trot out slogans and catchphrases like robots rather than demonstrate the authenticity of their views by talking in everyday language. Our society is getting more and more unequal. Surely that's worth fighting for and sending 300,000 young kids further into poverty in an attempt to get their parent(s) to go out to enjoy low paid work doesn't seem like a very fair policy.
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