Labour Leadership implement Labour Policy on Brexit. Pope still Catholic. Bears still head for woods...

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So today the Labour Party announced that the Party in Parliament will be following the policy agreed at Labour Party Conference in respect of Brexit.

This seems to have caused some confusion.

The loudest centrist voices in the media, having spent months trying to create a story about how the Labour Leader was not going to implement the Policy are trying to spin that this is a change of position by the Party leadership.

Those who stand out against the “MSM” (mainstream media) are keen to emphasise that this is not so (even to the point of not quite reporting accurately what the Party has in fact said).

Polly Toynbee (who has relevant previous form – having stood for the SDP in Lewisham East in 1983, splitting the progressive vote and gifting the seat to the Tories) is bound to say that; “The defection of eight Labour MPs to the Independent Group seems to have had a big effect, breaking the obstinacy of the leadership team.”

But actually, all that has happened is that the current leadership of the Party have done what they have always said they would do – which is to follow the democratically agreed policy of the Party, as decided at Conference.

This is anathema to those whose lives revolve around the Westminster bubble and whose only wisdom is to observer that bubble and know what is going on within it. People like the Member for Streatham, who knows that he must prevent the possibility of a socialist Prime Minister, are utterly fearful of a world in which ordinary people could exercise real power.

In that world – our world, which we want to make – we have no need for career politicians (though those who have given their lives to political work with no expectation of a “career” have helped us reach the point at which we can hope to reach our goal).

When policy is made democratically by the elected delegates of Constituency Labour Parties and trade unions, and then implemented by the elected leadership of our Party there is no need for a commentariat. Their clever ability to decipher the hidden meanings of the hints dropped by politicians and their bag carriers is worthless.

So today the Labour Party leadership announced that they would continue to follow the decisions of our Conference.

This is simply as it should be. It is not – and ought not to be – news. This is the world we are going to create, in which politicians implement the decisions taken by ordinary people, and in which we break down the barrier between “politicians” and “people” by ensuring the accountability of the former to the latter.

Update on Monday evening

Interestingly, when I posted a link to this blog post on Facebook, I got an insight into the very limited nature of the current debate.

I posted this to a “Labour Against Brexit” group (because I am a Labour Party member opposed to Brexit) and got a fairly vitriolic response from a rabid centrist who obviously wants to use arguments around Brexit to attack the Party leadership.

I also got into hot water with members of a “secret” group of LRC members (who consider themselves – somewhat implausibly as it now appears – to be on the “left” of the LRC) who had learned – in the 70s or 80s – that the EU was a “bosses club” and have never unlearned that.

The funny thing is that – although I myself do oppose Brexit as a racist, nationalist project – the point of this post was never about that – but about the fact that we now have a Labour Party where the leadership follow the line laid down by the membership.