More United?

[Denzil_DC]

7. "Basic stuff" should include not demonizing a growing faction of his own party to try to win votes.

Like Eagle, Smith has fallen into the same trap.

Here's Iain Macwhirter, a Scottish author, newspaper columnist and ex-BBC broadcaster, drawing some parallels with the Scottish Labour experience:

Iain Macwhirter: Why Labour control-freaks fear Corbynites

...
In some ways, Smith is a sign of just how much the Corbyn effect has changed British politics. He insists that, despite the rumours, that he too is of "the left". Smith's top policy proposal - apart from kicking Corbyn upstairs into a fictional post of party president - is a £200 billion investment programme that looks suspiciously like People’s Quantitative Easing. This was the much-maligned economic policy unveiled by Jeremy Corbyn last year and rubbished by his then Labour leadership rivals as “economically illiterate”.

But Labour MPs seem determined to deny Jeremy Corbyn credit for having restored Keynesian economics to centre stage, or for having achieved what no Labour leader has for decades: restoring the party's mass membership. There is now well over 600,000 Labour members, supporters and affiliates. More than 300,000 have joined the party since Corbyn first stood for the leadership. They're dismissed by some Labour MPs as Trotskyite hangovers from the Militant 1980s. Yet most of these new members weren't even born in the days when the Derek Hattons of this world were trying to take over moribund Labour branches.

Most of the new members are millennials, without Marxist baggage. They just want decent jobs, fair taxation, free education, a strong NHS and no more illegal wars. These used to be core Labour values and it is a measure of how far the parliamentary wing of the Labour Party has departed from its own traditions that such ideas are seen as dangerously radical.

Labour MPs are running scared of their own shadows, accusing their own party members of being abusive, anti-semitic misogynists issuing hate on social media. Owen Smith claims that Corbyn is somehow responsible for all this even though hardly a day goes by without him condemning it. All of which is very reminiscent of what happened during the Scottish independence referendum of 2014.

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http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/14638742.In_Labour_demonology__Corbynites_are_direct_descendants_of_Cybernats__In_fact_both_are_just_activists___and_that__39_s_what_scares_the_control_freaks/

The Scottish post-Independence Referendum experience was summed up by Hardeep Singh Kohli on Twitter as:



Like the Independence Referendum, one day the current Labour leadership battle will be decided. People tend to have inconveniently long memories.