In politics, as in many things, I'm a romantic. To steal a slogan from Paris '68 I like to Be Realistic & Demand The Impossible'. So romantic am I politically that I've slipped from being an out & out socialist to some kind of fuzzy anarcho-communist.
As a result there isn't really a political party in this country that comes to close to representing my beliefs that is going to come within a mile of genuine political power. My head tells me this. The regular internecine spats between the harder left of the left-wing confirms it.
We seem to have much more interest in fighting each other than putting together some kind of 'Popular Front' to take on the real enemy.
Ideological purity seems to be more important than actual power.
You'd have thought the almost total failure of the left to actual benefit from the biggest crisis capitalism has faced since the 1930s might have taught us that what the right does better than the left is turn talk into action & action into power.
Which is when horrible pragmatism slaps me around the face. What's the point of politics if it isn't to win. Whether that's winning a campaign or winning an election. If we're not in this to beat our opponents then what's the point. To run this country, with the political system as it now stands, you have to win an election. To win an election you have to appeal to the British people as a whole, not just preach to the coverted. That means you normally have to take the edge off.
So Labour is my party of choice. Even though I know that I'll be disappointed with how middle of the road they are. That they'll do something at some point so odious that I'll find myself banging my head on my desk.
I know I should just jack all this Labour Party stuff in & go join the Green Party or the SWP or the Communist Party of Great Britain. No, I should ignore party politics altogether & get involved in individual causes & protests. Party politics is a dead end I hear my inner Bakunin cry.
Except it isn't.
Does anyone serious expect the British people to rise up in the name of revolution & sweep aside the 'system'? Come on...anyone? I wish I did.
It might happen one day but in the meantime we have to go through the tedious process of winning electoral majorities & I'm afraid to say that only the Labour Party can deliver that.
There you have it. Romance skewered. Let us walk into the future together bitter & cynical about the political system. Angry at the perceived betrayals of the soft left. Let's stick to the romantic & exciting stuff.
The romantic in me would like to see a genuine 'Popular Front' uniting the Labour Party with the harder left & the various protest movements to create a grass roots up movement to change our politics.
The pragmatist in me wants victories. Let's get rid of this Tory led government before it is too damn late. Let's get rid of them before they have a chance to bed themselves in for thirteen years.
Fuck ideological purity. Fuck losing. Losing sucks.
The romantic in me thinks we just need to go out there & sell our beliefs better. That we've done a shit job at explaining what the left stands for & that some of us gave up too easily when the Berlin Wall came down & we were told socialism was dead. Maybe if we do the job well we can move the country towards the left & the Labour Party with it.
Most importantly let's win. Let's win the arguements & win the elections. Let's unit as much as we can & concentrate our fire on the real enemy. We're never going to agree with each other on everything. The gap is too wide but let's at least try.
Perhaps in the end I'm saying do we want to be a 'Popular Front' or 'The People's Front of Judea'? Do we want to win or not?
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