What should the Left do?

When you're a whining critical arsehole like me, you get asked a lot: "What would YOU do then?" It's a fair question.

While personally, I like to think well of Long-Bailey, and as such I think she made a mistake rather than actually being an anti-semite - (after all, it wasn't her interview, most of which was about how much the Tories suck) I can also see that clearly, some house cleaning has to be done on the Left.

How, who knows - or if it's even possible, considering just how quick the British Left is to blame Israel for everything, even when it's literally on a different continent to the problem at hand, I would say it is definitely systemically anti-semitic - yet there's always hope.

I don't know how to get there, the journey would have to involve some kind of period of long, sober reflection, but I know what the end product should be.

So what should a New New Left look like? What should the Left do?


* The Left is nothing if it isn't ultimately about economics - cold hard cash.

 So the New New Left would be laser-focussed on economic matters. The anarcho-capitalists are right, money really does unite us all, we all need more, and we are all being robbed blind by the same system. Without in any way wanting to detract from wider social justice struggles, which can (and should) belong to the wider society, the Left should be more about money, about prosperity and why that prosperity isn't being shared.


* The Left should of course support social justice, environmental, and minority rights struggles. But it should not, and MUST NOT attempt to monopolize or hijack them.

We've seen it time and again, on the one hand with miserable Trots like the SWP hijacking these issues for their own purposes, and on the other with Leftists generally taking their eyes off the prize of economic redistribution and latching onto increasingly obscure issues such as the endless conflict in the Middle East, which has become a toxic running sore beloved of racists and arseholes the world over.

The Left should cut through that nonsense and issue general memoranda of support for peace where the problem is complicated and intractable, as with Israel / Palestine, and issue specific statements in support of no-brainers such as BLM, where the problem is simple but not directly related to the wider economic issues.

Again, the focus must remain on the distribution of wealth in the wider society. Don't get caught up in the Right's culture wars, they are designed to divide people, not unite them.


* The Left must change its own culture.

From one where those it supports are patronized as victims, to one where the proletariat are genuinely supported and lifted up, emotionally as well as economically, as those who actually do the work in society. Nobody likes to be told they are a loser, and right now the Left poisons its support base with a patronizing narrative in which the poor, pathetic working classes are patted on the head and told they deserve more handouts, rather than shown how they too can gain real concrete results for themselves.


* Leftist discourse must be about bringing people up, not pulling them down.

Leftist discourse has also become poisonous in the way it treats people generally - The classic example is how Twitter leftists are constantly pulling each other down, or trying to bring down celebrities who have in some way trespassed. Policing public morality is not our job. Our job is to gain political power and facilitate the transfer of power and wealth towards to the proletariat. It's not supposed to be about "cancelling" people we don't like and bringing people down - it is supposed to be about bringing people up.


* The Left MUST STOP supporting causes and organisations that actively harm it.

There are two obvious examples - the aforementioned poisonous and intractable Middle East conflict, and (to a much, much lower degree), its obsession with defending the BBC. Everything that can be said about the Middle East has already been said, so I'll talk about the Left's relationship with the BBC, which is a good example of this phenomenon but without the emotional baggage of the miserable, horrible Israel / Palestine debate.

The BBC is a State broadcaster. As such, it is a tool of the government of the day. If the Tories really do want to shoot themselves in the foot by doing away with it, that is their mistake to make - do not, under any circumstances, defend that gang of propagandists. They aren't your friends, they certainly aren't journalists, they are a tool of government - and you will have to treat them every bit as roughly as the Tories do if you ever gain power.

This is not to say, don't be media savvy - you must be media savvy. But don't spend hours and hours going on about how much you love the licence fee - remember, the TV licence fee is a regressive tax which is levied on rich and poor alike so as to benefit a giant corporation, and therefore profoundly and intrinsically reactionary. It should be abolished anyway.