In Response to Tony Blair

Tony Blair says a Corbyn win would annihilate Labour. Failing to elect him as the leader would do so too.

Blair misses the point that the sanitized, undifferentiated party that he helped create in 1990s is now irrelevant. This is one of the problems with change - that it does not stop. Today, after 9/11 and its wars, recession and Greece, the world is a difference place than it was in 1990. The politics must be different, too.

The triumph of centrism, as witnessed in the decades since 1970s, was not the end of History. An opportunity was provided and missed, as the lack of working class activism was used by the powerful to advance their agenda of marginalisation, inequality and power-grab. The moment may be now, or in the future, but the push-backs have now started. 

It comes just after the Tory win in the UK, but it should not surprise anyone. We should be able to see beyond Tory win and Labour loss. The Labour lost for two reasons. One, because the Lib-Dems got annihilated - and Tories got their votes. Defeat for centrism, here! Two, because SNP routed Labour in Scotland. Defeat for centrism, again! Yet, all the Pundits and Rupert Murdoch are in agreement that taking a stance would annihilate Labour, though they see that not taking one has already destroyed it.

We also heard about the extreme discomfort in the surge of Labour membership applications in the wake of Leadership contest. Apparently, 600,000 is now entitled to vote, though the pre-election membership of the party was only 200,000. This has forced Blair to warn against Corbyn, because he knows what is coming. All those people joined Labour because Corbyn has made Labour relevant to them. The party Blair created on the 1990s soft-toy socialist agenda is bucking under millennial dream.

Having said this, Labour can not be trusted to do the right thing. One should not underestimate the power of reaction, and Corbyn is genuinely threatened by that. Historically, Trump-like right wing clowns have been far more effective in undermining the right-wing agenda than any principled effort on the side of the people, which Corbyn represents. Blair, with his dinner fees and Murdoch as his ex-Pal, is one whose endorsements various sanitised Labour candidates may not want. But he has still jumped into the fray and offered an opinion, desperate for his own relevance, not very unlike Mr Trump. Hopefully, that would do more for a Corbyn win than all the determined efforts of all his supporters put together.





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