I've said for years that the mode of 'left' politics represented by the 'People's Vote' has done very significant damage that we'd suffer for years. And I'd love to stop saying it. Except that I'm now seeing socialists appealing to the leadership of *Zack Polanski*. 1/
I assume that this is part of a general spasm of panic at the pace of collapse of the political centre and rise of the new right. But it's something worse than a pyrrhic victory to double down hard in a few university towns and lose any wider connection to the country. 2/
This isn't only about the fact the Greens aren't radical enough (they aren't) or their class composition. It's about their sheer conventionalism as a political force. Your solution to this...*chaos* is sending a few more nice liberals into a hall in the Westminster estate? 3/
The response to war, street racism, inflation, the breakdown of the political settlement, is the dusty, sleepy House of Commons and some near bankrupt local authorities? And you won't be sending firebrands to these mausoleums of a fading democracy. 4/
And I'm not just concerned that the Greens won't work out. What if they do? What if that becomes the visible representation of the alternative politics to Reform in this country? What's the best outcome? Things are too serious for this nonsense. 5/5