Anti-Corbyn Faction Of Labour Proves To Be Anti-Democratic

The Labour party in Britain seems to have gone completely off the rails. One of Jeremy Corbyn’s achievements when he took over the leadership position was to make it substantially easier for someone to become a Labour party member, bringing that total to over 500,000 which surpasses the prior peak under Tony Blair’s leadership. Many of these new members were clearly Corbyn supporters although, more recently, the anti-Corbyn faction has also been active in recruiting new members. Incredibly, the National Executive Committee, the rules-making body in the party, actually instituted a “freeze date” beyond which any newer member would not be allowed to vote in the leadership election. A number of members then sued in court to be allowed to vote and yesterday they seemingly won an important victory as the court ruled that there was no indication they would not be allowed to vote when they joined the party.

It is hard to describe the insanity the drives a party to try to prohibit their own members from voting. But that is where the hatred for Jeremy Corbyn has taken a certain segment of the Labour party, many of whom have more of a Blairite vision of the party. Corbyn will never be a Prime Minister – in fact it is doubtful he will even want to run. But if the Blair wing of the party ever wants to maintain their credibility within the party, perhaps they ought to craft policies and positions that address the concerns of the members of their party and the voting public. The Blair position of Conservative-lite has been rejected in both of the last two elections. If they continue with that policy, they might find themselves in the same position as Blue Dog Democrats – that is, nonexistent as a political force.