The personnel is political

New parties built by old people.

Let’s try a thought experiment.

Imagine that Labour had won in 2017 and Jeremy Corbyn’s first King’s Speech had included bills to vastly improve worker’s rights; nationalise the railways; devolve power over buses and encourage bringing them into public ownership; establish a publicly owned green energy company; increase regulation on water companies; and to bring in free breakfast clubs in every school.

Imagine if John McDonnell’s first budget had included measures such as a 2.2 per cent increase in public spending; An increase in Capital Gains Tax; VAT on private schools; and a 6.6 per cent increase in the national living wage.

Can you imagine the response to this being accusations of “shoving Labour rightwards” and the setting up of a new left wing party to join the ranks of TUSC, Left Unity, The Communist Party of Britain, The Worker’s Party and countless others - and this being earnestly described as being “a necessity rather than a luxury”.

Yet all of these things have been done by Keir Starmer’s Labour government. So why are the left unhappy enough about it to want to start yet another left wing ‘mass movement’ party?

This what is excitedly reported on in a recent column by left wing writer Andy Beckett in The Guardian. I think this is a depressing mistake for the (somewhat) organised left which will push them every further into self-reinforcing irrelevance. But I also think that the benefits of doing so are obvious for the individuals involved even as I think them harmful to the causes pursued. It is in separating the one from the other that we all - and I include myself in that all - fall down on occasion.

(It’s worth saying even as I dispute Andy’s piece, both its premise and reasoning, that I recently read and enjoyed his book The Searchers which I found an interesting reminder of some of my own left wing political instincts and history. That I have taken a tactically different path from those the book celebrates does not mean, I believe, that we have different outcomes in mind. Pragmatists have ideals and idealists can be pragmatic. It is frequently in the balance of the two - and the belief in the correct path to those outcomes - that the most vociferous differences can arise.)

I thought it would be worth examining why people start a new party rather than trying to work with/change an existing one?