This video was filmed on Saturday at the first annual conference of Left Unity, a interesting new contribution to British democratic discourse whose fans include Ken Livingstone and George Galloway. You wouldn’t know it from the banal voting process, but those present are discussing a motion on whether or not Britain should support ISIS. Several in the room agree that the bloodthirsty jihadis have “progressive potential” and “could only be a stabilising force for the region”. Here is the motion in full:

“Despite the atrocities it has carried out and its attack on the Kurds, IS nevertheless represents an attempt to break fundamentally with the structure of religiously and ethnically divided nation states imposed on the region by Britain and France at the end of the First World War… Unlike a continuation of the framework of western-imposed nation states, it therefore, theoretically, has progressive potential.”
 
“The Caliphate represents an alternative political vision that is gathering support amongst Muslims across the Muslim world because… it stands for replacing the brutal regimes in which they live with a political system based on Islam that sets up an accountable executive, an organised judiciary, representative consultation, inal motions and amendments for the rule of law and citizenship; such a state could only be a stabilising force for the region and the European Left has to acknowledge and accept the widespread call for a Caliphate among Muslims as valid and an authentic expression of their emancipatory, anti-imperialist aspirations.”

Er, what?