Left-wing author Leo Panitch’s digital launch of his new book “Search for Socialism” at the weekend featured luminaries of the Labour party’s new hard-left faction; John McDonnell, Zarah Sultana, Corbyn’s former adviser Andrew Murray and former head of strategic comms, James Schneider. Guido joined the Zoom…

John McDonnell had a lot to say on the recent leadership election result, describing the election of Sir Keir – whom he identifies as “a lawyer, white, middle–class, in a suit” – as “defeatism” on the part of the membership, and the result of the working classes’ ‘forelock-tugging’ mentality to the middle class, akin to the election of Tony Blair. Labour’s 500,000 overwhemingly middle-class members might feel somewhat insulted…

The group also used the book launch to plot about the tactics they plan on using to regain ‘leadership’ in the party, with Zarah Sultana – a leading proponent of the newly-revitalised Socialist Campaign Group – setting out:

“in the years ahead, the SCG has a huge role to play in terms of defending and advancing our socialist principles to give our class, anti-racist politics a voice in Parliament and nationally”

It is worth repeating that Zarah, along with the majority of the Labour Party’s supporters are now middle-class, that is why they lost so many traditional Labour seats. The weird and woke policies of the modern Labour Party are not too popular with the socially conservative working classes.  “Our class” is not the working class.

Son of a stockbroker and aristocrat Andrew Murray argued that Labour has to urgently “reconstitute working class politics” for Labour to win again, and son of a multi-millionaire property developer James Schneider agreed with the rest, saying the left need to stay within the party to “organise” – “That’s the way that we will, with a pincer movement, get the leadership of the party to back the policies that we want”. Guido imagines Sir Keir will be only too proud to see his party’s hard-left refusing to respect an electorate’s decision…