At the Overland website, I’ve written about the Labour leadership contest, Jeremy Corbyn’s candidature and the European question:
Often, the impulses and motivations ascribed to the Corbyn campaign seem suspiciously congruent with the Blairites’ own actions and disavowed impulses: a textbook case of projection. A Corbyn victory would be driven by entryism! cry the remnants of a tiny coterie who captured power despite being so ideologically opposed to the mainstream of the party that they openly embraced the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. Handwringing warnings of splits — remember the Gang of Four! — are being made by those most likely to carry them out (even, shamelessly, by those who were involved in the original SDP split from Labour), making them closer to threats than to warnings. The mastermind behind the infamous ‘dodgy dossier’, cobbled together to justify the rush to invade Iraq, has sternly urged the party not to do anything rash. ‘Does he even want to be leader?’ scoff a political class despised for knowing no principle but personal ambition and the will to power.