"This is not your fucking back yard" Virat Kohli

 

This is not a Corbynite coup, it’s a mandate for his radical agenda

Gary Younge in The Guardian

Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793,” wrote Albert Camus, referring to Louis XVI’s execution after the French revolution. “But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all.”

One of the biggest mistakes the critics of Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, made from the outset – and there are many to choose from – was that his victory was about him. They refer to “Corbynites” and “Corbynistas” as though there were some undying and uncritical devotion to a man and his singular philosophy, rather than broad support for an agenda and a trajectory. If they could get rid of the king, went the logic, they would reinherit the kingdom. With a new leader normal service could resume. Labour could resuscitate its programme of milquetoast managerialism, whereby it was indifferent to its members, ambivalent about austerity at home, and hawkish about wars abroad.

This week’s resounding victory of a slate of leftwing candidates to Labour’s national executive committee, the party’s ruling body, has put that assumption to rest for the moment. There is now a reliable majority on the NEC who back both democratising the party, to give members more control, and pursuing policies against austerity and war and for wealth redistribution.


Corbyn has been accused of tightening his grip on the party so that he may purge critics and promote cronies. The logic is perverse


That this should have happened in the week of Carillion’s collapse has a certain symmetry. Carillion took billions in public funds for public projects, paid its executives and shareholders handsomely, and has now left taxpayers to pick up the pieces in a system of private finance initiatives introduced by Conservatives but championed and vastly expanded by New Labour.

It was anger at this kind of rank unfairness, the inequalities it both illustrated and imposed after the economic crash, that explains not just Corbyn’s victory but the rise of the hard left across Europe and in the US.

The contradictions inherent in Corbyn’s rise are finally ironing themselves out. In 2015 he won not the leadership but the title of leader. Unlike Podemos in Spain or Syriza in Greece, his ascent was not the product of a movement that could sustain his challenge from the margins; instead he emerged from a wider, inchoate sense of frustration and alienation that propelled him to the top within the mainstream. Without the consent of MPs he lacked the authority that would endow that title with power and meaning in parliament. Outside parliament he lacked the kind of organised support that could buttress his position against this hostility. This left him embattled, isolated and, to some extent, ineffective, since his primary task was not to exercise leadership but to cling on to it.

'I'm JC': Jeremy Corbyn on ageing, infighting and his Tory 'friends'



Last year’s general election changed all that. Labour’s gains, with its highest vote-share since 2001 leaving the Tories without a majority, proved that there was a broad electoral constituency for his redistributive, anti-austerity agenda. In so doing it showed that the membership was far more in touch with the needs and aspirations of the electorate than the parliamentarians.

Now, with the shadow cabinet no longer in open revolt, the parliamentary party quiescent, if not onside, and the party machine no longer obstructive, at almost every tier the party has either come around or made its peace with him. Meanwhile, outside parliament, Momentum – the leftwing caucus within the party that supports Corbyn’s agenda – has become more organised and less fractious, providing a more coherent plank of support beyond Westminster. Finally, Corbyn can do what he was elected to do – lead on the agenda he has laid out.

Leftwing control of the NEC was one of the last pieces to fall into place. Since the three candidates who won this week were backed by Momentum, and one – Jon Lansman – is its founder, this latest shift will inevitably provoke some bedwetting.

Those who have got everything wrong about Labour over the past two years will, of course, get this wrong too. We must once again brace ourselves for rhetorical hyperbole. Corbyn has been accused of tightening his grip on the party so that he may purge critics and promote cronies. The logic is perverse. The Stalinists, in the minds of his most feverish critics, are the ones who keep winning internal elections hands down; the democrats are those who launched a coup against the popular choice.

Jeremy Corbyn speaks to NHS staff at Park South community centre in Swindon. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

The obsession, among parliamentarians and their courtiers, is that this latest development will lead to a wave of deselections (or purges) in which MPs hostile to this new orientation will be forced out. There is some irony in the notion that those who tried to depose an elected leader with a huge mandate might bristle at the prospect of being removed by an election.

For now, that fear seems unfounded. While Momentum certainly believes MPs should be more accountable to their local parties, there is little evidence that this is a strategic priority (which doesn’t mean some local chapters might not pursue it). Corbyn’s team is not keen either, believing the pain rarely justifies the gain.

This is a relief. Another election could be upon us at any moment. The party does not need more trauma. Moreover, the gains are likely to be minimal. Corbyn is not king; his word is not law. The moment has tipped in his favour, not swung to him completely. And while the party may have made its peace with him, Momentum still sits outside its comfort zone. According to the website Labourlist, of the 24 key marginals to be contested so far, Momentum candidates have won in just five, while a further six have gone to candidates from the “wider Labour left”. The rest have been taken by “trade unionists, longstanding local campaigners and former [candidates]”.

Momentum’s focus is instead on funding organisers to transform the party into a social movement by connecting it with local campaigns – be they over caretakers’ pay, or cuts to schools and hospitals. For those whose understanding of politics and power is limited to elections and parliament, this will seem at best a waste of time. But anything that engages members, be they new or longstanding, in activities that make Labour more dynamic and receptive to the outside world should be welcomed.

This would fulfil one of three central challenges for Momentum in the foreseeable future. The second is to deploy all its resources – digital, human, organisational – to help Labour win at the next election. The third is to establish some independence from the Labour leadership, so that it can continue to advocate for a left agenda, should the party come to power. However confused the left might be about where power resides, the right understands that a range of vested interests, from big business to hot money, can force parliament’s hand and thwart the popular will.

Like most radical governments, Labour will have to negotiate between the powers that be and the forces that made them possible. Corbyn is not king. It was pressure from below that made him possible. It will be pressure from below that keeps him viable.

On Tory attempts to Activate British youth

Skepta will make a video on a skateboard park with his crew, singing ‘I’d do anything to please her, my Theresa, got a smile like Mona Lisa, as strong as Julius Caesar, as long as DUP get money to appease her’


Mark Steel in The Independent


This is a wonderful development: a youth group has spontaneously erupted to support the Conservatives, and calls itself Activate. It’s surprising this has taken so long, as you often hear young people in nightclub queues saying: “Listen up blud, a man Hammond getting bare fiscal growth yu get me, him one sick chancellor bruv.”

The plan must be for Chris Grayling to appear on Radio 1, interviewed about Brexit by Jameela Jamil, who says: “Wow, your riff with the Danes about butter tariffs was like totally AWESOME.”

At their conference, Conservative members will be told to wander into random locations chanting “Oooo Andrea Leadsom”, as this will result in young people joining in until it’s a Christmas number one featuring Stormzy in a duet with Amber Rudd.

Skepta will make a video on a skateboard park with his crew, singing: “I’d do anything to please her, my Theresa, got a smile like Mona Lisa, as strong as Julius Caesar, as long as DUP get money to appease her.”

Or the Conservatives may concede that the grime scene has committed itself to Labour, so they’ll have to co-opt a different style of youth music – such as thrash metal.

Then at fundraising garden fetes, the local Conservative MP can announce: “Thank you so much to Thomas and Frances Diddlesbury for such generous use of their grounds as ever, and for Lady Spiglington who surpassed herself this year with her delightful vol-au-vents and exquisite cranberry salad, and now I’m sure you’ll all join me in welcoming our special guest band to see us through the evening – let’s hear it for ‘Skull-crushing Death’.”

Then the singer will inform the crowd: “This first song is about the need for a tough stance on Brexit – sing along with the chorus that goes ‘They’re gonna crush your bones, crush your bones nnnnnygggggghaaaa vrrrrrr the European single market will lead us to Satan Satan Satan Luxembourg is run by Satan’.”

It’s typically astute that the spontaneous young Conservatives chose Activate as the name of their group, proving their sharp sense of youth culture, because like Momentum, this has the crucial quality of being three syllables.

They probably had lengthy discussions on which three-syllable word to choose, from a shortlist that included Caliphate, Urinate, Camper van, Rwanda and Wheelie-bin.

The next stage will be for Activate to collect millions of followers on Twitter, posting pithy youthful Tory tweets such as: “OMG! David Davis negotiation Gr8 massive love bro”, and “Bring back da hunt dem fox get merked proper lol.”

Because what the Conservatives have worked out, is that Jeremy Corbyn succeeded in appealing to millions of young people because he put stuff on Twitter.

No one was bothered about what he said on Twitter; it could be abolish tuition fees, or quadruple them – but the main thing is he said it on Twitter.

Then lots of young people said, “Oh look, like wow that old dude is on Twitter and shit”, and started singing his name.

So the Conservatives just have to copy the Corbyn image and they’ll win back the youth vote. Michael Fallon will grow a beard, and when he’s asked about Trident, he’ll say, “Talking of massive weapons, look at this beauty” – and display a prize-winning radish from his allotment.

This is why they’re promoting Jacob Rees-Mogg. Corbyn may be naïve enough to think he won popularity amongst the young by opposing zero-hour contracts, but the real reason was that young people are won over by anyone who seems a bit quirky.

So if Mogg doesn’t work, they’ll pick a leader from the people who go out on the first heats of Britain’s Got Talent, choosing someone who dresses as an ostrich and eats bees.

The Conservatives have a problem in trying to create an organisation that copies Momentum. It’s that Momentum didn’t just enrage the Tories – it also infuriated most Labour MPs, by backing someone who had spent his life on the edge of the Labour Party (usually in opposition to the leadership).

So it’s handy that they claim Activate has sprung up spontaneously, in a vast surge of natural youthful enthusiasm for working without a contract and having nowhere to live.

Amongst this energised adolescence is Activate’s National Chairman, Gary Markwell, who has suddenly decided to pull together these young forces who are crying out to be led.

He’s a reflection of how this is a grassroots movement, because up until now Gary has had no connection whatsoever with the hierarchy of the Conservative Party – except for being a campaign manager for Theresa May and Boris Johnson for ten years.

Now he’s suddenly decided to spontaneously set up Activate, in the same way that Nigel Farage might announce: “It’s never occurred to me before, but I think I might start campaigning to leave the EU.”

They’ve made an excellent start, because the way to win young people over, according to any faint study of the nation’s youth, must be to prove the Conservatives are the party of compassion and spirit and youthful energy.
So a Whatsapp group, described as a “precursor” to Activate, has been revealed to have had a fascinating discussion about the issue of “chavs”. An event in a working-class area is described as: “A fine opportunity to observe homo chav. And gas them all.”

It’s then suggested they could have medical experiments performed on them, to see how “they’re good at producing despite living rough”, and “substituted for animals for testing” and on and on.

That should do it. The Tories are already on 17 per cent of the under-24 vote, and Activate should guarantee it goes a long way down from there.

Momentum - successful grassroots organising!

Rachel Shabi in The Guardian

Not so long ago, in the slur-filled era before this year’s election, Momentum, the grassroots group of supporters for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, were routinely dismissed as armchair activists, cultish Trots, delusional young naïfs, or some combination of the three. Now, media coverage of the group carries headlines such as “How Momentum changed British politics for ever” and “How Momentum HQ perfected social media outreach”.

The 24,000-member group didn’t deserve those dismissive pre-election labels, but it has certainly earned the more recently positive ones. Credited with mobilising the youth vote, Momentum’s snappy social media campaigns gleaned millions of shares. The group also sent scores of campaigners – some of them first-time canvassers – into the country’s most marginal constituencies, helping to drive up support for Labour, house by house and street by street.

Using an online map of marginal seats as well as WhatsApp and phone banks to enlist and direct activists, the group transformed Labour’s canvassing game, helping to turn seats such as Canterbury, Sheffield Hallam, Derby North and Croydon Central into Labour wins. MPs who may once have criticised the group are now more enthusiastic, while Momentum organisers say that, since members and constituency campaigners worked so closely in the past six weeks, relations are more cordial. Those who were divided over past splits in the Labour party got to know each other – and found that they got along.

Now, Momentum wants to build on the – oh, let’s just go with it – momentum to militate against any complacency over Labour’s dramatic increase in voter share, now at 40%, or disillusion that the party nonetheless lost the election. Since the general election, the Labour party has gained 35,000 new members, while 1,500 have joined Momentum. With greater numbers, capacity and credibility, the task now is ensuring more activists join in and are election-ready – because who knows how soon we’re going to have to do it all again.

But elections aren’t the only focus. For a start, Momentum wants to move away from the idea that political campaigning only takes place when votes are needed. It plans to engage in community action, whether that’s voter registration campaigns or support for local causes, so that the group and, by extension, the Labour party, is organically active at grassroots level. Not to re-open old wounds – and definitely not now the Labour party is united in support for its leader – but this terrain might have been broached sooner, were it not for Momentum instead having to rally in support of Corbyn during last year’s leadership challenge.

In any case, such endeavours, however embryonic, have already begun. Last year, local Momentum groups started to collect and volunteer for food banks. Now, national organisers are looking at the possibility of running these independently, although the idea isn’t to provide tinned beans bearing party slogans so much as to support local communities in tackling hardships also addressed by Labour’s political offer. At a time when so many have been terribly affected by the recession and Conservative austerity cuts, there are multiple social issues where Momentum could get involved.

The focus seems to be on harnessing the political engagement unleashed by Corbyn’s leadership and fostering unity among Labour’s different voter groups. This pursuit of collectivism, in the face of decades of rampant individualism, was always one of the more radical aspects of Corbyn’s leadership. It was in evidence throughout his campaign speeches, where he often spoke of society’s many cohorts as one community, binding together groups – young and old, black and white, nurses as well as builders and office workers – that are more often encouraged to compete against each other in the current economy.

Momentum draws inspiration and cross-pollinates ideas with the leftwing Syriza party in Greece and Podemos in Spain, both of which were fed by practical, grassroots organising to counter the effects of crippling austerity cuts. In Greece, for instance, the social movements that ran health clinics, food banks and legal aid centres were the blood supply for the Syriza party now leading a coalition government. In the UK, Momentum is also looking at growing the information-sharing debates developed by the World Transformed, which launched parallel to the Labour party conference in Liverpool last year and hosts political events.

The intention is to convert social media clicks and shares into practical action: the demand for Momentum’s election campaign training and turnout on the doorstop has shown that there is a desire to get involved, given the means, confidence and skills to do so. It’s also pretty much what grassroots democracy looks like – a movement that chimes with and feeds into a viable political party. And it’s this combination – a left wing effective both at parliamentary and community level that could help turn the Labour party into an unstoppable political force and propel it into power.

The Corbyn Effect

Part 1 Andrew Murray interviewed byTariq Ali

Part 2

Momentum, a convenient sporting myth

Suresh Menon in The Hindu

So Australia has the “momentum” going into the final Test match in Dharamsala.

At least, their skipper Steve Smith thinks so. Had Virat Kohli said that India have the momentum, he would have been right too. The reason is quite simple. “Momentum” does not exist, so you can pour into the word any meaning you want. Sportsmen do it all the time. It is as uplifting as the thought: “I am due a big score” or “the rivals are due a defeat”. Sport does not work that way, but there is consolation in thinking that it does.

“Momentum” is one of our most comforting sporting myths, the favourite of television pundits and newspaper columnists as well as team coaches everywhere. It reaffirms what we love to believe about sport: that winning is a habit, set to continue if unchecked; that confidence is everything, and players carry it from one victory to the next; and above all, that randomness, which is a more fundamental explanation, is anathema. It is at once the loser’s solace and the winner’s excuse. Few streaks transcend random processes. Of course streaks occur — that is the nature of sport. But that is no guide to future  performance.

Momentum, momentum, who’s got the momentum? is a popular sport-within-a-sport. It is a concept that borders on the verge of meaning, and sounds better than “I have a feeling about this.”

A study in the 1980s by Thomas Gilovich and Amos Tversky raised the question of “hot hands” or streaks in the NBA. They studied the Philadelphia 76ers and found no evidence of momentum. Immediate past success had no bearing on future attempts, just as a coin might fall heads or tails regardless of what the previous toss might have been.
That and later studies — including the probability of the winner of the fourth set winning the fifth too in tennis — confirmed what a coin-tossing logician might have suspected: that momentum, like the unicorn, does not exist.

Statistics and mythology are strange bedfellows, wrote the late Stephen Jay Gould, evolutionary biologist and baseball fan. One can lead to the other over the course of an entire series or even through a single over in cricket.

Gould has also explained the attraction of patterns, and how we are hard-wired to see patterns in randomness. In many cases, patterns can be discerned in retrospect anyway, but only in retrospect. “Momentum” is usually recognised after the event, and seems to be borne of convenience rather than logic.

The momentum in the current series was with India before the matches began. Then they lost the first Test in Pune, and the momentum swung to Australia for the Bengaluru Test which then India won, grabbing the momentum again.

The third Test was drawn, so the momentum is either with Australia for plucking a draw from the jaws of defeat or with India for pushing Australia to the edge. Such simplistic analyses have kept pundits in business and given “momentum” a respectability and false importance in competitive sport. There is something romantic too in the idea, and many find that irresistible.

Momentum is such a vital component of sport that it has assumed the contours of a tangible object. Fans can reach out and touch it. Teams have it, they carry it, they ride it, they take great comfort from it and work hard to ensure that the opposition does not steal it from them. They carry it from venue to venue like they might their bats and boots and helmets.

To be fair to Steve Smith, what he actually said was “If there’s anything called momentum, it’s with us at the moment,” giving us a glimpse into a measured skepticism. If it exists, then we have it.

Does Peter Handscomb have momentum on his side, after a match-saving half-century in Ranchi? By the same token, does Ravindra Jadeja, after a half-century and nine wickets in the same match? Is team momentum the sum total of all the individual momentums? Will Ravi Ashwin, in that case, begin the final Test with a negative momentum having been less than at his best on the final day in Ranchi? How long before someone decides that momentum is temporary, but skill is permanent?

It is convenient to believe that either one team or the other has the momentum going into the final Test. Yet it is equally possible that those who swing the match with their performance might be players who haven’t been a great success in the series so far.

Someone like fast bowler Pat Cummins, or Virat Kohli himself. A whole grocery list of attributes then becomes more important than momentum: motivation, attitude, desperation, and imponderables that cannot be easily packaged and labeled.

Whichever team wins, momentum will have nothing to do with it. But that will not stop the next captain from telling us that the momentum is with his side. It might seem like blasphemy to disagree with him, so deeply is the concept grouted into our sporting consciousness.

Jeremy's Anthem for 2017

by Girish Menon

I’m not afraid of  Brexit

I’m not worried about Trump

I’m not scared of boundary changes

Don’t care about opinion polls

I don’t bother with Tony

Nor his many cronies

Half a million volunteers

Are my army

Largest party in the EU

I won’t let you down

I believe in socialism

Universal basic income

World class NHS

Pure air, water and food

A safe place to live

For all who live here

Half a million volunteers

Will each bring thirty new voters

Largest party in the UK

I won’t let you down

I said don’t go to Iraq

I did not fudge my bills

I do not hate the wealthy
The media hate me

But the youth relate to me

And I am full of energy

Half a million members

Will spread the good word

A fair government in the UK

I won’t let you down.

-----

Universal Basic Income explained

Satire - Labour is using members’ money to ban them from voting

Mark Steel in The Independent

It’s marvellous how they manage it, but every week the people running the Labour Party election perform a stunt even more spectacular than the last.

Next week Margaret Hodge will kidnap John McDonnell, which she will claim is in accordance with the Labour Party Constitution, Rule 457. (Shadow Chancellor Chained to a Radiator in the Basement Clause (14 B iii).) Peter Mandelson will reveal he has met Vladimir Putin to request he cuts off the oil supply to Jeremy Corbyn’s office, and Hilary Benn will announce he has hired a fleet of Tornados to bomb a Momentum branch meeting in Exeter.

Labour must be bold and ambitious, and never before can an organisation have illegally banned its own members from voting in an election it promised them a vote in, then spent the money it took from those members on appealing to the High Court to try and keep the ban.

The argument of those who brought in the ban was that, although the new members were promised a vote in Labour elections, they didn’t mean the next election, but at some unspecified one in the future.

What a boost this method would be if it was adopted by British business. Comet would never have gone bankrupt if anyone buying a washing machine handed over their money and was then told they wouldn’t actually be given a washing machine, but the money they had paid would be used on appealing to the High Court for the company’s right to not hand over a washing machine.

And this is from the wing of the Labour Party that insists it can be trusted on the economy.

It would be entertaining if it ran the country like this: Angela Eagle would announce: “We’ve spent the education budget wisely, on an appeal to the High Court that no one in Wales should be allowed to eat bananas.”

Because Labour must be modern, and to prove how modern it is, the plotters are furious at how democratic they are ordered to be by High Court judges. Maybe this is how it plans to win a General Election – by appealing to the High Court to only allow someone to vote if they’re called Kinnock or Eagle.

But these extreme measures are essential because, as Tom Watson explained, the Labour election has been undermined by “Trotsky entryists twisting arms of young members”. This explains why Corbyn is expected to win again, because the 300,000 new members of Labour are powerless before the arm-twisting might of Britain’s 50 Trotsky entryists.

Some people may wonder why these arm-twisters never overturned Tony Blair during the 15 years he was leader. That is because the Trotsky entryists were living in a city under the ground guarded by men in yellow boiler suits, perfecting their evil arm-twisting machine, cackling “soon we will unleash our power on Ipswich Constituency Labour Party then nothing can stop us… mwahaha”.

Now the worry is what other votes they are influencing by arm-twisting. We should watch out for this year’s Strictly Come Dancing, when Will Young comes second to Alf Barnshaw, the central committee member of the Trotsky Entryist group the Revolutionary Movement for Extremely Violent Workers’ Anger.

The whole strategy of the anti-Corbyn plotters appears to be random fury. Every vote that goes against them is a result of “bullying”, and one MP, Conor McGinn, told the press that Corbyn “threatened to call my Dad”. This suggests their aim to win a general election is to go after the toddler vote. They are going to campaign for the voting age to be reduced to three, then issue a manifesto that goes: “It’s not faIr becoos I wozent doing anyfink and Treeza MAy kAlld my daD just like jErmY and thats wie I want to b pie minister.”

But they don’t appear to have any desire to work out what might be taking place. Because, like a married couple who scream at each other for hours about who left the ironing board in the wrong place, clearly there is something more to this disagreement than the rows they have about who sent a nasty message on Twitter.

The anti-Corbyn plotters complain Corbyn’s policies make him unelectable, so their strategy appears to be to have no policies at all. They make no effort to explain why the support for Corbyn is an English version of what has happened across Europe and America. Presumably they think Bernie Sanders won millions of supporters because he borrowed Corbyn’s arm-twisting machine, and the SNP won in Scotland because Nicola Sturgeon threatened to call Ed Miliband’s dad.

And none of them attempt to assess why thousands turn out to hear Corbyn in town centres. They must be the only people in political history to see huge crowds coming into the streets to support their party and think “We’ll ban that lot for a start”.

So Owen Smith’s campaign insists he will continue with many of Corbyn’s radical ideas but do it more competently. If you were cynical you might wonder how strongly he backs Corbyn’s ideas, when the people backing Smith most fervently are Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, and everyone else who hates everything Corbyn stands for. It is like standing for the General Synod of the Anglican Church when your campaign manager is Richard Dawkins.

The result is their campaign amounts to a series of unconnected exasperated attempts to force him to stand down, by all resigning or appealing to a High Court for the right to rig the vote, making them look like Wile E Coyote chasing the Road Runner.

Next week, at a Corbyn rally, Stephen Kinnock will hide above him waiting to drop an ACME piano, but the balcony he is on will collapse and he will land on Laura Kuenssberg.

Then Tom Watson will try to shoot him through a hole in a tree, but the gun will bend back through another hole and he will shoot himself in the face, so he will issue a statement that this proves Corbyn must stand down – he simply isn’t competent.

Corbyn supporters are not delusional Leninists but ordinary, fed-up voters

Ellie Mae O'Hagan in The Guardian


 

‘Members of Momentum feel as though the Labour coup is as much an attack on their right to participate in public discourse as it is on Jeremy Corbyn.’ Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Lock up your children, for there is a sinister force taking root in modern Britain. It is a cult, with followers like those of mass murderer Charles Manson, shrouded in a cloud of spite and acrimony. The worst thing about this terrifying insurgency? My mum is part of it.

'We're not cult members': Labour supporters at Corbyn rallies



I am, of course, talking about the people who support Jeremy Corbyn – 12,000 of whom have joined Momentum, the activist movement that propelled Corbyn to power. And after Monday’s high court win and a clean sweep in the elections to Labour’s national executive committee, support for Corbyn shows no signs of abating – despite continued suggestions that those supporters are nothing more than an abusive rabble. How many of the journalists writing panicked screeds about these awful people have actually met any of them, do you think? I ask because writing about the Corbyn phenomenon over the last year means I’ve met probably hundreds of his supporters and to be honest, I find dealing with them the most pleasant element of writing about Corbyn.

A couple of months ago, I went to a political event that included a branch of Momentum. All young women; they were energetic, funny and very friendly. Two weeks ago, I had a debate with a Momentum member about Corbyn’s media strategy. Of the two of us, it was me who was the ruder, more impatient one. When Corbyn ran for leadership last year, I visited phone banks for him dozens of times, and spent hours in the company of the very people who went on to found Momentum. I told myself I was researching a piece; actually I think I just liked talking to them.

Sure, my experiences of these Corbyn supporters might not be representative. But they do suggest that the depiction of them as a madcap bunch of deluded cultists is not representative either. Broadly speaking, the media has failed to understand the political moment in the Labour party; it has shown a damning lack of interest in the fact that people who had previously written off party politics are now flocking towards it in their hundreds of thousands – preferring instead to dismiss them as an angry mob.

One half of that description is accurate, however. Corbyn supporters may not be a mob, but they are angry. And to understand why, it is useful to consider the words of the academic Jeremy Gilbert, a longstanding Labour member and activist who has joined Momentum: “Momentum is simply trying to give a voice to a body of opinion which has been widespread throughout the country for many years, but has been denied any kind of place in our public life since the early days of New Labour. It is a body of opinion which believes, with good reason, that the embrace of neoliberal economics and neoconservative foreign policy under Blair was a disaster … Naturally some of those voices, suppressed for so long, sound raucous, aggressive and uncouth.”

The anger that commentators detect in the Corbyn movement, in my experience, is not a symptom of the fact that it has been infiltrated by bullies – but that its members feel as though the Labour coup is as much an attack on their right to participate in public discourse as it is on Corbyn. 

Everything the left traditionally stands for – from human rights and socialism to a foreign policy driven by diplomacy – has been, at best, marginalised and, at worst, actively mocked in mainstream political discourse since the 1970s. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the depiction of the trade unions, the last bastions of organised British socialism, as insidious barons intent on wrecking British life (a claim that sounds particularly ludicrous when made by newspapers who supported the Conservatives at the last election – a party consisting of members of the actual landed gentry).

I am yet to meet a single Corbynite who is naive about Corbyn’s failings as a leader, the great challenges he faces, or who does not want to win a general election. But the reason so many have coalesced around him anyway is because they view his leadership as the only opportunity they have had in at least 30 years to see their views finally represented in public life. The Labour rebels’ attempt to unseat him is, in their minds, as much an attempt to excommunicate the wider left as it is to get rid of Corbyn himself. Perhaps the most salient evidence of this is the decision to charge affiliate members £25 to vote in the leadership election, and ban outright members who joined fewer than six months ago – a decision that has now been overturned in court.

Worse still for Corbyn supporters, the policy positions they have taken over the last 30 years have often been proven right. Lack of social housing has led to a spiralling housing crisis; the deregulation of the financial industry would have caused economic collapse had it not been for state intervention; queasiness around public ownership has caused escalating transport costs and arguably the shambles that is Southern Railway; inequality is the UK’s most pressing social issue; a reluctance to rein in fossil fuel companies has led to a climate emergency; and even Tony Blair accepts that the Iraq war may have led to the rise of Isis. This is why so many Corbyn supporters are upset by the coup, and why they have decided to back him unequivocally, in spite of the incompetence that has at times been part of his leadership.

I have a lot of sympathy with Owen Smith supporters who are horrified by Labour’s poll ratings. But I have zero sympathy with those in the party who have been utterly unwilling to engage with Corbyn supporters, and who have not reflected on why they lost control of their party to someone they so clearly regard as useless. There are simply not enough delusional Leninists in Britain to make up the entirety of Corbyn’s support – these are ordinary British voters who want radical solutions to a growing number of crises. And until they are listened to and taken seriously, Corbyn and the movement keeping him in power is not going anywhere.

Labour, are you sure you want to kick out Jeremy Corbyn and become the 'nice face of the establishment' again?

Emma Rees in The Independent

This week, sections of the Parliamentary Labour Party, our elected representatives, are attempting to undemocratically oust Jeremy Corbyn, who received a historic mandate not ten months ago and has seen the Party membership double since. But, this isn't really about Jeremy Corbyn, as I'm sure he would agree. It's about much more than that.

It's about the crisis at the very heart of how we do politics, or more aptly, how politics is done to almost all of us.

For the past 35 years or more, neo-liberalism and free market fundamentalism have shaped our politics. In this system, power and wealth flow to and concentrates at the top. For the majority of us, it's not even clear who has power, or where it is held. All we know is that there is very little we can do to exercise any of it in our own lives. Whether it is zero hour contracts, spiralling rent or soaring utility bills, it's not us who are calling the shots. And what is more, the electorate have never been asked if this is what they want or not, of course, but it's certainly what they've got.

During this time, the Labour Party has not countered free market ideology enough. It has been too weak in challenging our disempowerment. A growing wedge has been driven between the Westminster Labour Party and our movements’ grassroots. This weakness has led many Labour MPs to be seen as the nicer part of the establishment, rather than being the empowering force for the overwhelming majority that we need.

Add six years of bruising, Tory austerity on top of all that, and now we're at breaking point. The backlash has taken many forms: the SNP, UKIP, Brexit, Corbyn.

Jeremy Corbyn's leadership campaign was a break on “business as usual”, Westminster politics. It tapped into, and inspired, a movement for social justice, a movement for a more equal and decent society and a movement to give ordinary people more power in their own lives. That energy now lives on in Momentum and was seen in Parliament Square last night, where, with just 24 hours’ notice, 10,000 gathered to give Jeremy a vote of confidence.

So, what do the so-called “coup plotters” think is going to happen? That flying in the face of the membership, they can take an unaccountable, illegitimate ballot, replace Jeremy with someone in a smarter suit, and we, the electorate, breathe a heavy sigh of relief that everything has returned to the good old days of May 2015 when we lost the general election badly? And what about the traditional, working class support base who Corbyn is “failing to speak to” despite huge numbers turning out to hear him speak in traditional working class towns? Will they suddenly, after years of structural disempowerment, realise that actually do feel represented and empowered in the political process after all?

Not only does this show a total disregard for democracy, but it highlights a profound lack of self-awareness, reflection or analysis of what has been going on over the last few decades.

Corbyn isn’t going to fix this on his own. That is his greatest strength, the surest sign of his leadership. The difference between him and the plotters is that Corbyn recognises we, the grassroots members, have to be involved in finding the solutions.

Secret discussions in parliament drive wedges between the political elite and ordinary people. Corbyn wants to open up the party to become more of a movement, more rooted in our communities and firmly committed to redistributing wealth and power to the overwhelming majority of us. In short, a Labour Party fit for the 21st Century that will make society more equal, more democratic and give the overwhelming majority control. That’s inspiring. A big internal conflict that talks politics and ignores the major issues facing a country steeped in crisis? Not so much.

Cricket: What is Momentum and how relevant is it?

Mark Nicholas in Cricinfo

What exactly is momentum in sport and how relevant is it? Do New Zealand's cricketers have enough momentum to carry them past Australia this weekend? Can momentum overcome talent?

Essentially momentum is form and confidence. It is usually associated with a winning streak, a succession of performances that either truly reflect ability or, better still, lift that ability beyond its norm. This is presently the case with Brendon McCullum, whose bravado is driven by the need to prove to his team that anything is possible. He wants them to play without inhibition of any kind and if that means breaking boundaries (metaphorically and literally) then so be it. This is because most cricketers play with traffic in their head. The game bares heart, mind and soul. Insecurity, affectation and failure are the enemies. The enemies play tricks and cause confusion. A clear head is the holy grail.

McCullum might as well be saying: "If you think you can or you think you can't, you are probably right."

In Riding the Wave of Momentum, American author Jeff Greenwald says: "The reason momentum is so powerful is the heightened sense of self-confidence it gives us. There is a phrase in sports psychology known as self-efficacy, which is simply a player's belief in his or her ability to perform a specific task or shot. Typically, a player's success depends on this efficacy."

I once asked Andy Flower what he thought was the most important part of his job as the England coach. He said it was to have the players ready and able to make the right choices under pressure. This caught me off guard but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Single moments define cricket matches. At critical times these may be any one of a brave shot made, or one not attempted; a brilliant ball that outthinks the batsman; smart anticipation by a fielder that leads to a run-out; a masterly move by the captain who understands what the opponent likes least.

Flower felt that for a period under Andrew Strauss, England consistently made good choices. This led them to become the No. 1 team in the world. The flaw in Strauss' team was the formulaic nature of the play. If an opponent had the mind to challenge it, and the efficacy to pull it off, the England team seemed oddly unable to react. Witness Hashim Amla's 311 at The Oval, during which Graeme Swann, a key figure for Strauss, was so comfortably played from a guard on and outside off stump. In all the time I watched Swann bowl, I never saw him so witless in response. And by such a simple tactic!

During a momentum shift, self-efficacy is very high as the players have immediate proof of their ability to match the challenge. They then experience subsequent increases in energy and motivation that lead to a feeling of enthusiasm and control. The corollary is that a sportsman's image of himself changes. He feels invincible, which, naturally enough, takes him to a higher level.

David Warner is a good illustration of this. First a devastating T20 batsman, then a prolific Test batsman and now an intimidating 50-over batsman. With the various ages of Warner have come a variety of changes - some to technique and application, some to attitude, others to fitness, health and lifestyle. His momentum has run parallel to the improved performances by the Australian team. This is no surprise. They go hand in hand. The trick for Warner now is to retain - some might say regain - humility.

In his formative years Robin Smith was coached by the highly intelligent former Natal player Grayson Heath. Probably Robin was over-coached. Heath grooved technique and shot execution. But he did not free the mind. This is less a criticism than a reflection of the time. It was a more respectful age, both in society and of bowlers, whose examination of technique was greater than it is now.

Heath - a wonderful man, with cricket set deep in his soul - would marvel at McCullum, or AB de Villiers, as much for their carefree approach as their inspirational effect. Heath preached an equation: A + H = C. Arrogance plus humility equals confidence. Both de Villiers and McCullum perfectly reflect the equation. Humility in a sportsman is paramount. Without humility, momentum will easily be derailed. After all, momentum is winning and no person or team wins all the time.

The key to not losing momentum is to retain perspective and to remain grounded. Why do Chelsea, dominant in the Premiership, suddenly concede four goals and lose to Bradford in the FA Cup? I wasn't there but the fair bet would be indifference (inexcusable) or complacency (believable). Hard as José Mourinho must work to avoid this, even he cannot invade the heads of his players and correct them in a season of some 60-odd matches.

The other explanation for such a defeat is fatigue. Mourinho watches this closely but tends to play his MVPs for long stretches. No sportsman can beat fatigue. It is inevitable. The point is that you will lose some time. How you lose is what matters. Did you cover all bases? If so, momentum need not be lost.

The test for New Zealand, though it may not apply to Saturday's group match, will be to deal with the pressure of an event that troubles the mind. Australian cricketers trouble the mind. McCullum's assault against England was a real f*** you of a performance. It said to his men: "They are not worthy." Had he got out cheaply, it would have said the same dismissive thing - like his approach in the chase against Scotland. Had New Zealand lost, it would have been awkward and may have derailed the team. But he didn't think for a minute they would lose and his innings sent that message loud and clear.

His captaincy does much the same: "We are all over you and don't forget it." His tactics challenge prosaic thinking. His bowlers are empowered to take wickets. His fieldsmen are inspired by his own startling fielding performances. This style is more All Black than Black Cap. But for Richie McCaw read Brendon McCullum.



All Black or Black Caps? © Getty Images





The journey has not been easy. Ross Taylor was popular and the fall-out from McCullum's obvious desire to take his job was unpleasant. Taylor withdrew into himself, a loss of cricket expression that New Zealand could ill afford. Former players raged against the machine. McCullum had to deliver or he was toast.

Like Taylor, he is a good man. Arguably, he is more secure. This tournament will define him.

In the face of Australia, the Black Caps must, and surely will, continue to play McCullum's game. This means sticking to the flow, not overthinking or overanalysing. The minute you change approach, or even marginalise, you screw up. If you focus too much on the outcome, it becomes difficult to play so freely. An attacking mindset can all too easily become a defensive mindset. The outcome needs to be a given. Concern for the consequences diverts attention from what must be done.

Australia are the more talented team but they have been sleeping for a fortnight; the captain has been immobilised for three months. This is the time to get them. Momentum should carry New Zealand over this line because the consequences are not a major issue. Come the knockout stage, the traffic will creep in. Creep, creep until the brain is scrambled. Can McCullum's bold interpretation of cricket remain New Zealand's force when the stakes are at their highest? Or will momentum suddenly count for nothing?