A good article from Zoe Williams in yesterday's Guardian. Sadly, from Trada's posts it seems there's zero chance of this happening with the current Corbyn supporters mindset:
This government is falling apart, so Labour’s tribes must come togetherThe Tories’ main problem with Jeremy Corbyn and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, is that they speak human. Critics rush at the opposition like Wile E Coyote, carrying boulders and anvils marked “Maoist cult” (© Tim Farron) and “Marxist radical”, then wonder how McDonnell scuttles behind them with a cheerful “meep meep”. The Labour leadership is not pretending to be moderate, it’s trying to change the definition of moderation. They’re not smuggling ideology into some “common sense”, they’re attempting – with some success – to upend the consensus. In the art of persuasion, there’s nothing quite like believing what you’re saying. It bestows authenticity upon your entire character, makes you memorable in your hobbies and foibles: I can imagine Mr and Mrs McDonnell incompetently sailing together as he described in Sunday’s Observer, and the Corbyns chopping onions. In the domestic lives of the Mays and the Hammonds, I see nothing; empty rooms, polished tables with neat little notes about tax-efficiency schemes.
What would really distinguish it, ahead of an election that cannot be far off, would be to foster generosity and trust
Of the Conservatives, Labour have little to fear: McDonnell’s line at the weekend – “they’ve got no mission, no objectives”, ending on that whisper of sympathy, “and I think they realise” – was quietly, devastatingly dismissive. Yet that doesn’t mean he has nothing to worry about; all Labour’s energy now has to go into healing its own wounds. The high command plainly already got this memo: Gordon Brown’s endorsement of Corbyn last week had the ring of Britney Spears coming out for George W Bush (come on, you can’t have forgotten, it was only 2001: in precis, whatever you think of him, he’s now our president, and we must line up behind our president). Brown was neither cheerleader nor cynic, he was simply lining up. McDonnell repaid the respect, in the simple, tail-wagging language of a footballer looking forward to a new season: “I’ll be sitting down with Gordon and some of his people … it’s exciting.” Blair has never warmed to the project, but you never know, given his cunning and still combustible unpopularity, whether he’s just affecting animosity because to come out in favour would pitch the New-Labour-hating left into total disarray.
Lower-profile rifts take more intricate repair, and won’t be healed with a cheerful line in an interview – there are the MPs who had nothing against Corbyn’s vision, but doubted his competence and said so; those who thought the vision just about acceptable, but some of the methods heavy-handed; those who had an objection to elements of the manifesto, but not the bulk of it.
Utterly resolute anti-Corbynites were never very great in number, they just had high status because they’d previously been thought of as the rightful successors; their opposition had very little to do with Corbyn’s policies or personality, and far more to do with the feeling that he’d stolen a leadership that was rightfully theirs. The Chuka Umunnas and Liz Kendalls need neither be obliterated nor placated: the party is strong enough, and has enough small-M momentum to accommodate even profound differences.
But milder doubters include some of the most thoughtful, sophisticated, likable and doorstep-ready MPs in the party – Chi Onwurah, Lisa Nandy, Clive Lewis – and the challenge for Labour is not so much to present a united face in order to look government-ready, but to find a way to use all its talent for when that government materialises.
Frankly, there is nothing in Labour’s “alternative budget” for even the most ambivalent leftist to be afraid of. It has been billed as the most leftwing programme in living memory; that’s only true if you’re 16. The promise of a £6bn injection for the NHS is less radical, in cost and intent, than Blair’s 2001 pledge to bring health spending per capita up to the European average. The unfreezing of public sector pay and pausing of universal credit are neither most nor least leftwing, since we have nothing to compare them with. Seven years without a pay rise; six weeks without any means of sustenance - this government’s assault on living standards has been without precedent.
You could argue that New Labour, in McDonnell’s position, would stick to Tory spending plans, as they did in 1997, but you’d be comparing apples and oranges. John Major’s government was a different proposition to Theresa May’s, rarely as chaotic and never as cruel. The promise of one million homes built in five years is identical to Ed Miliband’s pledge, except that he said “up to one million”, which was the very distillation of his failure: his head knew what the country needed; his heart knew what it wanted; his guts were always looking for a getaway car. “Properly funded public services” and “spending on infrastructure”, meanwhile, are what every party used to promise every election - more bigger stuff now - until the financial crash sprinkled credibility and even glamour on austerity.
But if the Labour leadership is serious about redefining the centre, it has to stop using “centrist” as an insult. In an opening goodwill gesture, every member of the parliamentary Labour party should take a vow never to use the word “electable” again. It’s always self-assertive (“I know the electorate better than you”), never generative. Those using it rarely have any notion of what “electable” might look like, while remaining utterly confident as to what “unelectable” means. It’s also peculiarly divisive, effectively turning what should be a question of ideas (“shall we do X or Y?”) into a question of morality and character. You’re in effect saying, “You’re keeping our enemies in place with your radicalism, which is really your vanity, or your caution, which is really your cowardice.”
Labour is looking more purposeful and coherent, the faster the government cascades into tergiversation and panic. But what would really distinguish it, ahead of an election that cannot be far off, would be to foster an atmosphere of generosity and trust. Neither Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson nor Jacob Rees-Mogg could park tanks on that lawn.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/19/government-falling-apart-labour-tribes-corbynites?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other