Photo: Joe Reynolds / DemotixLet me declare my interest from the get-go: I am one of those ‘naughty people’ either on the Trotskyite left or the Telegraph right deluded or malign enough to engineer a split in the Labour party and consign it to years of wilderness. I have paid my £3 and become a registered supporter of the Labour party (12 August is last day for registration) so that I can vote for Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership election. Commentators who welcomed the one member, one vote change in Labour party regulations as a way of breaking the block union vote are now complaining that the new rules are allowing people to buy a vote. They can’t have it both ways!
I also do not fit the demographic of the young voter, not by a long stretch. It is true that I did not expect Corbyn to win enough nominations, and when he did, I did not expect this huge surge in popularity which makes his leadership of the Labour Party a growing possibility. Corbyn did not expect to come this far either. These low expectations themselves have been held against us as evidence of incompetence – when there is a completely obvious alternative explanation. Any narrative that challenges austerity, talks about renationalisation or redistribution of wealth is damned for being hopelessly out of touch with reality. The truth is that we did not dare to dream that we had as many fellow-travellers as can now be seen above the parapet.
At the end of July, Corbyn launched Working with Women, an excellent document which cannot be faulted for the policies it proposes on a range of issues from free universal child care to the drive against austerity to ending violence against women. However the silences and gaps are worth further scrutiny. Whilst the document mentions the importance of proper funding of specialist BME women’s services in preventing and dealing with violence against women – very welcome in view of the recent trend of replacing specialist services with generic services provided by depoliticised organisations like large housing associations – and points to ‘the intersectionality of the impact of the cuts on them’, it does not mention the intersectionality of religious fundamentalism and women’s oppression.
