The Parliamentary Labour Party, which its stalwarts claim nearly met its doom under the ultra left Michael Foot, is now having tantrums about how the Shadow Cabinet was chosen and appointed. Never mind the detail; they are behaving like children. They mounted a rebellion and lost spectacularly and it is now time to knuckle down or get out. Michael Foot failed because during a time of change in the political weather when the centre moved sharply to the right, he took his party left. But now there is a change in the political weather again in full swing, with the centre moving sharply to the left. Although not in government Jeremy Corbyn is the leader of that shift in the UK and has attracted to the cause unprecedented numbers of young people, well educated and clever, who know and care nothing about Michael Foot, Trotsky et al, but who see clearly that the current economic model, which New Labour helped fashion, cannot sustain and is grossly unfair.
May, who turns out to be nobody’s fool, has followed Corbyn and moved the whole Tory party to the left of anything ever thought of by Tony Blair. It is well to the left of the squawking right of the PLP. Utterly befuddled by the new political reality, these sad and sorry soundbite politicians of a yesterday now passed, call for ‘effective opposition’. They cannot see that Corbyn is more effective than any modern opposition leader. Not only has this 2015 Tory government had to abandon more legislation than any post WWII predecessor, it has had to completely reposition itself in the political spectrum. Because of a political agenda driven by Corbyn.