Where is the Labour Party's messiah?
Owen Jones favourite word is war. The writer is always banging on about the Tories declaring war on someone or the need for Labour to go to war over this or that. Trouble is, the real war is the one thats been going on in the Labour movement for the past century between social democrats and democratic socialists. Labour is a quasi-religious movement and thats what makes it attractive. But its also why its incivility and moral contortion look set to go on longer than that of the Plantagenets and the Valois. Since 1945 Labour has been buffeted by the conflicts between supporters of Hugh Gaitskell and Aneurin Bevan, then Denis Healey and Tony Benn, then Neil Kinnock and Militant and today a rudderless coalition of centrists against embittered and biblical-sounding Corbynites. Labour has only been able to win when a figure emerges who can, mostly through force of personality, bring both sides together. No one but Harold Wilson and Tony Blair has achieved this. The unfashionable and perhaps unpalatable truth is that even with coherent policies, what Labour really needs is another messiah. In Jones Manichean world, good and evil are definable and observable. Regrettably, for far too many in the Labour movement, the things that make winning possible  discipline, coherence, unity  are on the side of the devil. Jones does not appear to see the irony of condemning those he does not like as factionalist, while his current favourite tactic is to attempt to make the label centrist convey the monomaniacal malevolence of Pol Pot. He even wrote an article about his regret at Labours internal war as if he had nothing to do with it (apparently, it was down to a misunderstanding over anti-Semitism, including the hit line, Corbyns personal distress at being labelled a racist led him to make poor decisions on anti-Semitism). Once again, Labour figures are arguing among themselves about their proclivity to argue among themselves. Holding Batley and Spen in a by-election doesn't really change anything either, other than preventing the latest attempt at political masochism by a handful of delusional dingbat MPs.