"Stalinists",Trotskyites and Labour

It is somewhat ironic that an a warning that a bunch of old Trotskyites are not going win political power.” comes from someone called Kim.

 



Not however from KimJong-un supreme leader of the last Stalinist outpost  Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) but our own Kim Howells  who of course before joining Labour and becoming a Blairite MP was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and probably had at times had to put up with the accusation of "Stalinist" from other far left fractions
But  it is clear it is from his Blairite stance  that Kim Howells  claimed Civil war within the Labour Party is “inevitable” following the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader, 

Mr Howells, who represented Pontypridd between 1989 and 2010 and was a long-serving minister under Tony Blair, told last nights  BBC Wales Week In Week Out programme that the party needs to reconcile its divisions as soon as possible if it is to have a chance of winning the general election in 2020.


Asked how he would respond to recent events if he were a Labour MP now, Mr Howells, whose last appointment before stepping down from the Commons was as chairman of the intelligence and security committee, said:

“I’d be bitterly opposed to the current leadership of the Labour Party.
“I’d be saying things that I believe about the need to win political power and a bunch of old Trotskyites are not going win political power.”

To win, he says the party has 

“to start speaking in a language people can understand and convince the electorate”.
“There is going to be a civil war inside the Parliamentary Labour Party. It’s nothing new, it’s happened in the past and it’s happening right now.”

Asked if he thinks civil war is inevitable, he says: 

"I think it is inevitable.”
 “It’s not good enough to say that the party is resilient, it will come back again. It could be decades before it comes back again. So the party’s got to make its mind up.
“Does it really think it’s going to win again in the future, with Corbyn as the leader? I don’t think so.”

 Mr Howells could have at least accepted  that Jeremy Corbyn was elected with the support of the vast majority of party supporters  and that it is clear that  even if you removed all the "Trostkyite"  won.


Normally as a supporter of Welsh Independence the prospect of Labour tearing itself apart  would probably appear to benefit this cause as Plaid gains support.

But I'm not sure that Plaid or the Greens or even the Lib Dems will benefit from a Civil War  within Labour and that the true winners will be the Tories as usual

Before we dance around the Bonfire we must make sure  it does not end up with us getting burnt to the ground as well.