Apart from anything else, I have a feeling it’s the last thing he wants you to do.

If he’s learned the same lessons I have from being involved with the assemblies movement, he’ll be hoping like hell that you’re just getting on with it, your way. We really, seriously do need that thing everyone’s been saying for years – a grassroots movement. That means what Jeremy may or may not have said to Zara, or Zara to Andrew, or whoever else everyone’s talking about today does not matter.

National parties can be infiltrated and corrupted. Heroes can have bad days and be brought low by media hacks. Manifestos are going to contain things some people can’t stomach. The Collective has been talking about a coalition of independents and, whether or not Jeremy, Pam, Katie, or anyone else thinks there should or should not be a party and whether or not they think you’re allowed in their planning meetings and whether or not any of them decide to start a new party, we should be getting on with building a strong, locally rooted, hydra-headed ‘by the people for the people’ movement that no-one can buy unless they’re willing to give a six-figure bung to each of several million people.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please check out the assemblies movement. Not that thing Unite and someone else have been running since forever but those loose alliances of local lefty/environmentalist/campaign groups who get together in their own towns, learn the ‘how to’ from each other, and start knocking holes in rich-people politics.

Splits, spats and leaks

Of course there will be – loads of them — and don’t the media have us well trained! The minute there were signs of discord in The Collective’s secret group, pretty much everyone I spoke to immediately came out with sentences in which ‘typical’, ‘left’ and ‘split’ kept banging around. It’s really not that hard to understand. Centrist and far-right groups are less likely to be seen behaving like that because – remember these two points, they’re lifesavers:

Key point 1

Right-wing groups are more stable and more private because they are not trying to do democracy. Real democracy is never tidy – the more democratic something is, the less governable it is – that’s its strength, not its weakness. Starmer and Co were able to steal the Labour Party specifically because it was not democratic. Sure, there were votes but paid staffers controlled who got to vote on what, on what terms, and when.

Key point 2

It’s easier to get unity in a rich-people group because they’re all loyal to the money. In the real world, real humans relate to each other as best they can through a morass of wishes, hopes, fears and different ideas – all of which have an equal right to be heard.

So that’s my advice to myself, to you, to all of us: don’t wait for Jeremy or ‘the new party’. Get active locally, and see if you can find a bunch of people who fancy starting a local party and don’t worry about the spats and splits — I believe there are already two ‘new left movement’ groups in my town — It doesn’t matter. We’re all learning to do politics.

There will be splits, spats and leaks and all the rest of it. We will all at some point have to navigate round people who think they own the movement. That’s normal and its human but far, far greater than any of this is the warmth, friendship and fun you find when you start trying to work honestly with local people outside your own ‘comfort zone’ circle, and there will be vast amounts of energy and enthusiasm if we can get to a stage where we can put up our own, local candidate at the next elections.

Let’s face it, we have nothing to lose but an absolutely useless, vindictive, self-serving bunch of crap career politicians. Surely we can do better than that.

Ready? …. Let’s do politics!

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