Absurdity is becoming reality, as Britain travels back in time

As Remain-supporting campaigners come to terms with their latest court defeat and the startling revelation that even judges have a better grasp of politics than some of our MPs, it might be informative to consider events in a parallel universe.

Just imagine if a Corbyn-led government, acting entirely legally and within the limits of our uncodified constitution, were to embark on a course that seemed, to its opponents, morally repulsive and politically cynical. Now imagine how members of Momentum and the prime minister’s strongest supporters might feel if legal action aimed at reversing the government’s course was launched.

Cue many renditions of (the only verse they can remember of) “The Red Flag” and howls of indignation by various mouth pieces of the far left as they see a threat to their ambitions. “You see? This is how the establishment always fights back against democracy!”

The fundamental fault line in the British Left is a refusal to be bound by the same rules it imposes on others, a belief that, because they are morally superior to their opponents, the same strictures of law and behaviour do not apply to them. That’s why physical attacks on people who espouse Right wing or libertarian views can be justified, but politically motivated attacks on anyone on the Left is condemned (rightly) in the strongest terms.

Perhaps in anticipation of the likely failure of the legal case brought by 75 parliamentarians at the Court of Session in Edinburgh this week (the main hearing will take place next week), Momentum have demanded – and have organised – a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience which, ironically, is being mounted in defence of the rule of law and of parliamentary sovereignty. The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, whose leadership campaign in 2015 spawned the campaigning organisation, has, of course, chosen to support this series of illegal events, including the occupation of bridges and the blocking of roads.

It is perhaps to Corbyn’s credit that he sees no need to hide his principles credit: DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/ AFP

Not only that, but the man who still believes he is fit to be prime minister has urged his fellow MPs to join the protesters in their efforts to force the Government – by mob rule rather than by democratic means – to reverse its policy on next month’s prorogation.

Some have likened this planned action with the 1990 poll tax riots, which saw clashes between protesters and police in the centre of London and in other cities. At the time, the then Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, condemned the organisers of the violence as “Toy Town revolutionaries”. And he was right. Kinnock’s attack was a continuation of his strategy to detoxify his party from the stain of Marxist dogma, which found its willing advocates in the ranks of militant, and whose members Kinnock had helped expel from the party’s ranks.

It’s hard to remember today what all the fuss about Militant was. Militant was not a newspaper; it was an entirely separate political party, with its own membership, its own policies and its own leadership. Its philosophy was revolutionary Marxism, the notion that the working class, if suitably provoked, would one day overthrow the capitalist establishment by force.

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Unable to secure power on its own – because the ordinary voters considered them to be mad – they chose instead to infiltrate the Labour Party. Which is how they managed to control Liverpool council and run it into the ground, achieving the People’s Victory of 1985: sacking everyone who worked for the local authority.

And standing up for the rights of Trotskyists to remain in the party and to continue campaigning for their revolution was none other than Jeremy Corbyn, one-time secretary of the “Stop The Witch Hunt” campaign against expulsions. It was Corbyn, in fact, who, as chair of Hornsy Labour Party, ignored a ruling by his party’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) and issued the Trotskyist revolutionary Tariq Ali with a membership card.

Ali is back on the scene next week, as one of the speakers at a “People’s Assembly” event to protest against the government. Although finally expelled from the party in 1983, Ali remains a controversial and divisive figure who has never recanted his revolutionary views.

He will therefore be joined on the platform by Labour front-benchers Richard Burgon and Laura Pidcock, as well as other luminaries of the far Left: Lindsey German of the Stop The War Coalition and formerly of the Socialist Workers’ Party, and Mark Serwotka, the Trotskyist general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), who was re-admitted to Labour in 2016 after being expelled 25 years earlier.

This shower will be joined by Liverpool MP and Corbyn loyalist Dan Carden and by Laura Smith MP, who you might remember rose briefly to prominence last year when she called for a general strike to bring down Theresa May’s government.

The Labour Party, in other words, has made it clear that it has no objection to carving its way to power via non-parliamentary means, from an illegal general strike to shutting off public roads. In a previous era, Labour leaders would have distanced itself from any suggestion that the party was in favour of any tactics that were anything other than democratic.

It is perhaps to Corbyn’s credit, and an indication of how weak his internal opponents are, that he sees no need to hide his principles. He has never abandoned his revolutionary friends on the extreme Left, and over the next few weeks they will repay that loyalty by doing everything they can, by fair means or foul, violent or otherwise, to install him in No 10.