ACFM - #ACFM Microdose: The Comedown

Episode Date: January 7, 2020

The #ACFM crew take stock in the wake of Labour’s defeat and the dawning of a new year. https://novaramedia.com/?p=16785

Our exit poll is suggesting that there will be a conservative majority when all the votes are counted. I feel a bitter disappointment at the result that appears to be unfolding tonight. It's just totally devastating, isn't it? Obviously, very sad and the result was changed. Oh, well, it's horrible year never end. Hello and welcome to ACFM, the home of the weird left. I'm Nadia Idol, and as usual, I'm joined by Keigh. Kea Milburn.

Hello. And Jeremy Gilbert. Hello. And today we're talking about the post-election, the come-down. Guys, how's everyone feeling? Other people should go first. Oh, really? Yeah.

Okay. Kea, how are you feeling? I'm quite prepared to tell you my full gamut of emotions from 10pm on that Thursday. Yeah, me too, so go for it. Well, look, so yeah, the election, the election, the exit polls come out and it honestly was like getting kicked in the stomach, basically.

I felt it viscerally. Instant sadness. Basically, really hard to take. And the next day as well, I felt very, very sad and grumpy. and shocked. I think I was shocked by the polls and not necessarily I don't necessarily think I was surprised.

It was like more, it was like a weird one of like, I was definitely shocked. I had that feeling of shock where I was finding it hard to process the information. But it wasn't surprised because I am quite used to election, exit polls give me that feeling of sadness.

So it was a very familiar feeling, but, like, basically, it was also shock. And it might be useful to talk about shock as, to give a little conceptual analysis of what shock is, because I think it might help people think through what. Yeah. Because shock, I think shock is best understood as, like, being overwhelmed by information or sensation, which is what you find hard to process. So if you think about, like, an electric shock, that is exactly what an electric shock is. you're basically you get too much like basically electricity is the mode through which our information is carried around our body and when you get an electric shock you just get overwhelmed by the amount of information your body can't process it so it just sort of shuts down basically closes off and it can't function you know and I think it works you know we can understand shock in that similar sort of way as in that you get you get overwhelmed by sort of like perhaps unexpected information or information that you you can't quite

process. And I definitely had that where I basically wanted to close down and not think about it and not think about anything for a couple of days. And then basically I started to treat the whole situation as an analytical problem, which is my way of dealing with these sorts of things. But it's useful because then that makes you, that's the first stage in turning this experience from a passive experience where you're just overwhelmed to an act. experience where you're starting to get a collective grip on it. And so that's what I've been basically, basically doing. How about you, no idea? Okay. So I was in the momentum office for the exit poll. I went there from the marginals where I was canvassing in. I've been

canvassing for 10 hours in the rain, got into the Momentum office. And we all sat around around the big screen and there was there was this kind of odd atmosphere because it was an antith. It wasn't so much that I felt like there was nervousness. It was kind of like it was as if we had like removed the cover of of the optimism of the will. And it was like, right, there's nothing we can do now. There's no amount of like going out and talking to people. like this is this that's happened that's done we're just we're going to be on the receiving end of things and I think that I mean nobody said that but it definitely felt like that like we aren't actors anymore we're going to kind of receive the whatever the tablet of stone of like the truth of the outcome that's what it felt like there was a very heavy atmosphere I thought even though everyone was being really friendly and saying hello to each other and you know there was pizza and beer and whatever and then we all shut the lights sat in front of the big screen and the results came in and it was just this deafening silence.

And I felt two things. Well, I think, I don't know, I was telling other people this. I was telling people that it felt like when my friend unexpectedly died and I was at the funeral with 40 of us who were in a band together about 10 years ago and everyone was crying and I just felt like I had to be strong for everyone else. And I think that's a personal thing in terms of how I process my feelings. But there were so many tears for me in the run-up to this election. I don't cry easily at all for all sorts of reasons. But there were so many tears for me. And I think that the emotion came from the fact that I really felt like we were building

something. And it was incredible. And infrastructurally, it's been unprecedented in the UK. But as soon as that election result came in and some people visibly started breaking up, breaking down, some people were in shock, I just felt completely numb, comfortably numb, as goes to song. And I still feel comfortably numb. I thought cerebrally, I thought two things. And this immediately came to my, within 15 minutes, I thought, fuck, I need to get a proper job and protect myself. I need money. So that's the first thing. And the second thing, I thought, fuck is going to be more difficult to walk down the streets as a woman, dressed how I want. Those are two things that I felt, and that's like the immediate, I guess, reaction to the

shit's going to go down. How do I take care of myself? And that's an odd reaction for me or a different reaction. I'm not used to feeling that. I mean, that's how I felt at the moment. I haven't cried since I went home. I stayed up to look at some of the things, sorry, the results coming out for some of the marginals.

I went to bed. I woke up. I read four articles, and I've not been online or read or engaged with anything since. The thing I've had a visceral reaction to is, and a real repulsion is how I see a lot of people reacting, which I kind of am seeing as like some kind of like mass mental health situation. And I've just been like, I just don't want to do any of that. And I mean, I want to talk about that more later.

But that's more as a processing rather than a reaction. I feel quite distant and quite like I'm going into reserve. I'm hibernating and I'm going into reserve, I would say. yeah that makes sense Jeremy how did you feel well people are always I'm going to talk about frustration because people get frustrated with me giving

responses to questions like that in terms of frustrating because it's not they get frustrated with your frustration but just say about how you felt well this is the thing I am I mean that's my main feeling if I'm honest my main feeling was one of frustration because I wasn't surprised it's what I expected

it's what I've expected since before 2017 for very specific reasons because I just think there was a whole dimension of our political strategy which was flawed and you know I can tell all the stories about my relationship to that those debates and like well you know why

but I know it's not it's not the kind of visceral story of personal emotion that people often want to hear at this kind of moment but no I can't help that's my relationship to it you know it always reminds me you know I got studied once

by some Italian sociologists as a supposedly a representative of the anti-capitalist movement in Britain so I was putting a focus group in some room at SOAS for a Saturday afternoon because Shantelle Muthford said

oh this is Jeremy Gilbert he's some sort of activist talk to him so there's me and a bunch of other people and we were putting a focus group and they got really annoyed with me because firstly I said there is no anti-capitalist movement in Britain.

There's like 300 people who've been turning up on the same demos for eight years. There's not a movement, really. They were really irritated with me for saying that. And then they started going on to me. So we don't want to hear your analysis. We want to hear how you feel. And I said, I feel frustrated

that we are unable to constitute an effective counter-hedymonic force. That's how I feel. And that also wasn't... If you're making a parallel between me asking that question and the people in your focus group, that's not what was happening. Saying that you're frustrated

and you're going straight to analysis is completely fine because that's interesting, right? People have reacted to this in a different way. And if your brain has gone and, you know, I'll let you finish whatever you wanted to say. But like if your head has gone there, I think one, I think that's important and one of the reasons why I wanted to do this episode is because I feel like there's a closing down. And I think this might be something that you're touching on, Jeremy, of like the, there's only one proper left response. and I think we're human beings and we're all different and we have different responses and your response was different to mind, different to Kiyas, just based on what you've said. But carry on and talk more about your frustration.

But I just wanted to like elevate that as a, you know, we're different people. Yeah, I appreciate that. I wasn't at all. I didn't think at all that you were going to have that response. I didn't think that at all. I'm just, I'm just conscious. I'm conscious my relationship to this stuff is, you know, is bound up with a father. Like I've been doing, sort of doing, trying to do this combination.

of, you know, radical activism and, but also labour electoral politics. I mean, literally since the late 80s. I don't really know anyone else in that position, apart from people much older than. So I always feel like I'm slightly watching things happening from a distance at a different speed. So obviously, I mean, my first feeling, obviously,

was just like heartbroken for all my friends who put so much into it, you know, people like you. I mean, you were the first best I thought of really. No, I didn't remember. I'm really, you know, I'm really sad. Really sad for that reason. but also like I say kind of frustrated because I just I will say you know I'm on record as having said this for many years well this ties to your story actually is I'll tell a story about going to the first time I ever went to the momentum office which is very very early in the day like it's a different office to the one now momentum had only really existed for a few weeks and Sam tarry took me in to talk to the office with the office then consisted basically of James Adam Emma John Lansman Joe Todd was there I think in a couple of people, that was it.

And I was to do a little seminar about the whole kind of political situation about where I thought we were going, where I thought we would come from, what the possibilities were. And I kind of outlined all the situation, I outlined why I thought, you know, the Corbyn project was viable

and why we would probably get more support from sections of what had been the sort of soft left than people might expect. Then I said, look, you've also got to accept the fact that it's just a historical reality that Labor has never, never won a parliamentary majority on a radical programme like ever from opposition. It's never done that.

It can't be done, is my contention. The history is shown it cannot be done. We won in 1945 because we were already part of the government and we had that gave us all kinds of advantages in terms of laying the ground for a programme. We won in 97 because we completely conceded vaguely a veto over our whole programme to Rupert Murdoch and the city. And you just cannot, the electoral system just doesn't let you do that. You've got to accept that, you know, the only way you're going to get in the electoral success with the radical program is to change the electoral system and to accept that is going to mean working with other parties like every other social democratic party in Europe has had to do, and often with much more success than we have had. And if we don't accept that, we will ultimately, you know, crash on the rocks of this system, which has been built to keep us out of power.

And basically what happened in that discussion is all the young people totally agreed with me. And then, you know, John Lansman, who might have a huge amount of respect, said, yeah, I agree with everything, but I don't agree with this stuff about proportional representation and progressive alliances and all that rubbish. And other people in the room at that time were actually were quite frustrated by that. And I kept saying, all through, even through 2017, well, look, we're not, this is this, you know, however bigger campaign, however, however will we do, then, you know, if we don't cross that Rubicon of just accepting that this sort of fantasy of like a, you know, a Labor Party all on its own. with a radical program, winning a parliamentary majority in a system which massively is weighted in favour of the Tories, like it always has been. It's just, he's not going to work. Halfway through the election campaign, I actually got a call from John, from Lansman.

And he told, he said, okay, look, we've sort of come around. Some of us have come around, at least some of the way to this. We're never going to talk to the Lib Dems, but at least trying to get something going with the Greenbop. And I talked him about it, and I suggested some other people for him to call, who were more connected than I was, but it just went nowhere. In the end, like the leadership decided not not to go that way. And I just feel like that. And that was the moment when it was all lost from my point of view. I mean, there was never, and then we, you know, we didn't do that in 2017.

We didn't, we didn't cross that final bridge away from kind of traditional laborism. And then, you know, it was all downhill from there. And I think it's really important to understand that in the election, the 20, like in the election, the 20, um, we were really, really scuppered by the fact that the leave vote had a massive advantage because of the first-past-the-post system. They had 400 constituencies. I mean, for me, this is personal and visceral

because that wasn't the first time I've made that argument. You know, the first time I made that argument publicly anyway, it was at a Labour Students conference in the early 90s. And I said then, I said, look, given the way the electoral system works, given that we live in a multi-party system, whether we like it or not, This was the early 90s. I said, look, there's only two ways for Labour to go.

Either Labour retains its identity as a radical socialist party, but it accepts it can't win a parliamentary majority on its own on that programme, and it has to enter into some kind of coalitions with other parties, whether it likes it or not. Or it can move so far to the right that it actually outflanks the centre parties to the right, and it becomes completely unrecognisable to us as the party we've all joined. And lots of people supported the idea of supporting proportion and representation. They supported all the other stuff, but they didn't. But they said, no.

They said your idea that Labor, if it doesn't do what you say, Labor is going to go so far to the right. It's unrecognizable. That's mad. That's never going to happen. Within the next five years, that is exactly what happened. So I feel, so that's how I feel like I've been watching this happen, you know, for sort of 30 years.

And I just feel, you know, it's very frustrating. Yeah, I absolutely, I absolutely, I'm just going to say one thing and then, Kear, you can jump in, which is that I'm absolutely incapable. incapable of engaging with this the election on that level like I probably disagree with some of the stuff that you say Jeremy but I haven't thought out I haven't thought it out and I kind of don't want to think it out for about another year or something like I I just cannot engage whatsoever on on that kind of level of analysis which is totally fine like that's me I'm not

capable of doing it. I don't want to do it. I want to talk about how everyone needs to get on the sesh and have more sex. Those are the things that I think people should be doing. I don't have, it's not in my physical, emotional, like, left-wing capability to do that. I just want to say, I'll just end on this point and then feel free to, like, jump in the analysis. But this is just to say to listeners, like, I have sophisticated political ideas and none of them are going going to come out on this podcast like just wait you may you may surprise yourself lydia well no i'm just i just don't i this is not this fear in which i'm willing to or have want to talk about the election and i'm and that i want to be honest to myself to i i can't i'm not i don't want to talk

about analysis i want to talk about how we should have better parties and resistance Now, but Kea, go ahead if you want to jump into analysis. I'm not doing analysis for another year. Well, I mean, basically, that is an analysis and we will be doing analysis. But basically, people deal with these things in different ways. Do you know what I mean? Me and Gem's instincts are much more to deal with events like this by bringing them into analysis, do you know what I mean?

But I wanted to do a different thing, right? So which is if Jeremy was convinced that this was always going to happen, and I think he's more convinced now than he was a little while ago, and, you know, if I was shocked but not surprised, you know, should we have prepared people more for the potential for defeat and their potential for sadness? Do you know what I mean? Because even, because the last, the last sort of that, pre-election, the pre-election special we did, you know, we were quite up. We were very, you know, joyful. And that was real joy, actually. It was real joy. And there's a joy that comes through a connection with others. You know, that campaign really was a joyful experience in many ways, even though. We were coming up. We were coming up at 1am. We were. What can I say? Well, it was, but it was joyful in a very anxious and in that very anxious way. Do you know what I mean? As in, we weren't convinced we were going to win, but there was something going to go. going on and it was you know that is the joy which is you feel a connection with others other

people you haven't met and it's constantly confirmed where you when you jump in a car with a load of strangers go and canvass with them and basically find you you know you uh intimately connected you know i mean you are increasingly each other's power and in fact you know you seem to be on the same page um you know that that is a real real thing you know and what what we've been experiencing, you know, in a way, it doesn't matter what's going on in your own head. You can just see it happening around, is that the movement is feeling sadness. And sadness is not just that you're feeling a bit miserable. It is a very specific thing. Sadness is that feeling that your powers are diminishing because, you know, that sense of unity, that sense of collective

purpose is splintering to some extent, you know. But you have to be, you have to be like actually watching the stuff. And what I'm saying is, I've not engaged. Like, I've literally not engaged. I don't know what's happening in the news. I'm, I'm, I'm, so I'm not experienced, maybe that's like a weird reaction or like, I'm not feeling sad. I'm just feeling like reflective. I'm in the kind, I'm reflecting on the election and it's also Christmas and the new year. So I'm not feeling sad, but I did have, like, as you were saying, and you know, like, it's really nice that Jeremy, like, felt that towards me that he was like, oh my God, like Nadia's been working so hard on this.

I don't know, maybe it's some like weird quirk of my brain, but I just didn't think about myself at all. I was like, oh, my God, it's all the 20-year-olds. Like, I've been doing this for 20 years. You know, I've experienced many defeats. I remember the Labour Party when they were the enemy. Like, I'm fine. And I'm fine because I've had a really good year

because of other things that have happened in my personal life. I've had one of the best years mental health-wise in a really, really long time. I'm just sad that it, I guess I am sad that it ends. did this way, but it's a cerebral thing for me. I've temporarily experienced sadness for all the 20-year-olds for whom, like you said, Kear, and I think you're right, we should unpack this more. Like, should we have prepared those people for defeat? Because I can't actually remember a build-up experiencing something that was a build-up this big, although some people say that they felt that 2017 was like that for them. But then in 2017, I didn't go canvassing. I only went, they'd

get out the vote and I didn't know any of that stuff. So I feel a little bit, I do feel a level of betrayal and I'm not sure or, um, not betrayal, the other, the other term looking for that begins with a D. I feel, I feel like, um, deceived. I feel like something has deceived me because I didn't think there was, I basically didn't engage with the calculation. I couldn't engage with, I couldn't do what I was doing and engage with the calculation that we could have lost in the way that we did. So even though I cerebrally understood that there was a big hole in my information, it was like the only way that I could keep going for six weeks was, I don't know, it was like having an affair or something. It was like going to Las Vegas and having an affair for six weeks, and now it's over, and it's definitely over. And I couldn't have had that affair if I, you know, thought that my wife and kids at home or something.

But no, like that's what it's up. It doesn't it also like an experiment. I mean, to me it feels like it was an experiment. You know, there had to be a certain collective suspension of disbelief for a while for the experiment to be prosecuted. Although I also, I feel like the experiment has verified, you know, that's partly my feeling. The experiment has verified something some of us have been saying for a really long time. And then it wasn't really necessary ever to take that risk. But fair enough, you know, for the experiment to be conducted, people had to suspend disbelief in.

you know, in a certain set of institutionalized political realities. But isn't it like it's not just a six-week thing. Like we basically, we sort of got trapped into a sort of like a suspension of disbelief by 2017, by the 2017 election. Do you know what I mean? And what you're feeling, Nadia, which is sort of, all right, I need to look, you know, I need to sort of protect myself a little bit here. Like, you know, perhaps I need to go and get a job and protect myself and get a job,

which, you know, pays some. money to protect myself against all of this shit that's coming, that is partly an effect of the fact that that, that sense, the 2017 election gave us this sense that, that a left-wing Labour government was close near, basically. It could be a couple of years away. And that gives, that sort of temporality is very, very different towards sort of temporality where you're thinking at least five, perhaps 10 years of preparation. Do you know what I mean? You know, that's the temporality in which you sort of suspend things and think what are the most what what needs to be done now to give us a chance do you know what I mean and basically don't you have to always go for those

opportunities I think you do yeah I do yeah go on Jeremy no I was just going to say one little point which is you know and this this might sound a bit like techie and I don't know like NGO corporate but I think there's a theory of change problem that's gone on in this situation. I think the suspension of disbelief bit which is irking me is like, okay, did we suspend this belief over the fact that we could do this through

mobilising and not organising. Because organising and mobilising are two completely different things. No, no. No, I don't think that at all. No, that's not what I mean. But I think, not in response to you, but I think if from my vantage point where I was working

in the arena that I was working in, I feel like there was a bit of that. It's like if we just mobilize more people, we can win this thing. That was the work that I was involved in. That's what we were doing. It was about numbers and contact, numbers and contact, numbers and contact, whereas I know from my expertise that where the groundwork has not been done, like people see things very, very differently.

And that's why deep organizing is really important. And there was part of, like, deep organising as, you know, a theoretical basis, like, informed what I did. But I feel like I'll take a year to think about that stuff, you know, to want to go back to it. But that was like, basically that, you know, that was the thing that, the only unknown in this election was what effect the ground campaign would have. Because it was a level of ground campaign we haven't seen for like 20, 30 years or something. So, like, you know. The fucking 50. We don't seen anything like since the 50s.

Yeah, you're right, actually. Yeah, you're right. No, no, but that was it, wasn't it? Like, you know, as far as like, you know, Brexit trappiness in the polls from the, from leave, you know, all of that was set in. That was the only unknown was what effect would the ground campaign have? So that was the suspension of this belief was we have to fucking do what's necessary to give that his best chance, you know, in the most unopportune of circumstances. Because, you know, I'm not sure. I think absent Brexit, if May's Brexit had happened and he's,

election, you know, May's withdrawal agreement had happened and the election happened in, you know, 18 months time or something in more precipitous, precipitous circumstances in this spring, you know, perhaps that would have been enough to get us over the line. Even then, though, I think, we would have faced a really big problem, i.e. we hadn't backfilled the movement. You know, as far as I'm concerned, Corbyn was a fluke. The Corbyn election, you know, Corbyn being elected as Labour leader was a fluke. And that was the chance, basically, that opened up and up opportunity. But that opportunity, it was always premised on the idea that we would backfill or retcon a movement into place. Usually it's the other way around. Usually, you know,

we get a movement and then a leader. It's the figurehead of that movement and they produce lots more possibilities. And when we look back at it now, we'd say, well, look, a movement has come into place, in fact, to some degree. In fact, I'd like to do a sort of like my generation left sort of analysis because in some ways it's sort of been confirmed that it was being confirmed I was over over optimistic but in some ways it's been confirmed because it there's nobody pretending that age isn't the big sort of divider in this in this election there was just starkly obvious my analysis was always that like you know 2008 the crisis of 2008 you know that broke a generation or a couple of generations from neoliberalism the few the neoliberalism the

illiberal future that was offered to them is no longer available. So they become available for a different sort of future to be offered. But the circumstances are, you know, you need, that doesn't mean you go to the left necessarily. You need people to, you know, propose a different future for that. And that future got proposed by basically a generational unit, as Mannheim would say, like a small core got produced in 2010, 2011. You know, and the Corbyn moment, The opportunity of Corbyn basically gave the opportunity for that core and, you know, all of the people who were drawn around that core, people like S3 who were a little bit older,

you know, the Corby moment has made it possible for that generational unit, the generational core of 2010, 2011 to basically hegemonize the generation of 2008. Do you know what I mean? They also sort of hegemonized a slightly older generation in 2017. you know the sort of 40 to 50 year olds and that's that was the place where it where it weakened this this time you know that's a that is a very made that's a huge thing that puts us in a much much stronger position than we were in 2015 right it proved circumstances proved that it that it wasn't possible to get an electoral majority you know partly because partly because

the over 65s basically have a completely and complete and utter a utterly different conception of what's possible, you know? No, but the conception of the world, I mean, I think you're right. You've both said, yes, this is my ideas before the election, and this is why I was right. And I'm trying to think of an equivalent so I can make, you know, that argument. I think, I mean, my argument would be somewhere along the lines of, like, Labor's lost its base. But, you know, I think I don't, I don't want to have a big debate with Jeremy over this, but I'm, you know, like, if Labor are not the people, on the ground for a certain percentage of the population, that is going to, and they are the

establishment, and there are ship labour councils, you know, like, as you guys know, I live in the suburbs, I don't live in the quote, unquote, and I hate this quote, like, left behind northern towns, which are all talked about in some kind of, like, massive lump of all of these places that, you know, some of us don't even know where they are, and we should just own it, that we don't know where these places are, rather than, like, pretend that we can speak on behalf of them. But where I have something in common is I've seen the effect of a shit labour council on people's psyche of what the Labour Party is. And there are things like that. There are so many different variables.

But I believed, I believed that we would be able to overcome those. I really did. I thought we would win. I thought Hope would win. You know, like I joined the Labour Party because Jeremy Corbyn, I know as an activist, right? John McDonald, I know as an activist, like, these dudes, as far as I'm concerned, are, like, solid comrades, right? I join the Labour Party because of them. Like, I'm, you know, and I, you know, I'll say this for the record, like, I would rather pull out my toenails than get involved in any sort of internal Labor Party or momentum, labor leader selection stuff.

I'm way more likely to get involved in Extinction Rebellion things, even though I've never done anything on the environment in my fucking. life. I'm way more likely to do that than get involved in any way in that stuff. I was only there because those guys were there. And I want people who are, you know, 20, 25 to know that activism does not all exist in terms of like parliamentary politics. It doesn't. Like, if people want to do other things and build the resistance elsewhere and build the ground game, like, go for it. Like, you know, be true to who you are. Like, if you want to do all of that Labour selection stuff, fine, if that's where your vibe is. But, you know, I'm not a, I'm not a Trotskyist for various reasons. It's not just ideological. It's like, I can't deal with that shit. Neither

at my CLP, which I didn't even know what CLP was a few years ago, or at a council level. Like, people have said to me, like, Neda, you should become a counselor. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? Have you met me? Like, no. I want to do ACFM. That's who I am. So anyway, that was my, that was my spiel on that but like you know not everyone has to engage now on every level which is why i think you know everyone needs to chill out and then find find themselves again after the long affair maybe i do think people are going to have to become counselors i'm basically i don't know that's fine but not everyone has to be i don't want to see the narrowing i'm worried about the narrowing you know when he's saying everyone has to be i mean no one he's saying everyone has to be but i think

I think it's really important to get away from one of the problems, one of the things that we haven't got over that we're going to have to to get any kind of success on the left is this kind of, you know, it's basically a kind of identity politics. I mean, what worries me about what you're saying, to be honest, is that basically you join the Labour Party because you identified with John and Jeremy. And I just think we have, you know, that never gets you anyway. Like we have to accept, we all have to accept the complexity of the terrain. The collective terrain is actually electoral politics does operate according to a different logic, the movement politics or kind of identity politics. And we have to figure out how to hold them all together

in a certain way to be able to actually get outcomes that we want. That's not saying there's any prescription and what anybody has to do. That's not saying any one person, no one person can be expected to do everything. But it does, but also I think, I'm worried that violent emotional rejection. I'm seeing that from a lot of people, you know, part of the sadness now is this kind of violent rejection of, you know, what they see actually as a kind of demand from people like me. You've got to start now, start taking fucking shit seriously that we've been talking about for years that you didn't want to listen to. What I was trying to say was, like, basically there will have to be some sort of turn towards municipal politics, basically, and like, you know,

an attempt to to introduce radical politics into the municipal sphere because the parliamentary sphere is closed off for us for at least five years, basically. be, I mean, you know, and so in some ways that that was that one of the weaknesses of what happened after 2017 was the focus. It was very hard to drag the focus away from parliamentary politics because the time scale was seemed really shortened. Now the time scales opened up and we need to build all of the parts of an ecology of the left that got neglected in, you know, the ever, and during the last couple of years, you know, and there seems to be no doubt to me that one of those things will be, you know, a turn towards, you know, community and

trade union politics, you know, and partly that's going to be dictated by Boris and Boris Johnson and, you know, that parliament, they have really have no solutions, I think. I think they'll think about trying to do some sort of performatives pretend social democracy in the north, but they're not going to, they're not going to have the funds to do that. They're not going to have the inclination to do that in any serious way. So their basic program is to try to fuck up the left, basically, ban strikes, et cetera, et et cetera, you know, try to draw the left into a culture war thing. You know, so basically there's going to be, that defensive battle has to be turned

into an offensive battle for us, basically, not on the culture war thing, but on, you know. But also illegal, okay, not legal or illegal, but surely it's not just on the level of municipal council surely like we need like really epic parties stage left and to jeremy like you know you're right well i think well it was one of the most interesting like um things to come out of all the reports from people canvassing and the people's sense of what was the obstacle to us being able to persuade people to vote for us was this really specific analysis that there's a certain you know it was it was it was like in spinoza in terms it was sad a great obstacle you know the fact that people there's a whole set of people

they're either very old and they're very they're invested in a just in a totally defensive response now to kind of advance neoliberalism and the nature of the defensive response is you've got to protect your assets because no one else, everything else is gone and they won't be able to bring it back or they're younger and it's just a sense

of complete disconnection and hopelessness so there is no question that you know everybody's saying we're going to need community organising we're going to need municipal politics and all that is going to have to be organised around I would say a strategy of collective joy. I think it's really important. And all the evidence we get from things like community organizing is, and this is why we're serious when we talk about collective joy

and people really have to understand when we talk about it, we don't just mean everyone getting on one. I mean, that's part of it. The point is all the evidence is from things like community organising is, if you just run a campaign saying to everyone, look how fucked everything, everything's fucked, you should be angry. People just get more miserable and desolate because they know how fucked everything is. You've got to create opportunity. however low level for people to feel the sense of collective empowerment. And if all that is, is like a street lunch, you know, it's better. If that's all it is, if you can't even get a win from the council, which is good if you can,

if you can't even get a win over like tenant rights or something, which is good if you can, at least people are coming together from feeling some sense of, you know, some percent of potential solidarity is really crucial. That's really crucial. Couldn't agree more. And I think, I think, like, that's why, I think it was episode three that we're at talking about what we're doing, like taking a bus round and then having like a rave and also like an exhibition of manhole covers or whatever. Like I, it's almost like the time is now

for for that kind of creativity. And I just think people like do whatever they can. And obviously we've got, you know, the law is not going to be on our side and resources not going to be on our side. But people have built the infrastructure of connecting with each other in a way. Some people anyway, I'm not going to pretend that I speak for a whole area of the country that's not been touched by the kind of mobilising, because this has not been everyone. But the people who have been involved in the mobilising themselves, as you were touching on Jeremy, when you're talking about, like, what was it about the canvassing experience? Like, we should take that, you know, we want people to have to relate, to be able to relate to each other from them,

but also to other people, just as human beings. There was, there was an interesting article I can't remember where it was where somebody was saying that somebody was reporting from Wakefield, which is just not a million miles from me where I'm sat now and saying, you know, we had this advice to organise some parties but how can I organize parties around here? You know, most of the people are in their 70s. Do you know what I mean?

So I do think it's that like we have to think about so this is it, this is my provocation then, right? You know, do we have to rethink the ACFM or the AC project right because in some ways i think we were caught we we sort of developed out of that what you might call euphoro corbinism that followed 2017 do you know i mean that big feeling of euphoria that um the world had changed etc um but in fact our actual practices i our podcasts and our our actual practice when we go around to do consciousness raising sessions they're actually quite a lot more sober do you know what i mean they're not euphoria really our consciousness

those rows raising sessions they are about starting from people's experiences and then trying to work up the structural forces and I think that might be part of the the cultural differences that they they they that if people live in this sort of like monocultural white and to be perfectly frank old community with no young people and no multicultural element then what what are the experiences you start from you know to make them connect to the wider world you I mean, I'm quite got that. But I think it might be a part of that solution to how do we, how do you take the kind of consciousness-raising practices we've been thinking about,

which are probably urban, to the villages and small towns, do you know what I mean? Which is the great divide now. It's like, you know, the larger towns, the cities, they're young and they're left. The smaller towns in the villages, they are old and they are right. I don't know that I agree with you, Keir. Well, I feel really uncomfortable about the way multiculturalism, has been brought up

and I don't feel like a comment on that I don't want to talk about like multiculturalism and like whether somewhere and like as white or like people of other other skin colors I just kind of I don't know I think maybe because I think about multiculturalism

as the kind of Blair project rather than multiculturalism in the kind of like nice experiential way and I don't know I think actually I don't I don't know maybe part of the reason why I don't want to say anything for a year, apart from ACFM. Actually, I should say first that I don't,

I don't agree that ACFM came out of the euphoria of 2017. And the sea, the sea was always ambiguous, and I'm happy for it to be ambiguous. And there's about six or seven shows that I can see coming up that I would like us to do. I'm like, utopias, desires, all sorts of different things that I think are, that will, of course, like, be part of the reality that, the kind of changed reality that we are finding ourselves in or like the worsening reality or whatever but also i just think personally and this is not a comment for you like this is not a comment on you guys who are obviously like two of my favorite people in the whole entire world or else i wouldn't enjoy on this podcast with you but i think there is an arrogance in us saying what we need to do is

reach people in the small towns or what we need to do is go to the villages it's just like i just want us to shut up really i think and i've listened for some there's a lot that we don't know that's what i feel and i don't this is not like like i said it's not about you too and what you've said and you've said amazing things in this podcast but but this whole like we need to reach we need to do this we need to do this it's like well we're not the people who voted this are this situation in there's all sorts of separated out groupings of people who their perception of the world and their experience of the world is different And I think the organising needs to start from the ground up.

And I think you can only intervene with like, I don't know, you know, I don't know that we can intervene for those people right now. I don't think it's us that can. I think people will find their own way and then we'll meet them in five years. Well, I sort of agree. But my main point is this, right, is we have to protect what we've got. What we've got is a movement which has got hegemony over young people at the end of 40s, right?

That is the starting point. And we don't need to go and convince everybody over 65 of the error of their ways. We just need to, you know, basically get into those constituencies and find a big enough proportion of whoever to win them back at, you know, the next election. And I agree with Jeremy, then you can change the electoral system. And, you know, a lot of these tensions become diminished to some degree. but you're right though Nadia right you're right in that the only way we can do that

is to do some proper class composition analysis of like you know who the people who do work in those areas what work do they do and what affordances to those work does that work you know what sort of political sort of framings is that afford those political those types of work and other parts of life as well you know what sort of

political framings, that those life experiences, you know, incentivise or disincentivise. I don't think we've found that yet. Perhaps it's not a job for us, right? Perhaps it's not a job for us three in particular. But I think that's the task of the movement to some degree. Well, I would say it's important to know. I mean, one of the most perceptive responses I saw to the election in the experiences of canvassing, talking about the sort of racialized experience of some of the older

people, the prejudices, the racialized nature of the prejudices of some of the older people they met. I mean, this guy's account also said, you know, it was really generational. But, I mean, there is a, and that, you know, amongst people under sort of 50, I mean, really, I mean, people, you know, sort of my age and younger, who he met, he said the problem, who were working class, the problem wasn't that they were kind of racist and they weren't voting Tory, mostly they were just still not voting at all. And you look at the statistics for turnout. That's kind of borne out. We haven't really, we haven't motivated enough of the kind of younger, you know, younger working class people who don't, who don't read them out all of a sudden anymore, you know, who don't actually have a kicking, a sort of nationalist ideology, but are completely disconnected from any kind of politics.

Like, then we haven't kind of mobilised. Now, I think we do, you know, our project is, you know, we've said before we does, we've said many times, actually, the AC project isn't, well, actually, we've talked about whether it's for every. when we said it could be in some ways it is and in some ways it isn't but but i think it does you know have something to say about the question of how would you connect up with people who have quite shit lives but they actually they don't actually share the kind of nationalistic orientation of their parents so they live in a highly technical life and not expect anything in return that's what you do if if we who we who live in the south and or care you know from in the cities who like you know are intellectual

but also human beings, we go and give, if we're going to intervene in other people's arenas and lives where our lives are not anything like theirs in a way, but also are very much like theirs because we're human beings, we give them something and expect nothing in return. That's what you do. That's the kind of community organizing. Well, I think that's probably right. It's also the nature of solidarity to someone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then that builds the concept of solidarity. It builds the concept of possibility because asking people to hope, it turns out, was a really big fucking ask. Yeah, I think that's true.

I hope that things can be different was a really big ask when you don't have the same historical analysis and kind of networks of solidarity like we do. You're right. You know, it's a really important point that the most historically, how do you kind of radicalize communities and build bridges between them? Well, one of the best ways is always to show up for other people's struggles. Exactly. You know, with other people in trouble, you show up for them and you show support, you know, and that's the, I mean, that was the kind of, that was the method at the high point of kind of radicalisation in the 70s and early 80s.

Actually, there was a big practice of, you know, people from one oppressed group or other showing up to support others and building relations to solidities. The trouble is what you do when there aren't any struggles going on in those places, when those places are so downtrodden and the unions have all been gone for years. So they're not struggling. They're just doing it. The problem is then, what do you do? Because that's where we really have a problem actually, you know. I don't know. I think there's other things like in terms of like people's local heritage where there's

been like no investment in like the interesting and weird and wonderful histories of these people of, you know, various different like towns and villages and whatever. And like you go and put a radical spin on it and like you put on an event or or you go and organize with local people and you take over a boarded or up shop and you like do something that like that's the kind of thing that you know you think that's right yeah you do something and you just think fuck it it's an experiment and and that that's what you do but i also think though that there's like when there's not that when there's not active antagonistic struggle going on what there is are you know practices of solidarity basically and you know projects of mutual

mutual aid you know going on in all in you know all of these smaller towns where where poverty you know it's still a big problem and by you know anecdotally you know the people who run those projects are women over the age of 65 basically you know that that'll be one of your ins that's one of your ins how can we add how can we add scale and force to that to the practices you're already doing do you know what I mean yeah and for when you do research into like what's going on in an area those active older women are your key points of contact you know what I mean so so Nadia right we can we can analyze the general trends which are young people are just leaving these areas and so of course the other people who are your active inns to those areas are the young

people who left those areas went to university went to the cities and are now on buses going back to those to have a very miserable argumentative Christmas with you know but that that's one of the one of the other in but then you have to break it down and think you know what is going on in in sort of, you know, in Bury, you know, what practice of solidarity are going on in there? You know, what are the different sectors that we could have a much more of an in to than property pensioners, right? Who are the most difficult sector for us to reach, I think. You know, that is the starting point. And we haven't even started to think about how you do that.

But I would say another thing is that, like, one of the other things we do need to do is like, you know, a big program of political. education, not in the sense of like just providing these people with the right ideas, although there will be some of that, but also, you know, that bit of starting from people's experiences and then trying to move out to sort of, you know, a much better understanding of the forces which are constructing, constricting their lives, do you know what I mean? Because those people have been won over to the idea that the European Union is the thing that has been holding back society, do you know what I mean? That's a failure of political education.

I think that's a good point, yeah, and it comes back, I think I wanted us to come back to the point you raised, actually, I felt we didn't really address, which is about preparing people for the possibility of defeat, preparing the possibility of sadness, because I was sort of, well, I just want to know from Keir, actually, well, the first thing, I've got, I mean, I can say things, but what, what, what would it have looked like if we didn't prepare people defeat or sadness? Because I felt personally, you know, and like, we know this, like every time I talked to anybody or got interviewed by anybody, so younger in the past, two years. I've said, you know, if you look at the big picture, you look at the trends, it would be very optimistic to think we're going to get over the line this time. We've made loads of progress. But if you look at the big trends, it's much more likely we're still a few years away. And apart from just saying that to people and trying to say to people, you know, look, it's a long struggle, it's a marathon, not a spring. You know, we're doing really well. We're doing really brilliantly. But that's, apart from doing that, I mean, what else could have been done? I mean, on a movement level, like what would it mean to prepare?

people for the possibilities you could speak. Because I suppose I would say, I'll answer it and a new answer, because now since I'm talking. Look, partly I would say, yeah, that whole issue of political education, not just in terms of proselytizing to other people, but political education within the movement I think is really

important. And frankly, the stuff I say that at the start was frustrated about and I bang on about, I mean, part of my frustration is, look, I'm not joking, like in most countries in the world, it's just considered normal for any political party to have a strong political education program to have summer schools and stuff and a situation

where most people when I say to people most people are right you do realize when we won the 1945 election we were we were in government we went from opposition oh people go god yeah never thought of that I mean just those basic facts about the electoral history of the party it's not normal to have a political culture where people don't know that stuff and it's normal not to know it but that's because that was taken away on like on purpose there was a project for all of that history to be well that's part of But it's not entirely true, but it's all, it's not entirely true. And the Labour Party always was really shit on that stuff.

But there was a big argument about it in the 80s. You know, that's why the political, the reason every branch still has a political education officer is because actually it was a big, that didn't exist before the 80s. And it was actually a big demand more from the soft left, from the kind of Kinnokite soft left than from the hard left that we had to do political education. Could you describe what that actually is? Because what, what do you mean, like, in a date, like, what does it look like? are we talking about these things? Are we talking about, like, what does it look like to have a political...

I think just it, I think the first thing is that they should, you know, they should at least be like publications, like little pamphlets and websites for party members, just giving a basic account of like a political history. Like, what's the history of the party? What have been our successes and failures? How does the electoral system actually work? And like, and how do we think we got to where we're not on now in 2008? You know, you can do it all in a 20-page pamphlet, you know, and just give it to members. I don't even mean like stuff, you know, you're going out to persuade other people. It's just insane that that doesn't happen. There's no videos about this, something online. You know, there's nothing. It's not, you know, and I think it's that. And that's, like I keep saying, that's not normal. It's not some pie in the sky stuff I'm saying should exist. Like, it's just considered the normal part of what it means to have a political party

or a political movement in most countries. And I think it is a symptom of this kind of endemic anti-intellectualism in English culture, I think, more, you know, specifically English, not even Scottish. in Welsh, Irish, that, you know, people have been complaining about for decades. But so I would say that is one of the things, one of the things that could have prepared people, I think, for the shock, for that shock, without demotivating them. And I don't think it would have demotivated them, you know, is to have a much stronger sense of where we think we fit now in a history of struggle.

What is the nature of our moment now? Yeah. Because if you have a clear-eyed sense of that history, this is why, you know, get frustrated people say, don't want a history. if you have a clear item to that history, you would understand that actually, exactly as we've all been saying, the rebuilding, the revification of the left, really only since 2015, to be honest, is an extraordinary achievement. And on the other hand, the idea that we could get from where we were four years ago

to actually forming the most radical government in 70 years, it's just silly, you know, clearly there's no physical way you can achieve that. but just from what you're saying there it's just like the achievements have actually massive yeah exactly what we've done is massive that's the thing and it's what we've gone is massive and i think we've done as much as could have been done at this stage i think there are you know as i've said there are strategic mistakes and strategic opportunities that weren't taken but you know i think it's it's a huge achievement to have got where we've got to and frankly look in terms of the labour party it's an absolutely it's a it's a huge achievement that

The favourite to be leader of the Labour Party right now is a Kiry Starmer who's going to go for a historically conventional soft left position. Whereas, you know, four years ago, it was considered completely insane. I mean, it was considered a long shot that Andy Burnham might get it on that platform, you know, on a platform well to the right of where we are now. So that is a big achievement. I mean, there is something has been achieved really colossally. But that's not the point. The question is what, I'm sorry, I've gone on and I wanted to know really for. from you to. In addition to that stuff I just said, what would it have meant to prepare people

for that possibility of defeat and sadness? Is there other stuff we could have done or should have done? Well, I mean, no, you're right. Basically, like the main thing is to add some sort of perspective to pull us out of the two-year focus of 2017 to 2019. But the other thing it would be, and you know, let's be honest, you know, we've tried our best in this podcast to add some had a bit of hysterosity yes yeah no there's no doubt about it

hystericity yes like always get that one wrong I know hysterosity does sounds better I'm saying now history sounds better everyone say that now but the only other thing is

like there's only one like you know I can understand Nadia's response which is I don't want to get I want to get off social media and I don't want to get my head in this stuff but like the only the only the only answer to both

sadness, right, in a spinoza sense, and shock, you know, that overwhelming of information is to collectively process it. You know what I mean? And so, and to be fair, the world transform put out a, you know, a guide to how to have a sort of debrief sessions, collective debrief sessions, et cetera. Yeah, but so the only other thing would have been to try to prepare, you know, so that people had those things to plug into. So, you know, I have a momentum branches or CLPs would automatically be the avenues through which you would would do those sort of debrief sort of sessions collectively process this together but perhaps also to sort of like say there's a anything oh god I couldn't I couldn't but okay good good good this is what the other thing

would be to sort of like say just to add perspective now which is you know we're speaking whatever it is how long is it since the election I've lost a whole track 10 days 12 days or something This is the point at which, and you can see sadness on a collective level, as in the breaking of unities and tensions emerging, et cetera, and all these sorts of things. Do you know what I mean? But, you know, we should have some sort of sense of, like, you know, what happens in the first 10 days is not, there's not really a particularly good guy to what happens in the three months that follows, you know what I mean?

It could be, but basically people are processing shock, basically. And, you know, the way you process shock is to gradually get some sort of active control of it by gradually getting a grip on the, on what's going on, do you know what I mean? And so, like, you know, outrage and panic at like really quite shoddy takes is not that, you know, basically I think the data is going to come in that will allow a fairly sensible analysis of what's going on to take hold, you know what I mean? No matter how much the Labour right want to sort of like push through, they want to use this this shock to try to push through a sort of expulsion of the left, I imagine.

They're not going to succeed in that. So it's like that, yeah, add perspective not only to the last two years, not only to the last six weeks, but also to that our current moment of shock. And so staying off social media in that sense and not like falling out of it probably is quite a sensible thing to do to some degree. Yeah, I mean, trying to respond to Jeremy's question, could we have prepared people? My feeling is like, no, but could we have prepared people? Are people better prepared if they have a sense of history and in a very visceral experiential sense are not like in a crazy mental health like now, now, now, tweet, hot take, hot take, how I'm feeling today.

I can't even remember yesterday, which is a function of neoliberalism, the further away you are from that in the way that you experience life as a human being, the better off you'll probably be obviously relationships with friends and family and comrades like fits in there. So can some people have been better prepared than others, yes. Could we have prepared them and also ran the campaign that we ran? I think no. Like, I think, unfortunately, I think age does play into this. Like, I think if you've been doing this for a longer time, you probably recover better because you see the arc of history as being long, whether you think it bends towards justice or not.

I think it bends towards justice. But so I don't think that. The last thing I'll say, I'll just wait until you guys finish. and then, yeah, or I can say them now, which is, like, what I think people should do. I say it now. I don't have anything to add, really. Okay. I definitely think, like, it's Christmas. I don't know when this is going out. Like, this is a time of reflection for a lot of people. It definitely is for me, not because of any particular link with Christmas, but with how I feel and how I socialise, etc.

I think it's okay to feel numb. It's okay to be in mourning. would rather people be in mourning than in some kind of like melancholy. And I say like it's okay for people to completely delink from what's going on. And I don't feel like you'll lose your identity, going back to your identity point. If you're not involved now, now, now, now, and you don't want to do things this second. I just think you don't have to have a hot take and you don't have to get involved. And it's only 12 days since the defeat. Like take the time off, be with your friends.

friends, like, get on the sesh, like, take more drugs or not, like, have sex, all of those human things, and go for a nice, long walk, have more, definitely have more sex. I think everyone having more sex now would be better. Slow down, Maddie I'm going to write these down. Going for long walk, like, go for long walks, relate to yourself as a human being in varied and multiple ways that, you know, listen to your favorite music, like, if you need to mourn, mourn, But if you're like me in a state where you're not feeling those feelings, that's fine. Don't feel like you need to go to every single meeting.

You need to regroup because I am definitely not feeling like I want to regroup. My regrouping is probably going to happen in six months' time. And that's okay. That's all I'm saying. I want it to be okay for people to not to regroup. And kill the hot take. I don't want anyone's hot take on anything until two weeks down the line. And happy Christmas.

There we go. That might actually be a good point to leave it because it probably will be good for the left to go back and spend some miserable time with their families. But just to have a little bit of a break from continuous activity over the Christmas period. And like you said, Keir, which before we started recording, that time of endless Sundays or whatever between Christmas and New Year is really special because neoliberalism kind of like doesn't operate on exactly the same way that it does. So take advantage of it. I agree. We, Under acid communism, it will be Christmas every day.

That period between Christmas and New Year's when money stops to have purchase and it's replaced by cheese. Cheese because of the medium of exchange, the store of value. Cheese and chocolate. Amazing. That's what we want. Okay, onwards, comrades, to the cheese, fully automated cheese communism.

I'll see you after the break. brought to you mind I had a point to drink from time for sake of all that time we're all that time in for all that time

in it for all that time we're all that time we're trying and shit for sake of all next time