Back before sourdough, avocados and frappuccinos were invented it was still possible to buy a flat in one of the less salubrious bits of east London on a Post Office clerical salary. That is how I became an accommodation bureau for Workers Power and members of its international groups visiting the city.

There was the Austrian Kurt Cobain lookalike who had decided soap and water were unspeakably bourgeois and spent his Saturday nights reading books on the Korean car industry; the New Zealand chap who used to fish old motorbikes out of the canal in vain attempts to repair them and who once left the bedroom floor two inches deep in polystyrene for some reason or other and the comrade from Australia whose love life seemed even more fraught than mine if the long messages his girlfriend used to leave on the answering machine were anything to go by.

Collectively the group was a bit ultra left for my taste, but I had a lot of time for members of Workers Power as individuals. Every Sunday night two or three of them would team up with me and another Mandelista to compete in a pub quiz as team 1917 where I would offer advice on romance which boiled down to “get a pair of decent trousers and a nice shirt”. I remember nearly choking on my beer with laughter when they turned up one evening and announced that despite their vigorous opposition, the majority of their comrades had decided that the world needed a new Trotskyist international. It would be distinguished from the others by being called The Fifth.  

In my experience, all their members were serious, thoughtful, independently minded and mercifully free of the dogmatic sectarianism of many other left groups and were always good company in a pub. With one exception all the Workers Power comrades I have known have retained the same set of political and personal principles even after leaving the group.

From Trotskyist full-timer to British patriot

But Jesus! What an exception! I was on little more than nodding terms with Paul Mason, something for which I am now deeply grateful. I cannot think of anyone whose path I ever crossed who has undergone such a complete and humiliating political collapse.

A brief summary of his evolution, which I don’t claim to have followed especially closely, would be intense Trotskyist full timer, journalism,  a couple of decent books, useful material on Tory austerity, Corbynista of a sort till he worked out which way the wind was blowing, a ludicrously humiliating quest for a Labour seat, British patriot warmonger with a sideline at kicking the left. This last feature is reminiscent of the uncool kid pitiably failing to impress the cool kids. Why else do you open an article on Corbyn and Sultana’s new project with “There’s been some hilarity in Westminster over leaked WhatsApp messages”?

There are some elements of his criticism that I agree with. It already seems to be a factional bear garden and unless strong evidence to the contrary emerges, democracy will be what the leadership decides it is. Maybe that is a lesson they have taken from Starmer’s crew.

However, most of his objections are reactionary and dishonest. We know this when he says “But there are serious issues at stake – not just for the warring factions of British neo-Stalinism but for UK democratic resilience.” That is just old school red-baiting, not much more sophisticated than “those lefties just want us to be part of Russia”.

From there he degenerates to the sort of thing he can recycle for a Daily Heil article. See if you can spot how he cleverly links opposition to genocide in Gaza to internet antisemitic conspiracy theories.

“that would lead you to the kind of rhetoric that has become common in the pro-Palestinian far left: claims that Labour is actively perpetrating genocide in Gaza; attacks not just on Israeli arms firms but on all firms and universities involved in the defence sector; claims that Labour is imposing austerity (following its £20bn cash injection into the NHS!); claims that Starmer is a Tory, or is a sleeper agent for the CIA/Mossad, or under Israeli control, and that “the Rothschilds were responsible for Grenfell”.

It is one hell of a leap to claim that this will be the commonsense of a new Sultana Corbyn party. Every person on the left I have ever met would immediately and forcefully squash that nonsense. For Mason however the fact that “Sultana tried to end her Parliamentary speech last week by shouting the slogan “We are all Palestine Action”” is a much more hideous thing than an 83 year old woman facing prison sentence for holding up a placard which is longer than one she would receive for manslaughter.

He is aware of how Labour’s unconditional support for Israel has made it unsupportable for millions of people, most of whom are also revolted by its use of the ideas and rhetoric of Reform. This opposition to genocide has to be met with “a strong offer”, whatever that means in everyday English. His sole rebuttal of allegations of it being an austerity party in a society in which 4.5 million live in poverty is an increase in NHS funding.

You and your feelings

On account of not being able to see the big geostrategic picture the way that he can, for most people “voting becomes just an expression of your feelings”. There is an insight for the ages. People who don’t spend their time in right wing think tanks are influenced by what they see happening in the world around them and how the state is affecting their quality of life and tend to be against useless military spending, genocide and inequality..

While he will remember entryism, the French turn and all that from his Workers Power days, it is utter nonsense to suggest that anyone is doing an entry job on the Green Party. What is actually happening is that many thousands of people who were enthused by Corbyn’s Labour have found a new party which reflects their anti-racism and progressive politics. Starmer showed them the door in the most performative way possible, and they did exactly what he wanted. If Labour is losing voters and activists to its left it is up to Paul Mason to have a word with his new chums about why they are wrecking the party’s electoral chances.  Whatever else this process is, it is not Third Period Stalinism. These phrases probably get chucked in to show the right that he is familiar with niche Trotskyist concepts.

As all good Marxists know, the material weight of capitalist wealth, ideology, status, jobs, social connections has always been a huge countervailing influence on those among them who want to get on in the world. Journalism and parliamentary politics are where you see it at its worst. In his own backhanded way, Paul Mason’s moral collapse is the highest praise of all for those members of Workers Power and other socialists who look at Starmerism and instead of hoping for a bit of career advancement see something to be opposed.