23 August 2006
 

How to win back Labour's lost voters

Why should socialists want to join (or rejoin) the Labour party to support John McDonnell (Letters, August 19)? The party abandoned socialism in 1994 when, under its revised clause four, it redefined itself as a modern social democratic party committed to what is now termed neoliberalism (and to what has since been referred to by the unremittingly New Labour campaign team as "Thatcher's embedded free market"). Whatever socialism might have meant, it only now serves as a rallying call for oppositional politics. Socialists have ample opportunity to democratically oppose the progress Labour has made, either by supporting genuine socialist parties or - if the concern is particularly over foreign policy - by offering encouragement to the Lib Dems. Most ordinary Labour members, surely, have no interest in supporting McDonnell's see-saw socialism.