Three ways to understand fascism: as tendency, formula and style

Both centrists and leftists have eyed the Trump administration with a sense of disgust and horror, turning en masse to the ultimate political insult. Are the new populists of the hard right fascists in different clothing? There are three ways of answering the question from the left, each with its own limitations.

By far the most influential strand of left intellectual theory of fascism comes from Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt school, an analysis that took as its immediate subject not the German state that had spawned the Nazi regime but the postwar, consumer society of the USA. It may seem deeply incongruous that this - the land of plenty and the pursuit of happiness - was the place which they took as their model for the emergence of potentially fascist political tendencies. Yet what drove the Frankfurt school's analysis were not the abstract models and ideal types of conventional sociology, but a negative dialectic by which "heroic" bourgeois individualism gave way - in consumer society - to a bland, anonymous authoritarianism which was latent in capitalist societies and tended towards fascism. The latter was, therefore, a tendency inherent to late capitalist consumer societies in which questions of truth were subservient to questions of power. In such conditions people's latent authoritarianism had an ever-present potential to be converted into fascism.

Yet we can't avoid here questions of conventional political science - which are basically those of abstract definition. We have to define authoritarianism' relationship to fascism.. Is authoritarianism some kind of proto- or pre-fascism, a somehow incomplete expression of its ultimate object? We are also asked to group the various strands of fascism - from its Italian origins to Nazism - into a typology. How do we distinguish ultra-nationalism from fascism or account for those forms of ultra-nationalism that never fully became fascist nor understood themselves to be fascist, even as they allied themselves with the Axis powers?

These are substantial, weighty questions, even if they would be anathema to Adorno et al. But the point is not to reach for perfectly abstractly-defined types only to step back and shake one's head when those distinctions break down in practice - when, say, a populist right winger adopts some of the style but not the whole substance of fascism. Rather it is to look at the concrete - that is, real world - development of political tendencies in their contexts.

As Dylan Riley has argued, the fascism of the 1920s and 1930s was in its own way a response to the economic and social modernisation of two laggard European states - Germany and Italy. It echoed in an extremely perverted way the great processes of political modernisation of the nineteenth century - in particular, the French Revolution. Fascism, Riley argues, had a tendency to depict itself as the authoritarian-democratic alternative to modern liberalism. What caused the radicalisation of the political right in these circumstances was - besides the economic crash - the existence of a powerful communist movement and the successes of the Soviet Union.

So fascism is radically opposed to liberal democracy, but it is not simply a violent form of anti-democratic reaction to it. It is also a complex form of political response to the economic, social and political crises of capitalist liberal democracy. What's missing today from the new hard right is not some conceptual element - say, the central role of Jews as an enemy of the people - but enabling conditions for its radicalisation into fascism. For Riley, the absence of an economically threatened agrarian producing class, the absence of millions of demobilised soldiers, and the absence of a powerful communist movement all militate against the emergence of full-blown fascism.

In this way we move away from the potentially reductive reading of fascism as a "tendency" - that is, both a political tendency within liberal democratic politics and as a situation towards which liberalism tends under late capitalism (or the weird formulation of a tendency towards a tendency). Fascism can be seen not only as a tendency but as a specific political formula which arose in specific historical circumstances. Its exact reoccurrence - fascism qua fascism - has all the likelihood of lightning striking twice. But that does not mean there aren't plenty of echoes of it.

The most pressing issue for political theorists today is to identify the defining characteristics of recent hard right "populists" without falling back on cliche or the tired idea that populists are simply illiberal fantasists unable to compromise with stark reality. These are the populists - whose opposition of a pure people to a corrupt elite resonates with fascism but also with many non-fascist movements - who have had such extraordinary success in the last few years and to whom many in the liberal and radical left refer when they talk about fascist tendencies today.

Beyond the right-populists who have seized power in the USA there are innumerable shock troops of the hard and extreme right, groups formed in the incessant churn of social media and occasionally bleeding out into real life as boots on the ground. Navigating this sea of pop/culture authoritarianism and violent ultra-nationalism, it is easy to pick out the specific resonances with Nazism. And indeed it sometimes even openly declares itself as such - as when Richard Spencer's mob hailed Trump with Nazi salutes. 

There is then a third way of understanding fascism: that is, as a political style, one that can be adopted and adapted, fed into discourses that oscillate between other political styles. Spencer characterised the swastikas at his rally as expressions of "a spirit of ironic exuberance." Here fascism is less a properly articulated, coherent political position than a set of resonances that can be worn semi-ironically and retracted just as easily - as accidental overspill, a moment of blind acquiescence. 

None of this should blind us to the extreme danger of the present political moment, however. Ultra nationalism in its many guises is sailing to electoral victory where it can most easily highlight the failings of liberalism. Just like fascism, the hard right counterposes a pure democratic will of the people to liberal elites. While it lacks some of the racial- genocidal intensity of fascism and Nazism especially, it is feeding off a broken political system. The grave danger it presents can only be met with a similarly radical politics of the left: a promise of renewed democratic participation for all in the future direction of society.

The general election results show how a Labour majority is possible

There has been general relief and celebration on the left about Labour's general election result. Labour narrowed a twenty point gap to three and scored its best general election result in almost two decades. Against overwhelming odds, the left fought back against the rising tide of a reunified right and it paid dividends. But most importantly, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour has shown how the party can build a path to a majority government very soon.

All this comes with very serious caveats (which will be discussed below), but at last we have the tantalising prospect of a Labour majority. What does that prospect rest on?

Firstly, Labour has a large, young, enthusiastic base  - and demographically speaking it's set to expand. Almost thirteen million people turned out to vote for Labour. Not much lay between Labour and the Tories in vote share (only 2.5-3%). Huge turnout among the young indicates a positive showing for Labour in future.

Labour won some southern and southeastern seats outside of London and turned some - like Hasting for Amber Rudd - into tight marginals. The south of England was previously desolate terrain for Labour and it still looks challenging. But many more seats than anyone had predicted will be competitive come the next election. 

Equally important, Labour showed it can bring back UKIP voters from brink of Toryism with a populist economic message and prevent collapse in Wales. The vast majority of UKIP voters went blue last week, but Labour only needs a relatively small swing among these voters for a Tory collapse to become a real prospect. 

Slower is progress in Scotland - but when Labour looks likely to form a government, support in Scotland will grow (as it did in this campaign). The better Labour looks in England and Wales, the more distant the prospect of independence, the more Scottish voters will come back to Labour. Basically, Labour has to win the social-democratic, unionist vote back from the Tories and the SNP. Labour has to win several more seats north of the border - but far fewer than originally thought.

The basic lessons are twofold: maintain the high levels of turnout in urban, young, densely-populated areas and win over more cautious, conservative voters in less urban areas with an economic populist message. Corbyn has proved he is the candidate for both jobs. If an election takes place in the next twelve months, there's every reason to believe a radical-left Labour Party can win it. Let that sink in. Nothing like it will ever have happened before in western politics.

Now the caveats: the Tories would have scored a landslide this election if it hadn't been for the energetic campaign fought by literally tens of thousands of activists of the left. The right has consolidated within the Tory party. The deep strain of reaction in British politics is organised and angry. Their impending, crushing victory was only narrowly averted by our great efforts.The right could yet rally behind a nationalist Brexit and a hard-right, anti-immigrant platform supported by all the major tabloids and vicious Tory government intent on saving itself.

Labour could also fall back if Corbyn and the Labour leadership aren't able to pull forward on a radical platform. The manifesto was perfectly attuned to 2017 - but the party itself is full of weaknesses. The Parliamentary Labour Party is still very right wing and, at the same time, uncomfortable with any change to the status quo. Corbyn needs to be clear that Brexit is going ahead, that the plan to rebuild the country is independent of the Brexit negotiations, and that there is no room in the party for anti-migrant xenophobia.

The danger is great - but only because we have never been so close to victory. There are very few who doubt that a Labour majority government is now possible. The way to make it possible is to sustain the enthusiasm of the 2017 election campaign - channel it into anti-Trumpism, anti-racism, unity and solidarity against austerity, and campaigning for a clear Brexit programme which is good for workers of all backgrounds. 

In the next twelve months we can have a Labour government - and a social majority for a socialist manifesto. 

Doorstepping: Is it Really Worth It?

The Labour doorstep is a hallowed thing among Party activists and it's long been rumoured that Corbyn supporters don't bother with it. To be fair, it's often not an enthralling thing.

You meet somewhere in a huddle, get very briefly briefed, and led briskly around a few streets, gamely knocking on doors, and often unwarmly met (if at all) by suspicious residents. And normally the best you can expect is to have a nod and a "Yeah, I'm Labour, don't worry."

The worst aren't even the hostiles, who normally have means of shooing you off, on four legs and with bared teeth. That prize is reserved for a particular type of enthusiast who comes armed with enemy literature and rails against the sundry deceptions of the local Greens. Or at least that's the case in the Labour seat of Oxford East.

My doorstepping days only go back to the era of Milifandom and bacon sandwiches. Back then it was all about stopping Nigel Farage in Thanet. Now, in Oxford, the local MP is standing down. There's no candidate yet to replace him but it's safe to say the Lib Dems will gunning to unseat his successor. The Lib Dems almost snatched it off Labour in the weird days of Cleggmania and with their recent surge in Remain towns can count on a huge number of Labour waverers swapping sides. For the first time in my life I'm doorstepping where it officially, definitely Matters. Where getting out the Labour vote, and persuading reluctant voters, is the difference between having a Labour MP and not having one.

I almost didn't go. It's unseasonably cold and there have been blasts of icy rain all week. But it got to five, I shut up work, and traipsed off into the hostile climate.

Ten of us met at Cowley Road Tesco and buzzed diligently around Princes Street, receiving our orders from serious young men with clipboards (serious young men are a common sight in Oxford, but these have an additional sense of purpose). The best I had were a few startled students and shy nods. A man gave me a ten minute standing lecture on Herbert Morrison's "big mouth" - apparently still reverberating in this man's head all the way from the 1950s.

My final call as it reached seven o'clock was a tidy terrace near the start of Headington. A nice woman answered and looked relieved that I wasn't one of the local Labour councillors who she knows by name. "Didn't want to have to tell her..." she said, trailing off with a faint chuckle.

She continued more firmly: "I'm more or less Labour in the locals. I always vote. Never voted Tory before..."

My eyes obviously told a story.

She hesitated, "But I just like Theresa May."

I mock-fainted. "No, don't say that!"

"I just think she's done quite well with this whole in out thing."

She seemed curious about me. "You all know more than me, you do your research.  We just get it from the telly. What do you think?"

I thought about my answer and said, "Well, I think you can't trust her. She was Remain, now she's Brexit. She wasn't going to have an election, now there is one. I think she's very well protected by her rich friends."

She worked in a school, she said. And she knew Labour was for families and hospitals and schools. "But I'm leaning towards her just because I think she's doing well."

And then the dreaded moment happened. The question that haunts doorstepping veterans across the land. "And what do you think of that..." she paused, as if the name might upset me. "...Jeremy Corbyn?"

So I took a small breath and said carefully, "To be honest, from the bottom of my heart, I think he'd make a fantastic prime minister. He's unflappable. All the attacks he's been under, he's never once lost his cool. He's principled and his heart is in the right place. And he's spent his whole life fighting for us - for schools and hospitals. And all the things we need. He's never turned his back on anyone and he's never bowed to the pressure. I think he'd be great."

We spoke for a few more minutes and I asked her, when the day came, to bear us in mind. And I promised her that now there was an election, she might see a different side to him.

"Yeah, I'm going to look more closely. I know the cuts and everything. And I'm going to see."

And that was it. She was Tory when I arrived and still Tory when I left, if a little more open and certainly happy to have talked about it. That conversation won't be the end. She'll be thinking about it as she watches the news the next few weeks. It's up to everyone now to persuade her that we need an Oxford East Labour MP and - above all - we need a Labour government.

I waved goodbye to her and her daughter (who had crept curiously round the door but kept being pushed back inside). I genuinely hoped she would come round. There isn't much time.

Corbyn or Bust

Labour members must make an asset of their unconventional leader

As unlikely as it sounds, Labour members must finally make an asset of Jeremy Corbyn and they have no more than a few weeks to do it.

Not one member of the Labour Party, nor its MPs, nor anyone on the broader left or in the Labour-supporting public wanted an election right now. So for once, in a strange way, we're united. The polls point to a catastrophe for the left and Labour in particular. No doubt that's why we've got this election - despite everything Theresa May has said to the contrary. 

But another election is less than eight weeks away and the potential results are stomach churning. There is a grizzly effectiveness to the Tories' realpolitik. They've calculated that they won't be stronger at any other point in the electoral cycle, and have done what electoral logic demands. 

So we need to be equally calculating. Labour can't win a majority - under this or any other leader. Brexit has shifted the landscape - already deeply unfavourable to social democracy - towards the right. Scotland was already gone. In these conditions we need to urgently prioritise - identifying regions where we can win and concentrating our efforts there. The north of England, London, and Wales. 

Yet even in those places we face a massive challenge. Years of neglect have whittled down Labour's vote in the north. The breakup of Britain threatens Labour's identity as a national party. Even in left-leaning London, a low turnout and resurgent Lib Dems pose problems. 

Labour's message should prioritise unprecedented investment in the north. Jeremy Corbyn's promise to invest half a trillion pounds in new job-creating industries is a powerful message in a climate where -mercifully - the debt and deficit are less of a focus. Labour must also promise a more inclusive, more open society to win in the liberal big cities. Labour's message under Corbyn has been the tangible promise to "rebuild and transform Britain so that no one and no community is left behind." I'm still convinced this is a winning slogan - backed up by sound policies that are popular.

To gain ground, even to tread water, in this election, will take the entire progressive half of this country to accept Corbynism's key tenets - even if it still doubts the messenger.

But more than this, the whole of the left will have to unite around Corbyn in particular. This is a view which is anathema to many - both more liberal, pro-EU types and the anti-borders, extra-parliamentary left. 

Why is it worth supporting the apparently doomed project of Corbyn's leadership - even for those who do not think he has done well or feel betrayed over Brexit?

The simple answer is that the country is open to a radical break with the politics of the last five, ten, even thirty years. Liberals cannot win with the status quo. Radicals cannot win by backing out of electoral politics. Right now, Corbyn is the only hope for progressives to maintain a serious presence in British politics.

Corbyn offers the progressive sections of society something important: a way forward. He is not a conventional politician. He is a lifelong enemy of Westminster elites. He also has distinct political virtues: he is unflappable, cool under pressure and an uncompromised advocate of equality. When I vote for Jeremy Corbyn, I'll do so with the belief that he would make an excellent prime minister.

I want to see things from the Labour leadership too: clearer, more radical positions on the future of British society. An insurgent, passionate mood and a way of acting which defies the dull conventions of Westminster politics. The promise of a democratic transformation of our rigged political system, our unfair society, and our economy which generates inequality. More effective communication.

But these things can only be communicated by us - the Labour movement at large and everyone who opposes the rightward drift of British society. Consider it your duty to help that process.

If Corbyn goes through this election tarnished as a liability by even those who sympathise with his politics, then his politics will die with the election. I believe Corbyn could deliver the change he promises if he were elected. More importantly, I believe utterly in the politics that made him Labour leader. I want that politics to survive this election - and if Corbyn's leadership becomes just another sad side story in Britain's march to the right, it will further damage that politics.

So here's what we say on the doorstep and at work and at home and in pubs and on social media when people say they don't like Corbyn: he's a lifelong supporter of people like you and me. He's campaigned for things that benefited you and me his entire political life. He's not in it for power. He's in it for us.

The political symbolism of Corbyn being crushed will resonate far beyond June. It will affect discourse in this country for years. We need to stand up and say - for any strategic mistakes the inexperienced leadership has made - this guy is one of us. He represents the best side of this country. 

It's precisely because the left has to outlive Corbyn and establish itself as a powerful, organised and influential part of society - campaigning against racism, inequality, war, and the wasted lives created by an unjust system - that it's so important not only to vote Labour but to cheer Corbyn all the way. 

Time to ditch Corbyn?

If you listen carefully, you'll hear the murmurs in the ranks. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to ditch Corbyn.

Here are four reasons this would be a bad idea. Not to say his leadership is "working" in any conventional sense. The data is clear and widely known. Labour is tanking everywhere. He is widely unpopular with everyone outside his base. There is no clear policy on either of the two most important issues - Brexit and, related, immigration.

But here in brief are the five reasons to keep Corbyn for now - reasons that anyone (left or right) who wants to see the long-term existence of the Labour Party maintained should at least consider.

1. Good things are - very slowly - happening below Labour's surface. The membership appears to still be increasing. People are getting active in the party - albeit unevenly. Broad positions on investment, industrial strategy, fiscal and monetary policy are being sketched. New ideas are bleeding through. Excellent, young (admittedly mostly left wing) MPs are coming through - Angela Rayner, Kate Osamor, Rebecca Long Bailey, Cat Smith, Clive Lewis. This deep rejuvenation of the Party is vital in the long-run.

2. Corbyn could straddle the divide between liberal and 'left behind' voters in a progressive way and keep just enough of Labour's voter coalition intact during the Brexit process for Labour to survive. Corbyn is moderately eurosceptic, liberal and in economic terms an interventionist. Only that combination can appeal to both sides.

3. If another leader were in place - say, Chuka Umunna, Owen Smith or Yvette Cooper - all evidence suggests Labour would be offering another referendum on Europe and curbs to freedom of movements. In other words, the David Cameron 2015 position. This would be a disaster for many obvious reasons.

4. Yet another leadership contest would hit Labour's polling and demoralise activists. Corbyn has a mandate and his leadership has to be allowed to play itself out.

It's true that Labour has no clear position on either Brexit or immigration, but that's less because of Corbyn and more because of the many conflicting views in the party. Just as the Tory vote has been firmed up by Brexit, Labour's has been fractured. Changing the leader won't help.

It is worth recalling that Corbyn's policies are broadly very popular. But people don't believe he can implement them. There are two possible reasons for this and they are always at play when socialist parties propose radical changes in a neoliberal context:
1. People don't trust the political process - from the individual politicians to the institutions. They don't think politics does what it should and they don't see Corbyn as a break from that.
2. People don't believe that radical but desirable policies can be implemented in a time when market power predominates over the state. 

Corbyn's issue is that either he personally is incapable of delivering in his promises or the system in which he's participating will not yield those reforms to him. Corbyn has a lot of baggage and his early days as leader were not exactly persuasive. But it will take time before someone on a surer footing, younger and better able to play politics, can sell Corbyn's popular policies in a way that makes people believe they can really be implemented. 

Corbyn deserves another year. Then he - and all of us who want a radical Labour government - need to decide.

Brexit is a Simulation

The craftiest thing Theresa May's government could do right now is follow through with exactly what it's promising. To disguise itself as itself. Where the default position is cynicism, no one will ever expect the Tories not to be lying, not to be concealing some hidden motive.

Official Brexit so far has been tantalisingly, provocatively ambiguous. 'Brexit means Brexit' had a double function - as a reassurance to leave voters, and as a sort of coy provocation to the press. All the liberal hair pulling last year about this slippery turn of phrase was really just a refusal to see the obvious. Brexit means 'hard Brexit.' The opposition of the latter to some fantastic alternative -'soft Brexit', 'non-Brexit' - was always a mere disavowed hope of despairing liberals.

Brexit means hard Brexit because there was never really any other Brexit - speak to anyone, especially the angry pleb-types on Question Time, and they knew what they meant by Brexit. This was the problem with the assumption that Brexit could be shaped, because it was just a 'howl of pain from the void', one that could be answered with either the angelic voice of liberalism or the angry puffed up face of populism. People knew exactly what they wanted and the issues weren't 'too complex for democracy.' People assumed the economic hit of leaving the single market was worth the punt. And that's what the government is now doing - with 39 percent backing. That figure represents both those who now back a hard Brexit and the Tories' current vote share. There's a near perfect, reactionary alignment on the right of politics. And it means Brexit.

Voters back the Tories over Labour by a ratio of three to one deliver on the Brexit referendum. Sceptical remainers warned this would happen: leaving the EU would re-unite the Tories, much of the British establishment, and many of the voters who left them for UKIP. It would leave an already weakened centre-left floundering and embittered, while the radical left would be the primary victim for its frustrations. As long as Brexit remains the key divide in British politics, Labour is bound to lose. Brexit added to an infection that was already debilitating for Labour - coarsening a split amongst its factions that might otherwise have stayed hidden. Just as the right has stiffened its resolve, the left of British politics and its old alliances with the liberal centre are, structurally speaking, a mess.

But to paraphrase that most cliched of pop-postmodernists (after all we live in a cliched version of a postmodern dystopia) Jean Baudrillard: Brexit is a simulation - it relates to no underlying Real. As any philosophy bro waxing lyrical about Nietzsche and shit at your first year party will tell you, reality no longer exists.

"To dissimulate is to pretend not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have what one doesn't have. One implies a presence, the other an absence," Baudrillard (probably) says. All I'm arguing is that we should openly partake of this honest naivety. Today's critics of May all leapt at the chance to accuse her of wanting to have her cake and eat it. Well, why not? What else is she supposed to want? What's the alternative? The faux-realism of the 'grown-ups' - the AC Graylings of the world - who keep piously insisting that Brexiters will crash back down to earth when they realise they've shaved a couple of percent off GDP? I'd rather the apocalyptic naivety. It's always far better in politics to promise the impossible than tut and tell people to grow up. Politics is fuelled not by sensible men saying sensible things but precisely by impossible demands. 

But of course there is a Real and it's my belief that the Real comes back to bite you. Not in the form of the apocalypse - the climate crisis is taking care of that - but as a world-historical anti-climax. Brexit - to Grayling's credit - probably does mean two percent shaved off some phantasm of projected future wealth (what better example of a simulation?). It probably does mean a hit to the British economy. And it means other bad things too, though that depends on your subject position: for migrants, for the poor, for those who don't have savings or investments or property. For me. But fuck all that - Brexit really means something slightly tedious for most. It means some imaginary future Polish shop won't open. It means an imaginary future Labour government won't get elected. It means the minimal change May can make to our migration policies and the minimal hit to the economy she can get away with. It means Germany looking just tough enough and controls on immigration looking just militarised enough.

But enough is never enough. It never hits the spot. Because the more you crack down on migration, the more the thirst for it grows. That's the problem with a perverse fixation - you don't cure it by feeding it. Each hit needs to be bigger. 

Brexit will mean the Tories win the next election. Brexit will do just enough to keep reality feeling real. And then the same lingering disappointment with our shitty lives will kick in and we'll want to do something else, something more. And we'll go stumbling in to the next world-shaking crisis. Want to imagine the future? Imagine the tedium of Tory government forever, rocked only occasionally by sudden, inexplicable spasms of rage, before life returns to dull normality, only this time a little crueler. 

Farewell Free Movement?

It has been a strange day for the Labour leadership team, with the new 'populist' Jeremy Corbyn coming off rather a lot like death bed-era New Labour.

There was the 'human touch' tweet involving "teaching" Piers Morgan about Arsene Wenger. Then the pre-briefed volte-face on Freedom of Movement. The strained morning sofa appearances. The semi-retraction cum botched explanation that Corbyn hadn't "changed his mind" on immigration (just maybe his policy - or then again maybe not). A raft of other "thinking aloud" moments. And all this before the trailed speech had even been given.

So, for those still listening, where does Corbyn now stand on immigration? The answer is - exactly the same place. Only striking a slightly different pose. This is one problem that populists sometimes run into: with the emphasis on rhetoric, we are supposed to suspend concerns about substance. But eventually the posturing of populists can lead to exactly the same cynicism it's designed to counter.

Now, there's also the specific problem of thinking you can talk your way out of the "immigration issue." Blair once promised "tough immigration laws that work." He policed borders. He went after "illegitimate" asylum seekers and opportunistic economic migrants. New Labour created much of the Right's anti-immigrant language.

At its best populism creates new cleavages between the majority and the elite few. It is able to name its political enemies and isolate them. Needless to say this has risks. But it is important to accept that in politics there are enemies and we should call them out - the billionaires, the oligarchs, the tax dodgers and the political elite. Bernie Sanders does all this very well. But its limits can be seen in the wink-wink-nudge-nudge discursive contortions of Podemos. What they call "transversalism" sometimes just looks like a fudge. Trump's asset is his clarity. Left-wingers looking to dodge difficult questions with a rhetorical gloss end up backed into a corner.

Corbyn has sunk rapidly into the latter group. His stance on immigration risks satisfying no one. While much of the public want 'answers' to immigration 'problems', this sounds like New Labour waffle. There is nothing to say people will believe anything Labour says about migration, even and perhaps especially if it starts announcing targets.

Also, it's not at all clear if the public appetite for migration controls can really be  satisfied, as if all the migrant bashing will end if numbers dip below 250,000 or even 100,000. There's of course the small economic matter that fewer migrants will reduce GDP, see a fall in employment, reduce the tax base, and lead to more poverty. But besides the 'material' side of it, there is the fact that sadism is by nature unquenchable.

Corbyn was confusing and looked insincere. He managed to remain pro-FoM throughout the entire Brexit campaign. His new tone just sounds off. Labour won't be wooing back thousands of disenchanted white people on the strength of this.

Meanwhile, the liberal centre and the hard right are revelling in Corbyn's supposed ditched principles. He's given the worst people in the British media further fuel and in the worst, disorganised, Thick of It way.

Although I wrote at the time of the EU referendum that I thought freedom of movement should be defended, I don't want it to be the sword the left dies on. Immigration has many upsides and almost no downsides. The few negative effects that can feasibly be attributed to it can be counteracted by a decent government with a constructive industrial policy. My evidence for all this was a recent LSE report (link below). Moreover, migration is a good for labour as such: if capital is free to move, labour must be too. Otherwise wages really do become a race to the bottom, with capital free to choose the lowest wage areas.

But with Theresa May content for Britain to leave the single market, a change to Britain's migration system is assured. Free movement between Europe and the UK is effectively dead already. This a cold political fact. Jeremy Corbyn is perhaps attempting to communicate that truth today. But his intervention lacked clarity to say the least.

The speech was overshadowed by Corbyn's precise language on immigration and the meaning of legal cap on pay - but perhaps that was the idea. Part of me wonders if Corbyn's whimsy has just been the beginning of an apparently spontaneous (though secretly tightly managed) process of flooding the press with contradictory ideas designed to spur on the base a la Trump's Tweetstorms. But then I remember: no, that's  just Corbyn. No doubt someone somewhere has called yet again for his resignation. The one good thing is, as these haphazard media appearances multiply, people aren't even listening to those siren voices any more.

People in Corbyn's camp need to do some serious thinking soon: do they want to gain a point or two in Opinium's latest poll, or do they want to set the party on a forward path that can feasibly persuade people of social democratic solutions in the longer term?