I came across this article in the New Statesman, called, “The Bennites’ revenge: how Jeremy Corbyn and his allies survived political exile”, and what fascinated me is the statement that Blair and David Miliband’s failure to aggressively support the social democratic tendencies and projects of the EU are one of the foundations of the failure to vote remain in the referendum.
The author, Prof. Jeremy Gilbert also looks at the US’s journey from supporting Social Democracy as a weapon against the radicalisation of the working class in western Europe during the cold war to Reagan’s initiating of the neoliberal world order after the fall of the wall and the Soviet Union. He also tracks the politics/media nexus amongst both Labour and Tories arguing that the right invented the threat of the federal super state to copy the US’s neo-con politics of insurgency.
His central argument is that Corbyn and his close allies are recognisably free from the US’s “Special Relationship” and the malign influence of the UK’s right wing press. Today this is an advantage,
It;s a great read and I am now following him on feedly and academi.edu; on his blog he points at a Compass Project, a podcast series, that he was involved in called a Beginners Guide to the Labour Party.