What about the Islington Tendency?

The beloved P Toynbee writes another panic-stricken piece in the Guardian today, ostensibly on the issue of voting for members of Labour's NEC. The drift is readily apparent:

Brexit should be Labour’s focus. Its NEC candidates ignore it at their peril 

Toynbee displays her usual take, perhaps even more desperately:

Here we are in the midst of the greatest national existential crisis since the war, with the country divided and dangling over the edge of a precipice, months from committing mass hara-kiri over a fanatical Tory idea mendaciously missold in a referendum. And yet, 19 candidates have forgotten to give it even a passing mention.

National existential crisis? Does she mean expensive British strawberries again? Will Brexit come to war with the EC? Committing hara kiri while hanging over a precipice yet! 

You might argue that domestic issues of austerity were important, which Toynbee does in her day job, or even the curious moral panic about anti-semitism which has provided Labour with its own silly season sideshow, but 

This reticence on Europe might signal Labour’s reasonable worries about holding its Brexit-voting seats, [nothing really to worry about then?] but the strongest impression is one of absent-mindedness.... But too many in Labour, including its leaders, have treated it as a sideshow – which is bizarre, since Brexit chaos offers the best chance of Labour suddenly winning power [really? Based on what?]....Labour’s leaders need to sharpen their focus on the coming Brexit crunch that will get them there: still in his many speeches, Corbyn usually sidelines Brexit.

The function of ideology as uniting fellow-believers has triumphed here over any attempt to provide some sort of discourse to weave together another world-view -- Labour Brexiteers can just be ignored again.  Opposition to Brexit makes those of the Toynbee tendency (repentant social democrats) feel better? The separation of passionate Remainering from the concrete politics of the Labour Party is seen in the choice of Toynbee's nominee for the NEC -

Best and most passionately anti-Brexit on the list is Eddie Izzard, who belongs to no one’s slate: “I am a proud British European. I am a strong pro-Europe voice on the NEC.”

Years ago, S Hall argued that the then Social Democrat Party (established by P Toynbee with other Labour rebels) were Bonapartists in the Marxist phrase -- cobbling together some sort of temporary consensus to win power but doomed to oblivion because they lacked a substantial base, especially in class division. History is unlikely to repeat itself, even as farce, with Eddie Izzard as our leader.