The march of Labour’s new militant tendency

WITH brutal efficiency, Jeremy Corbyn and his disciples in the sinister Momentum group are slowly but surely tightening their stranglehold on the Labour party.

Already in complete control of the party membership, last week they also took charge of the policy-making National Executive Committee. Now they are reported to be plotting a national purge of moderate Labour MPs to wipe out the last vestiges of resistance to Mr Corbyn’s Marxist agenda.

For Momentum – the self-styled ‘grassroots’ alliance dedicated to propelling Mr Corbyn to power – it has been a remarkable journey. Less than three years after forming, it has become Labour’s driving force.

But for traditional supporters – especially in the Northern heartlands – Momentum’s rise has been a disaster. Labour is no longer the inclusive, mainstream party of Attlee and Gaitskell. It’s a loose affiliation of hardLeft ideologues, naive young people seduced by false promises of a Socialist nirvana and fringe pressure groups.

Largely London-based, they preach class war and the politics of envy. Anyone who challenges them is denounced and subjected to a torrent of vile abuse on social media.

Far from trying to curb their excesses, the party leadership joins in. Only yesterday Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell refused to apologise for repeating a call for Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey to be ‘lynched’. So much for Mr Corbyn’s commitment to ‘kinder, gentler politics’.

For an insight into Momentum’s longer term plans to transform Labour, look at its ongoing takeover of Haringey Council in London. Moderate councillors replaced by pro-Momentum candidates, disciplinary action against anyone who objects, massive council tax rises planned for bigger properties and proposed pay cuts for public employees on over £60,000 a year.

There are chilling echoes of the 1980s, when the Trotskyite Militant Tendency virtually bankrupted Liverpool and almost destroyed Labour.

But there is one crucial difference. Then, the militants were maverick outsiders who had infiltrated the party. Today, they are its masters and operating in plain sight.

Heaven help Britain if they ever get their hands on the levers of power.