As for the idea that I spend too much time jumping up and down on the soft-Left, Tom, even once would be too much for you – a fact which belies a staggering inability to accept any sort of critique, which is by and large what I write – and which you answer.

With regard to how I divide up my time, Tom, most of my political activity doesn’t even need to make reference to the soft-Left. No one I work with has heard of them.

At any rate, the “objective result” of what the hard/far Left does is fuck all to do with the state of the Labour Party Tom. The state of Labour is to do with a) leadership policies and b) lack of credible ‘soft Left’ policy positions that don’t shade into a light touch of Blairism.

Finally, as regard to your snipe at Louise, you can fuck right off. The name of the think tank is important as it denotes what wing of the SDP it’s coming from – and Louise is absolutely correct in pointing to some of the past achievements of this wing; tying it to Harman’s own views, it paints a picture.

I do happen to think that Sunny is right, far too much concentration in this place as at others on what divides the hard and soft left. The soft left spends its time attacking a mixture of blairism and the Tories, especially where there is confluence and convergence. Attacks on the hard left exist, but are rare, and often short and dismissive.

The hard left spends as much time attacking us as Luke Akehurst does. It’s ridiculous. The obvious strategy is to hope to grow by attacking those closest to them within the party. The result, however, tends to be bemusement followed by bitterness.

These being the objective results thus far, this is hardly an encouraging situation in the fact of a resurgent Tory Party and a Labour Party that will, however the election goes, have to be in a mental condition whereby it is prepared for hard truths (the failure of New Labour to win for those at the bottom or achieve hegemony over public discourse or therefore electoral politics).

Just want to chase a few things though, on the post itself.
Firstly, Harman is not of the soft or centre-left or the soft left of the party. She is on the soft right of the Labour Party.

In many ways her opinions mirror ‘liberation politicians’ in the party’s youth movement, many of whom seem to thoroughly divorce class issues and analysis (along with financial inequality more generally) from ‘identity politics’, a massive sop to apparent radicalism that avoids them having to say anything off-message that might cost the treasury or cause heads to be scratched at Number 10. Many of these are right-wing feminists who also seem not to care about other aspects of identity based oppression around disability, race, and even sexuality.

For Harman, there are real incentives to act like this. She is in the cabinet. For youth politicians, one can assume that it exists only because of upbringing or poor levels of political education, probably both.

We can but hope…

There is are several clear dividing lines between centre- and far/hard Left; the most basic is capitalism, but there are others which stem from this, such as the nature of political leadership, the purpose of political strategy (any political strategy) and so on. These don’t go away if we don’t talk about them. Quite the opposite. They could become much more debilitating.

Incidentally, this article wasn’t attacking Compass. If I had wanted to do that, I’d have dwelt at length on Harpy’s point that this was a speech to Compass and its partners, a foundation built around the legacy of a man directly responsible for the use of soldiers against socialists and even plain workers who weren’t interested in much explicit politics but wanted a better lot and had the courage to fight for it. I wouldn’t classify Harriet Harman as anything-Left, and if she is, we need better terminology for what constitutes ‘our’ side.

Please know that any time you want to meet for coffee, and I’m available, if you think that you have some strategies for co-operation between socialist- and centre-Left, I’m all ears.

As an addendum, I also think you mischaracterise the unity of the Right. Until recently I spent very little time looking at the Right blogosphere beyond the odd Iain Dale nonsense – but now I read the Spectator and a bunch of the better wikio ranked Right blogs. They are just as fractious as the rest of us. I don’t think it’s in unity where they trump the Left.

Bad blood? Doesn’t this reflect fundamental criticisms of each other? The problem with Harriet Harman was/is still part of the NL machine adhering to neoliberalism, in other words, class warfare. What is forgotten here is that when the Left did have power in 1980s in some town halls it spearheaded a lot of these reforms around equalities i.e. anti-racism, ‘Positive Images’ campaign in Haringey’ etc. and the left were accused of being ‘loony left’. And now these issues are now mainstream and within the Equalities Bill. The ‘Bennite’ Left did achieve something back then. When the Left had a chance, we took it and here are the results, I certainly lived and campaigned through it!

The thing with Harriet Harman is that she has had 12-odd years to push equalities. Also one of her tasks when she was Secretary of State for Social Security in ’97 (maintaining Tory spending plans btw) abolished the lone parent rate of Child Benefit. NL (and to reiterate she is part of that) had so many chances to transform and create an equal and more justice society.

And as I wrote on my own blog, Harman’s priorities in which meetings to attend expose her politics, Compass over Southwark UNISON Black Workers’ Group and Movement for Justice. A soft-left political debating society as opposed to talking to grass roots TU activists… Again, shows where her priorities lie…

Oh, and finally Harman spoke at the Compass and Freidrich Ebert Stiftung Conference. Freidrich Ebert ….. the man who sided with the right-wing, voted for War Credits in 1918 (let’s not forget…Harman voted for the Iraq war in 2003) and he stabbed the Socialist revolution in Germany out.