Blairism won elections while forgetting the party’s political purpose

Evidence

The truth is what many of us have long suspected: Labour lost this election five years ago, by failing to challenge the Tories’ narrative. Yet this failure wasn’t about the wrong leader, PR strategy or even policies; it is ultimately rooted in Labour’s disconnection from any wider movement, and this is in turn rooted in the wider emergence of capitalist realism. Blairism may have won Labour three elections, but the unfolding of its logic could well lead to the destruction, in the not so far distant future, of the party. As Paul Mason acidly summarises, “Labour no longer knows what it is for, nor how to win power”. With Blairism, Labour knew how to win power, but in acquiring this knowledge, it forgot what it was for. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1850

Categorization

• XREF: Pays off ch32/ch84 on the third way’s content being bureaucracy and the hollowing of Labour under capitalist realism. — connects to: Blairism normalized the 1980s defeat rather than overcoming it; Blairism internalized rather than overturned 1980s defeats. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1775; Blairism won elections by sacrificing the party’s sense of purpose — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1850