Excellent analysis Paul but where then ? Is the counter-power enough ? It was being content with an aspiration of change and a working shield for the here-and-now that got us to the situation you eloquently describe. Social democratic parties were once participatory mass movements. It is not a guarantee of real change. The German SPD was a colossus in 1930 but it’s overwhelming numerical advantage didn’t stand the test imposed on it. Syriza are in office; manifestly not in power since they are busy imposing, on behalf of the Greek ruling class, the austerity they had pledged to end.

The Labour left have tried before, failed before; beaten not by the right but by their belief in the shield. A shield is a defensive concept, like a trade union; it is not something which is capable of changing the system so that eventually no shield is needed. Kicking the Blairites out of the LP might, after a few years, just return us to the balance of power between labour and capital that existed 50 years ago. A good move but not a tipping point: on it’s own, without storming the rest of Gramsci’s trenches, we would be doomed to repeat Blairism but with the disadvantage of the right having learned to do it better.