James Butler

Head​ out from the moorings on the Thames where I live – passing around the riverfront’s gated colonies and skirting the wharves, long since reanimated as desirable ‘resi’, on which my grandfather had his first job (‘A man’s job, at fourteen’) – and in a few minutes you reach a clutch of houses which might have been grafted from a garden city....

It began​ with the beheading of a god. In a dispute over theological primacy, Brahma – traditionally identified as the creator – insulted Shiva. The offended deity poured all his anger into the creation of a new god, Bhairava, who emerged wreathed in fire and shining like the god of death. He tore off one of Brahma’s heads, which immediately attached itself to his hand in...

Broad scope and lofty ambitions can conceal ambiguities and faultlines. Was the goal of the project primarily to wind the clock back, to undo the changes Kinnock and Blair had wrought within the party, and Thatcher in the country as a whole, by returning the trade unions to a central position in Labour and chasing a romanticised version of the postwar settlement? Or was it to bring the post-2008, post-austerity generation which had been so enthused by Corbyn into formal, institutional politics? Could the two ambitions be bridged? Why was it important to change the party’s structure, and how could it happen? Was it intended to put decision-making power back into the hands of union leaders or give it to individual members? How could the middle layers of the party be brought on side? When talking about ‘the project’, who was included? Corbyn and his staff and advisers in Westminster, or the wider circle of activists and party members, or supporters in the country generally? During the last 18 months of his leadership, Corbyn himself, the one man who had sufficient power to impose clarity on any of these questions, seemed barely involved.