Once more the big missing centrepiece of any strategy to preserve liberal democracy in Britain is the absence of any mention by columnists and leading politicians of the vital need for proportional representation. The existing Westminster model of FPTP and two and a bit parties is both obsolete and dysfunctional.
Nick Cohen is less interested in practical politics that with the usual obsession with fixing and framing what it means to truly be progressive. It's a rehash of What's Left : How Liberals Lost their Way and attempt to use the crisis of the liberal left to berate Corbyn once more as a sinister bearded ideologue.
Much of Cohen's worldview is inverted Trotskyism, a messianic division of politicians into those who are evil sneering renegades and those who are naive and confused in the face of some always ever ready to appear fascist threat. There are always Kremlin plots and enemies within ready to destabilise democracy.
The real thrust of Cohen is that Corbyn is simply not interested in winning an election but in a fantasy version of politics. This is true, of course, but its equally fantasy to claim that the failure of any Progressive Alliance is wholly a consequence of Corbyn opposing some mythically 'hard Brexit'.
Nobody yet knows what exact shape Brexit will take and when many politicians say they oppose a 'hard Brexit' they mean Brexit is hard. They cannot claim they do not accept the referendum verdict in any way whatsoever. So they spin rhetoric around it to position themselves as appealing to the 48% and Leavers.
Without reform of the electoral system there will be constant subterfuge to plot the downfall of May's government and to leak negotiating secrets or work towards the EU in defeating Brexit. The right win mass media and some Tories are bound to use this to shore up nationalism and the idea of enemies within.
This is precisely why only a promise proportional representation by Labour could act as a way of creating a 'Progressive Alliance', but Corbyn is wedded to a woolly minded model of democratic centralism in which he poses as the facilitator in chief of a revolutionary of ordinary people from below against the few.
"Blairites"may well be anyone 'to the right' of Corbyn or, indeed, anyone in Labour who does not value his new form of Leadership as Guiding Prophet of the Ignored. But the fact is that this politics of plotting is the consequence of having two parties that can no longer contain political forces in Britain in 2017.
The next few years of the Brexit process could see anger boil over into destabilisation attempts within Labour and within the country, plots to sabotage Brexit by fair means or foul, street protests and clashes between disenfranchised progressives and mobilised Kippers and assorted nationalists ranged against them.
The only way conflicts could be contained and resolved civilly is through the creation of a mass movement dedicated to electoral Reform, a 21st century version of nineteenth century agitators and the Chartists working from below to force Labour to accept it or create a new party to promote overdue reforms.
The need for reform would grow urgently should the inevitable fall out and conflict within Britain over Brexit result the ramping up of the powers of an authoritarian national security state and compliant media in demonising internal enemies who are in hired traitors taking foreign gold, secret EU financing.
On the other hand, liberal groups and media that cannot accept the Leave verdict will start claiming that UKIP is part of a subversive Kremlin plot backed by covert scheming billionaires who have oligarchical ideas and interests in breaking up the EU the better to advance their financial and media interests.
Brexit is one of those epochal sea changes in history, as important as the English Tudor Reformation in the sixteenth century when Henry VIII sought a divorce from the continent and complete sovereignty over the offshore islands as 'an empire entire unto itself'. Doctrinal wars and propaganda over its future direction are certain.
As then, there will be plots and accusations of treason, power struggles at the top and a massive grabs for power and control over these islands amidst heated polemics and the ever possible breakout of violent rebellion with state coercion and spies vying for information on potential threats within and without.
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