The right-wing Progress mob boo, hiss and shout at Paul Mason

Progress is the right-wing pro-austerity, pro-privatisation, pro-imperialism, pro-globalisation, pro-PFI faction of the Labour Party that ruled the roost for two decades between 1994 and 2015, and they absolutely hate what's going on now so much that they've deliberately sidelined themselves from influence with their petulant refusals to serve in Jeremy Corbyn's cabinet, their coup-plotting and wrecking tactics, and their regular displays of naked contempt for the party membership.
   The Progress ideology is that the only way to win an election in the UK is to imitate the Tory party. 

It doesn't matter how far off into bonkers hard-right austerity dogma and privatisation mania the Tories go there are Labour right-wingers who are certain that the only course of action is to continually track rightwards to stay next to them, hence the shockingly inept 2015 General Election strategy of promoting austerity-lite instead of properly opposing Tory austerity dogma as the socially and economically ruinous ahistorical nonsense that it is, and always was.

Despite being vilified in the mainstream press like no other political leader before him, Jeremy Corbyn managed to win 3.6 million voters back to Labour in the first general election in decades that the party hasn't been dominated by the right-wing Progress faction.

Who would have thought that a Labour leader could appeal to millions by offering people what they want (decent wages; properly funded public services; repatriated national infrastructure; education as a right rather than a commodity; job security; more cops, nurses and firefighters; real action to combat the energy market profiteers; no more privatisation scams; no more warmongering in the Middle East) rather than lecturing them they they're too stupid to understand politics for themselves and that Tory-lite is the only alternative to pure Toryism?

It's almost as if Progress and their ilk are actually completely wrong about everything, and it's their determination that the role of the opposition is to imitate the government rather than oppose it that's the toxifying force that gradually rendered Labour "unelectable".

As Jeremy Corbyn was being cheered by tens of thousands at Glastonbury Paul Mason faced a much harder audience at the Progress conference.
Paul Mason was lied about, booed and hissed by the Progress mob as he tried to explain to them that they need to get with the project or form their own centre-right pro-EU, pro-war, pro-privatisation party. 

Listen to the leader of the right-wing Progress mob desperately misrepresenting everything Paul @paulmasonnews said. pic.twitter.com/qDXV7Crv4q

— Another Angry Voice (@Angry_Voice) June 25, 2017

Listen to how the leader of this mob Richard Angell desperately tries to spin and misrepresent what Mason is saying in order to make himself and his ilk out as the poor victims of censorship, even as the Progress mob simultaneously boo and hiss and shout at Paul Mason for expressing "thought crime"!.

This outrageous stuff is the behaviour of an out-of-touch and increasingly sidelined faction of the Labour Party that is absolutely intent on telling people what to think, rather than listening to what they're actually saying.

Mason's views went down like a lead balloon because the Progress mob still think that the Labour Party belongs to them and that this period of genuine democratic socialism is just a frustrating but brief interregnum before they can retake the party and top-down impose centre-right neoliberalism-lite again.

They've already shown that they will stop at nothing to try to undermine Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, and Angell has clearly expressed his anti-democratic determination to prevent local Labour Party members from choosing their own candidates in favour of parachuting in yet more Progress-approved centre-right political drones.

Angell also accused Paul Mason (first joined the party at the age of 19) of being an "entryist" on stage, a lie which elicited a round of applause from the Progress mob.

When @jeremycorbyn was getting cheered at Glastonbury, @paulmasonnews was getting lied about, booed and hissed by Progress right-wingers. pic.twitter.com/eU1jTH3qyc

— Another Angry Voice (@Angry_Voice) June 25, 2017

Not only do Progress want to ape hard-right Tory economic policy, they also ape the Tory tactic of accusing their opponents of that which they are guilty of themselves.

Progress are the "unelectable" ones who couldn't even beat David Cameron in 2015 despite five years of toxic austerity dogma, shockingly chaotic governance, near-constant lies and evasions, constant demeaning economic baby-talk, and extraordinary complacency about abject incompetence in his top team (Iain Duncan Smith, George Osborne, Theresa May, Chris Grayling ...).

Progress are the "entryists" who took over a democratic socialist party and set about turning it into a centre-right neoliberal party and driving away millions of voters in the process.

And Progress MPs are the "extremists" who actually queued up to vote in favour of Tory austerity dogma in 2015 when the public were crying out for an opposition party to actually oppose it.

Make no mistake about it, the Progress mob will do everything in their power to hobble the Labour Party because they'd much rather exist in the political wilderness of the unpopular, unelectable and almost totally abandoned centre-right territory than actually win power from the centre-left.

Don't take my word for it, take Tony Blair's.

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