YOU might have heard the one about the man who shouts across the fence to his neighbour during lockdown: “Jez, don’t bother trying to shave that beard off. I have just invented a mask with razors in it. Shove it on and it shaves your face in one go.”

“Hang on, Jon,” Jez replies, “not everybody’s face is the same shape.”

“Don’t worry Jez, it soon will be.”

I worry that, amid the panic caused by the loss of the election, a new Labour leader whose socialist credentials are, at the very least, unproven, new groups and slates forming inside and outside the main vehicle for the Labour left, Momentum, that there is an understandable desire to squeeze the ungainly face of the Labour left back into a shape that is not serving socialism in the party well.

Everyone knows that Momentum was instrumental in mobilising effectively for the 2017 election campaign, when Jeremy Corbyn upset the odds, forcing a hung parliament and nearly getting a Labour government in power.

Momentum effectively deployed a social-media strategy that had worked well for Bernie Sanders in the US and mobilised thousands of the many new members who joined during the Corbyn surge — 350,000 new members joined between 2015 and 2018.

What is often forgotten is that Momentum did not exist in 2015, when a coalition of left groups and individuals swept Jeremy Corbyn into power and dealt a mortal blow to the neoliberal consensus that had been shaping Labour’s politics since the Blair/Brown axis.

Some of those groups, such as Red Labour, pioneered social-media messaging to great effect. It was that coalition that provided the organisational backbone and the database of activists that Momentum was built on.

Politically, Momentum has remained what it has been since its inception, a very broad-based coalition. Indeed, it largely reflects the profile of the vast majority of the Corbyn surge members.

These, incidentally, were more like the existing members than is often acknowledged; they were middle class and left of centre, and sometimes only just left of centre, at that.

As Ben Chacko pointed out in this paper a fortnight ago, it was very much a liberal left, certainly not a Marxist one.

Poletti, Bale and Webb are authors of an Economic Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded research project on party membership. They looked at the change of membership in the Labour Party between “old” and “new” members, with “old” members defined as those who had joined before 2015 and “new” members as those joining as part of the Corbyn surge.

The average age of both old and new members is 51 — so much for the myth of the shiny young lefties — and more than half of them are graduates. Three quarters of them live in households in which the chief income earner has a “middle-class” (ABC1) occupation.

What is different about them is that the older members voted predominantly for Owen Smith and the newer members for Jeremy Corbyn, but they were all fairly “left wing” in terms of their attitude to economic issues such as redistribution of wealth.

A critical difference, which may have influenced their decision to join in order to support Corbyn, is that the newer members see themselves as significantly more left-wing than older members. With Momentum members this difference is even more pronounced.

Of course, that very much depends on what you believe to be “on the left.” On the EU, just to underline Chacko’s point, the ESRC study found that 49 per cent of all Labour Party members thought that there should “definitely” be a vote on the final Brexit deal, with a further 29.4 per cent answering “more yes than no” to the question and only 8.8 per cent definitely opposing it.

If we are to build a Marxist left in the Labour Party, we need to reflect on the one-size-fits-all model of organisation that Momentum has adopted.

To be crystal clear, I am certainly not advocating that there is no need for a disciplined process for agreeing who the left should support for committees such as the NEC, or any other internal or public representative post either, for that matter.

Anyone suggesting that, or undermining the arrangements currently in place without an alternative, should be (metaphorically) taken out and shot.

The old ILP had a saying: If you want to make socialism, make socialists. Socialist organisations are more likely to recruit active and potentially committed members and, more to the point, shape their political perspective, if they are engaged with them personally and locally in campaigning and educational activities.

The top-down approach to organisation can actually be unhelpful — witness Momentum spokespeople welcoming independence supporters as part of a “progressive alliance” while members of the Scottish Labour Campaign for Socialism who are joint members of Momentum and committed to a federal UK looked on in dismay.

Talking of federalism, we need to look to developing something like a socialist federation in the Labour Party.

Momentum will, of course, be the single biggest component of that, but other groups and perhaps unions could affiliate and this body could take responsibility for agreeing candidates for internal and external elections or, where widespread support exists, mobilising for specific policies at Labour Party conference.

In Scotland, there is another reason why we need an autonomous organisation with a clear Scottish identity: anything allowing an accusation of “branch office” is fatal.

There is, in any case, clear evidence of groups bumping up against the political lockdown. “Forward Momentum” has sprung up, demanding more democracy inside Momentum; “Don’t Leave, Organise” has emerged outside it as an alternative co-ordinating hub; and an organisation building on the internationalist legacy of Corbyn, “The Cosmos,” is set to provide a platform for anti-imperialist discussions in the wider socialist movement, inside Labour and beyond.

So despite the temptations to take a razor to your face coming out of lockdown, a Corbyn-style beard can still be a good look, whatever your age.

Vince Mills, chair of Campaign for Socialism, writes in a personal capacity.