IS THERE some “siege mentality” in the Corbyn camp? A defensiveness, a tendency to see criticism as illegitimate. Maybe even a touch of paranoia sometimes?

Of course there is — because Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters have been under siege. Relentlessly. For over three years. Like it says in Catch-22 — just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.

What should we do about it? Well, one way to relieve a siege mentality: relieve the siege.

The rank and file contains hundreds of thousands of Corbyn supporters. There is small core of MPs fully up for a Labour government trying to really shift power from the rich and the corporations to the majority.

In between? A solid lump of semi-hostile MPs and a comically partisan press, all working happily with a Tory propaganda machine to resist change.

The “Corbyn project” broke through this hostile bloc because of big, imaginative grassroots support. By contrast anti-Corbyn figures thought randomly throwing mud was a good tactic, even though it more often splatted all over them than their target.

Comedian Jeremy Hardy’s recent death was a chance to remember his unique mix of the humane and the cutting, the charming and the filthily rude, the joker and impassioned activist. 

It was also a chance to remember some of the ridiculous, relentless resistance to Corbynism. When Hardy joined Labour in 2015, the party’s Blairite bureaucrats did not welcome him. They “vetted” away Hardy’s membership, along with thousands of others enthused by Corbyn. This was just one tiny part of the relentless rigid resistance to the Labour leader.

The big success of Corbynism has been spontaneously building a strikingly new kind of politics, combining grassroots and online campaigning. 

The movement crowdsourced its communications to show that parties can change opinion rather than purely try moulding themselves to opinion polls. But it has also had to spend a lot of time resisting and defending itself from attack.

Corbyn’s supporters grouped together to fight off the pathetic “coup” by almost all Labour MPs, the endless rounds of shadow cabinet resignations, the briefing of the press with pointless stories. 

Meanwhile the Tory propaganda machine and their friends in the press threw about the most bizarre stories — Corbyn is a Czech spy, “Corbyn’s great great grandfather was the master of a workhouse” and so on. And on. And on. 

Frequently Corbyn supporters have formed a defensive ring around the Labour leader and fired outwards. They have usually been right when the pundits have been wrong. They were right, for example, that Owen Smith was neither credible nor sensible, and that a Corbyn-led Labour could improve the party’s election results.

So a lot of defensiveness, a tendency to a siege mentality, reflects how members were right to defend Corbyn, and how he is often under siege. 

But it does have two costs. First, fighting defensively can become a bit nasty, a bit like hand-to-hand combat. It’s frustrating. We’ve all been nastier than we should be sometimes, especially with the exaggerating effects of social media. There is a real need to rise above it, not descend into angry insults.

Second, it can narrow debate. There has to be a debate between the grassroots and the leadership. This can be hard in hostile territory. We saw the need to keep up that debate recently over the Immigration Bill. 

Diane Abbott made very powerful arguments against the Tory Immigration Bill in a Morning Star article. She showed the Tory Bill would create a new class of “super-exploited” migrant workers on one-year visas. However, in Parliament Labour was set to abstain on the Bill’s first reading. 

This was clearly a compromise. In Westminster Abbott is relying on a whole lot of “soft left” MPs and a tradition promoting social reform while giving in on tougher migration targets — the tradition that brought us Ed Miliband’s six pledges: five offering better conditions for workers, but one promising “controls on immigration.” 

People think Corbyn’s Labour doesn’t compromise, but it does all the time. However, this was clearly the wrong compromise, and after much criticism from voices on the left, Labour reversed its stand and said it would oppose the Bill. 

Having that kind of debate is necessary, but it is hard when Labour’s left-wing leadership is isolated and under all kinds of opportunist criticism. So how do we make it easier? 

First, by making Labour’s leadership less isolated. They badly need support in Parliament. Constituency parties need to supply more left-wing MPs. Almost all the decent, half-decent and quarter-decent left-wing MPs have been sucked into shadow cabinet posts. 

There is a massive move to the left in Labour nationally. But there is barely any left-wing “back bench” to act as a sounding board or bring in alternative views. The solidly left backbenches don’t extend much beyond Clive Lewis, Lloyd Russell-Moyle , Emma Dent-Coad , Kate Osamor and Chris Williamson. So break any siege mentality by sending in a flying column of new MPs through the encircling forces.

Second, where people on the left want to try to shift Labour’s leadership, it is better to do so while creating shifts at the grassroots. Don’t just pile demands on the leadership — demonstrate that those demands are popular on the ground. Some argue Labour should shift to a “radical Remain” position on Europe. I don’t agree (though I am sympathetic). 

But those actively campaigning at the grassroots for this shift as well as asking Labour to back it — like Manuel Cortes of the TSSA, or the group Another Europe is Possible — are more likely to get a hearing than those that simply present these as demands on the Labour leadership. Or worse, those that run campaigns targeting Labour’s leadership with hostile stunts.

Third, sometimes we have to be the bigger people. There are no end of opportunists who will seize on any issue to have a pop at Labour. But sometimes the issue is more important than the opportunists. So for example, there are spurious or mendacious claims about anti-semitism in the Labour Party. 

But the movement has also never been exempt from racism, and at its best has not shied away from trying to educate away from racism, including anti-semitism. Sometimes we need to worry less about opportunists’ smears and more about the bigger principle.