Ahmed Hussain has joined the Conservative Party.
It is not clear whether he remains a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party.
I am very confused. A senior Socialist Workers’ Party activist emailed me John Rees’ press release early this morning, denying that Ahmed Hussain was going to take the radical step of joining a democratic mainstream political party, and insisting that he was still a loyal Trotskyite. I put that press release up in good faith.
But now, it seems, I have been made a fool of. I shall never trust the word of an SWP activist again.
It appears that John Rees is a delusional idiot, with no grasp of politics at all. After all, why else would he have staked his reputation on insisting that a man who clearly was joining the Tories, would not do so.
John Rees has been utterly humiliated by this pantomime. He had claimed that the SWP/RESPECT split was a product of a deep seated left-right divide. Rees was right, up to a point. The core of RESPECT Renewal is aligned with Jamaat-e-Islami, a far right clerical fascist party guilty of war crimes during the Bangladeshi War of Independence. I suppose that, compared to the Jamaatis, Ahmed Hussain’s embrace of Cameronian Toryism is Left wing, in a relative sense. But, let’s face it, however you cut it: the Tories are a party of the centre Right.
I’ll leave the last word to another former SWP cadre: RESPECT Renewal’s Kevin Ovenden
Now – all those who came here in high dudgeon claiming that we had lied need to ask themselves how they were taken in by the flimsy 2.15am release from Rees.
He has turned a disaster into a catastrophe. If people remain lashed to him, they will go down with the ship.