Well, this is impressive.
Most of us are familiar with “entryism“: the process by which one political party works within another political party, so as better to advance its own political agenda.
It is largely Left wing groups which practice entryism. In the United Kingdom, it is the Labour Party which is usually the target of such a tactic. A group called the Revolutionary Socialist League spent much of the 1980s pretending that they were merely the readers of a newspaper called “Militant“: until they were thrown out of the Labour Party, and renamed themselves the Socialist Party (a move which greatly annoyed the pre-existing Socialist Party).
More recently, a party called Socialist Action successfully infiltrated the Labour Party, and managed to get its advisors appointed to senior positions in Ken Livingstone’s cabinet.
I am no fan of entryism. I can see why small unappealing parties do it. Who would vote for Socialist Action or the Revolutionary Socialist League if they stood under their own names? Still, it would be far better if it didn’t happen at all.
Labour is used to entryism. The Tories aren’t. It looks to me as if Boris Johnson’s team is being infiltrated by the Revolutionary Communist Party. I wonder if they have realised what is going on:
A glamorous young Muslim woman is the latest Cameron favourite to be parachuted in to keep a close eye on Johnson.
Munira Mirza, who argues that racism in the UK is greatly exaggerated, is to serve as a cultural adviser to the mayor.
She is the third member of his new team to have worked for Policy Exchange, the organisation behind many of the policies adopted by Cameron’s Conservatives.
Mirza’s appointment will also be viewed as an attempt to neutralise any accusations that Johnson is racist, especially as he seeks to slash grants to fringe ethnic groups, many of which received lavish funding from Livingstone.
Mirza believes race relations policies based on multicultural ideas have been divisive. While the official party line remains that Johnson is his own man, the Tory high command is leaving nothing to chance.
Munira is very clever. She is rather glam, to be frank. And she is a key member of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
For a trainspottery follower of fringe politics, this is very cool. I can think of no other occasion on which a nominally revolutionary communist party has infiltrated a right wing political party. In reality, the RCP aren’t enormously “revolutionary” or “communist”. They’re sort of controversialist libertarians with a love of GM foods, and a strong love of Westphalian notions of national sovereignty. However, they started life as a split from the Socialist Workers’ Party.
When I discussed the involvement with centre-right Policy Exchange with Munira some time ago, she was rather droll. Munira’s line was that it was the Tory Party who were infiltrating the RCP: not the other way round.
Either way, it is a first.