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This pandemic has shown there is still a vital role for Momentum in the Labour party

<span>Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters</span>
Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

As the Labour left attempts to regroup following the twin defeats of December’s general election and the subsequent party leadership contest, Momentum is under new management. In a fractious set of elections to its national coordinating group (NCG), the Forward Momentum slate emerged triumphant over its rival, Momentum Renewal. Now, at a moment of great political urgency, the organisation must answer an existential question: in the post-Corbyn era, what is Momentum for?

Granted, to outsiders – and, given the low turnout, most Momentum members – the source of the antagonism between the competing slates must seem quite obscure; hackneyed Life of Brian gags have again been thrown around with abandon. However, the fundamental problems with Momentum today are rooted in its lack of political clarity, as previously argued by Momentum Renewal candidate Max Shanly. Originally rushed into being in 2015 to defend Jeremy Corbyn’s embattled leadership of the Labour party, Momentum has struggled to develop any substantial objectives beyond this original purpose.

Although it initially harboured vague aspirations of putting itself at the centre of a broader social movement, how it might do so was never really elaborated on. Instead, it fell to Momentum to simultaneously supply the Labour left’s organisational muscle for winning votes at party conferences and in candidate selections, provide an auxiliary PR operation for Corbyn, and turn itself into a well-drilled election campaigning machine. Unsurprisingly, the fledgling organisation was ultimately overwhelmed by its various responsibilities.

Hence, the challenges are already piling up for the new, Forward Momentum-dominated NCG. For starters, it is now faced with the unenviable task of engineering a single leftwing slate for the impending elections to Labour’s national executive committee (NEC). The NEC elections that took place concurrently with the recent Labour leadership contest saw leftist votes splintered hither and thither among rival Corbynite candidates, handing the party’s right wing a majority which (unlike the left under Corbyn) it has not hesitated to use.

But reconstructing Momentum, if it is to find an effective post-Corbyn role, must go much further. Its local branches, largely withered on the vine, need to be revived. With Labour’s community organising unit facing an uncertain future under the new party leadership, it may be left to Momentum to fill the void as best it can (albeit with much more limited resources). In addition, it will need to offer a lead with regard to socialist political education, organising in constituency parties, helping to build new labour movement institutions organically rooted in working-class communities, and strengthening bonds with the trade union movement.

Momentum has already launched a programme for recruiting and training leftwing Labour council candidates, and this should be developed further. Outside a handful of areas, such as Preston and Salford, the Labour left made only modest inroads in local government during the Corbyn years. Yet some Labour councils are increasingly unpopular, partly (though not entirely) as a result of being spitefully starved of funding by Tory governments. There is therefore a clear need for new ideas and a new fighting spirit on Labour-run councils. But Keir Starmer has been keen to build a base among existing Labour councillors, who will look to him for protection against any leftwingers trying to replace them.

Perhaps Momentum’s paramount responsibility in the years ahead is to provide a constructive outlet for whatever socialist ideas and energies can be recuperated in the aftermath of Corbynism. For those on the Labour left who remain in the party, it needs to provide a bolthole, keeping members involved and engaged with local political activity, inside the party and out. There will be no shortage of things for socialists to do in the coming period; with mass unemployment and a wave of evictions looming, many people will soon need the assistance of renters’ unions, food banks and mutual aid groups, for instance.

Yet keeping these activists engaged with Labour will be a tough task. Starmer would lose little sleep over leftists cancelling their direct debits or cutting up their membership cards. Those socialists who continue to organise in and through the Labour party should be under no illusions about what’s ahead for them: a painstaking period of rebuilding, reorganising and rethinking. Others advocate forming a new leftwing party, but the circumstances for doing so could hardly be any less propitious, and without electoral reform (plus the support of the major left-led trade unions) such an endeavour would almost certainly be doomed.

Related: Powerless, rudderless and adrift: Covid-19 has crystallised how England feels | John Harris

There are those, from the liberal centre to the reactionary right, who are hoping that the defeat of Corbynism has put socialism back in its box. But the Covid-19 crisis has vindicated the left in important respects. Forty-plus years of neoliberal neglect, and particularly the last, lamentable decade of vandalism to public services, left Britain ill-equipped (literally and figuratively) for the pandemic. This is a point implicitly conceded – at least in part – by the incumbent Tory government, which has been forced to take unprecedented, previously unthinkable measures simply to avoid full-blown economic collapse, driving a coach and horses through free-market theory in the process.

Confronting us are multiple, intersecting crises to which self-proclaimed “moderates” can offer only sticking plasters and platitudes in response. The necessity of far-reaching social transformation remains as great as ever. While cohering a fractured Labour left will be an immense burden for Momentum to shoulder, this doesn’t have to guarantee failure. But this, in all likelihood, is its last chance to live up to its early promise.

• Tom Blackburn is a founding editor of New Socialist