In his recent Jacobin article, Osmond Chiu compares the Australian Labor Party (ALP) with its British counterpart, suggesting that the ALP’s right wing represents a bastion of Third Way social democracy. Correctly noting the danger of a resurgence of this failed approach, Chiu suggests that the ALP left represents an alternative. Not to put too fine a point on it, but we disagree.

Granted, the ALP and the British Labour Party are both labor parties. However, as labor parties go, the ALP is a geriatric with a drinking problem while British Labour is a healthy, open-minded, principled party with a bright future. Corbyn is the absolute boy. The ALP is absolutely beyond reasonable hope.

You could argue this wasn’t always the case. Either way, Osmond Chiu’s article “The Third Way Isn’t Dead Yet” doesn’t help us understand how the wheezing, morally vacuous old husk of a party that is the ALP got that way — let alone how we can make good on our shared desire to see the end of antipodean neoliberalism. Of course, in the spirit of solidarity, we wish Challenge Magazine — Chiu’s left-Labor faction magazine — the very best. If his strategy succeeds, we’ll see him in a local Labor branch. We will shout him a pint while we eat humble pie.