I don't know much about Mason, don't mean to pretend that I do! But the perspective strikes me as from the inside of mainstream parties like US Dems and Labor. He looks outward with mixed feelings to a "left", characterizes Corbyn as a threat rather than at least to some degree an opportunity lost.

He's gentle with an identity politics left, who he thinks misguided and is trying to persuade to more constructive approaches. He's not gentle with a left whose foreign policy views are "tankie", even though their economic views are often vigorously social democratic.

I happen to agree with him that both the id-pol focused and "tankie" foreign policy focused portions of a leftish coalition are making grave errors! but i think he's making an error by deciding one can be pulled into coalition, while the other must be banished to the adversary and shunned.

The id-pol people are right to observe that important social disparities break along identity lines in ways not fully captured by material notions of class. But they are wrong to make that a foundation for political activism, because identity advocacy becomes divisive and zero-sum.

Similarly the "tankie" left is not wrong that Western foreign policy has included a lot of horrors. They are wrong in imagining powers like Russia, China, and Iran are therefore superior because they resist Western foreign policy.

Both groups are badly mistaken. But both groups need to be brought into coalition on material social democratic interests. That is the power, and only hope, of social democracy.

Whatever else divides us, whatever we disagree about, a solid material basis for all will leave us much better off than we were, and more able to address those issues.

There will still be racism and sexism in a robust social democracy, but it will matter less, you can tell the racists and sexists to fuck off and just live your life.

Foreign policy will still be complicated under social democracy, but if you view capitalist corruption of a military industrial complex as an important source of Western foreign policy horrors, social democratic reform will make it possible to collectively think more seriously and ethically.

Basically, it seems to me that Mason has a very inside view of what kind of errors leave people "on the broad left" redeemable, and what kind render them pariahs.

Also a bit too technocratic here, "It is entirely possible to defeat and contain right wing populism if social democrats and their allies adopt an evidence-based and professionally executed strategy..."

"Evidence-based" and "professional" has been the hallmark of mainstream center left parties. It has not served them well.

The next bit is "...mobilising our substantial support within civil society and our working class roots." That inverts the direction of causality. A successful socdem movement will need to organize the party such that it is *mobilized* by civil society and working class roots.