Chris Leslie and Elitist Politics

In her Newsnight interview with Kirsty Wark, Anna Soubry batted away questions about the politics of the newly-minted Independent Group by saying this was "something new". As this could not pertain to the tired return of warmed over Blairism (with a full-throated shout out for George Osborne, in Soubz's case), it must be something specific to TIG itself. Plenty of people have noted this is not a political party but a corporate entity owned by Gemini A, a company owned by TInG nobody and anti-gay bigot, Gavin Shuker. Normally it's the height of Commons manners to be discreet about one's relationship to a private company, so I suppose that's new.

Another innovation came in George Eaton's interview with Chris Leslie. Amid the guff and nonsense, none of which we haven't seen before, this wee gem was put forward in response to being quizzed on party leadership: "Everybody has genuflected to membership, but that membership is a tiny fraction of the public at large ... MPs have to, by the nature of our constitution, have confidence in their leader." Therefore MPs should have the final say on who gets to be the leader of their party. Can you imagine his envy when Andrea Leadsom withdrew her ill-fated 2016 leadership bid when it became clear Theresa May had the backing of most Conservative MPs? It's not entirely surprising then how ordinary people cannot join Leslie's outfit - though their money is good enough.

But I want to focus a little on Leslie himself. The notion that social being conditions consciousness should be a banal truism when it comes to the analysis of politics, but it's not. And this is for good reasons where mainstream commentary is concerned. Rather than parties being the means by which interests are articulated and represented, they are free-floating coalitions of ideas. MPs sat in Westminster with their salaries, status and a cushion of office bods who do the donkey work for them can subscribe to this fiction, this illusio (as Bourdieu put it) of the political field because most of them are from similar backgrounds, have a similar outlook, the same salaries, conditions of work, respect for parliamentary conventions, and so on. For them, this is politics. The constituency association or party, having to deal with beastly members' meetings, committing to local council election efforts, that's not proper politics: it's a distraction.

Leslie's contempt for members' participation in the affairs of their party makes sense in this context. But additionally, he's something of a special case. Like his equally useless compadre, Mike Gapes, the Labour Party has provided him a good living virtually all his adult life. Fresh from his Masters degree at Leeds University he moved into a political research job in 1996 before getting selected for Shipley in 1997 at the tender age of 24. There he was a loyal MP and something of a Gordon Brown protege until getting dumped out of office at the 2005 general election by noted Tory misogynist Philip Davies. He was then gifted the directorship of the New Local Government Network following his defenestration, and headed Brown's leadership campaign from behind the scenes. He was then selected to fight Nottingham East in 2010 and has sat in Parliament ever since.

It's worth focusing in on that Nottingham East selection. Long-term readers might remember shortly after joining Labour in February 2010, the seat in which I live, Stoke Central, was subjected to a stitch-up. The NEC (in reality, the then regional director) drew up a shortlist comprised of Tristram Hunt and two no-hopers and trusted the local membership to select the right candidate. Alas, local party members in Nottingham East weren't even afforded that luxury. The then sitting MP, John Heppell, resigned late before the general election and so the selection of a replacement came under the purview of the NEC's Special Selection Panel. A long list was drawn up and was put to the five-person panel and, what do you know, Leslie was awarded the seat for services rendered. To understand why Nottingham East no confidenced him and have loudly complained about his neglect of the constituency, the circumstances of his imposition on the CLP is the necessary context to take into consideration. For a large chunk of the membership, the legitimacy of his claim to the seat has always been suspect and contested.

Leslie then epitomises the trends Peter Mair wrote about in Ruling the Void, of a party elite distant from and indifferent to what's happening in the real world. And we can see why. For most of Leslie's political career, elites at the top of parties have used bureaucracy, dirty tricks and all manner of manipulation to keep themselves in place and insulated from outside pressures. For the likes of Leslie, ordinary people getting involved in politics, having a say, expecting politicians to answer their questions and, ultimately, being accountable to them is as much an aberration as it is an abomination. This is politics as less an elite and more an elitist activity, one they shouldn't be ashamed of, and why it is no accident The Independent Group was set up as project for MPs only. Not that this should unduly worry anyone. As they will find out soon enough, if they can't be bothered to orient themselves to a mass constituency outside of Westminster, then people outside of their bubble, even those who might be favourably disposed to them, aren't going to be bothered with them either.