Monday 28 October 2019

Remainers at War

What to make of the major falling out at the top of continuity remain? Moves by Roland Rudd to sack Tom Baldwin and James McGory, the so-called People's Vote's chief spinner and campaigns guru respectively has produced the most unseemly of public spats. Alastair Campbell, having got over his recent tantrum, took to Twitter to defend Baldwin and McGory from the attempted coup. You can read his catty response for yourself. Indeed, the small number of staff variously employed by the principal organisations that make up the People's Vote walked out in support of the sacked pair, which must be the first time a wildcat solidarity action has ever received enthusiastic Blairite support. And this is sure to rumble on as it appears Rudd does not have the authority to sack anyone associated with PV, given that he heads up just one of its constituent organisations: Open Britain.

Where there are fallings outs in elite organisations, politics has to be involved somewhere. But the politics here seem quite confused. According to Owen Jones, Baldwin's arrival at PV towers in summer 2018 coincided with a relaxing of an anti-Labour atmos. Indeed, speaking on the Today programme, Baldwin criticises the LibDems for pushing their election plan and said they were "playing some strange games" with the campaign. Well, yes, but Baldwin is a hopeless naif if he thought for one second they'd subordinate their perceived party interests to the remain greater good. And yet part of Rudd's beef with Campbell, Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson and Chuka Umunna (while he was a nominal Labour MP) was their determination to use the campaign less for securing a second referendum and more as a wedge between the pro-EU support of Corbynism's mass support and the EU-scepticism of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour leadership. Rudd was, at least on the referendum issue, less partisan and largely unconcerned with Labour's factional ins and outs. And so we're left with a confusing mess where the "pro-Labour" people are using PV for factional ends to undermine Labour, and the non-Labour Ruddites are moving against the "Labourists" to ... protect Labour. The tangled web of elite politics, eh?

Remember. The People's Vote campaign is an elite endeavour. It certainly has organised impressive demonstrations which, were they efforts pulled off by the usual suspects on the left, would have excited many a Trot newspaper editorial. Objectively speaking, they might not have secured their referendum but they have done the next big thing: Labour's now signed up thanks to the weather making of the campaign, and the capitalisation on it by the LibDems. And now there are genuine grass roots organisations up and down the country doing stuff, like organising stalls, sorting out coaches for the next big march, putting on public meetings and the like. And yet the critique made of PV here last October remains true: they are a bourgeois social movement. That is for all the campaigners on the ground and the hundreds of thousands who've demonstrated, the movement is rigidly controlled from the top by a (formerly) close-knit group of senior politicians, their hangers on, and Westminster-adjacent business people. They determine the programme, who gets to speak for the movement, what they have to say, and who addresses the assembled throngs from its platforms. All the branding, materials, and messaging are handed down from above and funded almost exclusively by the rich. The activist cadre in the rest of the country have no say over the matter.

How has this happened? As argued before, Liberalism itself is an elite social movement, a network of political notables and business interests who are, or rather were, distributed across the main parties. And so why, for instance, Tory and Labour MPs were able to cooperate over the formation of Change UK and their subsequent stroll into the LibDems is because they were part of the same liberal team. The LibDems and its forerunners were traditionally the "open" manifestation of this faction, but liberalism was also overrepresented in the Parliamentary Labour Party (and in the party membership), and a section of latter day Toryism so belonged. And these are now elites in exile. Corbynism has routed them in Labour, and the attempts to heal the Europe rift in the Conservative Party has affected a split in its core City of London constituency. Any hopes of the Tories taking a liberal turn a la the Dave years is dead, and so there are two routes back to the political big time: continuing to needle Labour from the outside and hoping somehow a coming election defeat offers the chance of taking the party back to, and back for the right. Or investing their hopes in the rejuvenated LibDems. Presently, the latter scheme appears the more viable of the two. The party has real momentum behind it and offers a "sensible" capitalist alternative to the Tories while forswearing Corbyn and all his works. LibDem coffers also overflow with the largesse of banished liberal capital. And yet the Blairites haven't given up. British capital as a whole suffered a defeat when the left took over Labour, despite having previously thought the party had been made safe for the spivs and speculators of British finance capital and business generally, and they know for as long as the party has a mass purchase it's an ever-present potential menace to that class. Defeating Corbynism is the prerequisite for making politics a bourgeois playground for neoliberal technocracy again - and the conduit for ensuring their interests get first shout.

Therefore the PV faction fight is inseparable from these strategies of return. The "Labourists" like Mandelson and friends are annoyed because the utility of the PV campaign has diminished as the LibDems' standing has grown, effectively peeling off a layer of the right's traditional support within Labour and with them a section of the electorate - people any reconquest of Labour must be able to draw upon in the struggle to come. And, even worse, Labour's move to the second referendum and repeated line about only voting for an election when no deal is off the table makes the PV wedge less effective, and the possibility their criticisms of Labour become more shrill and desperate. Meanwhile, the Ruddites are afraid that this might jeopardise a cross-party effort of turning out a remain vote at the next election (definitely not 12th December). Why would Labour Party people, even those sympathetic to the PV campaign, want anything to do with them if they spend the campaign trying to bounce Corbyn into some pro-EU position or another? Such an initiative requires an honest broker and so cannot afford to be contaminated by factionalism.

And there we have the mess of the People's Vote campaign. However, as Owen rightly points out to make headway at the next election, to win, Labour has to convince the people who've took part in the PV marches, may have dallied with the LibDems back in the EU election, and are unsure about which way their vote is going to land come polling day to get on board. Their objective, a second referendum, is our objective. Labour offers the hope of a mitigated Brexit and the possibility of no Brexit at all, while Johnson offers Trump furst nonsense dressed up as a national renaissance and the LibDems many wasted votes that can keep the Tories out and a no deal Brexit off the table. Labour's position is, effectively, a wedge of its own designed to peel away the mass base of the remain movement from its compromised and scheming leadership. And thanks to the shenanigans that have erupted, they might make Labour's job a bit easier.

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7 comments:

Boffy said...

"And yet the critique made of PV here last October remains true: they are a bourgeois social movement."

So, is the Labour Party, so are the trades unions, so what? The whole point of socialists relation to these bourgeois mass organisations of the working-class is to thereby gain he ear of that mass of workers, and so to enable them to slough off that bourgeois ideology, and to move towards socialism. To do otherwise is simply sectarianism.

Of course, the sectarians are always able to point to the correctness of their aloofness later, by saying, "oh look these organisations they we refused to have anything to do with have not agreed us. We were obviously right to preserve our purity by our sterility."

Hugo Oehler is alive and well amongst the Left today.

Boffy said...

" British capital as a whole suffered a defeat when the left took over Labour, despite having previously thought the party had been made safe for the spivs and speculators of British finance capital and business generally, and they know for as long as the party has a mass purchase it's an ever-present potential menace to that class. Defeating Corbynism is the prerequisite for making politics a bourgeois playground for neoliberal technocracy again - and the conduit for ensuring their interests get first shout."

No it didn't. Corbyn represents the same kind of progressive social democracy as did Attlee and Wilson. Capitalism jogged along quite nicely with them thank you very much. Indeed, in that period, basically continued by Buttskellism, British capitalism had a heyday, as did capitalism in Europe, where similar social-democratic measures were pursued. The main drawback for capital from Corbyn's Labour is its reactionary support for Brexit. Without that there is a great deal of Corbyn's social democratic agenda that large-scale capital would get along with perfectly well.

As even McDonnell points out, much of their agenda is already in operation in much of the EU. Indeed, in Germany, they have measures way in excess of what Labour proposes. Where labour is fannying around with talk of giving workers 10% of shares, in Germany the codeterminations laws already give workers the right to elect 50% of supervising Boards, not enough, and a means of incorporating workers, but more than Labour's ill-though out and half hearted measures.

Boffy said...

"Therefore the PV faction fight is inseparable from these strategies of return. The "Labourists" like Mandelson and friends are annoyed because the utility of the PV campaign has diminished as the LibDems' standing has grown, effectively peeling off a layer of the right's traditional support within Labour and with them a section of the electorate - people any reconquest of Labour must be able to draw upon in the struggle to come."

But, that is not supported by the facts. The Lib-Dem support has recovered, because the Lib-Dem votes that were lent to labour in 2017, in the hope of stopping or ameliorating Brexit have gone back (along with the similarly lent green votes) as Labour persisted with its reactionary pro-Brexit stance. But, it has also grown precisely because a large swathe of all those radicalised young voters (and perhaps as many as 100,000 new members) that came over to Labour, have been pissed off by Corbyn's reactionary Brexit position! That is why the biggest drop in support for labour has come from the 18-25 year olds.

Boffy said...

"And, even worse, Labour's move to the second referendum and repeated line about only voting for an election when no deal is off the table makes the PV wedge less effective, and the possibility their criticisms of Labour become more shrill and desperate."

Why? labour's second referendum line is undecipherable. It means believing labour could actually negotiate its fantasy brexit, which fuels the belief that labour is a pro-Brexit party, which is why it is bleeding support to the Liberals and SNP. Then saying it will ask voters to vote against the deal its just wasted time negotiating is even more bizarre. But, it leaves open the door that having done so, voters might vote for a No Deal in that referendum, which Labour would then be committed to implementing with the electoral disaster that would then imply.

The no election prior to No Deal looked lying and frit as it was, now saying No Deal in 2020, now looks like Labour is taking the piss and taking voters for idiots! Its likely to see an even bigger wedge between the leadership and membership, not to mention voters.

Boffy said...

"Their objective, a second referendum, is our objective. Labour offers the hope of a mitigated Brexit and the possibility of no Brexit at all, while Johnson offers Trump furst nonsense dressed up as a national renaissance and the LibDems many wasted votes that can keep the Tories out and a no deal Brexit off the table. Labour's position is, effectively, a wedge of its own designed to peel away the mass base of the remain movement from its compromised and scheming leadership. And thanks to the shenanigans that have erupted, they might make Labour's job a bit easier."

Sheer fantasy and wishful thinking. A second referendum makes no sense, and is a trap. Brexit is reactionary. Labour should just say so, and commit to opposing it, and revoking article 50 if elected. there is no fantasy mitigated Brexit that is available or that makes any sense. For those that oppose brexit, labour centrist position simply means the possibility that some form of Brexit may happen, so they will vote Liberal, or SNP. That isn't likely to result in a Liberal government, but is likely to let the Tories in.

Those who want Brexit certainly will not vote Labour, but will vote for the Tories. So this fanciful strategy is only likely to see a right-wing Tory government elected with a clear majority, and the destruction of the Corbyn project, demoralisation of those thousands of young members that joined, and a resurrection of Blairism, just as Corbyn's strategy has already resulted in the resurrection of the Liberal corpse.

RES said...

Labour has haemmorhaged voters to the LDs mostly because its overall position on Brexit had been weak, vague and inconsistent. These voters want either to remain or the softest of Brexits and they've switched to the party that sounds like it holds their position. Meanwhile Labour has dismally failed to appeal to all manner of less Remain voters it aspires to win, who have gone Tory or Brexit party. And honestly, I have a hard time believing that Labour is not the same old metropolitan elite (if more social democratic) who still can't really find much appeal to the working classes they want to represent.

It's all well and good taking swipes at the LDs and saying how everyone needs to vote Labour to save the country, but a lot of Labour activists seem to be clueless about how Labour and Corbyn have squandered the support and trust of millions of their potential voters.

BCFG said...

“The whole point of socialists relation to these bourgeois mass organisations of the working-class is to thereby gain he ear of that mass of workers, and so to enable them to slough off that bourgeois ideology, and to move towards socialism”

This is priceless from Boffy, I can’t think of anyone who consistently champions the wonders of capitalism and the majesty of the bourgeoisie than Boffy.

Incidentally some analysis that contradicts Boffy’s 2 great new class camps theory:


Home owners stuck with the conservatives, both those with a mortgage and those who own their home outright.
Renters swung to labour, be it private or social renters.
Low income private renters are becoming a significant fact in a number of marginal seats.
But home owners are more likely to vote that renters.

For every 10 years older a voter is, their chance of voting Tory increases by around nine points and the chance of them voting Labour decreases by nine points.
Turnout among older people is markedly higher than among young people.
The retired were far more likely to vote Tory than Labour, which just shows that Logan’s run was less a dystopian vision of the future and more a guide to good social organisation.

Vote by socio economic grade is no longer a good indicator of voting intentions.

Interestingly those with lower education grades were far more likely to vote Tory than those with higher level qualifications, confirming something I have long believed, to be working class and a Tory you really do need to be as thick as pig shit.
Contradicting the above slightly, readers of the Daily Star were more likely to vote Labour, though to be fair, they do have some cracking women in that paper and the Independent just doesn’t work on a building site.

The gap by gender was negligible.

People who own shares are 40% more likely to vote Tory.