You can imagine the press furore and the whingeing of the parliamentary party if Jeremy Corbyn had bounced the NEC into conferring this power on Jennie Formby. In fact, that doesn't sound too much of a bad idea ... But we don't have to imagine. In March 2018 the ridiculous Owen Smith got the heave ho from the front bench for peddling his own line and generally being disagreeable. The response? Outrage and the cry of "this is a terrible Stalinist purge!". Your reminder, as if it needs repeating, that there is no such thing as a point of principle where the Labour right are concerned. Everything is a factional football for them. Everything.
The lesson? Well, Keir might be as far from Trotskyism as you can get (though not as far as some ex-Trot fellow travellers of the Trilateral Commission), but he certainly remembered something from the branch lead offs on permanent revolution. Not a doctrine for constantly fermenting revolution and storming heaven, as pretended by Trotsky's Stalinist nemesis, it is the simple insight that if workers seize power they'd better organise to keep it by moving to expropriate the property of the capitalist class, disarm the soldiery of the bourgeois state, clear out the old bureaucrats, etc. In other words, making the revolution permanent. This is exactly what Corbyn didn't do and, arguably, refused to do. There were opportunities to break the hold of the parliamentary party on Labour and enshrine the sovereignty of the membership, most crucially in 2018 when the leadership manoeuvred at conference to defeat a mandatory reselection motion and go for the compromise mess of a reformed trigger ballot. There was the opportunity to decisively tilt the balance of forces in the party, but it was not taken up. And here we are.
Keir is not making the same mistake. He's got his majority on the NEC. The press aren't causing him grief. The left are large, but contained. And nothing (yet) has come of his suspension of Corbyn from the PLP. And what's the cost of anti-democratic shenanigans. A few thousand resignations by leftists and some moaning on Twitter? Big deal. So why not go for a power grab at a moment of oppositional weakness and where, seemingly, the stars are aligning. From Keir's point of view of recasting Labour in his bland, managerial image, he'd be stupid not to. His writ rules the roost, and for all his talk of "unity" the apparatus is in place to screen out leftwingers selected to run in any upcoming by-elections and, of course, the general election itself. Perhaps not a few sitting MPs might also find themselves out on their ear for lacking the required "probity".
Despair? Absolutely not. This can be turned over and reversed by party conference. The "SLT" can ignore the party on matters of policy, as it always has done, but not when it comes to conference rulings on how the party should organise itself. Momentum has launched its policy primary with a view to pushing for positions at 2021 conference. Organising against the Evans veto alongside measures aimed at reversing the deadening creep of Starmerist authoritarianism seems like an entirely appropriate thing Momentum and the rest of the left should be pushing for. If the lesson from Keir is he's serious about power, at least where machinations in the Labour Party are concerned, then the obvious, the only worthwhile response from the left is we should be too and struggle with as much determination. And, yes, ruthlessness.
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22 comments:
The labour left should also be planning ahead in the event of a Starmer election loss. It would be nice if they had a strong candidate with a leadership campaign infrastructure in place ready to strike before Starmer's political corpse is even cold.
Starmer Doing Tory's dirty work and taking instructions from the Israeli lobbyists funding him so he's obviously going to get out smeared by the Tory's MSM BBC etc Tory hell never ending
" The executive voted through a paper that will grant David Evans, the general secretary (and unelected party employee) the right to refuse a candidate selected by a constituency party if he determines they're unsuitable because they don't meet the right standards. A vote for any of these decisions to be referred to the NEC also fell."
However, the rank and file can still overturn that at conference, or would if lock downs were not preventing normal political activity. It shows why the Left has to stay in the LP and organise the fightback, as well as stepping up that struggle in the unions, rather than listening to the siren calls of the sectarians to jump ship in favour of some alternative.
" it is the simple insight that if workers seize power they'd better organise to keep it by moving to expropriate the property of the capitalist class, disarm the soldiery of the bourgeois state, clear out the old bureaucrats, etc. In other words, making the revolution permanent."
That isn't what is meant by Permanent Revolution either. Its that late maturing bourgeois-revolutions require the support of the working-class, and the bourgeoisie will always end up aligning with the feudal rulers, or the colonial masters, rather than see the workers assume power, and so, the working-class can never engage in Popular Fronts with the bourgeoisie, meaning subordinating themselves to a bourgeois programme, but must organise independently from the bourgeoisie, and organise to go beyond the bourgeois revolution to a socialist revolution, i.e. making the revolution permanent.
In developed bourgeois economies, the dominant property - socialised capital - already has been expropriated from the capitalist class, as Marx describes in Capital III, Ch. 27. The capitalist class other than the remnants of small privately owned capital, has become a class of coupon clippers that obtains its revenue from the ownership of fictitious capital not real capital.
The task here is not expropriation, but simply a political revolution to bring the political and legal superstructure into alignment with the social and productive relations. It requires a political struggle for industrial democracy, to enable the associated producers as the collective owners of that socialised capital to exercise control over it, and not the shareholders that do not own it.
Very perceptive analysis but I can't see it myself ie. conference somehow overturning things and capturing the party for the left - it's a pipe dream in my view, not least because many of the delegates will be from CLPs that voted for and support Starmer's Lib Dem vision. Even supposing there was some sort of token victory like reversing Evans powers, you aren't now going to get a commitment to Open Selection which is what really counts - and as the arrticle points out failed to get through even under Corbyn. In addition to all that, you now have the big unions electing, or likely to elect right wingers who will fully support Starmer, and that is before you even consider the need to disaffiliate JLM, and proscribe LFI, both of whom are well on the right and support a political ideology in Zionism which is completely inimicable to socialist values. Somehow retrieving the situation, is complete pie in the sky, and we need to build an alternative that will take votes off Labour in a GE, even if only to hold a socialist balance of power- for myself I have joined Resist and committed to paying a monthly membership sub and I now have no real interest in the prolonged shenanigans that are Labours death throes as anything (beyond lip service) remotely to do with democracy, social justice or real change.
Here is another lesson from the 1980's. In 1982, in my ward party, a sitting right-wing Councillor was again selecting, beating me by one or two votes. I immediately set out with others on a mass canvassing campaign to get a Labour vote in the ward. However, as with the Socialist Campaign For Labour Victory in 1979, no part of this involved accepting the right-wing politics of the candidate.
Our task was to gain the ear of the largest number of workers we could, and that is what we did. When the more progressive voters complained to us about the right-wing, or simply incompetent nature of the existing Labour councillors, we agreed with them. We said, that is why we need you to join the LP, and join with us in transforming it, and getting rid of the present Councillors.
We recruited large numbers of new members, and next year had a majority in the branch.
The problem is that if the left use the same dirty tactics as the right, undermining the leadership in order to seize control of the party after the next election is lost, Labour is never going to win any elections. Ever. The only beneficiary will be the Conservatives who will be kept in power year after year by a third or less of the vote share. (No, they won't reform the voting system. Why should they?)
I think all hope is lost of a unified Labour party is lost after the way the right behaved, and that the only hope for the future is a break with the past and for new political groupings and alliances.
“However, the rank and file can still overturn that at conference, or would if lock downs were not preventing normal political activity”
Ha ha ha ha ha ha. This cretin will do and say anything to get us all back shopping. I swear Boffy is Julia Hartley Brewer’s even more idiotic twin!
The labour party was a tragedy and is now a farce. It actually used to emotionally move me to watch labour conferences on TV and see all the heartfelt speeches about the birght progressive future only to see the actual policies be aggressively neo liberal, war mongering and right wing. The labour party has always treated the members like useful idiots. As I said it used to emotionally move me now it just makes me piss my pants.
The idea that the rank and file can no change the Labour party is as absurd as it has ever been. Boffy only mentions it because it is another dumb fuck avenue (now all his other dumb fuck ideas are exposed) for his anti lockdown idiocy. He will be claiming next week that without lockdown we would now be living in a socialist utopia!
The labour party is lost forever, permanently. The only reason Corbyn ever ended up on the ballot is because that doddering old idiot Margaret Beckett thought it would look good to have a no hope leftist on the ballot. And what a leftist! Corbyn has done the centrists a favour, they will never ever make the mistake of ever having another leftist on the ballot. Corbyn acted like a pathetic doormat and was a disaster for the left.
One question remains, how can any self respecting leftist be in such a party. Actually this is something I always wondered about Corbyn, is in the labour party because he is a careerist or because he is a naive idiot. I think his leadership answered that question.
As for the other leftists, they remain in the labour party because they are not leftists, though they will still prattle on about inequality, zero hour contracts and the precariat! And how they work so hard to help the workers!
You spelt whinging wrong.
On whingeing/whinging, it can be spelt either way.
Don't forget that the majority votes at Labour Party conference come from the unions and the unions, at the last conference, did not support open selection and votes through the latest disciplinary procedures. My union didn't consult the wider membership on how they should vote
BCFG: the left remains in the Labour party to sabotage social democracy. As you rightly put it, the Labour Party does not, on the whole, reflect the priorities of the 'left'. There has NEVER been a Labour government, including 1945, which does. When Foot and Corbyn presented a platform approaching it, they were soundly rejected by the voters. All they achieved was enabling Thatcher and Brexit. All Left leadership has achieved on each occasion is a massive shunt of the centre-ground to the right, which in turn has obliged the subsequent centrist Labour leadership to reflect that context when standing for election. Blair/ Brown says it all.
Social democracy, with all its grubby compromises, is the only kite that will fly with the British electorate and the unappreciated grind of pushing, millimetre by millimetre, the centre back toward the left is the reason why, after having achieved modest gains, the cycle sees the left baulk, overthrow the soft-left, and as a consequence propel the UK ever far rightwards when the electorate reject their offer.
It's not rocket science, but it is cognitive dissonance. Possibly even sociology.
@John Barnard,
All those arguments were used by the sectarians to waste time building alternatives to Labour before. They were all palpably wrong and failed. The sects just talked and more correctly argued amongst themselves and got small and more sectarian, whilst workers continued to support Labour. And, without those sectors, ordinary Labour members and supporters, did change the party, and got Corbyn elected for good or ill.
Focusing on difficulty in deselecting MP's shows the same focus on parliamentarism as that of the centre and right, which is not where the Left should have its focus. The focus should be on building rank and file organisation at branch level and direct contact thereby with the working-class. The majority of members, even those fooled into voting for Starmer do not agree with his current positions, particularly on Brexit and jingoism, so its not at hard to see how a movement can be built to win over conference.
It was Corbyn and his Stalinists that held back democratiation and deselection. There is no alternative other than through the workers party, and for now that Party is Labour.
So, basically, the left in the Labour Party should act more like the right, i.e. power-crazed anti-democratic unprincipled manipulative slimeballs, except that they should do so in the interests of the good, the true and the beautiful.
What part of "unprincipled" don't you understand? Starmer will do anything to prolong the control of his faction, including losing national elections if that's what it takes. Just like Blair, just like Gaitskell. If the left imitates that, the problem is not just that they'll make themselves unpopular, they'll cease being the left.
I don't see an answer to this problem, but I can see that it is an enormous one.
«When Foot and Corbyn presented a platform approaching it, they were soundly rejected by the voters.»
But Callaghan, Kinnock, Brown, Miliband were also soundly rejected by the voters! Does that mean that they were far left extremists leaving behind social democracy?
And if we look at the elections of 2001 and 2005, electorally toxic Blair was also soundly rejected by the voters, who gave New Labour far fewer votes than in 2017 to Labour under Corbyn, and got a majority of seats only because the Conservatives were even more rejected, and the LibDem vote was too split across seats.
«When Foot and Corbyn presented a platform approaching it, they were soundly rejected by the voters.»
«But Callaghan, Kinnock, Brown, Miliband were also soundly rejected by the voters! Does that mean that they were far left extremists leaving behind social democracy?»
In addition the SDP in 1983 and 1987 were also soundly rejected by the voters! because thy were too socialist?
The other point that is disregarded by the buffoonish argument that Foot and Corbyn were rejected by the voters for being too much on the left is the obvious one:
The Liberals and the SDP and the LibDems have for 40 years presented an impeccable "centrist" profile (a bit tarnished by leftism under Kennedy, but they did much better than usual), even having a perfect "centrist" leadership team with Swinson and "electoral catnip" Umunna in 2019, and yet they keep being soundly rejected by the voters.
Given how brutally the perfectly "centrist" LibDems were rejected by the voters in 2015, 2017, 2019, why should Labour imitate them?
«Given how brutally the perfectly "centrist" LibDems were rejected by the voters in 2015, 2017, 2019, why should Labour imitate them?»
I'll give here what seems to be the answer by Keir Starmer: that indeed the key to electoral victory is not to imitate the always defeated "centrist" (thatcherism+gay marriage) LibDems, but to imitate the often victorious Conservatives, and to position New, New Labour not as a whig (never mind social-democratic or democratic-socialist) *alternative* to the Conservatives like the LibDems, but as a "tory" but more competent substitute for them. The message to tory voters is that voting for Keir Starmer is the much same as voting for Boris Johnson (they are even both "Telegraph" columnists now!), but with more competence and style.
That of course ignores that many tory voters like the style of Boris Johnson, and the only competence they care for is that to keep housing cost inflation high and wages and taxes low, or to fight the EU, and on those the Conservatives have been pretty competent.
Blissex. The Labour you mention losing lost by a considerably smaller margin than your two heroes. Kinnock, precisely because the public did not still entirely trust him after the Militant years, Brown because, among other things, 'that dreadful woman', and Milliband, because the left-unions overturned the membership vote and put in charge the wrong one. Apart from Brown, therefore, two out of three were hijacked by the left, and rejected as a consequence. Callaghan does not count as those were different times. It is disingenuous to cite liberals, SDP etc, as this does not take into account the electoral landscape. You know I'm right, but can you admit it to yourself?
Anybody who says "the wrong brother/Miliband" automatically forfeits the right to be taken seriously IMO. The actual evidence that Ed's older sibling would have been some sort of ruthless election winning machine for Labour amounts to quite literally zero.
You might even call such a totally baseless belief "cult like"?
Just saying ;)
«The Labour you mention losing lost by a considerably smaller margin»
Looking at numbers of votes that seems quite inaccurate:
1979: Labour 11.53m, Conservatives 13.70m, Liberals 4.31m
1983: Labour 08.46m, Conservatives 13.01m, SDP-Liberals 7.78m
1987: Labour 10.03m, Conservatives 13.74m, SDP-Liberals 7.34m
1992: Labour 11.56m, Conservatives 14.09m, Liberals 6.00m
with the collapse under very unpopular T Blair:
1997: Labour 13.52m, Conservatives 09.60m, Liberals 5.24m
2001: Labour 10.72m, Conservatives 08.34m, Liberals 4.81m
2005: Labour 09.55m, Conservatives 08.78m, Liberals 5.99m
And the Conservative recovery after New Labour crashed the property market in 2009-2009:
2010: Labour 08.61m, Conservatives 10.70m, Liberals 6.84m
2015: Labour 09.35m, Conservatives 11.30m, Others 6.00m
2017: Labour 12.63m, Conservatives 13.30m, Liberals 2.22m
2019: Labour 10.30m, Conservatives 13.97m, Liberals 3.70m
Corbyn's Labour got more votes in 2017 than any part after since 2000, and much the same or more votes in 2019 than New Labour in 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015, or the Conservatives in 1997 to 2010 inclusive, and the margins bear that out too.
In any case the if the argument is about winning, then Callaghan, Kinnock, Brown, Miliband, have all been big losers.
«Apart from Brown, therefore, two out of three were hijacked by the left, and rejected as a consequence.»
So they lost because they were not right-wing enough, very convenient indeed. But guess what, in 1997, 2001, 2005, 2010 the Conservatives were right-wing enough, and the LibDems were centrist enough, and still they did not win. And winning is all that matters, or isn't it?
«When Foot and Corbyn presented a platform approaching it, they were soundly rejected by the voters.»
«It is disingenuous to cite liberals, SDP etc, as this does not take into account the electoral landscape.»
It is rather disingenuous to ignore them if the argument is that what matters is the "platform approaching it", Look at the SNP in Scotland: they adopted the right platform, and wiped out New Labour there even if scottish New Labour had a "centrist" platform.
Is that another special case? Then the sophistry is that a "centrist" platform is *always* a winning move, except that all the cases when it loses are special cases to be ignored.
Blissex:
Seats. Your numbers argument is almost Trumpian.
This business about centrism. In my initial comment, I mention social democracy. The British public broadly supports this kind of politics, as evidenced by social attitudes. Ignoring the electoral landscape is like pretending FPTP does not exist. But then, you do appear to be living in a sort of dreamland. Lucky you.
As Starmer will likely de select any threats from his left. That is unlikely, but I agree a party in wsito is a must.
«mention social democracy. The British public broadly supports this kind of politics»
But corbynism means mild social-democracy... Hattersley, arch trot-hunter, wrote that “The Labour Party was created to change society in such a way that there is no poverty and deprivation from which to escape” and that is the basic aim of social-democracy, and it is utterly incompatible with trying to swing tory voters from the Conservatives by offering more competent management of "centrist" policies ("thatcherism"). When many who pretend to be on the "soft left" say "social-democracy" they mean "centrism", see for example all the attacks from the soft-left against Brown and Ed Miliband for being too far to the left to be electorally successful.
It is indeed obvious that your idea of "social-democracy" means "centrism" as you write of Ed and David Miliband "the left-unions overturned the membership vote and put in charge the wrong one", and also "hijacked by the left" for the leaderships of Kinnock and Ed; to the right of Kinnock and Ed Miliband there is only "centrism", not the soft-left or social-democracy.
In particular Ed Miliband was not even on the Labour soft-left, he was on the Labour "brownista" right, and David Miliband was/is on the non-Labour (Mandelson Tendency "centrists") neoliberal right. The non-social-democratic left were the people who nicknamed Tony Benn "Kerensky", to mock his being a social-democrat from their point of view.
As an aside, the "mystery" of why the Mandelson Tendency and other "centrists" have not moved (with the comical exception of delusional Chuka Umunna) to the LibDems despite being perfectly "centrist" is easily solved: the LibDems are already PASOKified, in that they don't have a large movement/popular base and thus they don't have a large block of votes to take over. The Liberals PASOKified themselves in the 1920s, leaving the representation of the social-democratic middle and working classes to Labour, and the SDP were created in the 1980s as PASOKified from the very beginning.
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