Whither the Northern Independence Party?

There's a bit of a puzzle with the formation of the newly-minted Northern Independence Party. As the UK state is hopelessly over-centralised and menaced by the SNP in Scotland and, to a lesser extent in Wales by Plaid Cymru, it's curious how NIP-sryle parties haven't formed sooner corresponding to England's stark regional divides. "Ah!" Might exclaim the nerds who follow things like local council by-elections, "don't you know about the North East Party and the Yorkshire Party?" Indeed I do, with three and seven councillors respectively. Regionalist parties are, actually, ten-a-penny. Mebyon Kernow down in Cornwall has been punting for independence for 70 years, and local authorities are littered with independents claiming to put their communities before party politics. My beloved Stoke-on-Trent is no different.

What makes NIP different from these other manifestations of what the pol profs call the centre/periphery cleavage? First off, it's explicitly socially liberal. As NIP's statement of aims makes clear, "We have members from across the LGBTQ+ rainbow and those of many different faiths and none. We will always fight against bigotry of all kinds - including racism, antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia." And second? It's where the party is from. Most regionalist parties and independent groups usually start life as a split from one of the two big parties, and typically as a result of fallings out in a council chamber. In this sense they are elite projects, albeit local government elites. As such, they tend to be older and have some years of experience behind them. Recall what happened with our unlamented friends Change UK, albeit at a municipal level: their characters are fundamentally the same. NIP, however, is not cut from the same cloth. It has come together out of the debris of Corbynism as a self-organised network of activists appalled with Labour's record since Keir Starmer assumed the leadership. Furthermore, while social liberalism is consciously stressed to jar Westminster-centric accounts of the north as a dessicated racist tundrascape, it reflects the basic common sense of the class cohorts who founded NIP: the immaterial workers and generation left, the backbone and natural base of Corbynism. Neither is it different to the cohorts lining up behind the SNP and an independent Scotland, except obviously the magnitudes of numbers involved are qualitative leaps apart.

But new political movements have to start from somewhere, and this is never from a position of strength. What prospects for NIP then under First Past the Post? As founder Philip Proudfoot says in his interview on Novara Media, electoral success is not the be-all and end-all for the new party. As Nigel Farage via UKIP and the Brexit Party was able to show, the mobilisation of a critical enough mass can impinge on and infuence the direction of the mainstream. True, though NIP will never have the same advantages enjoyed by UKIP in terms of media coverage and handy, five-yearly elections fought under proportional representation. But like these two parties and unlike other left-of-Labour outfits, it does have the possibility of building something out of its regionalist orientation. For one, few can pretend the north of England does well out of the current constitutional set up. Even Tory backbenchers know this and organise accordingly. And so while there isn't a generic northern identity outside of the imaginations of London journos as they head north on gammon safaris, there is an inchoate grievance ready to be drawn on.

One advantage NIP does have is the records of its activists. Having gone through the struggle Corbynism was thrust into and having a baptism of political realities at the font of scabbing by "comrades" and "allies", one would think they're not prey to the delusion of winning Westminster seats any time soon and have a grasp of how difficult making a breakthrough is. With this in mind, where it has enough members in a locality is it going to focus efforts on elections, building support in workplaces, the community organising Labour is foolishly abandoning, and/or the politics of the street? I imagine they will try all to build name recognition and recruit, but ultimately it was the electoral threat UKIP brought to bear that allowed Farage to set up his abode in Dave's head. Going for every local authority contest they can, and contesting seats consistently is the tried and tested method of other small parties.

Hence NIP's contesting of the Hartlepool by-election is quite interesting. The Survation poll for the CWU puts them on two per cent. Not a great score, but more than any of the other parties running apart from Labour and the Tories. Here the circumstances of the contest, particularly Labour's arrogant approach to the selection of Paul Williams and their entitled attitude could be grist to the NIP mill. Having selected the former Labour MP Thelma Walker and with campaigning now underway, including targeted Facebook advertising, we'll see if the party can scoop up any anti-Labour protest votes currently heading in the Tories' direction. And, given NIP's social base, whether it can flush out more votes from the corresponding milieu in the constituency.

The limiting factor for NIP is also its strength, and that is the party's regionalism. What it stands for requires little explanation, and undoubtedly a segment of any electorate it attracts will be on that basis - a bit like how the Greens have a record of winning Tory council seats in Tory areas despite being a socially liberal party with roots in the post-war expansion of immaterial labour. But the problem is, despite billing itself a democratic socialist party, is its efforts are always limited by this and if success comes, sooner or later the class interests of the coalition NIP's trying to build are going to come into conflict with the self-imposed geographic extent of its ambitions. Indeed, as Philip said in his Novara interview about this issue is people in other parts of the country should start their own regionalist rebellion against Westminster or move to the free North after independence. As we have seen in the UK, the nationalism of the mass politicisation in Scotland, even though it has a similar base to Corbynism has ensured its radicalism is boxed in and isolated from the rest of the UK body politic.

That said, the responsibility of NIP's emergence lies squarely with the Labour leadership for dumping on its people. And, I'm afraid to say, the Labour left. Little to no work was done to prepare Corbyn supporters in the event of losing, and since then the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs have not assumed the mantle of leadership. Seeing Jon Trickett tweet about policy, Richard Burgon pushing zero Covid, and Claudia Webbe talking about racism, there is no strategy let alone a good argument forthcoming for staying in the Labour Party. Keir Starmer is disaggregating and dispersing Labour's vote. Who knows, it might be enough to make NIP and similar parties viable, but those who would be leaders of the left are practically standing by, seemingly indifferent as our activists are carried to the four winds.