On Entitlement

When I was elected secretary of Stoke Central CLP 10 years ago, one of my first acts was to visit Geoff Bagnall, then general secretary of Unity - the New Labour-era rebrand of the Ceramics and Allied Trade Union. Over a brew in his office, I said I wanted an end to blank cheques from the union to local Labour candidates. In future, local politicians should earn their support instead. Geoff agreed and I'm pleased to say the local party was much more receptive to Unity's priorities afterwards. You see, what disgusted me was the attitude some in Stoke Labour had toward the union: it was there for the privilege of bankrolling their campaigns, no questions asked or strings attached. A microcosm then of the entitled attitude that MPs on the Labour right, including His Blairness, have long held regarding trade unions.

The entitlement doesn't end there. Despite being abused and defamed as antisemites, called cultists, having their say in the party stifled, and their efforts systematically undermined in 2017 and again in 2019, the left are being told to shut up and get on with campaigning. The party doesn't want their views, but will take their money and their time. And their existence as handy scapegoats when things go belly up.

Consider the debacle of the Hartlepool campaign. The latest poll from Survation forecasts the Tories romping home handily with a 17-point lead. We'll find out how on the money this is in the early hours of Friday morning, but consider what has happened. A completely unnecessary stitch up that assumes local voters will happily support anything Labour puts a red rosette on. Mentioning Paul Williams is a Doctor in every leaflet, putting out branded literature of him in his scrubs on the assumption the punters will lap it up. And basically trying to turn the campaign into a referendum on the NHS when the good folks of Hartlepool know Labour aren't going to do anything about it. Again, the assumption health care is a silver bullet that will put the Tory beast down for good, despite evidence to the contrary, is supposed to take up the slack when our new leadership has nothing to say. 127,000 dead, a government up to its neck callousness and corruption, with plenty of material around it beggars belief that the Tories are poised to win. From the outset, the Labour have felt entitled to Hartlepool's votes, just as their predecessors felt entitled to Scotland's, and it's looking like the locals have had enough. But none of this is because of them and the choices made by the strategic geniuses up above, it's all thanks to "long Corbyn" - the folly of activists and Labour supporters who are now expected to go on the stump and turn over their votes.

Labour Party entitlement has a long history. It rests on the safe seats whose rock solid support for the party was built on the sweat and tireless activism of tens of thousands of party members and trade unionists who worked to build Labour in the first place. It was maintained by close associations between work and home, of a link between who you were, your station in life, and the politicians who would (at least rhetorically) look out for your interests. The collapse of the labour movement in the 1980s left a huge amount of Labourist political capital in the bank in seats like Hartlepool, but as the years went by, as these places were taken for granted and how, unforgivably, we had Labour governments actively undermining their own mass base, the capital was expended with nothing accumulated. Except for directorships and nice jobs for former New Labour ministers.

The material basis for Labourist entitlement has gone, and so either the party's leadership acknowledges this and starts doing something different, beginning with learning from the wipeout in Scotland or, horror of horrors, the 2017 general election, or it carries on and dies. Given the tactical and strategic calls made this last year, I'm pretty confident Keir Starmer and friends will make the wrong one.

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