Of Rory Stewart, my significant other often says he doesn't look like a politician. He looks like an actor playing a politician. It's not just our Rory, though. Consider the Prime Minister. On Friday she tweeted "I'm clear that I am going to deliver Brexit, I'm going to deliver it on time, that's what I'm going to do for the British public - I'll be negotiating hard in the coming days to do just that." We know this is a load of rubbish. EU heroes Donald Tusk, Jean-Claude Juncker and Guy Verhofstadt have more or less intimated that May is just pantomiming politics and is wasting everyone's time. Which, of course, is the point. There is a clock ticking away and the chance she'll be able to get her deal through the Commons increases in proportion to our proximity to the cliff edge of a no-deal Brexit.
Playing for time and conveying an impression of feverish activity where there is none isn't a skill unique to politicians, but where our friends the Conservatives are concerned it has undergone something of a mutation. We need not expend any more time on Theresa May's woeful efforts, so let us clamber into the time machine and head back to the happy years of the pre-Brexit days. Approximately three years ago Dave went to Brussels to renegotiate the UK's membership of the European Union. People in the know then, as now, cast aspersions on his efforts to secure significant exceptions from the responsibilities of EU membership. And he came home with very little. The reward was small beer - to secure the Tory party right flank against a UKIP who polled very well in 2015 - but he put the house on it anyway. Nevertheless, the idea he'd achieved a meaningful change to the UK's obligations were risible and didn't wash, despite the efforts of the best spinners in the business. It nevertheless allowed Dave to look busy. A great deal of effort expended for something that, had it all gone according to plan, wouldn't have mattered much.
This characterises the modus operandi of the European Research Group and, appropriately enough, professional wastemen like Boris Johnson. Effectively, their vision of Britain post-Brexit is a big job of make-work for them. For tedious patricians like Rees-Mogg, it's more than an opportunity for his hedge fund to do well. The whole shit show is an affords a chance for the Tories to restore the leadership function of their class, of restoring their place in an ideological firmament that dethroned them throughout the course of the 20th century (forgetting Thatcher herself made her contribution). By tearing up all the agreements with the EU and, with it, all the trade deals with other states, such as Japan, South Korea and Canada - though the Faroe Islands are in the bag - Tories can globe trot and, in the full glare of publicity, sign up the trade deals they previously dumped. You can see it now, Mogg jetting off to exotic locales and bringing back with him an army transport full of pineapples. The disgraced Liam Fox loaded up with gadgetry to accompany his piece of paper with Japan's signature on it, and Boris Johnson messing with his hair and declaring a new era of cooperation as the Australian and New Zealand deals are sorted. To them, this is their Empire 2.0, their chance to play the great white hero swashbuckling across the globe and securing British interests. And their hope is it will play well at home. In their minds they're providing leadership to a country where it's sorely lacking and their reward will be seats and high office in perpetuity.
Meanwhile, in the scheme of the real world this is just displacement activity. A politics of wasting time to alibi the Tory party's absence on the big questions, like rebuilding Britain's economy, tackling the problems of the NHS, the underfunding of schools and early years, the lack of interest in the care crisis, and the looming, glooming threat of climate change. Even worse from the Tory point of view their obsession with jet setting sabotages further the strained relationship between the party and its constituency of voters because they're not addressing their concerns either, making the likelihood they'll get to act out these dismal neo-imperial fantasies somewhat more remote. Good.
It's a symptom of the awful state the Tories are in that a well worn political tactic has become elevated to the raison d'etre of a not insubstantial section of the party. All the more reason why our politics should work actively toward breaking them up so they never get the chance to form a government again.
Unwise his comments may be from the standpoint of diplomatic protocol, it's difficult to disagree with Donald Tusk. There should be a special place for Brexiteers who lied, peddled racist politics, and hitched themselves to the Leave bandwagon for entirely selfish reasons. Space must also be reserved on the damnation list for the former Prime Minister for failing to order any contingency planning in case Leave won the referendum. And when we think about the current occupant of the highest office? Oh boy.
Of course, the Brexiteers love it when any European politician or bureaucrat goes off on one about Brexit. They take up the comments and spin themselves and plucky old Britain as hard done to by the nasty foreigner in the hope it plays well with what they consider to be "the country". The always absurd Andrea Leadsom demanded an apology from Tusk, and Jacob Rees-Mogg tweeted some bollocks about St Thomas Aquinas. This will be followed by outraged editorials (my money's on the Express to produce the most frothing), and a few pub bores and kippers are bound to get themselves in a lather about it all. Meanwhile most people are going to look on with bemusement and wondering when this whole Brexit mess is going to get sorted.
Someone else who benefits from Tusk's cuss is Theresa May. Never the most consistent of Prime Ministers, she lived up to her reputation of being somewhat elastic with her word during her speech to Northern Ireland businesses on Tuesday. Now, bear in mind what has happened in politics of late. May's deal went down to a historic defeat. Faced with the Scylla of caving in to the Brexiteers on the hard right, and the Charybdis of a sensible customs-union based Brexit that already commands the majority of the Commons, as ever May put her party interest first and whipped her troops into supporting a new negotiating stance that re-opens the Irish backstop. Keen Brexit watchers will recall that the backstop was entirely her own invention in the first place, but such is politics. And so May is going in to bat for putting a time limit on the insurance policy in case her government proves incapable of striking a trade deal with the EU. Except she's not. She has assured Northern Ireland business that the UK isn't leaving the EU without some permutation of a backstop to prevent the return of the hard border. Eh? In her own words:
There is no suggestion that we are not going to ensure that in the future there is provision for this – it has been called an insurance policy, the backstop – that ensures that if the future relationship is not in place by the end of the implementation period, there will be arrangements in place to ensure that we deliver no hard border.
This isn't what she signed on to when May renewed her alliance with the ERG. For them, moaning about the inviolability of the UK is just cover because they feel compelled to hide their true intentions. Offered concessions at the Brexit Select Committee around a legal guarantee that Britain would not be bound in perpetuity to the backstop agreement should it be triggered, Andrea Jenkyns and John Whittingdale rejected it out of hand. No deal remains their objective, and there's nothing Brussels can do to persuade them to come to an arrangement. If this is resolved, this wing of the ERG will find some other reason to oppose a deal.
Given May's equivocation over the compact they thought was signed and sealed, they're getting a taste of what Michel Barnier has put up with these last couple of years. And yet the gnashing and the whingeing has curiously absented itself. Are they biting their lips out of deference to May going to Brussels for negotiations? Maybe. Then again, maybe not. Last week, it was continuity remain locked in a bitter dispute. This week's it's the Brexiteers' turn. As Alex Wickham reports, Tory party unity over the so-called Malthouse Compromise has frayed already. Central is the claim that a scheduled trip to Northern Ireland organised by the Alternative Arrangements Working Group (the outfit tasked to come up with a solution to the border issue) saw leading Brexiteers pull out because they were due to meet with civil servants, business and local politicians who would tell them what no deal means. It's interesting how power can never stomach its truth. They felt they were being stitched up, and so cancelled their flight yesterday afternoon. More interestingly for connoisseurs of Tory in-fighting, this is symptomatic of an internal ERG split on what concessions would be acceptable. Some, as per Jenkyns and Whittingdale are demanding the removal of a backstop entirely as a condition of their support because, you know, the risk of a return to violence and misery is a price worth paying for the ERG's tax haven fantasies. Others accept it but are on the time-limited wagon. What a shame. Or, as one Tory noted, "It is ironic that something supposed to overcome division within the Conservative Party has caused further division". Quite.
Don't know about you, but I can't get enough of the Tory party volatility. At the rate things are going, Theresa May could go into her meeting on Thursday with Jean-Claude Juncker promising to negotiate out the backstop, and reveal to the world how she's signed up to a full UK-wide customs union Brexit with a year-long extension to Article 50. To be honest, I doubt May fully knows what she's doing from one day to the next. But it doesn't matter for her. The shilly-shallying and the games playing, the scuttling backwards and forwards to Dublin and Brussels does achieve one thing: it keeps winding the clock down to when enough Tory and Labour MPs feel compelled to support her deal. We know her game, she knows her game, and she knows we know and we know she knows, but none of this is stopping the zombie-like resurrection of her deal and her steering of the country to the brink.
The tide flows in and out, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and discontented Labour MPs keep promising they're going to split off and launch a new party "soon". According to Toby Helm, one of The Observer's's biggest cheerleaders for this miserable Blairist project, discontent over Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn's foreign policy positioning are bringing them close to quitting. But hold on a moment, thanks to the benefit of having a memory aren't these always the reasons? So why now, what's new, how have things changed?
Continuing the fine tradition of the diminishing number of MPs said to be champing at the bit for a new party, Toby's exclusive puts the latest tally at six, which is down six on the proto-party talks alleged to have taken place last summer, and the 30-40, and 80-100 before then. Who are our dramatis personae on this occasion? There's Angela Smith, the MP who has curiously chosen the private ownership of water has her hill to die on. We have our mate Chris Leslie, or as I prefer him, vacuity in a suit. And, on this occasion, Luciana Berger's name is roped in. Hers has proven a career noteworthy in two respects - she's more famous for quitting the shadow role for mental health than anything she did with it, and her murky selection in 2010 thanks to knowing the right people over and above any discernible talent. Who could be the "three others" on the verge of quitting? Mike Gapes has recently been straining to get in the news, so one shouldn't rule him out. With gravitas like this on their side, how could they not succeed?
Well, they are going to fail and hard if they ever have the guts to follow through their tiresome threats. When these stories started circulating in the summer after the last general election, the conditions against a new party then still apply. There is zero name recognition for the people involved except perhaps, ho ho, Tony Blair. Apart from money, they have no leader, no activists, no profile with the wider public, and not even a pool of voters - despite their best efforts at trying to win one. Though, to be honest, whatever this gaggle of has beens and never weres decide to do they're doomed anyway. There's more of a chance of Donald Trump showing some humility than any of these getting adopted again by their constituency party as Labour candidates.
Why go through this tedious, rinse-and-repeat ritual of announcing their intentions? Just as matters have come to a head for Theresa May, so Brexit is forcing the petty scheming of the Blairists to a conclusion. This last week has shown there is no way to get their beloved (and undesirable) second referendum through the Commons. For all their disingenuous arguments like "how can more democracy be undemocratic?" (an point, we'll note, they never accept when it applies to the left's efforts at democratising the Labour Party), and the huge amount of money spent and unrivalled media access, they've succeeded in persuading absolutely none of their colleagues that a rerun is a good 'un. They've finally hit the brick wall of reality, and they think a new party - or at least the talk of one - will help scrape them off.
The other consideration is the infighting within continuity remain itself. From before the referendum until now it's been a top down, elite affair with the interests of British capital front and centre. Only someone who is a member of these exalted circles and moves exclusively within them could think putting forward Alastair Campbell as one of its main spox is a good idea. However, as Buzzfeed reported last month the campaign is falling prey to the centrifugal pressures rending at it. One faction want it to continue as an umbrella organisation determined to avoid Brexit, and they're at odds with the others for whom anti-Corbynism is the chief consideration. And in turn both are variously ill-disposed to the prima donna moving and shaking by Chuka Umunna who has long harboured his own vanity project. In other words, without really doing anything they've knackered themselves out.
What's left for them to do? Continuity remain was a hiding to nothing, and there is zero chance of them making a comeback in Labour. They had the opportunity to re-examine their politics and think about what they mean in the context of Labour offering a genuinely transformative programme, but for them to put the party first was asking too much. Besides, that's something to be expected of the little people but not mighty Westminster titans like themselves. They've mouthed off so many times without putting on the trousers, and because they have zero name recognition and no experience of organising bar ordering what to have for lunch, any new party would be a miserable, half-hearted and dismal effort. A fitting finis to their careers, don't you think?
When Dave was in charge, Oliver Letwin was one of his key people. He was kept away from the cameras for a number of good reasons, but as a strategic brain he was essential to the Dave set up. So his contribution to the Commons this afternoon was always going to be interesting. Sidelined by May like the other Cameroons, he chose the occasion to nip back with this warning: "If things go wrong with No Deal, it will not be Opposition blamed, - it will be us, our party, not forgiven for many years ... will be first time when we have consciously taken a risk on behalf of nation ... and terrible things happen to real people".
Unfortunately for Letwin, the Tories under Theresa May are proving as short-termist and blinkered as his old gaffer. And after tonight's events in the Commons, they've gone and doubled down on that. Firstly, after Labour's and the SNP's amendments were seen off, Yvette Cooper's amendment which was to annex to parliament the power to request an extension of Article 50 got voted down. You might recall this was the very same piece of putative legislation that had Amber Rudd and David Gauke giving interviews that May could face the resignation of up to 40 ministers if they weren't granted a free vote. May didn't cave, they did. Nevertheless some usual suspect Tories did rebel. It's just a shame 14 honourable members on the Labour benches saved the government's bacon and put us on course to a hard Brexit. A round of applause if you please for Ian Austin, Kevin Barron, Ronnie Campbell, Rosie Cooper, Jim Fitzpatrick, Caroline Flint, Roger Godsiff, Stephen Hepburn, Kate Hoey, John Mann, Dennis Skinner, Laura Smith, Gareth Snell, and Graham Stringer.
In what will no doubt go down in history as the stupidest vote ever to have passed the chamber, Graham Brady's amendment got the nod by 317 to 301. Because the government chose to back this, May's position will now see her return to Brussels to renegotiate the Irish backstop. As was reported earlier this evening, Donald Tusk got her on the blower to say the EU are not interested in revisiting the agreed position, making these meetings entirely pointless. On the surface, May is positioning herself as a believer in magic. She thinks a new "mandate" from parliament means the EU will be forced to renegotiate - because it worked so well for Greece. But underneath, May knows very well nothing has changed, to repeat a well-worn phrase. Unlike the Brexiteers who think the EU are going to cave because Britain, May is knows that fruitless meetings in Brussels pisses away more time. And with no deal imminent, the chance of her deal passing inexorably increases while retaining the support of the hard Brexit right.
And so we're a step closer to a no deal Brexit and all the damage such a disaster would entail. Yes, this is a calamity cooked up by the Tories in response to a split in the Tories, and hopefully its consequences will damn them for the rest of this century. But let's not forget those enablers too, without whom none of this would be possible.
Conservative values is an oxymoronic phrase for many readers, but there are millions of people who adhere to them. After all, the Tories cannot be the most successful electoral party in the world if all they offered was fear and thin gruel. Faith, family, flag are the favourite nostrums, to which we can add conservation, self-reliance, individual liberty, loyalty, unionism and community. Yes, yes, we know there is a disjuncture between Tory theory and Tory practice, as recently exemplified by one of its more liberal and sensible rising stars, but a mass purchase they still have.
Nevertheless, when you do one thing and say another you're going to get found out, and that is as true of political parties as it is people. When this happens a re-evaluation by some is inevitable. This is why I find Matthew D'Ancona's cry of despair in The Graun so interesting. The cause of his anguish? Theresa May's Tories, of course!
Casting an eye over the ugly scene, he confesses repulsion at Mark Francois's crude Germanophobia, the party's small-minded obsession with car crashing Brexit for the sake of tighter immigration controls, and the feeble and pathetic efforts of backbenchers at striking a waxwork Churchill. And what worries him more is the party's lurch into populism. While true that cancelling Brexit could have consequences, Brexiteers are talking up "treachery" and, as we know, insinuating a no deal martial law. What grotesqueries.
To this Matthew opposes a true blue conservatism. Whereas our Brexiteers are guilty of putting ideology before all else, proper Toryism is the dispensing of ideology, of approaching the world pragmatically and meeting it where it is. This is what Thatcher did, what Portillo called for when his Prime Ministerial destiny was snuffed out by 1997 general election, and was the basis of Dave's socially liberal modernisation project. Instead the Tories are now at the brink of a historic disaster precisely because this centrepiece of conservative thought has been abandoned. As he concludes, "the Conservative party is morphing into something I find alien and repellent. Like a listing galleon, holed below the waterline, it sails away stubbornly; dragging the nation towards a storm of unknown adversity, peril and pain."
A tempting response is diddums, but this kind of thinking typifies the attitude of a large number of what you might describe, with some inaccuracy, moderate Tory voters. As per centrism being out of sorts in the Labour Party since 2015, their sense of loss and estrangement is replicated on the other side among a layer of (sociologically similar) people mourning the loss of the Tory party they thought had become theirs. Yes, Dave oversaw unpleasant things like the bedroom tax and clamped down on welfare spending but everyone had to do their bit. And besides, at least he got gay marriage through, had a strong friendship with Barack Obama and totally looked the part on the world stage. You know, he was the sort of Tory that didn't make one queasy about voting Tory.
Dave was their Mr Sheen, flying about his dusty old party and shining umpteen things clean. It dazzled everyone who wanted to be taken in, and the glare was enough so none too many looked closely at the polished turd. With his presentational flare, people with short memories and a shallow feel for politics could be allowed to forget this was the party of class war, of crushing the working class movement, subverting democracy, and imposing an economic model that blew up in 2008. Hugging huskies and being all socially liberal helped ensure the vile bigotry, xenophobia and racism of the most malignant force in British politics was deftly swept under the rug. Then Dave fucked up, and in came Theresa May. Okay, she was a bit harsh on immigrants but she said nice words about tackling poverty and a social conscience. And then she went and defined Brexit in unacceptably hard terms, pulled up the rug and wafted about all the poison Dave stowed there. The Tories reveal themselves as backward, mean-spirited, small, and so unforgivably yesterday.
In truth the Tories in the early part of this decade were as backward and sectional as they proved under May. It's just that Dave was a better salesman, and they had a semblance of unity. They were not pragmatic, and definitely never eschewed ideology. They were the traditional party of the ruling class, and their primary objective - which the Liberal Democrats went along with - was to make working people and the poor pay for their economic crisis, and remorselessly grind labour beneath the heel of capital until there was little left other than motes of dust. This is what the Tory values Matthew and his ilk cry about mean in practice - a comfortable existence for people like him, an element (or illusion) of privileged access, and misery and struggle for those no one cares about.
Ultimately, happily, the problem the Tories have are much more serious than its social liberal veneer fluttering down the street with so many other discards. Brexit runs through the party like a gangrenous sore and it is totally split to the point of utter dysfunction. The support in the country, while substantial, literally diminishes by the day and there's no new constituency that can pick up the Tory standard and remake the party. To be sure the traditional party of the British ruling class is looking down the barrel of a gun. It has no answers, offers no leadership, and barely comes together as a coherent political force. Is it the Tories' distance from Tory values that bothers Matthew and friends, their exposure as a scam, or do they know in their bones that their party is in its death throes and they're getting their mourning in early?
It's not true that Theresa May's latest performance in the Commons was entirely pointless. As we saw at the end of last week, she was properly stuck with no pain-free exit in sight. But for once she has made a decision. We know what her game is, what she plans to do to get over her historic defeat. What that might be? Brace yourselves, hold on to your hats, take a seat because she's resolved ... to do nothing.
Having spent a period in her much-publicised "listening mode" with delegations of MPs, today with the centrist party-in-waiting of Chris Leslie, Heidi Allen, Soubz, Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, and Sarah Wollaston, May's revealed Plan B looks suspiciously like Plan A. Taking the sting out of her stupidly vindictive immigration policy, she has dumped settlement fees for EU residents here in the UK - which would curry favour with some - and has gone on to say the door for talks remained open. And then deploying her signature move of self-owning doublethink, May said she was sticking to her red lines and heading back to Brussels to seek changes to the Irish backstop.
Her game plan is political theatre, albeit of the most predictable, wooden, and time-wasting kind. The ERG, the DUP, the Brexiteers on the back benches and in the cabinet, she has decided the way to get her vote through is by pandering to them. Though even the dogs in the street know the EU aren't going to agree to any changes to the Irish backstop, despite Poland publicly breaking ranks today and suggesting this measure should be limited to five years. Clearly, May plans on scuttling back and forth between London and Brussels for utterly fruitless talks while the clock winds down, hoping the tyranny of those inexorable hands will wring out enough Brexit votes to get her deal through the Commons a second time. And by total coincidence, building on his pre-Christmas "capitulation", Jacob Rees-Mogg was in the Mail on Sunday yesterday suggesting if it came down to May's deal or no Brexit, he and his rancid comrades would sign on the dotted line.
A reckless move to be sure, as it seems impossible to contemplate that May could win the DUP and, basically, the non-payroll vote to back her before crashing out the EU. Though one should never underestimate the Tory capacity for a collapse into cretinism when the chips are down. Nevertheless, May is proceeding how she's always proceeded. This is less about getting a deal done, and more about preserving the Conservative Party. Going to the right May has reasoned that keeping the bulk of the MPs, what's left of the membership, and declining coalition of voters is her priority, and this is the best way of maintaining it. Your Dominic Grieves and your Soubz, they're not going to cause too much bother and if they should walk, which is doubtful, at least the bulk of Toryism is preserved to fight another day.
At least that was the lay of the land this afternoon. It seems since her Commons appearance that the beleaguered and abused Cameroon remnants are contriving to give the Prime Minister a cracking headache. Yvette Cooper is putting forward a bill in which Parliament takes over the Brexit process should May prove unable to get her deal approved by the end of February, chiefly by seeking a suspension of Article 50 until the end of the year. Coincidentally, it's backed by three lieutenants of the Dave ancien regime - Oliver Letwin, Nick Boles, and Nicky Morgan, who've been manoeuvring on this for quite some time. Labour are putting down further amendments committing Parliament to find the time to explore either a Norway-stylee or customs union Brexit, or an additional referendum. What makes this even more delicious is the normally-loyal Amber Rudd has piled in to "suggest" around 40 MPs on the payroll vote could go walkies unless May allows for a free vote on the Cooper amendment, which is dues to hit the Commons next week. Again, remembering there's not really such a thing as a Tory rebel (several Tory "insurgents" have ruled out voting for Labour's amendment), that Rudd felt compelled to speak out five minutes after returning to the cabinet is a warning to May that ignoring the Tory centrists is not without cost either and might leave her at the mercy of a Brexiteer rump should ministers walk off the job. The other problem for May is on present arithmetic, it could well pass. Even if Rudd's warnings come to nought, there are enough remain Tories thinking along these lines to defeat the government.
Extending Article 50 is not without its risks, but the responsibility for this situation should be laid at the doorway of Downing Street. From the point of view of the negotiations, May wasted crucial time calling a general election, appointing decadent, stupid and lazy politicians as Brexit ministers and the foreign secretary, signing a deal covering Northern Ireland and EU citizens before rhetorically reneging on them in public, hiding her Brexit plan under a bushel before an essay crisis meeting in Chequers over summer, sucking up to the Brexiteers while dumping on Tories with one foot in the business realities of bourgeois Britain, and now carrying on doing the same despite a historic humiliation at the hands of the Commons. May has attracted praise for "doing her best", but her best's overriding concern is the party interest, the preserving of the Tories. And if that means inflicting severe damage on the UK's social and economic fabric, then that's a price she's happy for us to pay.
"This story is not true. The figures are completely made up." A wise rule of thumb for every story to feature in The Mail, but today's splash that Labour are haemorrhaging members come amid media assurances that the party is hopelessly split and faces untold damage unless Jeremy Corbyn "gets off the fence". When you've heard the same line from multiple pundits and papers supposedly at ideological odds with one another, you might be forgiven for thinking there's a machine somewhere mindlessly churning out the same talking points with a minimum of human supervision.
At any one time, there are multiple shenanigans and struggles configuring British politics. And one persistent strand is anti-Corbynism. There are sections of the bourgeois mainstream whose overriding concern is the derailing, discrediting, and the destruction of this most inconvenient of insurgencies. They encompass all the parties, bits of the state, business, a range of campaigns, celebrity, the media, academia, and will use whatever comes to hand. This is not a conspiracy, though these networks will necessarily collaborate, plan, swap notes. Most of their bile is generated spontaneously from whatever motivates their hostility to the Corbyn project. Whether the secret state, or indeed states, have a hand in these machinations, it cannot be reduced to spooks. Anti-Corbynism is inseparable from the class relations of establishment privilege and power, arises organically from them, and therefore will always possess something of a loose, decentralised and undisciplined character.
Over the course of the last 12 months, the hostiles have learned that potentially the most effective way of stuffing Corbynism into the backrooms and sparsely-attended fringe meetings is by trying to drive a wedge between the leader and his support. They have realised banging on about anti-semitism is good for bad headlines, but the overriding consequence is a demobilisation of the right's own base in the party (though it doesn't stop some from carrying on). Ditto for Corbyn's litany of sins against the establishment common sense in foreign affairs. They do think they have struck a rich seam after years of casting around: Britain's relation to the European Union. The sociological basis of the bulk of Labour's 2017 vote, not least its new activist base is a rising class who've suffered political marginalisation for decades. However, this class of immaterial labourers, whose ranks range from the low paid to the handsomely remunerated tend to be conscious of the economic dislocation Brexit means and broadly identify with the social liberal/liberal internationalist cloak the EU wraps itself in. And so, as it's largely the old New Labour establishment leading continuity remain, Brexit and the issue of a second referendum is being employed to drive a wedge between the Corbyn faithful and, well, Corbyn.
This report for The Graun typifies the tendency. Young people out in city centres on a Saturday getting signatures petitioning Corbyn to call for a second referendum. Being something of a veteran when it comes to running petitions, surely they'd be better off collecting signatures against someone who can actually do something about it like, I don't know, the Prime Minister? Nevertheless, it's catnip for anti-Corbynism. "I'm going to vote for the Greens!" comes the refrain. And it's the same hard remain talking points as well. "Get off the fence!" and "Corbyn wants an election, but it’ll be one where we have the choice between a Tory Brexit deal and some magical unicorn Brexit deal promised by Labour." And the usual "the majority of Labour members want a referendum!". Would that be those same Labour members who are content to give Corbyn and Keir Starmer the space to carry on as they have been doing?
I'm sure it's accidental how the article neglected to mention these were campaigns run by Our Future Our Choice, an organisation with some interesting friends and who have a record of running pointed anti-Labour anti-Brexit campaigns. But while this is a relatively gentle addition to the mood music, The Mail's spread about imminent meltdown is its amplification. Anonymous briefings from "insiders" who suggesting membership is plummeting like a stone, and that this has blown a £6m hole in party coffers - this is the fearless kind of journalism we enjoy. "It's because of Jeremy's stance on Brexit" warbles our unnamed and probably non-existent source. We can afford to take this with a pinch of salt because unlike the Tories, Labour membership isn't a trade secret. If there was a big drop social media and the party's gossip circuits would be alive with chatter from secretaries and CLP habitués about mass resignations or, at the very least, mass non-renewal. And yet ... tumbleweed. The Sun decided to have a go as well, but the only one that could find willing to go on the record was noted champion of the grass roots, Chris Leslie. This would be the same Chris Leslie whose own constituency party passed a no confidence motion in him, noting his "disloyalty and deceit". It's interesting, the right wing tabloids are decrying Labour as an incompetent shit show who are simultaneously inept and useless, but will nevertheless expropriate the expropriators with lethal Bolshevist efficiency.
To muddy matters even further, ramping up the perception Labour is in a whirlwind of crisis, we learn (again, from The Graun) that apparently Labour would lose votes if it backed another referendum. Apparently, this poll found that Labour would gain nine per cent of Tory voters but lose 11% of existing Labour voters, virtually guaranteeing the party would lose. Apparently over a third of LibDems voters and Green voters would switch, but given how squeezed they are in the polls it's reasonable to assume not many more can transfer from the absolute cores they were driven down to in 2017. Also, one point the article misses is what it might do to the Tory vote. May's gamble was her belief that being the party of Brexit would carry the majority of the kippers, which it did, as well as swathes of Labour leavers in the north. She didn't partly thanks to Labour's adroit positioning on Brexit. Should we get another election, and chatter about one is increasing despite the no confidence vote falling, thanks to differential turn out the Tories will position themselves as the custodians of Brexit and if this ground is ceded, as opposed to Labour adopting a soft Brexit position again, May will get her desired result. If you think Tory "centrists" are somehow going to prevent this by launching a new party or whatever, prepare yourself for disappointment.
There's the state of play this weekend. Labour is in crisis, Labour's members are deserting, Corbyn is a massive millstone, etc. Meanwhile, calm heads will note support for a second referendum among the wider electorate is pathetically low, there is no route through Parliament for one, and Labour have posted modest leads in all the polls bar YouGov's outliers. Far from Labour being caught between a rock and a hard place, it's Theresa May who is stuck but refusing to abandon her Brexit position. There's the home of the real crisis, the black hole in which all sense is crushed to an infinitesimally dense point. And the one threatening to drag us all down with it.
Crunch time is coming, and contrary to the headlines and the bellyaching it's Theresa May, not Jeremy Corbyn who's caught in a vice. As forecast days ago, May has gone cap in hand to each and everyone, asking all corners of the Commons to come forward to try and make her Brexit deal work. And from all points of the map they came, a self-selected pick 'n' mix of Liberal Democrats, backbench Tories, nationalists, loyalists, and Labour people filed in and filed out of meetings with the PM and/or her henchmen. For the Greens, Caroline Lucas criticised May for introducing this listening exercise at the 11th hour, and then not budging on her fabled red lines. Likewise, Yvette Cooper and Hilary Benn more or less declared their meeting a waste of time because she won't take them off the table. A farce in other words, and one Jeremy Corbyn is wise to stay away from.
Examining the logic of Theresa May's position, the PM says she cannot take no deal off the table and that it constitutes an impossible condition for talks. May argues that only two ways exist to avoid a no deal scenario: back her deal, or back out of Brexit. It's almost as if her deal hasn't gone down to the humiliation of a sitting government's worst ever defeat and doesn't know the meaning of the word 'negotiation'. The problem for May is behind the scenes, her chancellor has done the ring around of key businesses and, um, has promised to take no deal off the table. Could it be the Tory leadership are saying one thing for public consumption, positioning Jeremy Corbyn as a target for the flak guns for his intransigence, and hypocritically whispering assurances to their well-heeled mates in private? I'll leave you to make your mind up.
Nevertheless, it's not just the Greens and a pair of undistinguished suits from Labour's past that have been wasting their time speaking to the Prime Minister. Looking as pleased as punch, David Davis, Steve Baker, and a useless entourage of the European Research Group smiled for the cameras before and after their meeting. As Boris Johnson wasn't present, the contents of the occasion did not immediately light up the phone of the Telegraph's chief political reporter, but according to Davis, the PM was in a listening mood as she politely heard their concerns. Yet as May hasn't changed her mind and is unwilling to offer concessions to her left, it is impossible to see how she can move and offer the hard Brexiteers something - no matter how conciliatory the poise.
Let's look at this in a little bit more depth. The position of the ERG and sundry Brexiteers is unchanged. While their flavour of Brexit might differ in some respects, they are resolutely against a customs union. It's more complex than a pathetic fancy of a swashbuckling Britain led by a new generation of Tory gentlemen signing trade deals here, there, and everywhere, but it's a Boys' Own desire they cannot quite shake. And it's a matter of coincidence it aligns with the hedge fund and disaster capitalist interests that have an intimate and constitutive relationship with the ERG faction. Secondly, as we've heard ad nauseum they're opposed to the Northern Irish backstop. This, for readers who can't be blamed for tuning out the finer details of the Brexit process, is the guarantee that the north will remain in a customs union with the Republic and, therefore, the EU in the event of the EU/UK not securing a trade deal and settling the future relationship after the transition/implementation period has expired. This is due to last 21 months from our putative exit from the EU on 29th March. Hence, as May rightly points out, her deal and her backstop is an insurance policy and probably isn't going to happen - though there are plenty of idiot bankbenchers, including Boris Johnson, who want a deal sorted as quickly as possible and are opposed to the transition lasting any length of time.
That's for another time. As far at the EU are concerned, the backstop is insurance for the economy of the Irish Republic. As the EU member state more dependent on the UK economy than any other, effectively remaining in an economic union with the north protects if from the worst of a no-trade-deal scenario, though barriers to trade with the British mainland would prove onerous. The EU are insisting on this, and as May refuses to accept a customs union for the whole of the British Isles, we have a fudge in which Northern Ireland might be placed outside of the UK, economically speaking. Here's why the DUP can hardly be described as fans (though they're happy for the North to remain separate from the rest of the UK for other reasons), and ditto for other Tories for whom the constitution of their state is sacrosanct - as long as it continues to defend their interests.
Houston, we have a problem. Because May caved to the right on no customs union, we have a compromise where the EU will only accept this if Northern Ireland remains in the customs union as insurance. Which is unacceptable to the Brexiteers. What May giveth with one hand the ERG try and take with the other. If May, however, was to accept an all-Britain customs union as insurance and the basis for a Brexit deal, which is Labour's position, then the Irish backstop will go away. What's not going to happen is May disappearing the backstop after tea and tiffin in Number 10, no matter the smiles, or how courteous and charming the ERG's ambassadors. The EU won't accept it, and it cannot get through the Commons. Therefore an ERG Brexit deal is foreclosed, and the route to one lies through a customs deal Brexit, be it something bespoke like Labour's or the Norway option, which is attracting attention on the Tory and Labour backbenches. Unfortunately for May, as Steve Baker made clear earlier today, a customs union means a split in the party - though it is worth remembering there's really no such thing as a Tory rebel, as last night's no confidence vote reminds us.
There then is Theresa May's big crunch. If no deal is to be avoided and the Tory party once again fulfils its historical vocation as the vehicle for Britain's business interests, it takes the sensible route and suffers a permanent schism with its wrecking tendency. If it no deals, the party underlines its isolation from the rising generation of voters, suffers a split with its more moderate figures and, crucially, makes the decisive break with the bulk of British business and bourgeois interests. A painful couple of months for Theresa May and the Tory faithful then, but an agonising fate so richly and justly deserved.
"The risk of a disorderly Brexit has increased" mused Jean-Claude Juncker. A fair assessment after Theresa May suffered the biggest Commons defeat by a government in, well, ever. Certainly something to keep the constitution nerds and Trivial Pursuit fans happy for centuries, and useful fodder for Labour's next general election campaign. Of course, there is zero sympathy for the Prime Minister round these parts. She has consistently misread the politics, has subordinated the needs of what bourgeois politicians call the 'national interest' to those of managing the Conservative Party, and from the outset brushed aside the concerns of others. Well, until some provided a fig leaf.
May's thumping 432/202 defeat is nothing less than catastrophic for her premiership and the capacity of the Tory party to govern. She might muddle through the vote of no confidence, in fact it is quite likely, but the margin of failure was much greater than any backbench Tory feared, or Labour bencher dared. Its consequences are scouring deep scars in the Conservative psyche and for some sections of the so-called natural party of government, there is little but numb shock. It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch ... Nevertheless, while May is batting away the resignation demands it's difficult to see how she can go on. As we've noted plenty of times, May has been in a historically unique situation in which her weakness affords her a strange sort of strength vis a vis the other factions and petty leadership contenders in her party. As they cancel each other out, she had autonomy and wriggle room. But tonight her opponents came together and collectively thwarted the raison d'etre of her premiership. Largely because she forgot that getting the deal through parliament meant getting it through parliament, not just her backbenchers.
Now what? In her brief speech following the defeat, May said the government would reach out and was now "listening". An approach, wiser heads suggested, that she should have adopted since she gave away the Tory majority. This, it seems, is the only sensible approach left assuming there isn't a general election. It would mean turning a tin ear to the hard Brexiteers of Jacob Rees-Mogg's ERG and your Boris Johnsons, and staking out where the majority of the Commons is at. And that would be in the direction more congenial to Labour's position, with its six tests, including the maintenance of a customs union, or the Norway-style option getting traction on the Tory benches. However, it's difficult to see how May could possibly facilitate such a process considering her obsession with immigration and her maniacal interpretation of Brexit in its light. The second difficulty concerns the electoral interests of the Tory party more generally. If we interpret the national interest in terms of getting a deal, how can this party be trusted to deliver a Brexit at odds with the membership, and its coalition of voters? In short, it can't.
Want more problems, because Brexit's got them! Assuming somehow the Tory party is able to overcome these insurmountable difficulties and act as a clearing house of ideas and amendments, these have to be packaged up and negotiated with Brussels. True, more reasoned heads than May and her awful coterie are surely going to be in the driving seat but the EU can say no, or maybe, or whatever. And then there's getting it all through in time for exit day, which is looking shakier by the hour. Revoking Article 50 is the sensible option with a view to starting the clock again, but that is not without consequences. And so, the mess reigns, but May's defeat has opened up new possibilities for something else, which was absolutely closed before her historic loss.
I thought the morning had a darker aspect about it than usual, and lo it turned out Theresa May was in town. No walkabout down Stoke's pearly avenues, it was Wades Ceramics that was the entirety of her itinerary. And her purpose was to push her Brexit deal in what has variously been dubbed the capital of Brexit, and she laboured her point. Either her vote passes tomorrow evening, or we face a no deal Brexit or no Brexit at all. Well, if the UK's membership of the European Union was a technical matter I'd be a-okay with that. But it isn't. Brexit cannot be wished away, and the clock cannot be dialled back to 23rd June, 2016. Still, the idea that Brexit might not happen or, to be more precise, the consequences of it not happening is interesting, because it has the potential of becoming a very serious political crisis.
It suits Theresa May and her lackeys, like the doomed incompetent Chris Grayling, to talk up no Brexit in blood curdling terms because, well, scaremongering is the Tory thing to do. And they don't have any politics left beyond trite soundbites to defend their position anyway. Still, one shouldn't too readily dismiss some of the concerns they raise simply because they raised them. To be sure, casting aside a democratic decision is a serious, if not foolhardy business, even if the argument for doing so is couched in the sophism of more democracy, in the form of another referendum.
Let's set Grayling's observation that thwarting Brexit could prove a spur for the far right in more credible terms. The foundation of our febrile politics is a malaise, and this used to get the establishment hand wringing a decade ago. Long-time readers will remember the moral panic every time the BNP got themselves a councillor, and the applause a succession of New Labour politicians would bask in from sundry editorials as they stated "unthinkable" thoughts about refugees, and talked up the tough treatment of immigrants. Yet no matter how far right leading politicians were prepared to go, they only sanctified and legitimated the BNP's xenophobic bile. A bit of liberal do-gooding here and there about how nasty the BNP were was more than drowned out by the racist sentiments articulated by the press and mainstream Labour. What we now call and is openly described as a 'hostile environment' was the fertile soil that nourished the BNP and, to a similar extent, UKIP, and this culminated in the BNP returning two Members of the European Parliament in 2009.
Success ultimately did for the BNP, they couldn't keep it together. And political fortunes turned against them shortly after Nick Griffin's infamous Question Time appearance. The Tories were looking dead certs to win the 2010 general election, and as Labour collapsed into Brownite decline and recrimination the populist sheen rubbed off the BNP. In Stoke, once described as the jewel in the BNP's crown by Griffin, at the 2010 local elections half of their councillors were lost and come 2011 they were wiped from the council chamber completely. Entirely welcome, but the same deep alienation from official politics didn't go anywhere. With the BNP a busted flush across the country, the anti-politics slack was picked up by UKIP, especially after 2013. Nigel Farage himself spoke about how the party was doing politics a favour by picking up former BNP voters and effectively domesticating them. Yes, but it was enough to put the frighteners on the Tories. In 2014 UKIP won the largest plurality of votes in the European elections and sent to Brussels the largest contingent of MEPs, and in 2015 they polled well over four million votes. At every step of the way, like his predecessors in government, Dave did not take on the xenophobic right: he cleaved to them. And we all live with the consequences of this now.
The problem is there is a mass base for reactionary politics as cultivated by previous generations of politicians and nurtured by a press at the peak of its influence. Cowards and liars have rode it to prominence, and others have tried compromising with it - seldom has it been challenged. The question then for anyone interested in progressive politics is to directly confront and win over its more amenable fringes, while demobilising and politically dispersing the rest. Well over a decade of appeasement has caused the present damage, given us Brexit, caused a surge in hate crime, and seen regular but small mobilisations of the far right. By accepting Brexit but marrying it to a popular programme of the new class politics, Labour was largely able to see off the reactionary bloc in its heartland seats in 2017 while a lot of that vote transferred to the Tories as custodians of Brexit. If then the Tories are seen to be responsible for thwarting it, that poses a big problem for their voter coalition - and an opportunity for the far right.
Unfortunately, many of the people who poured scorn on Grayling's warning at the weekend are the sorts who've spent the last two-and-a-half years telling everyone who'll listen that Leave voters were thick and racist, that the referendum should be rerun/pulled because it was "advisory", and they were manipulated by Russians. In other words, exactly the sorts of people least capable of understanding how reactionary politics can have mass appeal, and therefore the most clueless when it comes to taking it on. It might only be social media knockabout, but remainy/centrist rhetoric aligns with everything the far right have previously said about the liberal establishment, and could prove a boon to mobilising reactionary support in the context of a second referendum or Brexit's cancellation.
There are a couple of other things worth thinking about. Building reactionary support might not trouble the electoral calculus of the main parties. It's hard to see how even UKIP can make a comeback without its best known figures attached to the project. But the price would be paid in even more hate crime, more far right mobilisations, more Tommy Robinson, and other awful political pathologies. Other forms of political violence can't be ruled out either. We saw how Brexit's toxic rhetoric culminated in a fascist murdering Jo Cox, and it could quite easily happen again. Now, none of this is about giving an imaginary far right a veto on how we go about politics now, as some of the self-same clueless centrists put it over the weekend, but it is about recognising that political actions have political consequences. If you are seen to trample on a democratic decision you don't like, don't act all surprised if you end up stirring anti-democratic political forces. If you strike an elitist pose, don't be shocked if right-wing populism finds itself a big audience again. Because in Stoke-on-Trent and many other places like it, the BNP and UKIP may have been and gone but the slab of reaction is there, latent, abiding, and ready to mobilise if it is antagonised and enabled.
"Desperate Theresa May caves in on workers' rights to save Brexit deal". Well done The Mirror for getting the scoop, but what does it mean? Since losing her majority, May's approach to Brexit has proceeded more with an eye to Tory party management than actually getting her deal through the Commons. Then, during last Autumn's party conference season the penny belatedly dropped and the PM realised that intransigent opposition from the government benches meant she needed Labour MPs onside. Since then, nothing. And now at the 11th hour, we learn she's been having chats with John Mann, Caroline Flint and others about accepting an amendment on the protection of workers' rights.
The amendment seeks to fix existing EU workers' protections in British law, and would also give MPs a future vote should the EU decide to enhance employee rights in the future. Justifying his amendment, Mann argues that it makes May's deal more attractive to Labour MPs by improving on the vague sentiments expressed in the original deal text. Flint went on to say that she hoped the amendment would be backed by the front bench. Unfortunately for the "20 MPs" who are prepared to back the Mann/Flint amendment the likelihood of that support forthcoming is up there with a Simon Danczuk comeback.
John McDonnell and Angela Rayner have piled in, branding its acceptance by the Prime Minister as a cynical act of self-interest, adding that the Tories can't be trusted on workers' rights. This is more than the usual argy-bargy of parliamentary rhetoric. We should not forget that May has proven more underhanded and happy to lie than even her predecessor, her ruling out of a general election before calling one and pulling the meaningful vote on her deal the day before it was originally due to take place should set the alarm bells screaming "she's not to be trusted!". Likewise as Tim Roache of the GMB observes, if she really cared about workers' rights then there were ample opportunities to get trade unions around the table. Also, it's pretty meaningless. EU workers' protections have meant little as the Tories and, disgracefully, New Labour took Britain to the bottom of the league for employee rights in Western Europe. Workers in Germany and France still enjoy greater rights at work, despite us all (for the moment) being part of the EU. And for her part, while May is hardly the workers' friend she has not pledged to scrap protections or anything like that - this being a hobby horse of the hard right of her party - so accepting the Mann/Flint amendment comes at zero political cost to her.
What John Mann and co. are doing then is providing red wash for May's deal. Assuming she loses the vote next week, when she returns to the Commons with her Plan B it will, in all likelihood, be in the form of a cross-party appeal for further amendments. Clearly this is what both Mann and Flint expect as both have framed their intervention around workers' rights as the beginning of a process that incorporates more of Labour's red lines. And from May's point of view, the more new amendments are bolted to her deal, the more the clock ticks down to exit day, the more likely sundry Labour MPs are going to back it to prevent the disaster of no deal.
No Labour MP should have anything to do with getting May's deal through. While all Brexit options aren't good, some are less harmful than others. Contrary to efforts aimed at muddying the waters, Labour's position is clear and straightforward: a deal based on a customs union with single market access. This softest of soft Brexits guarantees continuity for EU residents as well as established trading relationships, and delivers on the 2017 manifesto. A position, you'll remember, that was able to bridge the gap between Labour remain and Labour leave constituencies when everyone else was predicting electoral catastrophe. By going along with May's deal, Mann and friends are advocating a harder Brexit than what could be achieved. They have forgotten, whether purposely or not, that the biggest danger to our people - their constituents - is the continuation of the Tories in power, and are on a course that would keep May and the rest of them in government. Such a position for a Labour MP is unforgivable, and makes their future as Labour MPs untenable.
This Christmas was a tale of two parties. Once the politicians broke up from Westminster and the immediate pressure of Brexit was off, the absence of hard news had assorted dullards fill the content-hungry maw of broadcast and print media with their favourite pastime: attacking Jeremy Corbyn. Yet on the other side of the Commons the story was somewhat different. Considering the turmoil, Rees-Mogg came out to declare there was nothing to see and, well, Tory turbulence made way for an eerie calm. That isn't to say phone calls haven't taken place and MPs weren't plotting, but rather nearly all of it taking place away from prying eyes. And as the Prime Minister spent a couple of weeks out of the spotlight (another walking holiday?), we've had some jockeying by the B-list epigoni in the cabinet.
The always-appalling Sajid Javid found his leadership positioning aided by the main news outlets. With a mild media panic generated by the usual suspects about refugees sailing/paddling across the Channel, Javid let it be known that he was cancelling his South African holiday to come back to deal with the "crisis". And he did so without challenge, as typified by this Sky News piece. There is a sinister subtext to all this. The Tories are past masters at divide-and-rule, and while immigration has slipped down the popular causes for concern since Leave won the EU referendum that doesn't mean it isn't a potent weapon. Filling TV screens with coast guards plucking refugees from dinghies with outboard motors could, if spun by unscrupulous papers and right wingers, be elided with the horrifying refugee disaster in the Mediterranean. Being seen to be all over his brief and sticking it to powerless others plays to the core vote, the editorial desks, and the dwindling party membership. Nevertheless, while a panic about refugees is just the tonic for making a case for May's tough-on-immigration Brexit deal, neither Downing Street or Javid's rivals happy to let him grandstand. Hence a pretty lame attempt to embarrass him.
Sadly, a consideration of Tory manoeuvring means pondering our mate Gavin Williamson is unavoidable. Nicknamed Private Pike by parliamentary colleagues, unlike his Dad's Army namesake Williamson gets off strutting about as if he's some military hard man. Less Lord Kitchener and more Fisher-Price Kitchen, he was on hand to greet HMS Echo arrived in Odessa before Christmas to deter the Russians - a spectacle sure to make Vladimir Putin "go away" and "shut up". More objectionable is his floating of the idiotic Empire 2.0 delusion, the view the UK can bestride the world not just as an independent economic power, but as a military one as well. In his Telegraph interview, he announced an intention to open two new military bases. One on the outskirts of the South China Sea, presumably with the view of making China think twice about its own ambitions in the region, and one in the Caribbean for, well, reasons. He also said "nations right across Africa look to us to provide the moral leadership, the military leadership and the global leadership". Yeah, but to do what? Totally absurd. There are, however, questions outstanding. Is this government policy? How's it going to be paid for? Or is it just a dismal effort to endear the Tory faithful with its imperial fever dreams to the camp of the stupid boy? Hazard a guess.
Jeremy Hunt isn't a name that - thankfully - gets uttered much round these parts, but he too has been playing at leadership footsy. See, he's gone down the road of the "vision thing". And what would his Britain look like after Brexit? Why, he's gone and half-inched the politics of the European Research Group and holds up Singapore as his model. Sadly, their extensive state subsidised housing isn't what he has in mind. Hunt doesn't expand much on what this means but he knows something about Singapore and low taxes, and is sold on the ERG idea that becoming the global hub of tax dodging (as if it isn't already) suits the interests of him and the hedge funds and disaster capitalists that have pushed Brexit very nicely. This not only tallies with some of the interests the Tory party articulates, it can be sold to the members both as a means of cutting taxes more generally (implying moar austerity red meat) and presenting the EU with a permanent Up Yours Delors moment. Never underestimate the enthusiasm of the Conservative Party for a morally bankrupt and dismal prospectus.
Nor should one underestimate their capacity for low cunning. As weird, ineffectual and incompetent these three men are, they demonstrated a certain adroitness in their positioning. Within Tory terms, each has staked out political territory that MPs, members and, sadly, a section of the electorate, finds compelling. Borders and immigration, military and empire, tax and hard Brexit. There is nothing here with mass, cross-party appeal - unless you're a backbench Labour hawk, I suppose - but at this point there doesn't have to be. All three have shown off their wares, and should it come to facing any of them down in a general election then in all likelihood Labour will be up against a traditional Tory campaign of lies, scaremongering and scapegoating. For this party of yesterday's men and women, the Tories' past is always their future.
Going in to 2018, Corbynism was presented with a challenge it hadn't encountered before: the relative peace of continuity. The movement began with an event to mobilise around in the 2015 leadership contest, ditto with the the coup that failed in 2016, and last year we had the general election and its fall out. There was nothing scheduled on the horizon for 2018, nor was there likely to be a mobilising moment. The old establishment had nothing to commend themselves, no avenues for striking back, nor any hope of destabilising Corbyn and snatching control of the party away from the membership. And Theresa May wasn't about to call a general election what with Brexit negotiations and a Tory party more divided then any time in, well, perhaps ever. How then has Corbynism fared over the course of the year? How is it developing? What are its successes? And how is it coping with threats and challenges?
In the metrics that matter most to conventional politics, Corbyn's Labour has a good story to tell. Polling is either level pegging, a little bit behind, or a little bit in front of the Tories. "Oh", wail Corbyn's opponents, "if he was any good we'd have double-digit point leads over this shower of a government". And perhaps Labour would if it wasn't for the political circumstances we find ourselves in. As noted previously and many times since, political polarisation has persisted throughout the year. It's not just a matter of the Tories and Labour mobilising different constituencies of voters, but that Brexit plays different roles in gluing these coalitions together. For Labour voters, as a general rule Britain's relationship to the EU is important, but other concerns like housing, the NHS, jobs, a better future, etc. more or less successfully keeps the coalition together. For the Tories, Brexit is absolutely central. It keeps the former kippers on board, it helps keep the Scottish unionist vote on board, and works as an attractor for the flotsam and jetsam of voters who buy the delusions of Brexit. If Brexit was a minority pursuit, which it isn't, then the Tory coalition would be smaller. To reiterate, the reason why the Tory vote remains large is because they are the party of Brexit. They're negotiating it, they're its custodians, and millions of people - who wouldn't necessarily vote Tory under other circumstances - are backing them for as long as it takes to get it done. Whether this falls away after 29th March or persists while the government prats about with a trade deal is a question we might be able to answer this time next year.
But this post is about Corbynism, not the Tories! May's local elections weren't a thumping success, though getting the best result in London for 50 years is worth shouting about. Nevertheless it demonstrated steady-as-it-goes progress with a polarised electorate in the background. Though, without indulging official optimism, it is worth remembering that turn outs for local elections are low and tend to flush out two groups of people; the super hard core who follow local politics and, disproportionately, older people. For Labour to do well in contests whose demographics favour the party's Tory opponents isn't to be sniffed at.
With electoral consolidation, um, consolidating, how are things looking in the party? Well, in 2018 we find a similar story. Momentum's membership grew massively over the year, passing the 40K mark in the Summer and with trolling talk of it soon overtaking the real membership of the Tories. It's possible! The year also saw the left firm up its control. 2018 began well with the left making a clean sweep of the three extra seats introduced to the NEC. There was plenty of argy-bargy in the last round of selections for this year's local elections, with the right claiming the left are racist/sexist/homophobic for deselecting councillors with awful politics - the sort of absurd logic which, turned the other way, damns every one of them for supporting white boy David Miliband over Diane Abbott in the 2010 leadership contest. In March, Corbyn flexed his muscles in the sacking of Owen Smith from the front bench for continuing to peddle his own line about a second referendum as opposed to the party's position. His forced departure occasioned the usual bellyaching, with Peter Hain going so far as to describe it a "terrible Stalinist purge". Neither it nor the fall out of the Skripal affair, where Corbyn used the occasion to draw attention to Russian money propping up the Tories, made any dents on the left in the Labour Party, and following May's elections it was a fairly easy task to get left wing delegates elected to conference and returning a full slate of leftwingers to this year's NEC.
The only real setback the project suffered internally were the shenanigans around mandatory reselection. Readers will recall there was an on-paper majority for it, and sundry rightwing Labour MPs were getting sweaty. Even Westminster colossi like Mike Gapes openly pondered their resignation of the Labour whip. And, in the end, there was some sort of deal done and instead of a simple reselection process we got a reform of the present trigger ballot system. This was disappointing, but not surprising. The leadership wanted to avoid headaches from the parliamentary party, and trade unions wanted to continue to have a hand in who does and doesn't get selected. Calling it a betrayal, as some did, is a bit much but it is an own goal and one bound to bite both the leadership and trade union general secretaries on the backside in the future. Nevertheless, what it did demonstrate was a tension in the relationship between Corbynism-in-the-party and Corbynism-in-the-unions.
Throughout the year, Corbynism's opponents in the party have either resigned in despair, as per John Woodcock and Ivan Lewis (neither, of course, had anything to do with a studied refusal to face sexual assault allegations), thrown tantrums like Frank Field, or trailed the prospect of a new centre party. If these people can't marry up a coalition of recalcitrant MPs and 50 million quid of LoveFilm money, how can they hope to be decent ministers? Well, we know they can't. But as far as the old Blairism and the Labour right are concerned, they did hit upon two weapons that have caused damage to the project and will no doubt be reached for again in 2018.
The first is anti-semitism. Jeremy Corbyn isn't an anti-semite, and neither are the overwhelming majority bulk of the Labour Party. But as explained here, there is a culture of anti-semitic carelessness on the left that has come into the party, which has been amplified by ones and twos of Labour people on social media sharing anti-semitic conspiracy idiocies, far right memes, defences of Gilad Atzmon, and Rothschild obsessions - all of whom are seized upon with alacrity by the media and the Labour right. This climaxed over the summer with the row over Jeremy Corbyn's attendance at that funeral. Unfortunately, while the right should be condemned for their disgusting and dishonest behaviour on this issue - where were most of them before anti-semitism became something you could damage the Corbyn project with? - the left needs to take responsibility and stamp this shit out. Better, quicker disciplinary procedures, a programme of party-directed education, and zero tolerance of anti-semites, conspiracy fools, and "leftist" liabilities who deny there's any such problem are good starting points.
The second is Brexit or, to be more accurate, the movement for remain. Broader and more politically amorphous than the FBPE cult on Twitter, it is nevertheless a bourgeois social movement, and one used by sections of the Labour right to try and drive a wedge between Labour members and Labour voters, who the polls tell us are mostly anti-Brexit and want a second referendum, and the party leadership. There was the pre-Christmas poll from YouGov that boldly claimed the LibDems would surge to second place if Labour was seen enabling Theresa May's Brexit, and there was the Graun interview in which Corbyn restated Labour's 'all options on the table' policy, which was taken up as some great betrayal by sundry Labour MPs and their friends in the Liberal Democrats. Of course, Labour has a tricky tightrope to walk. Brexit is damaging and a load of crap, but unless you think a bit of dodgy funding and a few Facebook adverts invalidate the result (especially when remain spent more overall, including on Facebook), seeing it through is the democratic thing to do. Unless another general election comes along and rewrites the rules. As noted earlier, Brexit does play a different role in Labour's voter coalition vs the Tory vote, but different role doesn't mean no role. In my view, calling for a general election with the promise to try and negotiate a different deal with the promise of a referendum at the end to confirm it is the best approach to take. Whatever happens, the party cannot be put in a position where it "reluctantly" votes for May's deal - Scotland and the fate of the LibDems shows what happens when other parties become the Tories' meat shield.
Overall, Corbynism is more or less politically united. More activists are more regularly involved, and provided the party carefully steps its way through the Brexit mess it remains well placed to win a general election. But there is still much to be done. Corbynism conceives of labour as a party/movement, a collective active in community struggles, trade unions and wider campaigns while simultaneously being a contender for power. The two are not mutually exclusive as the cretinists of the right maintain, but central to winning an election and transforming our society. Therefore we need to be aware that Corbynism hasn't spurred wider radicalisation. At least not yet. Tied up with this is building the network of ideas, thinkers, publications and websites, broadcast media, institutions - which is central if you want to frame the battle for the country's soul in terms of hegemony and counter hegemony. This is coming together and Corbynist outriders, mainly from the left of the movement are regularly getting themselves in the media to push the new common sense. However, the problem of what John McDonnell calls 'cadre development' remains. When you have a Labour Party culture historically antithetical to, well, thinking, and a social media culture productive of conspiracy theorising, instilling a sense of history, capacities for informed social critique, and hunger for new knowledge is a big ask. Nevertheless this is happening and, fortunately for the left, the experience of tens of millions tallies with what it is saying about the world.
Corbynism then leaves 2018 in good shape, in better shape than when it entered it. 2019 isn't going to be a walk in the park, but when you look at the state of our opponents in the party and outside of it, we could be in a much worse place.
