As the UK's formal departure from the EU is imminent, it's worthwhile briefly returning to the one thing that determined the outcome on 12th December more than anything else: the timing. Readers might recall a minority of Labour folks (me included) who argued for the party to hold firm in parliament and resist Boris Johnson's goading the opposition into a general election. The major reason was Johnson's strategy from the moment he entered the Tory leadership race was to bulldoze Brexit through regardless of the squealing and the costs. That was his path to cementing his premiership, provided he could get the Brexit preliminaries done quickly.
Having spent the summer fulminating against those who would thwart Brexit and promising to die in a ditch over extending Article 50, Johnson was eventually forced to do just that, rhetoric about disobeying the courts and flouting the rule of law notwithstanding. Once forced into this humiliating climbdown we saw the theatrics and the hysterics about challenging the remainer parties to an election. With the SNP and Liberal Democrats hopping on board the bandwagon, and groundswell among party members - eager to repeat 2017 - getting too much the leadership embraced the opportunity. We know what happened next.
Yet if Labour had held firm and said no, what then? Well, I suppose the question is what would the delays be for. While the parties cooperated well in late August and early September against Johnson we saw earlier in the year how the indicative votes didn't realise majorities for anything except a no to no deal. The second referendum'ers went for bust rather than countenancing a much softer Brexit, and so saddled us with a hard landing. Given the line was thin when there was disagreement over what objective the united forces of the opposition should push for, then Johnson was right: parliament was logjammed. With Johnson bringing back the election time after time and the other parties turning it down, he reasoned support would drain away from them as Brexit blockers and preventing the Commons from discharging its business. In this scenario, Labour would cop most of the blame, most of the pressure, and the disunity in the parliamentary party would likely have bubbled over into tabloid-friendly infighting as Brexity MPs took to the airwaves. The Tories would be shielded from the pain and when the election would finally come, Labour would have been in an even worse position to mount a decent challenge.
Alternatively, despite all this, if Labour held out to the point where Johnson had ask for another extension beyond 31st January, then the more difficult the Tory position would be to maintain. And perhaps then, to limit damage stemming from the paralysis from getting too extensive, in all likelihood he'd have to try and come to some sort of arrangement with the other parties - the very process which triply exposed Theresa May's ineptitude and finally put paid to her career. This would undoubtedly have dealt Johnson a severe blow, and the Brexit Party poised to go from torpor to the hungry devourer of the Tories' right flank. And Labour? Thanks to remain running riot in the party without even token resistance from the top, in this situation it's difficult to see how Jeremy Corbyn could have mustered support from enough of his MPs for a Labour Brexit, let alone be in a fit state to negotiate anything with Johnson. And even if that was possible and a deal reached with Tory and Labour backing, whenever the election came the LibDems and Greens would have been in the perfect position to make extensive inroads into Labour's support.
There is then no comfort or smuggery for those who argued against accepting Johnson's election. Take the chance before Brexit and get hammered, as per what happened. Or stick it out and either end up with a worse starting point when the election is eventually accepted, or strike a deal with Johnson that would heavily damage the Tories but wreak catastrophic destruction on Labour, possibly to the point of completely detaching the new and consolidating base, and we're left with an impossible position. Sadly, Labour lost this election in 2017 when the leadership failed to drive home its hegemony in the party, especially with regard to Brexit. And that meant when it finally came to the crunch there was nothing in front of the party except damaging options. Though, as incredible as it may seem, it's looking like Labour took the least worst.
Some Labour supporters are puzzled by how an overt charlatan like Boris Johnson was the preferred option for millions of voters versus Jeremy Corbyn, a man known for his principled (if not always popular) positions on a range of issues, as well as his kindness and unaffected way with ordinary people. Why was Johnson's appalling character profile more acceptable, and how will it matter over the next four or five years as Labour rebuilds? Learning from Jeremy's period in charge, how might the character of the new leader be important?
We know perceptions of politicians are heavily overdetermined by the media but it's not as though Johnson is a stranger to bad press and character assassination. His enemies are legion and to all intents and purposes, his personal life - including his inability to say how many children he has - makes him a laughing stock. And that's before you consider the lies, the laziness, and the incompetence. And yet, despite all this, Johnson won out for two key reasons which, I suppose, are among those few characteristics of politics that approach something of a law.
The first is the fear factor. As a rule, people will not follow or support leaders who make them fearful. Unless said leader has a grotesque apparatus of repression at their disposal. As Labour people, we will not vote or support Johnson because we know what the Tories mean for our communities and our class. We fear the dismantling of the institutions that many of our people depend on, the scapegoating, victimisation, and deportation of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, and the coarsening of public life. And, likewise, plenty of Tories fear Labour too. They fear us because they think we'll take their privilege away, make them cough up a lot more in tax, and speed up the sorts of changes they find objectionable, particularly the destabilisation of, in their eyes, their familiar way if life.
Unfortunately, Corbyn brought with him more reasons to be fearful. In the first instance was his pacifism and anti-imperialism, which was - still is - spun as being pro-Hamas and Hezbollah, pro-IRA and "anti-Western". Then there was the perception he was soft, and would not sanction the requisite tough action required to deal with domestic terrorists. And, of course, the perennial nuclear war issue, of his refusing to countenance a retaliatory strike against any hostile nation that might, for reasons, lob a nuclear missile or two our way. Coupled with the entirely false idea Corbyn is/was a communist, this is a recipe for widening the pool of those who would vote Tory, as well as making many of them more likely to do so. Yes, this fear didn't bloom in a vacuum, but the Tories and their press proved adept at stoking it precisely because it aggravated the collective unconscious of a whole strata of people. Considering how they were in a febrile condition thanks to the drawing out of Brexit - which they mostly supported, and even more wanted done - Labour's second referendum position contained every danger of prolonging matters, or of cancelling it completely.
The second issue is the question of competence. Or, as they say, folks don't vote for divided parties. Boris Johnson's stint as Foreign Secretary, and particularly his callous failures over Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe should bar him from the Commons, let alone the high office to which he has ascended. And yet, as we saw, Johnson was able to use Brexit as a wedge to bulldoze the Tories to a majority. But he was only able to do this by bringing his party to the brink. This autumn's theatre of lost votes, resignations of cabinet members, the expulsion of rebellious remainy Tories made for a heartening show to those who wish the Conservative Party nothing but ill, but it proved his credibility on this issue. You might not like Johnson, but you knew his direction of travel. Unfortunately, for many of these voters, this wasn't the case with Jeremy Corbyn. Likewise you knew (or thought you knew) what his views were, but he lacked credibility because he had a laissez-faire attitude to internal opposition and appeared weak when it came to tackling his own critics. This crystallised when it came to the anti-semitism crisis, which appeared to be allowed to rumble on and fatally damaged his reputation for decisive decision making. And, again, letting the second referendum campaign run riot in Labour's ranks without trying to challenge it. In other words, how can you trust a man with the keys to Number 10 to deliver all these very ambitious and expensive policies if he can't even run his own party. Sadly, we know the answer to this.
What lessons can the next Labour leader draw from this sorry episode, apart from the obvious and banal fact the media will be against them? The first is Johnson will hark back to the credibility on Brexit he's in the process of consolidating, which makes Labour's long leadership election an indulgence. The second comes down to Labour's messaging. As much as remain-minded members supporting Keir Starmer might hope he's going to turn the clock back to the pre-Brexit days, I cannot believe he would be so stupid as to commit Labour to rejoining within the lifetime of this parliament. And the other two serious candidates, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy, aren't about to either. Thirdly, it's difficult to imagine any of these would stand for the behaviour we've seen from a persistent core of MPs, some of whom are now deservedly ex, in the event of their becoming leader. As relative unknowns vis a vis the public, they have to be seen as decisive, serious (up to and including wielding the stick if needs must), hungry to win, and with the right answers to the problems the Tories cannot solve.
Here's the thing. Without Brexit, Johnson hasn't got a lot to offer the new Tory voters. Indeed, well-respected strategists are recommending not to unduly bother spending much time pleasing them. And, as if by magic, now the election is safely out of the way local government funding is set to fall in the Tories' recent acquisitions and monies diverted to the Home Counties and the South East. It's almost as if Johnson is determined to mug off his new support. Having accomplished their most stunning victory in decades they are, with unseemly haste, undoing the conditions for a repeat performance. The opportunities for Labour then are there, in fact they're already starting to yawn, but they can only be exploited if we look back at the last four-and-a-half years and avoid the same mistakes.
Were you surprised to find Keir Starmer at the top of YouGov's Labour leadership poll? Can't say I was, to be honest. Running at 31% vs Rebecca Long-Bailey's 20% (and 61% to 39% if there is a run off between the two), the omens are not auspicious for the left. Not least because it seems some of us are happy to throw their lot in with Keir, or "Starmzy" has he's started to be known in some quarters. How and why has he taken an early lead over the candidate who was the heir apparent straight after the election?
First off, a quick note about the polling itself. Since its publication we've had the same old, same old tendency of conspiracy theorists and Twitter stans declare the poll ... a conspiracy. YouGov is owned by Tories, not every candidate has declared their intentions yet, how does YouGov know their sample is representative and, well, do you know anyone who's been surveyed by YouGov? The argument goes the Tories want Starmer, so they have their polling company cook up a result that has him come out on top. While uninterested in how polling works, if the comrades can manage a bit of reflection they might want to think about how, this time, YouGov got the election right. And how, during the 2015 and 2016 Labour leadership contests, they got both of those right on the basis of the same pool of Labour members. None of this invalidates the argument that polls are used to shape political debate (they are), nor that they can't be shifted (they can), but it is nevertheless slightly concerning a section of the party prefer clinging to illusions than comprehending the challenge the left has in front of it.
Back to Starmer's lead, there are two intertwined parts to this: left failure and the composition of the membership. Transforming the Labour Party in four years after a century of right wing domination was always a huge ask, and while it has done so in many ways what hasn't been addressed is the party's deep seated anti-intellectual culture. True enough, there is an explosion of left wing thought and a rebirth of socialist ideas thanks to the Corbyn moment, but this has been diffuse and spearheaded by individual initiative and comrades coming together mainly outside of party structures. For most of 2019, it remained the case that Labour Party meetings were the best place to go if you wanted to avoid politics. Who needs meetings about policy or labour movement history when much fun can be had discussing process and procedure? But party education isn't, or rather shouldn't be about jolly debates and showing off your depth of knowledge, it's about rounding out members and transforming them from passive voting and leafleting fodder into people who can organise, lead, and help politicise others. Notwithstanding the sharpening happenstance of the 2019 election, which turned tens of thousands of members into battle hardened activists and effectively cadreising them, the party officially remained steadfast in doing nothing about the political development of its members.
The result? Under the impact of traumatic defeat, significant numbers of people who supported Jeremy Corbyn previously and were mobilised by the appalling behaviour of the Labour right have politically collapsed behind not-the-left candidate. This, however, only goes part of the way. The second strength is how Starmer taps into the residuum of remain feeling in the party. After 2017, Labour's leadership didn't really make the case for retaining its election positioning and basically gave continuity remain free rein to organise around the second referendum, when they should have been challenged. This was picked up on by elements of the Labour right (and the centrist/liberal establishment) as a means of driving a wedge between pro-Corbyn members and voters, and Labour itself. This culminated in the disastrous EU elections this May and, to prevent the party's position disintegrating entirely Labour had no choice but to adopt the second referendum, with all the electoral consequences that followed. None of this was inevitable and the leadership could have used its considerable standing to assert its view on Brexit, but alas. Keir Starmer as the most prominent shadcab advocate for a second referendum is the personification of this strand of opinion he did so much to cultivate, a consequence of Corbynism's failure to consolidate. And for this reason he's well placed as a sort of unity candidate who manages to straddle the left and the right.
In this respect, as an opening salvo RLB's progressive patriotism argument may prove to be a misfire. Going remainy won't cut the mustard whereas a pitch that emphasised holding the Tories to account for using Brexit for attacking our people could have generated more of a positive buzz. However, in this first pre-contest skirmish Starmer's base is unruffled, giving him a free hand to move next wherever he pleases which, if he is smart, will be confronting the soft leave/blame remain school of thought championed by Ian Lavery and Lisa Nandy. And if he isn't, he'll set about dismantling his own support just as Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, and Liz Kendall did a life time ago. Unfortunately, there is zero chance of that happening. Which leaves the position of the left more precarious than it should be.
Amid the chatter and analysis, British politics' bit-part actors, the Liberal Democrats, have almost entirely slid from view. This isn't to say what happened to them wasn't devastating. For a number of reasons, despite Labour's seat loss and inroads into traditional seats the result was bad but not apocalyptic for it, whereas LibDems have got to really start asking themselves searching questions.
Consider the performance. 3.7m votes, up four percentage points on 2017. And, thanks to the vagaries of First Past the Post, a net loss of one seat. Okay, that loss was Jo Swinson's welcome collapse by the slimmest of margins but a result is a result. But look more closely and there are some serious troubles. Forget for a moment the slew of defectors they took on from the other parties, in this election the party gained five but lost six, a feat mirroring what we saw in 2017 where five seats were lost despite a net gain of four. This suggests a real difficulty in putting down roots as well as their greater exposure to electoral volatility.
That however is not a natural force. Electoral volatility is the product of underlying social trends and can be stoked and exploited under the right circumstances, which Boris Johnson has just demonstrated. The truth of the matter is the LibDems could have done much better, but they fundamentally misread the situation. What they got right was how exploiting remain would, from the narrow perspective of party building, offer the opportunity of winning over Labour and Conservative voters. What they got wrong was the catastrophic execution.
The last couple of year's worth of by-elections has shown a propensity for the LibDems to take seats from the Tories more so than any other party. It was reasonable to assume those making the switch were the layer of Tory voters who were appalled at Theresa May's mishandling of Brexit, and the reckless affectations of Boris Johnson in office. Also, the 2017 election had showed Tim Farron's strategy of going after Labour voters by pretending to be more moderate lefties was a non-starter. And so after the election of Jo Swinson, a pivot to the right and treating the EU elections as a second referendum served them well. The Brexit Party was the run away winner, but picking up 16 MEPs certainly did the trick. But, at the peak of her powers, Swinson scattered the seeds of her own destruction.
The first was making the novice's error of treating the EU elections like a real election. About only a third participate, they are more likely to be older voters and, as second order elections, are the occasion for protest voting. All Swinson needed to do was look at UKIP's performance in EU elections vs parliamentary elections since gaining their first berths in Brussels back in 1999. They helped drive the Tory agenda and got the referendum to happen, but it did not translate into seats. And so we had the risky turn to hard remain, a gamble of doubling down on what netted success previously would, contrary to all evidence, cash in. The problem was simply saying that the referendum should be set aside, even if a LibDem government is never going to happen, certainly helped feed the 'metro elites want to steal your Brexit' line and contributed to firming up the Tory vote, while simultaneously presenting as illiberal and anti-democratic. There is daring, and then there is reckless.
The second big issue was how the LibDems adapted themselves to the incomers via Change UK's miserable demise, and then directly from the Tories. Here, Swinson was guided by parliamentary and not electoral politics. Given their participation in the trashing of Jeremy Corbyn and then flying the coup because, among other things, Labour Party members were no confidencing them, Swinson pushed Corbynphobia to ridiculous extremes, going as far to say she would not countenance supporting a caretaker Labour government even if it was committed to a second referendum. That was good enough to get the former CHUKa artists on board, and no doubt helped convince right wing but pro-EU Tory MPs that the LibDems were worth a punt. This, however, was not going to play out electorally. Presumably, Swinson thought her anti-Corbynism would endear her to those centre-leaning, ballpark-remainy Tory voters too. In fact, by barely saying anything about policy, apart from the dull-as-ditchwater "skills wallet" and joining in the Corbyn-is-evil pile on, the LibDems were successful in taking away a thin but significant - in some seats - layer of voters from Labour, but by adding to the cacophony they only reminded remainy Tories that Labour was their nemesis and there was only one way of seeing Corbyn off: by voting Tory.
In addition to the politics was the presentation. Good grief, the presentation. Never before in British politics has a party run such a narcissistic campaign around a figure with so very little to shout about. The reasoning was as someone barely introduced to audiences beyond the Westminster cognoscenti, a bit of flash branding was married to the totally dishonest campaigning, the party could alternately hoodwink and charm voters into backing them, that somehow the debut of Swinson decked out in anti-Corbynism, centrism, and remain would all come together in a Cleggmania repeat. It didn't work out that way. While not an incompetent performer in front of studio audiences, we had the peculiar spectacle of her having to account more for Tory policies like the bedroom tax and cuts to public services than, um, the Tories. Johnson certainly got stick for his past record and his lies, but not for the record of a party that has been in Number 10 for nearly a decade. Instead, rather than being the hope that could cut through the middle, the Tories regarded the LibDems a passing dust cart and duly left it to them to carry their refuse.
Where now then? Their strategy in tatters, their leader gone, and their raison d'etre settled for the foreseeable. Of course, it first depends on who the new leader is going to be. Ed Davey and Baroness Sal Brinton are caretaking presently, and no doubt Davey's going to have another shot. And then there is Layla Moran, whose name was floated during the last leadership contest. It was also said during this summer's silliness that she was one of several MPs open to working with Jeremy Corbyn's Labour. Obviously, what happens to the party next depends on who they select. Davey was as much signed up to the hard remain/Corbyn-sceptic/strong leader rubbish as Swinson was and, as a good Orange Book'er and former coalition minister there's unlikely to be much of a switch. The only real question is how long will he resist before taking the "short cut" of campaigning to re-join the EU than rebuilding properly.
Therefore, assuming she stands and her pragmatism goes beyond parliamentary jockeying, Moran seems better placed to begin the process of recovery. And that recovery means concentrating fire on the Tories, helping build a better relationship with Labour - whoever Jeremy's successor turns out to be - and putting the Orange Book in the bin. Her model is not Nick Clegg, nor Farron nor Swinson, but further back - the well-liked Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy. They were able to build the strength of the LibDems over time by explicitly positioning themselves as part of a broad anti-Tory coalition and, when Blair was in power, a fuzzily centre leftish conscience that managed to appeal to floating Tory voters who, for whatever reason, would never countenance voting Labour. Such a move presents Labour with its own challenges, but it also does the Tories. If at the next election the Tories are going to be dumped out of office, that means Labour does the heavy lifting but the LibDems also have their own part to play.
The question is now we face up to four or five wasted years of climate inaction, economic stagnation, attacks on working people, and the scapegoating of minorities, will the Liberal Democrats step up to the plate?
It's happened more than once. Since last Thursday a number of colleagues have said they thought about me as the election results rolled in. Not because I'm our office's Mr Labour or the fact there's very little to me except politics, but because of my shtick. If I'm known for anything at all it's as the Tory decline guy. I've banged on about how Labour is increasingly aligned with an emergent and ever-more dominant section of the working class, and also how, on the flip side, the changing class structure and composition of the Tory vote is storing up significant problems for them. Problems that could put their viability as a party of government into question in the years to come. Quite understandably, with a majority of 80, a whisker away from 14 million votes and a broad advance in to seats never held by the Tories before, you could be forgiven for thinking my focus should be on the long-term decline of Labour. The Tories, contrary to everything written here these last seven years, are in rude ass health.
Yet despite their handsome win the declinist tendencies have not gone away and, in many respects, Boris Johnson's triumph is a culmination of these trends. This has gifted him a wider base for sure, but as New Labour eventually discovered having support that is miles wide but only an inch deep leaves it prone to evaporation. The new Tory voters have injected some new tensions into Johnson's voter coalition he's going to have to manage, and while he is pressing ahead with gerrymandering the electoral system around party interests his win, paradoxically, might curtail the disappearance of some of the small seats, like Stoke Central, which certainly would be on the chopping block.
First things first, when a party is in decline that does not rule out its capacity to win elections and recruit supporters. For a while. Decline is never linear and can affect periods of growth and apparent renewal. This Tory win should be seen in this light. Writing last year, I argued there were three possible futures for the Tories: disintegration and splits between the hard Brexit right, the traditional Tories, and the remainy-Cameroon continuity wing. The second was stagnation arising from managing the Tories as was by doubling down on Brexit, and a more moderate Christian Democrat-style make over minus the illiberalism and bigotry. As it turned out, Johnson gave us a combination of all three. Signalling his intent in the Tory leadership contest to pile up leave votes versus a disunited remain-adjacent opposition, Johnson's reckless approach - which even saw his brother quit in disgust - successfully broadcast his intent to get Brexit done, to coin a phrase. He wagered that chucking out remainy rebels would trouble few Tory voters, and the horrendous prospect of Jeremy Corbyn would remind remain-inclined supporters that they're Tories first. And it paid off.
There is more to this than just referendum determinism. It is well established by now that there are clear age patterns when it came to the Brexit vote and the last three general elections. And these age splits are not the consequence of essentialist nonsense about people growing more conservative as they age. They are rooted in class relationships and the acquisition of property.
I'm not one for crediting Ben Bradley for, well, anything, but a recent thread of his explaining Tory success in the likes of Mansfield, Bolsover and Stoke etc. shows he knows but simultaneously misrecognises his support. The key to Tory advance, he argues, is understanding that the bulk of the working class is uninterested in socialism and radical change. They join unions out of self-protection, and go on strike to advance wage claims and defend existing conditions if provoked, and not because their heads are filled with Bolshevist dreams. Bradley is right about the pragmatism, up to a point. This was the basis of Labourist politics in the post-war period and, to a lesser extent, the persistent and significant minority of workers who ritually voted Tory. Collective action was a way of defending and raising living standards, but beyond that a quiet life was the heart's desire of the many. And now? A lot of these people, regardless of their politics then, now draw their pension and queue up outside the postbox to mail in their Tory votes. The actually existing working class are, in the main, non-unionised, know little to nothing of collective bargaining and the other institutional trappings of strong trade unions, and are housed, shuffling boxes back and forth, in metal sheds sitting atop the pits the likes of Bradley lionises.
The working class our "blue collar Tories" and their Blue Labour analogues get into a lather about is the working class of the past. The contemporary working class, the socialised worker is disproportionately young, more likely to be disengaged from official politics, but also largely spontaneously anti-Tory thanks to how the Tories are barriers to getting on and have vested interests in keeping this state of affairs so their voter coalition can hold together.
Why the old and the retired then. Why are they prepared to return governments who actively make life tougher for their children and grand children. Well, obviously, they don't see it like that. At its most conscious it's going to be articulated as tough love but ultimately, as a group of voters and a segment within the wider class structure there are certain structural characteristics conditioning their choices. The first is property. After a life time of work under a more benign economic and political settlement than now, they are more likely to own a home and have a decent pension. A decent number hold small quantities of shares. As modest as this property ownership is, you want to keep hold of it. And so suggestions Labour are going to tax the rich is code for 'they want to nationalise my bungalow'. Property, therefore, is something to be jealously guarded.
On top of this has to be considered the atomising effects of retirement. From the discipline of the working day to a modest but real enough freedom, retirement opens up the vistas of free time (conditioned by income, naturally) not available to those in work. As such it is a relative estrangement from the social and, therefore, the interests articulating and clashing within it. Further, whether a pensioner has property or not - about a third don't - the bulk of retirees are on fixed and modest incomes without the means, and in some cases the capacity, to make good shortfalls if, for whatever reason, something goes wrong. This means pensioners are prey to the sorts of ontological anxieties. In this case, a suspicion of change, a bewilderment tinged with fear about the state of the world, and a propensity to soak up stories that feed these anxieties. See The Mail, for example. Within this imaginary Corbyn was a danger because he cavorted with Britain's enemies, and condensed all their fears around tolerance, multiculturalism, softness, and big spending. He epitomised all that was wrong, now and in the immediate future. And so their votes for "change", be it Brexit or Boris, is a vote against a world that scares them, do not understand, and do not want to understand. This is pensioner as petit bourgeois.
Social being conditions consciousness, and the Tory gains demonstrate this better than anything else. In Bed Bradley's Mansfield, over the last three decades (according to Centre for Towns research), the number of over 65s are up 30%. Bolsover 35%. Scunthorpe 40%. Younger people, the socialised workers, have tended to mover where the jobs are - hence the massive Labour majorities in the big cities - and those left are more likely to be stuck in the more precarious, low paid end of the labour market and not be as likely to vote as their pensionable neighbours. Therefore Labour's collapse in these seats has been a long time coming - but could have been headed off. The Tory victory then was brought by attracting older voters by patriotism, their attachment to the eternal solidity of Britain/England in an uncertain world and their outrage at London elites disregarding their leave votes. After all, Brexit for them is not about Singapore-on-Thames but asserting independence, putting the Great back into GB and sparking off national renewal.
Well played then, Boris Johnson. However, taking these deprived constituencies into the roster of Tory seats means the party is going to have to learn to manage them if it wants to keep them. Immediately, under the boundary review undertaken earlier this decade a few dozen of these seats were slated for disappearance when they were Labour's. Johnson certainly has a majority big enough to get rid if he was minded, but that could do the Tories an unnecessary mischief, so the criteria is going to have to be thought about carefully. The second concerns postal votes, which the Tories rely on now much more heavily than Labour, and photo ID at polling stations, which is going to disadvantage the older worker/pensioner base than younger workers who carry more identification you can shake a stick at. There was no suggestion in today's Queen's Speech these were being caveated in any way, so we shall see how they handle this issue - or if they even identify it. Also announced, which doesn't bode well for our blue collar seats, is the absence of a hike to the minimum wage and watering down the already paltry policy concerning nurses' bursaries. Johnson can carry on in this cavalier way while basking in the victory glow, but it doesn't last long. Without a Brexit wedge in four or five years' time, if the Tories have clearly done nothing for these areas, what then?
The curiously empty manifesto offers some clues. Having successfully elided patriotism with Brexit and appealed to enough voters, the planned assaults on Travellers' property, the free speech "protections" and review of "low quality" courses in universities, the move to the much trailed points-based immigration system all offer culture war opportunities as per Bannon/Cummings. They hope running scapegoating and scaremongering campaigns on these issues will appeal to its traditional and its new support alike by prodding their fears and stoking up their anxieties. It's the oldest trick in the right's play book.
Johnson, however, is not invulnerable. His coalition can be undone, must be undone. One is his diet of thin gruel and hard Brexit for these communities. Things will change here alright, for the worse. Undoubtedly, the culture war posturing aided by their press satraps will find ways of blaming those who do not "believe in Britain" for it. Unless Johnson pillages Labour's manifesto and comes up with something. The exacerbation of tensions with the SNP should, at least initially, aid the Tories in terms of the thrifty English standing up to the grasping Scots, but issues around the union could portend a constitutional clash. And there is Labour as well. There is little chance of a lurch back to, as Peter Hain put it, "wishy-washy centrism" and Labour's radicalised activist army aren't going anywhere. If the party spends the next several years organising in communities, meeting people's needs, registering voters, and doing the slow job of winning back the Corbyn-sceptical-but-Brexit-happy, a Johnson government with little to no material improvements to its name and fiddling while climate change burns offers many openings.
The Tories won then because Johnson was better able to exploit the dynamics of working class decomposition better than Labour was able to ride the wave of working class recomposition, as it did in 2017. The Tory victory shouldn't blind us to the fragility of the voter coalition now assembled, meaning it's too early to suggest last Thursday represents a renewal and reversal of their long-term decline. And, happily, thanks to the interests they have to manage already the biggest obstacle to stabilising the composition of this vote is the Tory party itself.
"What happened to Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t a character assassination, it was a character exposure. The press didn’t destroy Corbyn, he destroyed himself years before he took the leader’s job. The Tory press couldn’t have handpicked a more ideal rival candidate if they tried." So writes Oz Katerji, Mail hack for all of five minutes. Yet what he writes is true, up to a point. As far as the establishment goes, Corbyn was and is not acceptable. They buried him under a mountain of shit, and a load of it stuck. But how do we understand that demonology, a monstering so total that it cut through to millions of people to the point where you could ask why punters didn't like Jeremy Corbyn and they couldn't answer why. And more importantly, how can it be countered when the next leader faces the same? And what should Labour learn from the mistakes Corbyn made?
Jeremy Corbyn would not have been my first choice for Labour leader and, indeed, was not. But let's be clear, Jeremy Corbyn was the only left wing MP who could have got through the parliamentary party's gatekeeping and on to the leadership ballot, and precisely because he was an unknown quantity to large numbers of the left-leaning public he was able to draw hundreds of thousands into the party and transform it from an eviscerated husk into something much greater. Yes, Corbyn came with much baggage. It was one reason why I was sceptical and wrote about it at the time. The other, which powered my initial Corbyn-scepticism was the credibility factor. i.e. Steady-as-she-goes centre leftism is the only thing palatable to the electorate, and so following the New Labour play book we have to tail the electorate instead of persuading and offering leadership.
This was it then: too left wing and too compromised by past associations. All throughout the Labour leadership election, you expect plenty of mud to be flung and flung it was. Rather than confront the programme Corbyn put to the selectorate he was criticised and belittled using all the old smears and stratagems. Only Yvette Cooper had a go at critiquing Corbyn directly, but didn't lay a glove because she interpreted nationalisation as a straight up Croslandite swap of private managers for Whitehall staff, and not the wider democratic vision at the heart of a reconceptualised public ownership. And as it became clear he was going to win, the rhetoric ramped up and swamped straight forward political criticisms. Labour MPs quickly went to Tory papers and fed them all the attack lines later regurgitated in op-ed after front page after comment column. And so when the wider public started paying attention, the spin put on his record meant Corbyn came before them as a renegade who would do Britain in. From September 2015 through the second leadership contest to the outset of the 2017 general election, the perception stuck for millions of people not because they had made their mind up, but because the initial framing was reinforced daily by a collective press exercise in demonology, backed by the broadcast media and fed incessantly by Labour's scab tendency of MPs. And following the election in which Labour exceeded expectations, it wasn't long before it started all over again. These last two years were an exercise in de-legitimation for which many of those self-same MPs who put the boot in paid the price - a fitting fate if our people weren't going to suffer because of their petty blacklegging vendetta.
Yet this experience did show something. The powers that be threw the kitchen sink at Corbyn before the 2017 general election and it largely bounced off. Media power isn't total power. Nevertheless, I say largely because there is reason to believe that if the Tory party's generous little helpers in Labour's ranks hadn't tried undermining the left and were much more disciplined we could have won in 2017. Alas, they ensured it didn't happen and it will now forever inspire a cornucopia of what if fantasies. The lesson then, which really shouldn't bear repeating, is the media are going to come for whoever leads the party. They will demonise and scandalise, terrify and vilify whoever takes the top job. And while the next leader is unlikely to suffer the same degree of abuse Corbyn endured, they need to be ready for it and have an aggressive press operation in place to rebut, ridicule, and stamp on whatever nonsense comes their way.
In the hands of the Murdochs, the Mails, and the Melts Corbyn became a monster who wanted to nationalise everything, compromise the country's security, stick undesirables in the gulag, and run the country into the ground. And the job worked a treat, especially with those layers of the population whose situation is ontologically angsty. People will not countenance voting for someone who frightens them, and that is as true of Tory voters who trembled at the thought of Corbyn in Number 10 as it was Labour supporters fearful of what five more years of Johnson means for them.
Still, while Corbyn was subject to the worst press and broadcast coverage ever received by a leading politician, there are mistakes he and his team made that helped his opponents. The first was the perception of indecision on Corbyn's part. This was rooted in a desire to be seen as someone whose authority grew from consensus rather than control. The thing is with a parliamentary party in open revolt and letting the scab tendency run riot with their attacks, this not only sapped the will of thousands of activists but fatally damaged his standing with the public. For the punters at home hearing constantly about problems in the Labour Party, the failure to do anything about the complainers undermined faith in his capacity to deliver Labour's ambitious programme. The people around Corbyn were often accused of being Stalinist, and yet perhaps we should have seen a little more Stalinism and a little less tolerance of the intolerable. After the 2017 election there was a window of opportunity to give MPs who consistently undermined the party the heave ho, and it was an opportunity missed.
The second refers to anti-semitism. Corbyn obviously isn't anti-semitic, but should have anticipated the likelihood of attacks coming from that direction. After all, as an active promoter of the Palestinian solidarity movement he would be familiar with the false equivalences made between anti-semitism and criticisms of Israel. Yes, Corbyn was hamstrung to a degree by a party apparat who sat on cases because it was factionally convenient, by utter idiots who prized their right to be "provocative" above party discipline and the damage to the wider movement and, his own past associations and blind spots and, sadly, cases of allies looking the other way, but from the off there should have been zero tolerance and expulsions. Instead we had a situation where it's become a running sore, and where the previously moribund Jewish Labour Movement falsely claimed the party is infested and riddled with anti-Jewish racism. This was obviously damaging as far as the party's relationship with the Jewish community was concerned, and a number of good Jewish comrades were alienated from Labour as a result. It didn't have to be this way.
And there was the campaign itself. It's always difficult to impossible to raise criticisms during an election because, well, a political party is not a debating society. But the party did make some elementary mistakes. As idiotic as Johnson's Get Brexit Done mantra was, fixating on that plus his two other main proposals - recruit 20k extra coppers, and throw more money at the NHS - meant that on the trip from doormat to pedal bin those three simple messages easily translated. Labour on the other hand offered a smorgasbord of goodness. Yes, the manifesto had to be ambitious thanks to the scale of the challenges facing us. But it could have been sold better by returning to three key pledges and hammering away at them. The Tories don't overcomplicate things, and neither should we.
The second big campaign issue was timing. Shortly before the election some honourable members and Labour activists, me included, argued that we should not give Johnson his general election. The polls didn't look great, and Johnson was forced to backtrack on his foolhardy promise to get Brexit done by Hallowe'en. Instead of letting him stew, we helped extract him from the mire. Johnson went from being the prisoner of parliament to, now with his majority, its jailer. Where the left went wrong, and this is not entirely on Corbyn, was the belief in the transformative power of Labour's activist army. And yes, it was transformative in the sense of tens of thousands of people finding comradeship and forging tighter bonds in the face of struggle. A process, if you like, of cadreisation in politically testing circumstances. This has deepened the left's handle on the party, but wasn't enough to carry the election. The 2019 general election is a case study in the limits of voluntarism.
And lastly, Brexit. There was no easy answer here and Labour was caught in a perfect trap. Nevertheless, this could have been handled better. It is one thing to offer a second referendum, but quite another for a large chunk of the shadow cabinet to say they would campaign to remain come what may. This was completely unnecessary from the standpoint of stymieing the bleed of pro-EU voters to the LibDems and the Greens, but would have overly antagonised a layer of leave voters who subsequently "lent" the Tories their vote to get Brexit over the line. Johnson, sadly, was right to point out the absurdity of a Labour Brexit deal that no one who negotiated it wanted to support.
As the dust settles and we draw lessons from this election for what comes next, we have to be prepared to criticise our performance. Yes, the media did a number on the labour movement and were helped at every turn by a faction of wreckers who want to turn the clock back to the bad old days of crapping on workers and undermining our base. And yet, while Jeremy Corbyn was neither the messiah nor a very naughty boy. We have to take what was good, learn from the mistakes, and forge our path anew.
Last night was a disaster. The exit poll was a pit that swallowed all our hopes, and it didn't get any better as the night wore on. Collectively, we're numb. And angry, very angry. It's tempting to point fingers at the media, at the scabs in our own party, the person of Jeremy Corbyn, and the character of the campaign itself. Each had their own part to play and will get the analytical treatment here, in due course. However, possessing more efficacy than everything else, it was Brexit that did the heavy lifting for the Tories. Despite our best efforts and, at times, its crowding from the airwaves by other issues this was the Brexit election - as anyone who did the most cursory door knocking will tell you - and Johnson used it as a wedge to bust open so-called heartland seats. Yet saying Brexit did for Labour and leaving it at that is just not good enough. There was no easy route for the party to take.
When Labour shifted its position from constructive ambiguity to having a second referendum with an option for remain, it was bound to cause the party pain. Circulating memes suggesting Labour was more successful in 2017 than yesterday because of its referendum positioning are just not credible. Quite apart from the thorough monstering Corbyn and the party got throughout 2018 and this year, readers might recall the summer's EU election results. You remember, the one where both parties of government were utterly routed because the Tories couldn't get their deal through, and the alleged "confusion" about Labour's position. The Brexit Party and the LibDems cleaned up because they offered coherence. Suppose then Labour spent the time since resisting calls for a second public vote. Johnson would have got his deal and contrasted his full fat Brexit with Labour's "remainer's Brexit" and bang, a very similar result with the added catastrophe of major inroads from the LibDems and Greens out and about on their People's Vote nonsense. As it stood, even with the the second referendum party policy Labour still lost four remain votes for every Labour leaver gone elsewhere. How do we begin to explain this?
There is a very complex dynamic of decomposition and recomposition in play here. Basically, what landed on Labour yesterday was the culmination of the disintegration of the labour movement's community base. The wiping out of Labour in Scotland (reconfirmed again at this election) was decades in the making, as was Johnson's successful offensive in England and Wales. You know the story off by heart by now. The Thatcher government accelerated deindustrialisation by loosening capital controls and letting businesses export jobs, itself enabled by her smashing of the labour movement. The consequences for many communities, especially in the Midlands, Northern England, parts of Wales and Scotland, was not just closures and economic depression as deep as the 1930s but the slow break up of these communities. The identity anchor of place is pretty empty if that's the single unifying characteristic of a particular locality. As families moved out and strangers moved in, as landlords bought up property and increased the turnover of residents, as people in any district were subdivided among hundreds of employers instead of two or three big local industries and their associated supply chains, as private life became, well, increasingly privatised community bonds frayed to the point of irrelevance. Most communities are communities in name only, a collection of houses clustered around an arrangement of roads. They are dormitories with inner city, suburban, and estate place names attached.
The Tories in the 1980s very deliberately cultivated the breaking up of working class communities to undermine the labour movement, but never did they dream the consequences of doing so would see the likes of Stoke, Wrexham, Bolsover, and Darlington fall to them in a general election. I plan on writing more on this very soon, but there are three key factors in play on top of community fragmentation: the specific issues with old people and their voting behaviour, the stoking of ontological anxiety, and the disproportionate exclusion/absence of younger workers from the political process. As such, the symbolism that is potent and does command collective fealty originates outside of them, such as sporting loyalties and, above all, the nation. It's why you can look at the same kinds of people living in the same kinds of places in England and Wales on the one hand, and Scotland on the other and find one set of seats voting Tory and the other SNP. One right, one left, both, for a lot of these voters, embodiments of a permanent and potent sense of belonging in the absence of other collective symbolic resources. And so comrades who are puzzled by people who cling to Brexit, despite the disruption and the damage that goes along with it, need to understand its deep emotional resonance with the everyday consciousness and unconsciousness of millions of people.
The insight of the Blue Labour people, that this is a problem, is true. Their prescription that we can win back these people by putting the Union Jack on our leaflets and being a little bit racist would be disastrous. But of course this section of the Labour right are going to think that: it's their fast diminishing base. In truth, this part of the working class itself is in decline. The retirees, who comprise the bulk of the new Tory support, did jobs in their working lives that either do not exist any more, are in sharp decline, or have been transformed utterly. You go after this declining demographic if you want. Many Labour MPs did on a ad hoc basis over the last few years, and now their political careers repose in freshly dug graves.
As I've argued before, Corbynism is the first mass expression in English and Welsh politics of a new working class. Its features are the immaterial character of its labour, that is it produces knowledge, services, care, relationships, and subjectivities/identities, and it depends on our social capacities and competencies as social beings - skills that can only be parasited off but not directly possessed by capital (more here and here). Acknowledging immaterial labour is not the same as the old embourgeoisement thesis, nor is it about glamourising this kind of work. The typical socialised worker is your care home worker or call centre employee, not relatively privileged programmers or university lecturers. In fact, you are very likely to find millions of the former distributed right across the working class constituencies the Tories won but, for a number of reasons, are not as politically engaged as the huge concentrations you can find in the big cities. By virtue of their work they are much more likely to be socially liberal than older workers, which lends itself to a spontaneous liberal internationalism (and therefore greater receptivity about the EU) and, thanks to how the Tories have barred millions from the housing ladder and frustrate attempts at building stable lives, are largely anti-Conservative. Yes, anti-Tory but not spontaneously pro-Labour. As a new working class in historical terms, their relationship to politics is different and their allegiance has to be earned. The younger you are, the greater the chances you are part of this growing if not already numerically dominant section of wage and salary earners.
At this election, because of the way Brexit had played out and the shifting class dynamics underpinning leave and remain Labour had to make a very painful choice. Labour could have gone down the second referendum route, which it did, and managed to shore up its support among the rising constituency of workers. Or contested the ownership of Brexit directly with the Tories and lose not only where it did lose, but also fail elsewhere with more votes going to the LibDems and Greens - benefiting the Tories in tight fights. The agony is real, the consequences are real, but as bizarre as it may seem fresh from defeat, Labour had no other choice. And it made the right decision.
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Polling day is nearly upon us and you're still unsure about who to vote for. In the next five minutes I hope to convince you to vote Labour without boring you to tears.
Unfortunately, to get it out the way with we have to begin with Brexit. You're fed up of it, and even for a politics hack like me it's wearing a bit thin. It needs resolving one way or another so we can all move on. Yet despite Boris Johnson's promise to Get Brexit Done, in practice this means nothing of the sort. If he wins on Thursday he'll get parliament to approve his deal so we can formally leave the European Union on 31st January. This will not be the end of it. Over the next year the UK will get embroiled in more negotiations about what sort of trading relationship we should have with this country's closest neighbours and biggest traders. Johnson reckons he can have this wrapped up by next Christmas. Bear in mind it took the EU and Japan five years to get a deal, and eight years to negotiate and implement a EU/Canada agreement. A leaked communique says it can't be done. And so we can expect even more wrangling over Brexit, more arguments, perhaps a knife's edge vote or two, more chaos and uncertainty, and more wall-to-wall coverage.
Labour will avoid this.
If elected, within three months Labour will negotiate a different deal to the one Johnson has presented to the public. Our alternative will put jobs before profit margins, and living standards before loosening worker and consumer protections. This deal will then be put back to the British people in a second referendum vs remain within six months of this Thursday, and its outcome legally binding. Whether we end up leaving or remaining, for the first time since the Tories' chaotic handling of Brexit we'll have certainty about the future.
Yes, the future. If you read the Tory manifesto, there isn't a lot in it. Their tomorrows looks a lot like our todays. Overcrowded classrooms and schools sending begging letters home, no help to get people on the housing ladder, a NHS - according to their own leaked trade documents - ripe for exploitation as the price of a trade deal with Donald Trump, and nothing for people dependent on foodbanks to survive, half of whom are in work and still cannot afford to feed their families.
Labour's manifesto is different. In education and health spending, the UK lags behind most EU countries despite our being the sixth richest nation on Earth. It's not a question of where the money's coming from - there's plenty there - and more of how it is spent. If the economy is roaring ahead like the Tories claim, let's see working people benefit from it for a change. Labour's first budget will increase public sector pay by five per cent, after years of cuts and freezes, and raise the minimum wage to £10/hour without age exceptions. This puts more money into the pockets of millions, meaning they will spend more and businesses will take on more workers to meet rising demand. Labour are going to end the underfunding of schools, ensuring they are properly resourced so they can have the staff they need. Labour will also remove the epidemic levels of pen pushing that get in the way of teaching and make teachers' lives a misery, so they can spend more time in the classroom. Labour will end the fleecing of the NHS by private health interests like Virgin Healthcare, and free up resources by abolishing the wasteful internal market, make sure we recruit and train the nurses and doctors the NHS needs, and invest in cutting edge research to create powerful new treatments.
And lastly, Labour are going to address the climate emergency. The Tory manifesto carries on as if our coastal towns and villages aren't under threat from rising seas and strengthening storms. Their decade of cuts have gutted flood defences and placed hundreds of thousands inland homes at risk. Labour will not only invest to protect the country from climate change, but wants to lead the world in carbon neutral energy generation, expand solar and wind power, plant two billion trees, champion advanced battery technologies, and invest in a cheap, high quality integrated public transport. This is nothing less than a green industrial revolution which would create new jobs, strengthen the economy, mitigate the effects of increasing temperatures, and protect these islands in the face of environmental uncertainty.
These are just some of the differences between the Conservatives and Labour at this election. There are, of course, many more. But there is one last issue, and that's a question of character. Everyone knows Boris Johnson lies, whether it's about the supposed cost of Labour's promises to claiming an increase of 31,000 extra nurses really means 50,000. Married to this is an indifference to the suffering of others. Johnson not only failed Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is currently held in an Iranian jail on fictitious charges, he made her situation worse. Or how the Tories so badly bungled the death of Harry Dunn, a motorcyclist who died after getting knocked over by the wife of an American intelligence operative, that the family are suing the government following misleading statements made in the Commons. Or even today how Johnson showed no contrition over a four year old boy with pneumonia forced to sleep on a pile of coats on the floor of Leeds General because of a lack of beds - and even swiped the reporter's phone while mechanically repeating pre-scripted lines. Is he going to change if he gets four or five more years? Would you trust Johnson to do right by your family when the Tories have failed to do so since 2010?
Jeremy Corbyn on the other hand is very different. The reason he gets so much stick and attracts bad press isn't because of who he was photographed with, or has spoken to. It's because Corbyn has spent his career sticking up for the voiceless, for the marginalised, and for working people. With Corbyn as Prime Minister, you know that he cares about jobs being plentiful, that schools and hospitals get the resources they need, and that people will be paid enough so they don't worry about making rent or struggling to put food in front of their children. The needs of the many will come before the needs of the few, to coin a phrase. Corbyn's vision of Britain is a place where people can own their own home, don't have to take out loans to afford a decent life, and where we rise to meet the problem of climate change instead of pleading with polluters to mend their ways. I don't know about you, but I'm fed up of that encroaching sense of dread when thinking about the years to come. For the first time in a long time, if Labour forms the next government we can actually look forward to a better future.
In this election, vote for yourself, your families and your friends. Vote Labour.
Yours sincerely,
Phil
One of the benefits of holding centrist journalism in contempt is the hacks can never disappoint you. And so it came to pass the New Statesman editorial carried the line according to Jason Cowley: that faced with Boris Johnson's Tory party and all it entails, from hard Brexit to hard misery for millions of people, versus Labour with its transformative programme for the better, we get some mealy-mouthed whingeing about Jeremy Corbyn being bad mmmkay, so bad in fact he's indistinguishable from the Prime Minister.
In the grand scheme of things it shouldn't matter. NS is a relatively low circulation magazine for people who prefer reading about over doing politics, but is a cornerstone of opinion formation for liberal establishment punditry. What it features does matter to a degree because it can catalyse talking points and headlines. And what do you know, 15 seconds with the search engine of your choice reveals how the right wing press have gleefully picked up on the story. The likes of the Express and Mail are all splashing on how this "left wing magazine" thinks Corbyn is unfit for office. And so, unfortunately, for as long as the dying networks of centrist hacks have reach, their rubbish must be rebutted.
What then is the substance of the editorial's charges against Labour? The first is our old friend, anti-semitism. Like the rest of the bourgeois press, the New Statesman has proven itself curiously incurious when it comes to the depths of its so-called institutionalism in the Labour Party. Have there been failings in dealing with it? Certainly. Has it been blown out of all proportion? Absolutely. From day one of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership his opponents have hunted for angles from which to attack Corbyn and, by extension, the left's dominance in the party. Alleged sexism had its trial run. Corbynism as a middle class phenomenon enjoyed some time in the spotlight. And we've had the nonsense of Corbyn as an agent of the Czechoslovak intelligence services. The only thing that has stuck is, because of his anti-imperialist take on foreign policy matters and efforts at promoting dialogue and peace, are past associations with sundry terrorist outfits and especially those wishing to see the destruction of Israel. This is enough to damn Corbyn as an anti-semite, despite possessing a record of solidarity with Jewish people long before the issue became a political football.
The accusations against Corbyn on this score are nonsensical and motivated by concerns other than racism. If the latter was the case, why do we not see our champions for political hygiene going after the Tories with equal vigour? Why do rightwingers get a pass when it comes to anti-semitism? For instance did we not see a word of criticism let alone condemnation of those party workers who purposely sat on anti-semitism complaints for factional reasons. Why? And if the party is guilty of institutional failure when it comes to dealing with anti-Jewish racism, then why has it only become an issue of process and procedure since Jennie Formby took over as general secretary, and when she made moves to expedite the expulsion of Jackie Walker this too was condemned as anti-semitism. The likes of Jason Cowley and his ilk do not peer closely into these matters because smearing Corbyn and the Labour Party is a collective effort. They are not interested in combatting racism, let alone anti-semitism. All that matters is enough muck is flung in the hope it sticks, the wellbeing of British Jews be damned.
The second gripe the New Statesman has concerns Brexit and Labour's positioning on the second referendum. The idea Jeremy Corbyn might go to Brussels to negotiate a new deal, and then sit out on a public vote between it and remaining in the EU is not to the magazine's liking. Now, I don't have the NS archive in front of me but if they didn't criticise Harold Wilson for his "reluctance" to take a position on the 1975 European referendum then one might accuse them of editorial inconsistency. Unfortunately, because of the way politics has moved these last two years it was unsustainable for Labour to ignore calls for a second referendum. Itself partly thanks to the works of Labour's opponents, the way Brexit has turned out and its grand reveal as an unmistakable project of the hard right, the party had no choice but to reposition itself or lose millions of voters to the Liberal Democrats. As managing a political project is more difficult than running a specialist interest magazine, Labour has nevertheless had to calibrate its Brexit position just enough so it can appeal to Labour leavers as well. As we know, Johnson's banking on Labour leavers leaving Labour, and so you can't criticise Corbyn for refusing to make his job easier by coming out for hard remain. After all, as some people need constantly reminding, there was a vote. Apart from that, is anyone really bothered about which way Corbyn would lean in a putative referendum? You'll remember he was lambasted by centrists and the right for not saving remain's bacon in 2016. And is simultaneously attacked for not having any leadership pull whatsoever. So which is it? Whether Corbyn matters or not depends on the dishonest exigency of whatever copy a melt columnist has to turn in, and that applies here. If Cowley was interested in mounting an honest criticism of Corbyn's positioning, it's not too much to ask for a consideration of the strategic dilemmas facing the party.
What truly damns this miserable screed is its bad faith. The New Statesman had no problem endorsing Tony Blair after Iraq, after detention without trial, and the stoking up of Islamophobia. Crimes, yes, crimes that led to the suffering and deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. One cannot simply compare the records of Blair and Corbyn and come to the conclusion the former is infinitely preferable to the latter. Unless your priority is upholding the status quo. And so when we see their anti-endorsement caveated with warm words for Labour's "transformative" programme, and the resurgence of the party under Corbyn's leadership, they're exercises in obfuscation. From the outset the editorial line has been opposed to what is happening in the Labour Party, and now it's crunch election time its antipathy to the left and loyalty to their media mates and our rotten state of affairs trump the climate emergency, the housing emergency, the cost of living emergency. I would at least have a modicum of respect for Cowley if he was up front about his not-giving-a-shittery, but like all hypocrites he has to hide behind principles that show up when they're convenient. Pathetic.
What might happen if a cockroach became Prime Minister? That is the premise of this heavy-handed satire from the accomplished novelist, Ian McEwan. This wee novella charts the adventures of Jim Sams who wakes to find himself in the body of a human being, a human being who just so happens to be a Conservative Prime Minister. It quickly transpires that nearly all of his cabinet colleagues are also cockroaches so transformed who, in their previous existence, inhabited the Palace of Westminster and were well versed in the comings and goings of politics.
At the centre of the novel is a divisive national endeavour. Before taking over the PM's body, the previous Jim was indecisive and faced backbench rebellions, the contempt of the 1922 Committee, and the hostility of the right wing press. Rebooted with insectile fortitude the new Jim is fully and resolutely hell bent on seeing the project through. Brexit? No, something altogether more controversial. Reversalism.
This scheme is, effectively, backwards economics. You pay for the privilege of going to work, but conversely when you go shopping you're paid to take goods off the hands of retailers. The idea is this would eliminate poverty and unemployment and raise living standards, while the hoarding of money is punished by exorbitant negative interest rates and unspecified penalties for having more than £25 to your name. And this scheme enjoys the imprimatur of its very own referendum, and the backing of most of the right, the very obviously Donald Trumpian US president, and the "secret" reversalist leading the Labour Party. Opposing reversalism is the 'clockwise' establishment, who argue reversing the flow of economics would lead to ruin. This is all nonsense and talking down Britain, and as proof of its soundness the UK had already lined up a reversalist trade deal to prove its viability - with Nevis and Saint Kitts.
There are some shenanigans, a near-war with France, and tight votes in the House of Commons. But they get the vote over the line by pulling a dirty pairing trick, and reversalism passes into law. The cockroaches' jobs done, they relinquish their human bodies and, spoiler alert, head back to their Westminster home warm in the knowledge the disaster, misery, and poverty of the madcap scheme would be boom time for cockroaches.
In the past, a number of comrades (me among them) have described Ian McEwan as a Blairite novelist. Partly thanks to his 2005 novel, Saturday, which is set on the day of the gargantuan anti-Iraq War march, the protagonist spends much time agonising over the case for war versus the sombre moral rectitude of the marchers shuffling along London's streets. And then later he enjoys all the fun of a home invasion robbery. Since, McEwan hasn't strayed far from the polite spectrum of centrist opinion. He voted Liberal Democrat in 2010, indicated a preference for Ed Miliband in 2015, came out against the Israel boycott not long after, and made disparaging remarks about elderly leave voters a couple of years ago.
As amusing and fun this novel is, the whole absurdity of reversalism is its not-at-all-subtle satire of Brexit, and it is here McEwan falls into the Blairite comfort zone. Like most of the political developments of the last few years, reversalism is treated like an absurdity that fell from the sky. It was a nonsense doctrine that hoodwinked millions on the basis of fantastical promises. And enough of the gullible public lapped it up. It's redolent of how the remain movement have behaved these last three years, up to and including the outright dismissal of leave voters altogether by the LibDems. The utter bampottery of McEwan's reversalism is less comic effect and more the condensing of condescension and contempt he has for the Brexit enterprise. Brexit is indeed bullshit, but it didn't come out of nowhere.
And this is where the second Blairite theme comes in: a weary suspicion of the masses thinking and acting for themselves. It's up front in Saturday, but you get it too in his last book, Machines Like Us, which imagines the digital age and Corbynism (in the shape of Prime Minister Tony Benn) 30 years ahead of time. And here, the political class take the back seat and are forced to adapt themselves the the animal passions of the mob. Though the cockroach conspiracy at the novella's heart reiterates how easy it is for the mass to be manipulated by shadowy elites who can't wait to profit by their further misery. The implied lesson? Leave politics to the professionals.
The Cockroach is good fun, pacey, and funny. But more than any of this, it's a trip into the Blairite imaginary.
Missing. The Conservative Party's 2019 General Election Manifesto. Entirely typical of Boris Johnson's performance so far, there was a muzzing of the hair and oh so funny quips, but a great void where policy is concerned, beyond the tedious "oven ready Brexit" and "get Brexit done" sound bites. Snore. Nevertheless, a lazy manifesto is something the Tories have consciously contrived. The received wisdom in party circles is that Theresa May's document was a disaster and, to be fair, it was. And so the lesson drawn is not to promise anything at all. An exercise in how a 64 page manifesto can be tissue thin.
As per the Liberal Democrat manifesto, I've read the Tory party's offering to save you time. And, what do you know, it is an absence. Sure, there's plenty of asides attacking "Corbyn" as if he's the devil incarnate, Brexit fancies on every page, and a bit of EU bashing that sees the sclerosis of Brussels bureaucracy compared unfavourably to the swift and nifty pen pushers of Whitehall. One supposes the author, a former Gove lackey and fracking lobbyist had never dealt with the DWP or the Home Office during her time at Education.
That said, because there is very little here apart from Brexit and the delusions the manifesto repeatedly indulges (save the £350m/week for the NHS, which is conspicuously absent), this is probably the most innocuous Tory manifesto I've seen. Minus the usual hobby horses, it's, well, a bit wonkish and a few side steps to the left of Labour's 2005 manifesto. It's true, read it for yourself. Lots of stuff on wellbeing, mental health, try hards on the NHS, and all topped off with photos of who they deem the more acceptable Tory candidates out there. And so the chapter on schools is illustrated with their Stoke North candidate, who happens to be a teacher. The NHS bit has a couple of nurses who are standing for the Tories. Crime with some ex-coppers, and above the policy section setting out the points-based immigration system we have a chummy photo of Priti Patel and Sajid Javid. Cheap, sick bucket-hugging stuff.
And while this is probably the most innocuous of Tory manifestos, it was preceded in its lineage by a statement of authoritarianism from May and plans to chop down public services and marketise the rest from Dave. Everything is relative, and so this is not without its signature unpleasantries. On top of the points-based stuff, which will mollify the puce-faced bigots in the shires, we have a singling out of Travellers as the numero uno group of undesirables ripe for scapegoating. The manifesto writes, "we will tackle unauthorised traveller camps. We will give the police new powers to arrest and seize the property and vehicles of trespassers who set up unauthorised encampments, in order to protect our communities. We will make intentional trespass a criminal offence, and we will also give councils greater powers within the planning system" (p.19). Can't ever see this measure used to demonise and traduce a powerless minority being turned against others. In-keeping with this theme, while protections of free speech are mentioned more than once we have this:
We will ban public bodies from imposing their own direct or indirect boycotts, disinvestment or sanctions campaigns against foreign countries. These undermine community cohesion. (p.20)
And taking aim at Johnson's old adversary, the RMT, the Tories will be requiring "that a minimum service operates during transport strikes. Rail workers deserve a fair deal, but it is not fair to let the trade unions undermine the livelihoods of others" (p.27).
To avoid accusations this document is a billionaires' manifesto (they bought it, you'll pay for it, as Jeremy Corbyn tweeted earlier), the Tories promise to get tough on tax evasion (p.35), pledging to beef up HMRC and introducing tough new penalties for the most "egregious cases". But don't let this fool you, this is but window dressing and will do nothing to address the yawning chasm of wealth and power. The Tories also plan to preside over this state of affairs well beyond this election. On p.48 we find commitments to scrap the Fixed Terms Parliaments Act, bring back the constituency boundary review to rob Labour of seats, introduce photo ID for voters, and give ex-pats the permanent right to vote in UK elections. Measures that will hold the old long-term decline in temporary check.
There are a couple more issues with the manifesto. First, there is a glaring numbers mistake. Second, on the flagship policy to reduce National Insurance and take the lowest paid out of it altogether, there is no detail at all on how this will impact state pension entitlements and eligibility for contributions-based Job Seekers' Allowance. This is a very serious issue, as those who are lowest paid are more likely to face unemployment than well-remunerated ex-spads and rubbish journalists who've climbed the greasy pole. What happens? Of this there is no answer.
Nevertheless, I think this is an interesting document. It's interesting because, as far as the collective thinking of the Tories are concerned, it shows they know thin gruel cannot be handed out forever. The emergence of Corbynism, its transformation of the British political landscape, and the mass support it commands portends a future the Tories would rather not have to deal with. And so they don't. All the big problems of the day are met with weak promises and non-committal position taking, but it does recognise the ruin of austerity, which did a great deal to activate Corbynism to start with, is no longer a viable means for ensuring the hoi polloi remain disciplined and pacified. At present, not least thanks to the contradictions of the Tory coalition they can't offer anything else. Plenty of Tories genuinely believe Brexit to be a magic bullet that will expand the economy, raise wages, and somehow make Britain a happier, healthier, wealthier place. But it won't. Brexit is nothing but a pathetic talisman.
And so this begs the question. The Tory manifesto contains very little, while Boris Johnson gurns his way about the country demanding we get Brexit done so we can "move on" and concentrate on the people's priorities. Yet those priorities are not reflected in this plan for government, which raises another question. If Johnson gets his wish and we're afflicted with him for another four or five years, what is he actually going to do?
