Full solidarity to Novara Media's Aaron Bastani. In the last fortnight he was piled on by the last people you'd want to turn your back to. Jolyon QC did some digging into Novara's funding, because the concept of a small media operation funded by donations and powered by volunteers is alien to him. Others, whose concern with anti-semitism coincided with it becoming something to attack the left with, tried smearing Aaron as a racist because of a jokey tweet sent years ago. Most egregiously Jeremy Duns (who?) wrote a clueless and tedious blog post questioning the validity of Aaron's PhD. Apparently, it was a "farce" that his thesis - on the dynamics of political communication in social movements - brings academia into disrepute because Aaron was a participant in the movement studied and, um, he didn't cite a New Statesman article from 2011 by Laurie Penny. Affecting authority on a topic one doesn't know about is chancy because the incontinent spraying of your opinions across the internet can make you look like an idiot. Except if you're plugged into the feeds of liberal Twitter, who will make you feel important and wrap you in the embrace of a centrist smug-in.
There is so much going on here I don't know where to begin. The attitude of these pitiful people and - I use this term generously - their political praxis cannot be separated out from the morbidity of liberalism. And this is not just a British thing. Here, centrism in its liberal and managerial/technocratic variants were rejected by mainstream voters of the left and right in 2017. In the United States Hillary Clinton was handily seen off by the tangerine Antichrist, and in France the God King of centrist politics is beset by a coalition of suburban citizens, just to give two examples. But let's not forget what liberalism is. It's much more than ideas in a short book, or a smattering of politicians and journalists. It is a movement.
We've talked about this before. Liberalism is a bourgeois social movement, a semi-coherent body of big business actors, the aforementioned politicians and journalists, bits and pieces of the UK state, and a mass base comprised mainly of the 'educated' middle class and small business people. It has a political party, our friends the Liberal Democrats, but the movement also has among its ranks MPs, Lords, representatives on devolved bodies, and councillors and members across the two main parties, plus odds and sods in the SNP and Plaid Cymru. Philosophically, it believes ideas drive action, and this action is the prerogative of our elected representatives. Collective action is possible, but through lobbying, petitioning and, as a less resort, peaceful demonstration. Liberal democracy is both the best and only system for reconciling the different competing pressures of any given society and, of course, the primary political unit is the individual. There should be no unfair or undue institutional or attitudinal impairments to the free exercise of their will, their desires, and their right to political participation. From our point of view, liberalism is fundamentally bourgeois because of its stress on the individual and suspicion of collectives, its privileging of representative democracy and the push-me-pull-you of parliamentary politicking, defence of the market and fundamental blindness to structural inequality and social conflict coincides with and apologises for the operation of capital.
Liberalism/centrism as a ruling class movement is in crisis. In Britain and the US, for the first time in a long time it is completely excluded from government. Trump surrounds himself with hard right ideologues and sycophants, and despite the permanent display of Tory weakness Theresa May is bulldozing ahead with her Brexit plan. Its crisis, however, cannot be reduced to this alone as there have been plenty of occasions previously where liberalism was locked out of government. What's different is a collapse in its mass purchase. In the US, it fought the Sanders insurgency in the Democrats with dirty tricks, and then moved on to Trump by, basically, ceding him political ground by fighting an almost entirely negative, narcissistic and technocratic campaign. Liberalism/centrism tried doing the same in the Labour Party against the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, and has continued on this basis in its opposition to the left ever since. But few, if any, are biting. Out of sorts in the Tories and Labour, and with the LibDems a pathetic shadow of what it once was they can feel an ill wind, and it's blowing in the direction of marginalisation and irrelevance.
This is the necessary context for understanding its political bankruptcy. Every significant political event of the last few years confounds their world view. Why the likes of Trump or Bolsonaro were victorious, or why Brexit was affirmed in a referendum the liberal establishment lined up against could not possibly have anything to do with them and their record. No, it had to be the Russians, or illegal spending, or the groupthink effects of social media. After all, their ideas are the most modern, most obvious. And this certitude has only got stronger the more reality flies in the face of their expectations. It used to be that liberals defined themselves on a left-right spectrum equidistant from each. Now it's a triangle - left and right are the slopes and the centre is the pinnacle from which they look down on both. In fact, the reverse is the case. The slopes are upwards and they're stuck in a hole. Their put downs to a resurgent left are really attempts to climb out of their pit by dragging the left down, and the more they flail helplessly the more vicious and shrill their attacks become.
And so back to the attempted monstering of Aaron Bastani. He and the comrades variously associated with Novara - Ash Sarkar, James Butler, Michael Walker, Eleanor Penny - and other outriders for Corbynism, like Grace Blakeley and Alex Nunns, not only frequently get into the media but are proven adept and articulate performers. For established liberals, it's more than a matter of simply disagreeing with them, they are competitors. Writing essays and appearing on Novara's own shows is one thing, but taking up seats on Politics Live, This Week, Newsnight and Question Time as advocates for the new left means fewer gigs for them and their like-minded mates. How to put them back in the box? Challenging their politics only gives them legitimacy as commentators, as equals with wrong ideas. But in the world of the attention economy, where commentator bankability depends on media appearances, Corbynism presents as much as an existential threat to them as it does their liberal allies and friends in the Labour Party. And so the skulduggery, the insinuation and snarking, the smears and slanders, and the borderline doxxing is about refusing legitimacy, of an attempt to discredit by exposing Aaron as someone completely beyond the pale. And if they're successful, what is the consequence? They have acted as gatekeeper, determining what is and isn't acceptable to be broadcast and discussed in mainstream outlets and made the media world that little bit more secure for themselves.
Back in September, yours truly was privileged enough to speak at the Derby Transformed event. This is the audio of the rally at the end featuring Chris Williamson, Derby City Labour Group leader Lisa Eldret, Lauren Mitchell, a Labour councillor in Hucknall in Ashfield, Paul Mason and, um, me. Please find below the recording - I start sounding off at 44.50. Also, keep an eye out for further recordings from the day on Derby Social Club's Soundcloud page.
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.
Politics is in flux and everything is up in the air, but the shifts and winding patterns of the last few years have nevertheless established two eternal truths. Back bench Tories talking a good rebellion but tripping over themselves to capitulate is one of them. And the other is the studied refusal of what was the establishment centre left to reconcile themselves with Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party. And lo as Westminster has broken up for the Christmas hols and the immediate pressure of the government's shambles dissipates, filling the void comes an avalanche of whingeing and belly aching about, you guessed it, Jeremy Corbyn.
Complementing my warm desire for a slap up dinner and a mince pie this morning was the wisdom of one David Miliband. You'll remember him, the former cabinet minister once touted as the heir to Blair, but dithered and was seen to be dithering over a coup against the blessed Gordon Brown. The man, we were told, who would have won us the 2015 general election - even though he spectacularly failed to win a leadership contest stacked in his favour, and that Labour's contact rate in his own South Shields constituency stood at an impressive 0.5% after departing office. You see, the legend of David Miliband is entirely fictional. Apart from his Macron-levels of arrogance there was nothing to commend him, and his reputation is a phantasm of wish fulfillment concocted by others. An exercise, if you will, in centrist fantasising.
Fantasy is apt when we consider his grand intervention into the Brexit debate. It's almost as if there are two Labour Brexit strategies: the one that really exists, which bases Brexit on a customs union with the European Union and a trade deal with single market access, and the one entirely made up by the galaxy brain of David Miliband. For Labour-loyal comrades without my sunny disposition, I'm sure the headline, 'Corbyn has given up on Europe. For the good of Britain, we cannot' and the blurb, "As Labour subscribes to the government’s dangerous Brexit fantasies, a people’s vote is now the only way to ensure stability" would have been enough for the red mist to descend. But let's be generous and put this topping down to the sub-editing. And we can afford to be because there's enough evidence here to convict the Prince Across the Water with dishonesty, performative ignorance, and downright nincompoopery.
Setting the bar low, he at least makes it through the first paragraph without fibbing about his opponents, but he quickly disassembles in the second. "The first illusion [leaders have in Brexit] is that the fundamental problem with Brexit is the faulty negotiating tactics of the government." He cites Boris Johnson as evidence, who as readers will know has been writing the same Telegraph article since the summer castigating Theresa May for not being bold enough, not being ambitious enough, etcetera ad nauseam. We are then told that the Labour leadership are guilty of the same sin. This, of course, is rubbish. Brexit is shit, to coin a phrase, but depending on your political priorities a range of different Brexits can be negotiated. Labour's "jobs first Brexit" is more than trite spin, it is a pointer to what kind of settlement it would be seeking - one that, funnily enough, is about protecting employment before all else. Hence why the party is opposed to May's deal, because of the extremely stringent state aid rules worked into her fudge so the Tories can close the borders to EU citizens. It's not about negotiation tactics but a substantive political difference.
Buffeted by his ignorance, David reduces Corbyn's talking points in the now infamous weekend interview with The Graun to a "better atmosphere" in the negotiation if Labour was to take them over. Thankfully, there is this thing called the internet which archives such things and we can read the article for ourselves. Corbs notes,
I think the state aid rules do need to be looked at again, because quite clearly, if you want to regenerate an economy, as we would want to do in government, then I don’t want to be told by somebody else that we can’t use state aid in order to be able to develop industry in this country.
Now, you can call this many things. You can spend time arguing about the chances of the EU accepting a customs deal with this as a red line, but "confusion", like David does? No, it's a straightforward position. Then David launches off into an irrelevant aside about the problem with Brexit, that May's negotiations and the mess the Tories have got themselves into are a product of fever dreams making contact with an unsympathetic real. True enough, but hardly a revealed truth or a keen insight. More a case of filling up the word count with faux erudition to cover up the fact you don't know what you're talking about.
We then come to David's "second illusion": the idea that once Brexit is complete politics will go back to normal. Not so. Once we leave on 29th March we have the joys of the future relationship to negotiate, not least of which being the character of trade. As David wonkily puts its, "there is no realistic future where we continue to negotiate with the EU and have the bandwidth to mobilise national willpower for the big challenges ahead." He might have a point, though with his characteristic dishonesty he cannot come up with an instance of anyone in the Labour leadership suggesting the old times are going to come back. Then again, he might not have a point. Even if May by hook and by crook gets her deal through the Commons in mid-January, the arguments and rows will move on to how the trade deal is going to look - a process, which David notes, will take years and years. True. And because it's a long time and doesn't require parliamentary timetabling, there is space to think about other things. If he'd paid any attention to British politics in the two years since Article 50 was triggered, he'd know a hell of a lot can happen.
And then we have our third illusion: that countries are lining up for trade deals with the UK. I think David needs to sort out his glasses prescription because he's obviously mistaken Liam Fox's speeches for Jeremy Corbyn's. Yes, David is right. By detaching the UK from one of the world's largest trading blocs it will find itself buffeted more by the capricious waters of the global economy, not less. The likes of Boris Johnson, the Moggites, and the freakish fauna of their backbenches sold leave voters a false prospectus: a diminution of UK sovereignty dressed up as greater independence. Again, nothing to do with Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, but quite a bit to do with the kinds of interests this section of the Tory party articulates: the hedge funds, the financiers, the disaster capitalists.
Summing it all up, our David declares "We have no time to lose in getting to grips with reality, sloughing off the illusions that have held sway on right and left, and embracing a vision of Britain’s future that is positive, empowered, progressive – and European". Does that "we" include you, David, or are you staying in exile with your obscene salary, leaving the "getting to grips with reality" for others to do? David's article is less a despatch from over the water and more a letter from another time, one in which masses of people aren't interested in politics and much fancied red princes carry all before them. There is no awareness that politics at the close of 2018 has moved on from the politics he left in 2013, that a cadre of notables hanging on his every word exist no longer, and that, well, he's irrelevant. When masses of people are politicised establishment politicians can try and intersect with it in some way, as others are David's ilk are doing, or play on the sidelines with figments of your imagination. Such is David Miliband. Pathetic, really.
The parliamentary choreography was clumsy, but we got there in the end. Mid afternoon Twitter was all aflutter with the news that Jeremy Corbyn was going to table a no confidence vote, something he'd been under pressure to table since Theresa May pulled her vote. Corbyn's threat, for that is what it was, promised a no confidence vote in the Prime Minister if she didn't name a date for the vote on her deal. Suitably spooked she conceded as such and it appeared as if the Labour leader wasn't going to announce his motion. Cue the usual moaners and screechers doing their usual moaning and screeching. The Labour press release was let loose into the social media badlands and then, stone the crows, JCorbz got up to the despatch box and said the following.
That this House has no confidence in the Prime Minister due to her failure to allow the House of Commons to have a meaningful vote straight away on the withdrawal agreement and framework for the future relationship between the UK and the EU, and that will be tabled immediately Mr Speaker.
Inelegant yes, but thankfully most people don't follow the ins and outs of parliamentary footwork. What Labour people care about, as well as supporters of the nationalist parties, Greens and, at least for the moment, the Liberal Democrats is the toppling of May is a commitment to barring EU workers from travelling and settling here. And what the UK receives in exchange are fewer trading options ans the ruinous de-integration of four decades of economic development. The global Britain the Brexit fantasists promised is nothing but a miserable, mean-spirited prospectus in practice.
What then of Corbyn's motion? It's not a real vote of no confidence because if passed it won't carry the constitutional force of a vote against the government. In that case, the path to a general election is opened. But nonetheless it's not a waste of effort, as the SNP are this evening disingenuously suggesting. The DUP aren't likely to vote against the government, and neither are the 117 rebellious MPs, at least this side of the withdrawal agreement vote. But against May is a different kettle of fish. Are Tory MPs who made a show of parading their no confidence letters in front of the cameras about to go back on this? All it takes is a handful of abstentions and May is effectively toast. Unfortunately, the likelihood of this being heard before parliament packs its bags for a fortnight is next to zero because of the government's control of the Commons' business. Nevertheless it puts pressure on the Tories and helps stir the division in the party further.
It needn't have turned out this way but May, just like her predecessor has not pursued the "national interest" (however chimerical that phrase is) in the shaping of Brexit. At each and every stage, from when she stood like an all-conquering titan and declared herself for a hard Brexit to her pathetic kowtowing to the idiots and malcontents on the backbenches, the range of interests that have exercised her the most were, initially, the short-termism of Tory party management and, since she's blown that, the stumbling on of her zombie premiership. Brexit is at an impasse because May's definition of the project, if it can be dignified with such a term, is incompatible with and can't be squared with these demands. The slate needs wiping clean, and Labour is the only one that can do it.
Why do First World War generals carry a reputation for incompetence? Because they would launch offensive after offensive against well-entrenched positions without regard to tactics, uselessly and criminally throwing away the lives of tens of thousands of young men. The stakes aren't as high, but I'm reminded of their example when surveying the strategic geniuses of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
Had things gone according to the government's timetable, after Theresa May has lost her vote on the withdrawal agreement today she would have faced a no confidence vote. There was some consideration whether this was going to be a normal vote or one aimed at May personally. It wouldn't have had any constitutional force, but made her position next to impossible. Why did Labour consider this? Because the front bench hold to the peculiar notion that if you're going to put something to the vote, you do what it takes to win it. The DUP are not May's biggest fan after doing the dirty on them on the status of Northern Ireland in the backstop. Nor are the scorned but impotent European Research Group of gurning Brexiteers, who've sat on the sidelines waiting for the number of no confidence letters to tick over the magic 48. Would they accept the opportunity to turf May out of office? Some of them probably would. But at the price of bringing the Tories down and opening the road to Jeremy Corbyn? Not. A. Chance.
Now the Prime Minister has pulled her vote, what game are this bunch of clowns paying at? Almost a who's who of Owen Smith's celebrated leadership campaign (including the great man himself), we have some of the very worst MPs to sit on the Labour benches are calling for a no confidence vote. Are they simply thick? Alas, even they are no strangers to the low skulduggery of our exalted parliamentary democracy.
Their little press conference this afternoon with the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the LibDems, and Caroline Lucas that called upon Labour to table a no confidence vote was stuffed full of ulterior motives. All of these people know it can't hope to win, so there are a couple of things going on. First and foremost is an attempt to shift Labour away from its general election first position. The thinking goes if a no confidence fails, then the hopes of an election are dashed with it - leading Labour to formally adopt a second referendum position. The attendant dangers of doing so have lessened slightly in my view, but the same discredited gang are ready to swoop in and front up the remain case (assuming remain would even be an option). And if they're at the helm, they would lose.
But, of course, it suits the nationalist parties and the Liberal Democrats to posture around a no confidence vote. They can point to Corbz and attack him for not being radical enough, for saving May's bacon when her repeated self-owns have her hanging on the ropes. For LibDems desperate to get back into the game, they think it gives them a lever with leftish remainers - once again demonstrating they don't have a single clue about what they need to do. For the SNP and Plaid, they too think there are electoral rewards from being more remainy - keeping Labour down in Scotland remains Nicola Sturgeon's permanent immediate political priority, and for PC supplanting Labour in Wales remains their strategic task.
What then of Labour's malcontents? How is their position advantaged? Again, it's part of the wedge strategy. Noting the ten-a-penny polls that show how remain/second vote friendly Labour members and Labour supporters are, here Corbyn can be shown up for not opposing the Tories sufficiently and manoeuvring to avoid the so-called People's Vote. Meanwhile they can try and abrogate for themselves the title of "proper" opposition and champions of members' views on the subject. Undoubtedly some of the names on Ian Murray's letter are useful idiots, and others are reduced to the level of putting a minus wherever the party leadership puts a plus, but never underestimate the Labour right's capacity for cynicism. It's how they were able to control the party for so long.
The joint Hope Not Hate/British Future report, The National Conversation on Immigration and its focus on "left behind" communities is to be welcomed, not least because it isn't the usual regurgitation of Blue Labour dogma. It acknowledges some of the problems Labour has with its former 'traditional' base, and suggests things the party needs to do to avoid more significant difficulties down the road. You can read a précis here by Rose Carter, one of the report's authors.
The conclusions are familiar. At the last election, Labour did best in metropolitan, socially liberal, and graduate-heavy areas. Taking immigration as a lightning rod issue that condenses a range of attitudes, those surveyed who had the most positive attitudes toward it, for example, lived in close proximity to a university. Respondents who registered the highest degree of antipathy tended to live in former industrial communities. In other words, the most progressive were concentrated in the leading edges of the economy while those who are not comprise the left behind.
Combining survey research and focus groups, Rosie notes that "wherever you are, and whatever the questions are about, you always hear about they". The amorphous 'they' can be Muslims, immigrants, or elites. This they has the tendency to denote all of them at once. The common feature is a perception that the system works for them while the 'we' - us - lose out. As these sentiments are widespread, it's small wonder conspiracy theory is almost banal in its ubiquity. However, unlike other investigations of the relationship between values and political choices, Hope Not Hate is clear that there is a materialist basis for alienation of this kind. Similar to what's been argued on there since year dot, and many other places at many different times, is that the evaporation of industry, the changing character of work, greater precarity, and the shifting geographies of the most profitable economic activity fosters a sense of anxiety that makes changing culture, patterns of migration, new values, and the acceptance of minorities appear strange and threatening to some. Unaddressed these anxieties can be tapped into by populist and far right politics. This has been the case in the United States, but also here in the UK with the rise and fall of the BNP and UKIP respectively, the potency of tabloid shit stirring about Asian grooming gangs, and the social media celebrity of Tommy Robinson. It's not that economics and identity are opposed, they're intertwined.
This presents a challenge to Labour because it is Labour-voting areas where these views found the highest concentration. The research suggests many people feel abandoned by the party, therefore the party has to address their concerns. This requires an understanding of their frustrations, their anxieties, the wellsprings of this disenchantment and put forward a "genuine offer" that is more than an "ideological project".
There are some issues here with the framing, the findings, and the prescription. In the spirit of understanding our left behinds, we need to get to grips with what the report overlooks: age. While there are plenty of people for whom views like those described above are grist to the mill of populism (and worse), the distribution is not evenly spread. As polling after the election demonstrated, young people are most unlikely to vote right, especially if they're in the DE category. Meanwhile, older voters across the occupational groups are more likely to vote Tory, but there is still a class effect here with those in the lower grades doing so in fewer number than the better off. This is important. Labour's problems with left behind communities is not with the "traditional working class", it's much more specific: it's with older workers and the retired, a consequence of a class cohort effect. This may vary to a degree from place to place, but remember, the bulk of low paid and precarious jobs are immaterial in character too - they have the production of relationships, knowledge, data, services, and care at their heart just as much as the swanky jobs of the cool hipster haunts. And outside of work most younger workers are plugged into the networked world thanks to the supercomputers in their pockets. This is not insignificant.
The second issue is the degree to which the 2017 Labour campaign acted more of a push than a pull factor. We know Labour did lose some "traditional" seats and dropped votes in others, including Bolsover, the fiefdom of dear old Dennis. Obviously, it would be ridiculous to suggest the perception of Corbyn's Labour as a "they" without a clue about life in the provinces wasn't a factor, but nor should we discount the consequences of the types of campaigns ran in a number of these seats. In a handful of "core" constituencies of my acquaintance, majorities were slashed and elections lost by the localised campaigns of Corbyn-sceptic candidates. There are cases of candidates agreeing with voters on the doorstep that Jeremy Corbyn was awful and the Labour Party was crap because of it, but still vote for me. Far be it for me to question the wisdom of such an approach, but common sense might suggest saying your party isn't much cop, which would then be repeated by a punter to their friends and families is not the stuff from which a successful election night is made. Far from overcoming estrangement, they compounded it.
And on the topic of campaigns, if we're concerned about Labour losing votes a scientific approach would require that we also look at those votes we won. And I'm not referring to the "new votes" in this case either. Theresa May's Tories were able to triangulate the UKIP vote and annex large numbers of them, but a not insignificant number returned to Labour. Why? Presumably, these voters' concerns were broadly similar to others who supported UKIP, so why did they come home? Was it that Labour's acceptance of Brexit conferred on the party a 'permission to be heard'. Could the distinctly 'old Labour' positioning the Tories and the media ensured every voter knew about was a significant factor in bring them back?
As that is the case, it suggests that Labour is already on the right track to win back these communities. It can speak to the left behind in the clear language of industrialism, housing, and jobs. Going down the Blue Labour and addressing "genuine concerns" by pandering to them won't cut the mustard. Getting besuited Westminster types wrapping themselves in the flag and talking hard politics on immigration appears naff, insincere, and desperate. It would win over few, if any, socially conservative voters and succeed in alienating large swathes of the huge coalition we've built so far. You'd have to be really green to go blue.
Winning over left behind communities is not an over night task. Since 1979 they have grown used to having politics being done to them by successive governments of all party labels. Campaigning, community organising, and the right policies that speak to our people is the way of rebuilding trust, seeing off cynicism and combating the nihilistic turn to Toryism and the right. Contrary to the implications of the report, we need more Corbynism. Not less.
Jeremy Corbyn saved the Labour Party. This feat was accomplished by winning the leadership election in 2015, recruiting hundreds of thousands of new members, registered and affiliated supporters, and building a new coalition of voters uniting the comparatively better off with those at the sharp end. In so doing, Labour in England and Wales avoided the fates of the Socialists in France, Labour in the Netherlands, PASOK in Greece, the cataclysm that befell Scottish Labour, and the accelerating decline of the German Social Democrats. As the poll above demonstrates, they are now level pegging with the far right AfD while bleeding votes to the Greens.
Or did Corbyn not save the Labour Party? Well, according to some responses to this tweet, that is the case. The learned Professor Colin Talbot says comparing Labour favourably to the misery of the SPD is "simplistic nonsense" because, um, First Past the Post encourages "big, broad church parties". The implication being that the 2017 general election is merely the natural expression of the electoral system we use, so nothing to see here. The second claim he makes is that if Corbyn is an explanation for why Labour out-performed expectations, then May is equally responsible for the otherwise impressive number of voters who supported the Tories. Well, yes. Here then we have an opportunity to revisit the idea of PASOKification, what's happened to British politics, polarisation, and the empiricism that too often passes for the analysis of politics.
The PASOKification thesis is quite simple. As parties, particularly social democratic and labour parties, pursue policies that are detrimental to their coalition of voters so the tendency for them to collapse increases. This is not a disembodied process, an abstraction sitting above the comings and goings of politics and manifesting willy-nilly, but an outcome of a number of things. Chief among them is the acceptance of a neoliberal programme with New Labour, of course, providing the paradigmatic example. During its terms of office, and despite refurbishing and renewing public services, it politically demobilised its constituency. As the political arm of the labour movement and the party of wage earners, the implementation of market and business-friendly policy did nothing to enhance the collective political strength of its support. Trade union membership continued plunging along with the party membership and the party's vote, alienating many of its (former) voters in the process. Had instead it implemented greater collective rights at work, listened to its membership more and not ignored the largest, widest mass movement of our life times then it may have avoided the ignominy of the 2010 general election.
This, however, must be seen in context. Blairism and its commitment to market fundamentalism was a response to four general election defeats, the collapse of the labour movement, and the triumph of Western capitalism over the grotesqueries of Eastern Europe. It convinced many in the party and among its electorate that Blair's way was the right way (literally and figuratively) because it offered a story that helped make sense of what went before. Still, this isn't another essay on Blairism, but starting out with the proposition that class didn't matter it and the Milibandist sequel spent the next 21 years acting as if it didn't, with the election results to match. This story differs depending at the country you're looking at, but what is stark is centre left parties in Western Europe not only presided over similar policy menu, they did so while dishing out the thin gruel of austerity measures. In other words, they not only pursued a strategy that effectively meant they were organising against their base but ensured it would hurt them. Would you, for instance, want to vote for a 'left' party set on freezing your wages and ransacking your modest pension pot while threatening to throw you out of work. No, no one would, and indeed the left wing electorates of several liberal democracies have demonstrated just that.
The achievement of Corbynism then is, if you like, a reverse PASOKification. Labour in local government and Wales still administer Tory cuts, but the party now defines itself against them. Corbyn's politics, often derided as throwbacks to the 1970s, proved to be the most modern leftist politics because it spoke to the interests and hopes of millions excluded from the mainstream. Jeremy Corbyn and his immediate comrades understand that a Labour Party is supposed to stick up for working people and the poor, and if it does so it can build a coalition to win office and stay there. This is not rocket science, but is the most mysterious hocus pocus to anyone lacking the rudiments of a class analysis. Yet you don't have to be overly identified with the left to do this. Presently, Labor in Australia is polling consistently well and leading its Coalition opponents not because the party has a radical left programme, but because its agenda isn't about attacking its base: it's a straight forward anti-austerity position, a consistent Milibandism if you like. The New Zealand story is similar. Jacinda Adern's Labour is a far cry from Corbynism (despite getting hailed as its antipodean twin) and her government is quite centrist, but again, its holding on to its support (leading in the latest poll) because it hasn't (yet) gone down the road of attacking its own base.
Of course, the learned professor is entitled to disagree with this political explanation of Labour's rejuvenation, but the facts aren't with him. If First Past the Post isn't a dependent variable, how to explain Labour's collapse in Scotland without resorting to political analysis? What we saw there, as if we need to remind ourselves, is a thoroughly establishment party throw its lot in with the Tories and be seen to set its face against its own progressive support. No wonder the SNP cleaned up. The second problem is holding FPTP responsible for 2017's polarisation goes against the vote trends prior to that general election.
As the graph shows, and every student of political science should know (let alone decorated academics), the combined vote share for the two main parties peaked in 1951 and declined by about one third by 2015. The sharp reversal came, you guessed it, in 2017. If then the FPTP thesis is correct, then why did voters spend 60 years moving away from the two parties the electoral system doled out unfair advantages to? Could it be because of, gasp, politics? And would an analysis of the politics yield reasons for the return of polarisation?
Well yes, obviously. But not from the vantage of the ivory tower it seems. I mean, who could possibly think that Corbynism as a valid explanation of the reverse in Labour's fortunes is refuted by the larger vote share Theresa May's Tories managed to poll? They are not mutually exclusive but, rather, are mutually conditioning. The present Tory coalition of voters was more or less in place shortly after May made it to Number 10, and here she did two significant things. She sounded the one nation bell that, at the level of rhetoric at least, suggested the years of dog-eat-dog and beggar-thy-neighbour were coming to an end. In other words, as someone vaguely new to the mass of the voting public she had a distinctive and mildly optimistic stance vis a vis her predecessor. And she explicitly positioned the Tories as the party of max Brexit. That is you can trust the Tories to deliver it, whatever "it" may turn out to be. This helped cement a tranche of voters attracted by (cautious) change and a right wing, semi-authoritarian and anti-immigrant vision of Brexit. Who were these people? The petit bourgeois hungry for "leadership", capital - naturally, older workers in declining occupations and retirees. These are segments of the population particularly prone to Tory scaremongering and, thanks to the breaking down of the conservatising effects of age, are in long-term decline.
Jeremy Corbyn is a factor here because his person is a lightning rod for their discontent and fears. Everything he is charged with - hanging around with terrorist supporters, spying for the Czechoslovak secret police, campaigning against wars, expecting the wealthy to pay more tax - these pluck at the anxious heart strings of millions of people ill at ease with the world and for whom such matters typify their anxieties. Funnily enough, Theresa May and the Tories perform exactly the same role for the coalition Corbyn's Labour has built. In power, their policies mean continued misery, continued precarity, no prospect of accumulating property and getting on, crumbling services, and zero interest in the threat of climate change.
These are the contours and movements of British politics now, and our job is to analyse them, get a sense of the trends and direction and, crucially, use it to inform political strategy. In other words, a million miles away from the academic political science demonstrated above. It's less a case of faulty analysis and one of structural distance, of treating the behaviour of parties and the stakes they contest as objects of contemplation. From such a remove it can appear as if parties are free floating, that voters pay obsessive attention to the comings and goings at Westminster, and that electoral systems play an overdetermining as opposed to a subordinate role in political life. Some might say they are reified precisely to avoid having to get to grips with the complexities of politics as well as the awful, impermissible conclusion: that Jeremy Corbyn has, indeed, saved the Labour Party.
A question to everyone who thinks Jeremy Corbyn and the current Labour leadership aren't much cop. Can you imagine a Tory chancellor, a noted fiscal hawk, proclaiming the end of austerity if Labour wasn't an effective opposition and hadn't made the running against the cuts? And the honest answer, of course, is no. It says something about the growing hegemony of the left that the likes of Philip Hammond are forced to ventriloquise its programme. And yet, just to reinforce the point this was a Tory budget, there is the movement of the 40p tax threshold, of raising it from £45k to £50k from 2020 onwards. There is no economic necessity behind the move, Hammond chose to do this for naked political reasons. And this is where things get interesting.
From the standpoint of the slow-burning Tory crisis, Hammond's tax move was aimed at preserving their declining voter coalition. The reasoning goes that by offering a subsidy to higher earners support for the Tories will be shored up, and make the difference among those layers tempted by Corbynist fare. It's a bet that hundreds more in the pocket is enough to make better off voters forget the mess and the cruelties the Tories have dished out. This then was no attempt to reach beyond but preserve, conserve their vote, but one that falls short of the narrow requirements of party interests. When support is literally dying and not getting replaced, one might suggest something with a broader appeal might be considered.
Then came a curve ball: John McDonnell has decided to accept this move, and drawing down criticism from the soft left and the usual suspects in equal measure. Yes, it's a bizarre spectacle to find erstwhile Blairites and Brownites criticising and rebelling against the party on this when, had either of their heroes done the same thing, you know they would have hailed it as a master stroke. See, for example, the contemporary praise for New Labour's pledge to stick to Tory spending plans for the two years following 1997. But, as Stephen Bush points out, most members tune out complaints from habitual bellyachers unless they're going out their way to attack the leadership. Still, it is a move not without risk as plenty of front benchers have criticised Hammond for prioritising this cut over and above the urgency with which crumbling infrastructure and the ever-present threat of climate change warrants. And by implication, criticism of Tory taxation plans is now a critique of Labour's.
What then is John's game? Why is a shadow chancellor unafraid of publicly commenting on his debt to Marx set on giving premier league footballers, FTSE 100 CEOs, and A-list TV personalities 900 nicker a year at the public's expense? As Stephen rightly suggests in his piece, there is a desire not to hammer the professions whose salaries often cluster in the £35k-£50k range. They're part of the Corbynist coalition too. But I'd also suggest it's about heading off future Tory attacks. Labour could commit itself to the most demented Friedman-Hayekian programme of flat taxes, privatisation and market fundamentalism, and the Tories will still paint it as a tax and spend party. By accepting Hammond's tax plan it does two things. It helps insure the next manifesto against attempts to reduce questions of economic competency to taxation - just as Dave and his media helpers managed in 2010 and 2015 with the deficit - and blunts Tory attacks. There can't be any smoke if there's no fire. This also gives Labour more room to pivot scrutiny onto Tory weakness, which is pretty much every aspect of their record. They are vulnerable on investment, growth, quality jobs, homes, and government debt.
Nevertheless, it is a funny business, an uncomfortable business for a left wing would-be chancellor to go down this road. Especially when there's no end to the benefits freeze in sight and public sector wages remain depressed. To add bite to the party's position, Labour could consider the possibility of introducing additional tax bands for higher earners, and other measures like beefing up Hammond's social media tax. Both would please the base and defend the leadership against charges of cynical positioning, as well as finding another angle to add punchy, populist policy to the next manifesto. While no doubt the Tories would try piling in, suggesting the likes of Jeff Bezos and Piers Morgan shouldn't pay more tax is not the stuff of which a popular politics is made.
Can anything more be said about the so-called People's Vote march in London that hasn't already been noted elsewhere? According to the organisers, there was anywhere between half a million and 750,000 on the streets. Not content with nicking A to B marches off the left, they've half-inched the revolutionary inflation as well. And what's more, some of Britain's wealthiest reached into their pockets and laid on coaches down to the Big Smoke. For instance, Peter Coates of Bet 365 fame here in The Potteries was one such benefactor. By their friends shall ye know them is a useful compass for navigating around politics, for where certain initiatives, policies and positions attract and cohere certain interests says something about the character of that politics.
In Richard Seymour's take down of the people's vote campaign, he notes continuity remain went "from being a campaign of the establishment, by the establishment and for the establishment, [and] they’re now styling themselves as a populist insurgency. Or what a PR agency might think a populist insurgency looks like...". While true, especially when their propaganda oozes smuggery, he is wrong to suggest the movement can be reduced to astro-turfing - if it was the case money could buy turn outs for demonstrations, Arron Banks and the Kremlin would have mass mobilisations of Brexiteers macrhing up and down Whitehall every weekend.
It's worth recapping what centrism and, given the degree of overlap, liberalism is. Cast off the identification with liberal ideas, in the main it is a social movement. In Western societies, it always was first and foremost a bourgeois movement, and alliance between the well heeled in business, in the professions, and in emergent state bureaucracies. In its train liberalism has always dragged some degree of mass support, but with one or two exceptions it was eclipsed by the maturation of the workers' movement. An elite movement liberalism remained, but one increasingly subordinate to (and cannibalised by) conservative forces and the rising elites of the centre left. It's what Bourdieu called a dominated dominant location - here understood as a subordinate position within the scheme of bourgeois politics (think the LibDems in coalition with the Tories), but dominant vis a vis the rest of society. Also like all bourgeois politics, it is in crisis. Though the character of this crisis is different from that afflicting the Tories. Theirs is a slow burn death of a dying electoral base, ruling class fragmentation, petty ambition, and Brexit paralysis. Liberalism's is a case of mounting irrelevance.
Liberalism is effectively locked out of Parliament. The LibDems have collapsed and their vote share at the lest election went backwards, despite posting record membership figures. Liberal Toryism has been dead in the water since Theresa May moved to carve out the Cameroons, and they are overrepresented in Parliament but defeated in the Labour Party - virtually by their own hand. And Brexit, of course, cuts them off from the liberal utopia over the water, and is all set to damage the the economic interests they are closest to. For if the Tories under Dave were the repository of political choice for the most backward sections of capital, the shiny doyens of liberal politics are aligned to interests tied up with the single market, with manufacturing, the creative sector and the tech bros of Silicon Roundabout - it's no accident Nick Clegg landed his gig with Facebook. What continuity remain and its network of slick fronts are is a condensation of this movement of elites outside of Parliament. It's a symptom of their weakness that they have to come together this way.
Nevertheless, our liberals are mining something of a rich seam. Had the left pulled off a demonstration of yesterday's size, breathless SWP internal emails would be emphasising the opportunities it opens up and all the usual leftist suspects would be hailing it as an earthquake. Clearly, the closer we inch to the EU departure date the more angsty remain voters were going to feel. And given the practical collapse of talks this week they're right to feel anxious. As we have explained before, the pro-EU marches are different reactions by different sets of people the the same problems bedevilling Western societies: generalised insecurity. Always the lot of the poor and the downtrodden, the consequences of austerity effectively destroyed prevailing politics by polarising them and, of course, delivering the Brexit vote. It brought home to millions of relatively privileged people, and not a few elites, the incertitude only other people - not them - are supposed to feel. This helps explain some of the movement's key features: its crass elitism, the over preponderance of white middle class people, the zero understanding of how we got into this predicament, and the strictly limited character of its politics.
This latter point is particularly important. It's telling that the most active forms it assumes on social media is virulently anti-Labour, and anti-Corbyn. The denunciation of Tory incompetence is secondary. Why? Because this liberal project is fundamentally conservative. It is, on the surface, seeking to prevent the dislocation and hit to living standards an exit from the EU is bound to entail regardless of the flavour of Brexit on offer. But in real terms, this translates into the preservation of an austerity that is far from over, despite what Theresa May is saying. Secondly, but most importantly for those leading the movement - Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell, and, yes, Tony Blair - they know their People's Vote posturing is a load of old nonsense. For them and the Anna Soubrys and Chuka Umunnas in tow, it's about restoring their position. They know at the next election the bulk of their movement is going to vote Labour, but by using Brexit they're trying to drive a wedge between as many of them as possible and Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. This makes winning an election harder and in the event of another loss, easier - they think - for them to resume their prominence in and control over the Labour Party. Their antagonism isn't directed at the Tories because Brexit isn't their main concern; it's concentrated at Corbynism because the mass political participation it represents is their main obstacle to a return.
The People's Vote or whatever continuity remain are referring to themselves today are a social movement, alright. A bourgeois social movement. Its objectives are about protecting the interests of a more internationalised and forward thinking section of capital, and the political positions and places its continued health depends upon. The anxiety over Brexit provides the perfect opportunity for them to reach a mass audience but, true to their elite approach to politics, the masses of people who turn up at the demonstrations are not invited to participate further. They have a walk-on part, they are bodies to be used as leverage in the media air war with Corbynism and under no circumstances is their movement allowed to open out to address other concerns. Such as the roots of Brexit in austerity, and the role the EU plays in enforcing similar politics across the continent. The way to counter this is not give in, nor to reply to the pathetic anti-Corbyn baiting we see in kind, but continue developing our programme and appeal directly to the mass of people attracted to these marches in the language of interests - just as the 2017 manifesto began to do.
Funky philosophers of social complexity, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari wrote a great deal on the schizoid character of contemporary(ish) capitalism. By this they meant the brazen and stark manifestation of jarring juxtapositions. Consider the declining salience of sexism and racism developing alongside the recrudescence of toxic masculinities and the growing number of hate incidents, for example. Or the US Christian fundamentalist right finding their saviour in a womanising, crooked perma-tanned Antichrist. I can go on. These fusions of opposites circulate and slosh around, conveying their neurosis, absurdity, and violence to every corner of the body politic. The figure Theresa May cut on stage today, or dare I say grooved, is a case in point.
Readers might recall the glory days of her tenure in Number 10. The triumphalism, if not Maynia with which her rise to the top were greeted by the bourgeois press. Out went Flashman and, instead, we had a woman of substance. Enter stage right juxtaposition number one. Her vaunted seriousness positioned her Gordon Brown to Dave's Tony Blair. In the three phases of May's premiership - the pomp phase, the election catastrophe, and the bother with Brexit - has,contrary to expectation, shown her thinness. Her blighted career at the top a matter of the rapidity with which May took to vapidity. Today's speech, widely previewed as the most important of her career, was more of the same. Substance? There was none. There were the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, the appeal to the "decent people" who sat behind his front bench, and - gasp - the recognition he is addressing real concerns. To which May re-announced the traditional freeze on fuel duty, some more resources for cancer treatment, lifting borrowing caps on councils to build more houses and a vague promise to end austerity at some point. Someone tell the chancellor. Watery gruel indeed.
Juxtaposition two. Immediately after spending an hour saying nothing, the press pack were right in there in among the assembled faithful. And all they could find were enthusiastic things effusive with their praise, even if some had to read out their spontaneous reaction. Yet this happy clappy picture for the cameras sharply contrasted with events outside the conference centre. Events like James Duddridge (who?) putting his no-confidence letter into the 1922 Committee an hour before the big speech, or the Daily Telegraph running with demands for May's resignation date from members of her cabinet. On top of yesterday's shit show with Boris Johnson, and the generalised and wearisome permanent instability, just who are they trying to kid?
Juxtaposition three, truth and lies. Brave was the woman to attack Labour for its pockets of anti-semitism when the Daily Mirror led with a ugly manifestation of Tory anti-semitism this morning. We heard again how opposed she was to any kind of customs separation running down the middle of the Irish Sea, and staying in any customs unions while her minions are busying themselves pushing the very positions May is formally against.
Juxtaposition four, and by far the weirdest is no matter how inept she is, almost 18 months after the unnecessary election that destroyed her authority she still manages to out perform Jeremy Corbyn on best Prime Minister polling. And of all the leading Tories she's practically the only one, data suggests, who can see him off. Yes, that also includes Johnson. How to explain this? There is an element of looking the part, and May's no-frills image certainly helps here. But also in the mind of softer Tory voters and a layer of floating centrist types (not excluding some on the Labour benches), there is some respect for her impossible position. Yes, really. They see someone who might not be the best, but is doing her best. She has to juggle the complex detail of the withdrawal negotiations with the hot mess of Tory party intrigue. Every day she reaches round to scratch a new itch to find another knife sticking in, but May gainfully carries on. Bereft and lying about the Brexit negotiating strategy, this most unsympathetic of figures, a reckless and arrogant author of her own political misfortunes, is an object of sympathy. If not pity.
Juxtaposition five. Facing crunch time this month on Brexit, never has the gap between the competence of the politicians in charge of the negotiations and the demands of the situation been so vast, so in deficit. For all the talk of strong and stable leadership - remember that? - bourgeois politics as per the Tories, the Labour right, and the miserable LibDem/remainiac crowd, there is a real crisis in establishment leadership following its decadent bungling into the worst political crisis Britain has suffered since 1956. Saving their system, ironically, is in the programme of the one party attacked, rounded on, and smeared as a bunch of Trots by these self-same poltroons. The ruling class of old are incapable of ruling in the old way, yet their behaviour hammers home every single day that their ultimate salvation lies along the road paved by Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party. Now that's what I call a juxtaposition.
While the divided Tories meet in Birmingham to argue over who's going to take over from Theresa May and the Brexit morass of their own making, it's worth spending a little time considering some of the divisions that surfaced during Labour conference inside the Corbyn project. In particular, I'm talking about the tension between Corbynism and the trade unions - a relationship that has hitherto been productive and, effectively, saved Jeremy Corbyn's leadership when the Labour right made their move. However, friction between the two are inevitable and has recently been in evidence. Part of this stems from a generalised tension between the Labour Party and its union affiliates - the party has to construct a broad electoral alliance to appeal to as many voters as possible, and the audience of unions are ultimately their own members, which are of a much narrower range. On top of that, Corbynism as a movement and trade unions as institutions are different animals. Their political ontology are not the same. This then is the overall context in which we should understand moves to insert more trade union influence into how the party elects its leader, and why the reformed trigger ballot system won out at conference and open selections were defeated.
Consider basic definitions. What is a trade union? It is an organisation of workers whose remit is to defend their interests, sometimes individual, sometimes collective, against one or many employers. For example, in the main the Communication Workers' Union sits across the table from Royal Mail (postal) and BT (telecoms). Unite on the other hand represents a larger number of workers in a huge variety of workplaces. Occasionally, when the balance is right, unions can go on the offensive and use their collective strength to exert pressure on employers to release more of the wealth they produced in the form of wages, less work time, and/or better conditions. As a general rule, unions are bureaucratic organisations too. They come with an administrative apparatus in which key positions are elected according to timetables, and on the basis of representative democracy. i.e. Few if any unions reserve recall rights, though getting by with a hostile executive or a no-confidence at conference would be practically impossible. As office holders the elected see the day-to-day operations of the union, taking on responsibilities of strategic priorities, resource allocation, staffing, etc. For elected officials and those employed by unions tend to be cushioned from the kinds of realities their members face. As a rule, they are generally better paid, enjoy better work conditions and perks, and tend toward the acquisition of bureaucratic, if not conservative habits of thought.
These are pressures that bear down on people in these positions, and naturally these changes are conditioned by the state of class struggle at any given moment. In lean times for working class politics, like the 30 years between the end of the miners' strike and Jeremy Corbyn's election as Labour leader, this insulation can preserve the memory and experience of working class militancy. One characteristic of this period was the disproportionately large number of leftists, including the far left, who became elected officials and full-time union officers. Now politics is mixing it up again the relationship becomes more complex. As bureaucracies, the mass take over of the Labour Party gives them new opportunities to extend union influence - but poses a threat also.
Unions tend to approach their influence in the party in the same pragmatic way. They look to maximise their influence via numbers on the NEC, motions to conference, sponsored MPs, sponsored party events, nominations of union personnel to job vacancies in the party, and relationships to party factions. See how Community and USDAW, for instance, chum up with Progress. How the T&G and then Unite in the West Midlands were the backbone of Labour First, and the CWU's affiliation to Momentum. This maximisation of organisational/general secretary influence is also an outgrowth of unions as sectional bodies. In the final analysis, workers have common interests. But their unions often don't. The immediate interests of one group of workers may come into conflict with others as employers try and play off one section of the workforce against another. For instance, different unions might organise different parts of the same employer. When I was a supermarket worker, the employer recognised the T&G (with whom I was a shop steward) and USDAW, which frustrated wage negotiations as one was used to undermine another. Likewise another place had three unions, one for each different section of workers, which made coordination among organised employees extremely difficult - not least because each group had bespoke negotiating arrangements. Also, unions can and do compete among themselves for recruits, up to and including scabby behaviour. At the end of it, a union is an organisation that wants to survive and thrive and these organisational interests have the tendency to win out over wider considerations.
As organisations embroiled in the day-to-day guerrilla warfare of wage bargaining and preserving/improving working conditions, unions have to be pragmatic. Levering its collective strength and using soft power against an employer requires a continuous appreciation of tactics and strategy - at least if a union is doing its job properly. Therefore unions are habituated to piecemeal change, small victories (and reverses) and incremental improvement. This habit lends itself well to the to-ings and fro-ings of parliamentary democracy, and why so many trade unionists past too the passage from the shop floor to the floor of the Commons. This is also the material root of Labour's historic anti-intellectualism, and the short shrift revolutionary politics have received in this country.
And then the old certainties dissolve and a new relationship with the party comes into play. Corbynism from the beginning had one foot in the unions, but the movement did not move through them. In its first phase of taking over the party, the people responding to Jeremy Corbyn's candidacy was composed of the politically atomised but socially networked. Minorities were old hands at the activism game, or people called back into politics, but the bulk were entirely new and had never been members of a political party before. They joined up as masses of individuals embedded in proliferating digital networks, which in turn recruited even more. These connections were vehicles of contact, affinity and affectivity. Corbynism in the unions initially assumed a similar character between existing leftists and a fed up officialdom. It proved string enough to bounce several general secretaries into endorsing Corbyn's candidacy, which in turn was helpful for winning over Corbyn-sceptical party members who take union support of candidacies seriously. Nevertheless, as a self-activating network, a spontaneous swarm that swamped the party and initially identified more with the ideas Corbyn represents than the rest of the labour movement apparatus, it was therefore different from the established, incremental and bureaucratic politics of the unions in and out of Labour.
From this arises an important set of differences. The more methodical practice of the unions contrasts with the impatience of Corbynism. Their habituation to committee room compromises with other forces differs from the experience of Corbynism which, before party conference, is used to the direction of travel being its way thanks to the weight of the expanded membership. Hence the emphasis in Corbynism on members' rights and the role they should have in steering the party. This is where tension came out into the open in Liverpool. Unions wish to preserve their influence over the apparat and PLP, but having a truly sovereign membership with the subordination of the MPs and unions to it not only threatens years of painstaking influence-building, but offers a vision of what could happen in several unions if Corbynism spreads and its radicalisation deepens. While all unions might like to recruit hand over fist, they might be less keen if this was accompanied by demands for member-led democracy and curbs on the power of officialdom. In short, this tension is the inescapable result an encounter between two sets of progressive forces with different political ontologies, or modes of being. It's the bureaucratic hierarchy and representative democracy of the unions vs the multitudinous mass of Corbynism whose trajectory points toward more direct democracy. This is why the struggle for open selection and more party democracy is not about to go away.
Can the tension be soothed? If things stand still, no. Therefore we have to ensure things do not stand still. Corbynism reached 13 million voters because it addressed and articulated a previously dispersed and unorganised set of grievances. On this, Corbynism and the unions are in fundamental agreement. They require more politicisation, and taking up to become bones of contention, of points that can be productive of even more struggle. But while there are plenty of such issues, the lynchpin is and will always be the workplace. This is the hinge of bourgeois power. Calling on unions to recruit more and organise more is to patronise the efforts of existing trade unionists who spend their time doing just that. However, here Corbynism has a role to play. In addition to legislation that makes effective trade unionism more difficult is the small, cultural matter of organised industrial action at work getting purged from the collective memory. Workers are inculcated by so many institutions as neoliberal subjects without social ties, which is reinforced by the nature of work, ranging from the precarious, temporary and the part-time to the individuating character of immaterial labour. A Corbynism of the unions is important and necessary because a dose of deepened member sovereignty will enable unions to respond better to where most workers currently are and, hopefully, start drawing them in to the wider labour movement.
Corbynism is important from the standpoint of world politics because it is the holy grail of many a abstruse debate about the death of class: it appeals to and forges together an array of positions which, if one is wedded to a liberal conception of identity politics, should not be possible. It reconciles seemingly exclusive constituencies by appealing to their common interests, doing so in alliance with "traditional" class politics and a hopeful vision of the future that encourages political imagination, if not experimentation. It has transformed the Labour Party, and has gone from there to reach out to a truly massive audience. For a movement just over three years old it is at the threshold of forming a government should the Tories fall, and it has transformed the traditional party of the working class utterly into something approaching where class politics now is. Unions as sectional organisations and oriented to mass workplaces will have a harder time achieving a similar take off, but it is possible. Democratising unions, making would-be members feel a living, relevant relationship to it, of offering themselves as networks of support and training as well as organs of resistance is the pathway to rejuvenation and overcoming tensions with the party and Corbynism in particular.
Like it or not, Corbynism is the future, more direct democracy is the future, becoming more swarm-like is the future. Politics is changing, the character of class is changing. We have to make sure our way of organising collectively changes too so we can use our strength most effectively. And win.
