A pandemic has circled the globe several times and we see liberal democratic states assume unprecedented powers to stop the spread of contagion. We live in an emergency, and yet the wheels of the mundane continue to turn. People make new connections and fall out with each other. Shopping happens. And murky practices come to light. Unfortunately, we've had our share of that in the labour movement. Mid-month we saw those leaks about senior Labour Party staff, and April's end was graced by the general secretary of a major union resigning amid serious allegations. But unless you were adjacent to the rarefied doings of Britain's far left, you might have missed another tale of miserable woe.
The Socialist Workers Party these days is, deservedly, a shadow of its former self. Having exposed yourself as a disgusting rape cult and failing to capitalise on the fresh interest in socialism off the back of Jeremy Corbyn might do that to a self-identified vanguard of working class politics. Yet despite their reduced circumstances, the SWP have persisted through its usual round of paper sales and front groups, such as Unite Against Fascism and its own(!) front outfit, Stand Up to Racism. They are still a presence on the left, and their hope is now less focus on matters parliamentary means new pools of young activists (students) for whom Sir Keir Starmer doesn't have quite the same sheen. With new opportunities around the corner and their decade of moral collapse behind them, the return of more bullying allegations is, well, about as welcome as reality intruding in a National Committee meeting.
A small group of activists have resigned from the SWP on Tyneside over serious concerns about the branch's internal culture. These include a "bullying, misogynistic and sexist culture", and the whitewashing of complaints made by the former members against the "harassment, slander and institutional racism" they experienced. Read the statement for yourself. It's pretty much what you'd expect. Favoured acolytes of the London apparatus are supported, and critics are steamrollered. On this occasion Amy Leather herself, the SWP's de facto leader, went to Newcastle to sort the complainants out. She didn't give a monkey's about the unhealthy culture inside her organisation, she wanted the dissenters silenced - the only conclusion you can reasonably make looking at the bundles of evidence provided. Now, as seven years ago, the leadership are concerned solely with keeping the show on the road. Bad behaviour and the mistreatment of comrades, that means nothing as long as the papers get sold and the leading cadres have monies enough to indulge their little Lenin complexes.
It is, however, a sign of the times that the SWP feel the need to respond to such a small scale split. And in true SWP style, they choose not to address the substance of the complaint and go for a character assassination of someone who, until recently, was regarded as a loyal pair of hands. The classic guilt-by-association move, in other words. Because Yanus Bakhsh, a well known long-time SWP'er was suspended from the "party" for defending someone with a questionable record (to say the least), just so happens to be among the group of Tyneside dissenters, nothing else matters, there's nothing to see. Quite rightly, the comrades concerned are angry to find their concerns brushed aside and reduced to apolitical sour grapes.
Readers can look at what's happened in Newcastle and judge whether the SWP "is strongly committed to women’s liberation and seeks to combat sexism both within our own ranks and in the broader society." Again, just like what's happened in the Labour Party and what's coming to light in the GMB, on an order of magnitude of less importance, the SWP's lies about bullying on Tyneside goes to show democracy in working class organisations, whether it's a mass party, a trade union, or a two-bit outfit with revolutionary pretensions is not an optional extra. Democracy and accountability for those who run the organisations are the crucial tools by which we organise ourselves as a class with political interests distinct from and at odds with the new consensus Boris Johnson is building. When democracy fails, our organisations and institutions don't just become ineffective, they actively turn against the aspirations that founded them in the first place. Far from vehicles of liberation, they can become factories for maiming activists, vehicles for vices of the abusive kind, and instruments for keeping our people down. In mass organisations, the fight for democracy is continuous because their mass character guarantees it as a latent possibility. But in micro-sects like the SWP, organisations some 30 years out of time if ever their brand of revolutionary politics were ever appropriate, there really isn't any point. Any SWP comrades reading this should follow the Newcastle comrades out of the "party". There is a wider world out there, and it's ours to win.
The surprise resignation of Tim Roache, General Secretary of the GMB caught everyone off guard. In a poorly worded press release, the union said his departure was thanks to long term "ill health" which was preventing him from discharging his responsibilities. A Soviet-flavoured excuse if there ever was one. Because prior to the announcement, news crept out that Roache had been confronted by union President Barbara Plant with a complaint making a number of allegations. Adding extra intrigue, the Sunday Times's Gabriel Pogrund suggested senior Labour MPs are "implicated" in the "controversy". When you consider the nature of the allegations, which are very serious and can be found by digging around Twitter, one hopes the only implications involved are their urging the President to take action.
Another crisis for Keir Starmer following hot on the heels of the Labour leaks scandal? Not terribly so. The allegations Roache faces are not factional, but speak to the wider cultural problems within the trade union movement. As for the politics, I don't think it makes much of a difference to the balance of power in the party. In his New Statesman email, Stephen Bush suggested it's potentially problematic because Keir could count on the GMB's support on Labour's NEC. As he rightly argues, a strongly positioned leader should have multiple ways of building majorities on an issue-by-issue basis, whereas Jeremy Corbyn was dependent on Unite to get his way. The implosion of Roache puts one of those avenues of coalition forming into doubt.
This is probably not the case. Roache certainly won his re-election handsomely back in November, beating Kathleen Walker Shaw by 30,656 votes to 19,576 on a miserable 8.5% turnout (actually a big improvement on the 4.2% that saw Roache elected in 2015). However, the vote itself was not without controversy. Kathleen, who is the union's European officer, was initially excluded from the ballot by shenanigans. Under GMB rules anyone running for the highest office requires 50 nominations from branches, a time consuming process that always favours officials with the contacts and time to build up support. Despite meeting the threshold with 57 nominations, the Finance and General Purposes committee tried excluding her on grounds she would not be able to fulfil the duties of the top job, even though she had worked for the union for 26 years. A grotesque stitch up of the old school in other words, and one happily overturned on appeal. Yet this wasn't a political challenge and more a bureaucratic turf war in which one full-timer simply tried her hand against an incumbent wanting to entrench his privilege. Though according to persistent whispers in and around the GMB, Kathleen was something of a stalking horse on behalf of the Kenny clan. Long time readers will recall Paul Kenny receiving a knighthood just prior to vacating the GenSec role. Warren Kenny, a chip off the old block and presently London region's secretary is known to fancy Dad's old gig - it would be surprising if he doesn't throw his hat into the ring and run to replace Roache.
Given the incumbency factor crowding out grassroots challenges, being a union not known for its left wing full-timers, and having endorsed Lisa Nandy in the leadership election, chances are good that the personnel may change but the politics will stay the same on Labour's NEC. In fact, not only that but some of Labour's right will be pleased to see the back of Tim Roache too. Not because he was a comrade or showed any tendency in that direction, though many of the positives of Kenny Sr's reign on the organising front were built on (despite the introduction of some sharp practices). He was, from a party factional point of view, unreliable. Not a Corbyn supporter by any stretch, during the 2016 coup Roache refused to go along with the aborted putsch. At the time he said "This is about democracy and respecting the Labour Party’s democratic process. Jeremy has a strong mandate, and it’s hugely disappointing that this is not being respected." Though come the summer he was backing Owen Smith, after a membership referendum with a slightly skewed question ("Who do you think is best placed to lead the Labour party to a general election victory and serve as prime minister?”) endorsed him over and above the Labour leader. Eyebrows were also raised with the formation of Change UK, Gawd rest its soul. Roache did not go along with the line that the splitters were "forced out" and instead condemned them for attacking the policies and aspirations if trade unionists. Nor was he impressed by Tom Watson's hard remain antics, calling them "wholly unwelcome". Episodic alignment with their schemes in a union they've come to regard as "theirs" certainly rankled, and they hope - though don't have the muscle themselves to ensure - the next one in the top job will be fully onside.
Trade unions are essential organisations and everyone should join their workplace union. But they are not passive organisations, their efficacy and democracy depends on how active the membership are. If they are quiescent, all kinds of skulduggery and bad behaviour gets a free pass. Not to mention backroom deals and politics that ultimately shaft our movement as a whole. When the full details of the Tim Roache case come out, serious questions will be asked about how this was allowed to continue and an unwelcome light will be shone by our enemies on the murkier practices of our movement. The best way, the only way to cleanse ourselves of this muck is by getting stuck in and applying the huge broom of democracy to the lot. Because if we don't, the Tories will.
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It's an unspoken tradition round these parts to cover the first PMQs of a new opposition leader, and I see no reason to stop. Not that I'm a fan of parliamentary cretinism, but more so because the weekly Q&A matters. Yes, it's frequently farcical. Yes, the Prime Minister of the day rarely answers (as true under Labour as the Tories), but of all the interminable debates in the Commons it's this session that gets snipped and repeated on the evening news. The punters get to see it. PMQs is also important for activist and members' morale, and piques the attention of the more politically engaged.
How then did Keir Starmer manage at his first session? Given the physical distancing practised in the Commons, only 50 MPs were allowed to turn up while others dialled in to ask questions. This afforded the occasion a sombre atmos which suited the super serious, softly-softly "responsible" oppositional course he's trying to steer. And up against Dominic Raab, standing in for a Prime Minister who, for once, has a proper excuse for not attending, Keir put in an assured, confident performance.
He opened by asking Raab about the capacity for testing, who responded by saying we advanced to the point of being able to administer 40,000/day. Immediately he jumped in with "then why was only 18,000 taken yesterday?" Ouch. Raab fumbled and mumbled some answer about demand, which he said was not there. An opening for Keir to talk about the issues concerning roll out for medical and care workers, and having often to travel long distances to avail themselves of them. He then asked about the death rates of NHS and care home staff. Raab supplied a figure much lower than those bandied around the press for NHS staff, and had no numbers for care workers. Keir replied he was putting him on notice about asking the same question next week (Matt Hancock supplied the answer in his subsequent statement - 15). Lastly, Keir asked about PPE supply and all Raab could do was wibble about a billion pieces of kit. Superficially impressive, but opportunities were missed for acquiring more when the seriousness of the pandemic was obvious.
As you might imagine, centrist Twitter are wetting themselves with excitement. Keir's performance was competent and if matching numbers to promises is 'forensic', it was that too. Though, given Keir's commitment to not rocking the boat too much, the jugular wasn't so missed as not gone for. Nothing about previous failures and complacency. That said, I think Keir and his support will be pleased with that, as the present conjuncture in the Commons allows for measured but detailed critique. The question however is will Keir be able to ramp up to the semi-theatrical when politics approaches normality again?
Should we bail out billionaires? Obviously not. But should billionaire-owned businesses qualify for help? This is an issue raised by your friend and mine, Richard Branson and his long blog ostensibly written to Virgin employees, but very much a publicity counteroffensive rebutting the charges laid at his Caribbean door. I mean, to have effectively laid off your staff and then going cap in hand to the government with a four billion pound fortune to your name was sure to raise an eyebrow or two.
I didn't know this, but thanks to his letter to staff I've learned how Virgin is a philanthropic concern whose activities are entirely benign. All profits made by Virgin Care, for instance, are reinvested back into the NHS - or to be more precise, the services the company provides. According to the big cheese himself he's vowed never to draw a dividend from the business. And so the time Virgin sued the NHS in Surrey over its tendering process, the settlement went back into services and not anyone's pockets. Also, contrary to popular belief didn't you know Branson isn't actually a tax exile? Necker Island, his private tropical paradise/resort (yours from $5,000/night for a minimum three day stay) is his place of residence because, well, he likes it there. Fair enough, but domicile status and tax jurisdictions don't care about your affections. A 14-year tax-free holiday from the UK while gorging on the profits produced here, benefiting from the country's infrastructure and enjoying influence with top politicians - perhaps keeping mum on taxes missed might have proven better for brand Branson. Then we have the issue at stake: the position of Virgin Atlantic.
As I'm sure readers know, the company attracted negative publicity for foisting eight weeks unpaid leave onto its staff, which was accepted by the unions. This was prior to the announcement of the furlough scheme, so it is peculiar how Virgin is pressing ahead with it. Perhaps VA isn't as philanthropic as advertised. And also we learn Branson has stumped up £200m of his own readies to keep things afloat. His detractors point out this is only a small faction of his paper wealth, but his hoard won't be sat appreciating in the bank (or sitting idly in a discreet account in the Caymans). A lot will be tied up in property and assets, investments, financial products with fixed maturation dates, and so on. We don't know if Branson can get his hands on more money at a drop of a hat and, indeed, not just opening the books but laying bare his portfolio should feature in union plans for company rescue. Secondly, Branson says he's not seeking a bail out for the airline but a commercial loan from the government, for which he's willing to stump up his island as collateral.
It goes without saying Branson isn't a firm favourite around these parts for his union-busting antics, those stories, and having parasited off the wealth generated by others for 50 years. But here we have to separate the socially useless - the coupon clipping, profit snorting role Branson plays in his businesses - from the useful: the jobs and infrastructure those businesses support. Apparently, one of the reasons why the government have so far turned down Branson's plea for a loan is because they're not satisfied all avenues of fundraising have been explored. Margaret Hodge put the position more bluntly: sell your island. Yes, though when we're talking about bail outs we should act as if the government has a limited pot of money. As announced a couple of weeks ago, the Bank of England is printing money to fund government spending. The debt this creates not only benefits from ultra low rates of interests, but also doesn't really ever have to be paid back - the government can determine the length of repayment and have it written off. Therefore helping out whatever company doesn't cost the taxpayer a penny, and is also why post-Coronavirus public sector cuts are completely unnecessary from a balance sheet perspective.
Nevertheless, because the British state can create money and billionaires can't, as lender of last resort the state has leverage over them. Therefore businesses owned by non-domiciled tax dodgers shouldn't be ruled out of bounds when it comes to support, as per Denmark's tough policy, but this should come with strings attached. Naturally, as the Tory priority is saving capital the conditions so far seen are pathetic, like having furloughing businesses promising to keep jobs open for their staff when normal times return or, as in Virgin's case, making sure all available resources are mustered for their preservation. They will be under pressure not to simply hand cash over when it's asked for, and so have to make a show of conditionality. This is where the opposition might make itself felt when it's not mumbling "now is not the time." Among the strings Labour should call for are significant wage rises to compensate for the present unpaid period, if not outright nationalisation a controlling stake in the business, a suspension of dividend payments, contributions to a climate fund and/or clean air alternatives to aviation fuel, full trade union rights, workers reps on the board and scrutiny of decision-making, and the locking in of bailed out firms to a planned transport strategy - all entirely within the ambit of the platform Keir Starmer stood on during the leadership election. Branson can then bugger off and devote himself entirely to the philanthropic conscience his ilk cultivate after acquiring more cash than they can ever spend.
Bail outs for billionaires then? No. But bail outs for their businesses? Certainly. Not just to get us through this system shaking crisis, but to lay the foundations for the better world to come.
You've seen that report. You've read the coverage and the fall out. And seen what Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner are going to do about it, and probably have strong opinions about that too. Clearly, obviously, having a party within a party or, as David Osland put it, an HQ within an HQ made for poisonous relationships, a toxic atmos, and studied purposeful incompetence. But all that taken into consideration, what consequences did scabby activity have on Labour's electoral performance in 2017? Were it not for their efforts aiding everyone but the party they worked for, could Labour have won? Might the result have been closer than it already was?
Despite his anti-Corbyn axe-grinding, Nick Tyrone's dissection of one of the left's persistent political myths deserves a view - not least because myths are no good for understanding the world and sober assessments of our actions. He argues the idea Labour were two thousand-odd seats from forming a government (which has, over the last couple of years morphed into two thousand votes from victory) is absurd. And it is. Distributed across Tory/Labour marginals that stayed with the blue party, if they all had fallen to Labour we'd still have fewer seats than our opponents. Would that then have made an anti-Tory coalition likely? Not in the slightest, says Nick. He suggests Corbyn would have been hostage to the PLP, and there's no reason to believe the SNP and LibDems would have gone along with it. Indeed, it's certain the yellow party would not have given up their identification of anti-Corbyn campaigning as their route back to the big time (that worked out well). Therefore whatever the shenanigans at HQ, whether money diverted and wasted on super safe seats would have ended up in key marginals the effect was likely to have been slight. Therefore while our disgraced officer corps did and didn't do things, and almost certainly cost the party a few seats here and there, they aren't responsible for a defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. Because it was never on the cards.
This is true enough, but you have to take wider party divisions into account to address this question credibly. The big fallings out in the party, like the failed coup against Corbyn certainly didn't help, but it was the incessant drip, drip of undermining, secret briefing, amplifyied anti-semitism, contrived rows, leaks, referendum manoeuvring and all the rest thanks to the parliamentary party, their media helpers and useful idiots in the ranks who did the real damage. And the evidence is quite clear about this. The consensus among the pol profs is divided parties tend not to win elections, and the data from the US and the UK stacks up. You can add 2019 to that list, certainly. Consider: the Tories were haplessly divided prior to the election, but Boris Johnson demonstrated serious intent to Brexit voters how he was prepared to do anything, including trashing his own party, to get it done. As a result the Tories went into the election united. Labour, on the other hand, did not. And from the punters' point of view, if you can't hold together your own party how are you competent enough to run the country?
Did this apply in 2017? Yes, but not to the same degree. Corbyn was an issue on the doors then and, yes, we'd hear quoted back at us not just the lines from the press but also the angles of attack helpfully provided by supposed Labour comrades in the two years previous. However, because Brexit was neutralised as an issue in places that later turned against Labour a lot of Labour voters gave the party the benefit of the doubt. Nevertheless, the divisive work done helped sap party support in Mansfield, Middlesbrough, Stoke (South), and Walsall (North) by accelerating the long accumulating tendencies that exploded all across previously safe seats in 2019. Additionally, the party attracted many new voters who are now, to all intents and purposes, the new party base.
In this context, while internal shenanigans didn't put off new Labour voters in 2017 it certainly helped demobilise older, more traditional sections of our voter coalition: division doesn't alienate all voters equally. Modest losses in seat terms in 2017 nevertheless saw majorities decline elsewhere, setting the party up for its big fall. While this cannot be directly attributed to scabbing at head quarters, they were part of the problem. They enabled the drip drip damage, they provided assistance to core group hostile MPs, they ensured the leaks took place and party machinery clogged up at factionally opportune times. They share responsibility with Tom Watson, Ian Austin, John Mann, and all the other scabs for dragging the party through the mud and damaging its electoral chances. Nevertheless, even when the crimson mist descends one should remain clear sighted. They cost the party seats but not a chance at government, and their collective behaviour definitely ensured our 2019 defeat was worse than it might have been. Yet in our unlikely 2017 counterfactual of their uniting behind Jeremy Corbyn, the media would have run with the same attacks eventually because the stuff used against Corbyn was out there, ready to be spun. It's also worth noting as well that if it wasn't for the appalling polling 18 months of division had bequeathed us that fateful April three years ago Theresa May would never had called an election in the first place.
Hindsight and probabilities are all we have to consider opportunities missed and chances thwarted, but one thing's for sure. Whether you think we could have won in 2017 or not, the exposure of the rotten heart of the professional party has shown how unaccountable and powerful the central apparat are and why the project of democratising Labour remains as relevant now as it ever was.
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Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters "should be shot." Vendettas against "Trots" pursued with alacrity while complaints, including anti-semitism charges piled up. Cheering on the Labour Party's opponents in elections. Discussions of who should leak documents. Setting up secret campaigns to funnel monies to favour MPs. Speaking about senior party figures in the most derogatory terms, including suggesting that a young party member with mental health difficulties should "die in a fire". Deliberations over cooking up crises to maximise embarrassment and damage to the leadership. Sabotaging campaign efforts. All this and more can be found in the 800 page document prepared for submission to the EHRC inquiry into Labour's anti-semitism crisis, of which excellent summaries are available here and here.
The report is utterly damning, and the response of those named and very publicly shamed equally pathetic. Iain McNicol, the former party General Secretary who was very much an instigator of this appalling behaviour said "The energy and effort that must have been invested in trawling 10,000 emails rather than challenging antisemitism in the party is deeply troubling." Rich coming from someone who, thanks to the documentary evidence provided saw anti-Jewish racism as less a cancer to be zapped and more an opportunity to damage the people he and his team were working against. Sam Matthews, the former Head of Disputes who featured prominently in last year's hatchet job on the Labour Party said this is sour grapes from a defeated faction. That's right, it was Corbynist disappointment in 2019 that forced senior staffers to scab on the party they ran until their departure from the party's employ.
The sad truth is none of this stuff shocked me - apart from the laughable incompetence of these people leaving a paper trail that could be used later to expose them. Encountering party staff drunk on their position, having watched careerists up close capitalise on apparat preferment, seeing shenanigans and hearing the stories (the worst of which I haven't and won't be writing about any time soon), being privy to conversations, witnessing stitch ups take place, all this I've encountered as a bag carrier in the bowels of constituency politics, a CLP officer, and an ordinary member in my decade of being in the party. I've also come across kindness, support, commitment, and solidarity. Though it says everything the latter is very much the preserve of the rank-and-file while the crushing fusion of infantilism and psychopathy characterises the party bureaucracy.
None of these people who participated in these discussions and made decisions about the party are fit to be members, let alone senior staff in other organisations. One, Emilie Oldknow was, apparently, Keir Starmer's pick for new General Secretary. I think it's safe to say she's now out of the running. What this means for her current senior role in Unison will cause the union something of a headache, but it has certainly put a new spin on the leak of Jonathan Ashworth's anti-Corbyn comments just prior to the election. For those not in the know, they are married to each other. Likewise the position of Patrick Heneghan, who went on to run the so-called People's Vote campaign would raise a few eyebrows subsequently given the role his organisation played in attacking Labour's voter coalition.
No one forced our Southside scabs to, well, scab. Yet when this is acknowledged across the party as custom and practice that goes back decades (see Uncle John Golding's tedious but revealing The Hammer of the Left), we're seeing something more than individual failure. This matter is a question of culture and is inseparable from how the party organises itself. Writing about the development of the German Social Democrats a century ago, Robert Michels' Political Parties argued that as organisations became more complex and specialised, so a dedicated bureaucracy forms up with its own offices and set of tasks. Furthermore, office-holding becomes the basis of power rather than the voluntary party and goes on to become the real decision makers in the organisation. Hence his famous term, the iron law of oligarchy. We see this reproduced in the Labour Party in the contemptuous attitudes toward the membership: it was the ordinary dues-paying member who was responsible and accountable to them, and not the other way round. The idea of democratic oversight or accountability was either a joke, or brought our bureaucrats out in a rage of hostility. Therefore those hoping for a neutral, professionalised bureaucracy are going to be disappointed: for as long as democratic determination by the members is kept away from the general secretaryship and regional directorship, the sorts of abuses our dossier details will happen time and again. This, among many other reasons, was why democratisation of the party was vital in the Corbyn era and remains the case.
Curiously, our fearless media, previously wall-to-wall with condemnation every time Jeremy Corbyn sneezed without a hanky, have barely covered the leak. Nothing on the Sunday politics shows. Nothing on interviews with senior Labour politicians this morning. We have the Sky News splash, a piece in the Graun, and that's about it. And some wonder why conspiracy theory is so popular. However, the lack of coverage does not mean this is something the party's new leadership can ignore. It's one thing to have party members calling it out, even if it does include high profile backers of Keir Starmer's campaign, but another to have MPs grumbling openly on Twitter about it. Without a doubt, this is an early, and for Keir, an unwelcome test for his unity credentials.
This then is Keir Starmer's Falkirk moment, so what is the Labour leader likely to do? I would expect ... very little. Not just because his first week in office has been weak sauce, or that his shadow cabinet appointments left a lot to be desired, but because he has no programme for the party itself. Whatever one thought of Ed Miliband, he used the occasion of Falkirk to neutralise what he perceived as overweening union influence on the party by introducing opt-in political levies for individual affiliated trade unionists, and the three quid supporters' fee. The scandal facing Keir is more fundamental to the party because it touches not on the fiddles of candidate selection but how the apparatus operates - an apparatus the leader not only needs, but also supported him more so than Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey during the contest. He could ignore the systemic nature of the apparat's corruption, and the fact the scab tendency have moved on to pastures new opens up a window for a 'bad apples' argument. Keir's not about to champion the cause for more party democracy that's for sure. What would benefit him, however, is if the party moves immediately to suspend the former officials, including Lord McNicol. Not just because it would placate his support in the party, who are likely to find these revelations as appalling as everyone else, but to show he means business to the right who'll happily undermine him as they did with each of his three predecessors.
Talking to Sophy Ridge yesterday, Keir said now was not the time to ask tough questions of ministers - as if politics is a leisurely pursuit for a better tomorrow. Something that will assist getting an easy ride in the media perhaps, but not help much when it comes to people noticing Labour's existence, let alone winning over hearts and minds. This search for a zone of non-punishment, I think, is going to condition his response to the dossier leak too. Say little, do nothing, wait for the EHRC report, take it on the chin and hope it will all go away in time. Sadly, if Keir can't or refuses to respond properly to a crisis that is entirely within his power to address, the next four years are not going to be a happy time for the Labour Party.
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Tony Blair has said some words again. Not just about the appalling situation the economy's going to be in after the Coronavirus outbreak has exhausted itself (talk about stating the obvious), but concerns political strategy. Or, to be exact, what Scottish Labour should do. Apparently, its route to success is Labour becoming more like ... Ruth Davidson. She was able to energise the pro-union case and see off the Scottish National Party. As he puts it, "the only politician in Scotland that broke that SNP grip at all was Ruth Davidson." And she was able to do this because Scottish Labour were wishy-washy on unionism.
First of all, let's scotch Blair's myth-making mischief. Whatever one thinks of Davidson's qualities, she did not "break the grip" of the SNP. Under her leadership the Tories turned in a creditable performance at the 2017 general election, but following her departure last summer things went to pot as they fell from 13 seats to six at the general election. If we're playing the centrist game where Jeremy Corbyn's near miss is irrelevant, so is the peak of the Scottish Tory resurgence. Considering the 2016 Holyrood elections, the Tories displaced Labour as Scotland's second party and took 31 seats, but in terms of MSPs and votes the SNP won twice more than "Ruth's team". Perhaps what Tonty meant is how Davidson caught the eye of London-based commentdom, who at times feted her and, if the stories are to be believed, was approached by an all-too-brief trail blazing outfit to lead them. She certainly proved more effective wowing arbiters and gatekeepers of establishment politics than winning voters over from Scottish nationalism.
On Labour's are we/aren't we unionist stance, there's some selective memory at play here too. It was never Scottish Labour's policy to back independence or support another referendum. Last Summer John McDonnell said Westminster shouldn't get in the way of another vote, if that's what the Scottish parliament decides to do. A position Jeremy Corbyn also conceded, while Scottish Labour stuck to its unionist line. And still the party got steamrollered, again, by the SNP in December. To suggest the party's salvation is being more explicitly unionist is peculiar to say the least.
Speaking on Steve Richards's programme about Labour's futures, Blair (rightly) notes the SNP aren't a far left formation, but goes on to suggest a political space exists for a centre left unionist opposition. But where? The Tories are the hard unionists now, and why would progressively-minded voters be lured away from the SNP when, all told, the SNP are hardly living up to the Tartan Tory caricatures you can still find bandied about among some sections of Scottish Labour. In fairness to Blair, he does recognise the party has to create its own political space by drawing attention to the SNP's record on education, and so on. Which is fair enough, but going after them on economistic grounds concedes the constitutional politics of the nation - the central question in Scotland - to the Tories and SNP. And besides, is Uncle Tone seriously suggesting Scottish Labour doesn't already talk about these things?
The truth of the matter is, while Blair is right that in England Labour have to take votes from the Tories to win an election, he cannot bring himself to make serious suggestions about how in Scotland Labour has to win them back from the SNP. And this comes as no surprise, because to understand how Labour lost north of the border it is necessary to think about how class dynamics there have played out.
I never shut up talking about the new working class and its relationship to the Labour Party, and how Corbynism was simultaneously its articulation and expression. As far as the 'old' working class were concerned, i.e. the huge numbers of older workers and retirees who abandoned Labour for the Tories in December, their old auto-Labourism were legacies of working class institutions that have long since faded, of common outlooks tied together by work and place, and a much more homogenous culture. As the political economy supporting the integration of organised workers with the Labour Party was eroded and, in the 1980s, smashed up, so their loyalties faded and other politics backfilled the void - mainly the politics of soft nationalism, which has a particular resonance with older people.
This is true of Scotland too. Labourist unionism has historically been dominant in Scotland because all across the central belt and in the major towns industry was initially tied to the Empire, and in the post-war period was maintained as successive governments were committed to (haphazard) policies of full employment. The labour movement then, cursed by empire chauvinism across Britain, and doubly distorted by added sectarianism in Scotland, nevertheless formed an assembly of working class institutions that bargained, sometimes forcefully, sometimes militantly for its share of the spoils, and won them. The Scottish working class derived tangible benefits from being part of the United Kingdom. And then the post-war consensus fell apart, and in came the Tories. As per England, Britain's primary industry and manufacturing base was imperilled by competition and was in decline before Thatcher, but her countenancing of mass unemployment to break the labour movement destroyed livelihoods and the political economy that conferred the state legitimacy. With unemployment giving way to call centres, offices, retail parks, the benefits of the union became less tangible. Having a few staff from the DWP transferred out of London and the multiplier effects of Faslane, what is there? And so once the Scottish Parliament was set up, a new mainstream politics opened up relatively autonomous from Westminster and more reflective of the dynamics post-industrialisation were set in train. In other words, Labour's domination became conditional.
The 2014 independence referendum saw this conditionality collapse. It wasn't so much that Labour played the leading role in the Better Together campaign, and shipped in activists from England to assist a long hollowed-out party, but rather the manner of the politics adopted. Here Labour were lining up with the very Tory party that had just spent four years overseeing attacks on the poor and driving down living standards while getting into high profile spats with the SNP over spending - a series of set-tos that allowed the SNP to present itself as the best defenders of the Scotland and "Scottish interests". Labour meanwhile was saddled with its pathetic non-opposition to austerity, and were only too happy to go along with Tory threats about how much they were going to screw a post-independence Scotland. What was particularly catastrophic about this blunder was it made sure the rise of the new working class in to political consciousness be channelled into the SNP as opposed to Labour. Scottish Corbynism was only ever a nice idea because what would have been its base was the SNP's new base.
Now, Scottish Labour might have the strategic genius of the likes of Ian Murray on its side, but any strategy for returning the party to health that fails to recognise this elementary fact is utterly useless. This is where Tony Blair fits in. The kind of politics he's advocating is no different to the Blue Labour prescriptions for winning England, but in Scotland it's doubly dumb. His preference and that of what remains of the party's establishment is to go after the Tories for the decaying unionist vote. Madness. As England where Tory support remains in long-term decline, despite their bumper Christmas gift, Scottish unionism is decomposing at a faster rate. Scottish Labour and Scottish Conservative support is mostly older, mostly retired, and is not reproducing itself. Sticking here is never going to be a route to political success, and guarantees nothing but diminishing returns for Labour.
I don't have a magic bullet, a solution, or even a strategy for Scottish Labour. Only a diagnosis of a problem. The medicine Tony Blair is dispensing, however, is nothing of the sort. Far from a cure, it's not even a palliative. Swigging it induces paralysis, and guarantees decay, defeat, and irrelevance.
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"It's the dregs of the Brown combined with the mediocrity of the Miliband era", so says a "senior Labour MP" finding themselves passed over for preferment in Keir Starmer's first shadow cabinet. That's one way of looking at it. The other is a candidate of the soft left fills his first appointments ... mostly from the soft left. Shocking, I know. In terms of political balance appointing Rachel Reeves the roving brief of the Shadow Chancellor for the Duchy of Westminster is a bone thrown to Labour First, while shuffling Rebecca Long-Bailey to Education is there to placate the left. Not that either wings are going to be satisfied by measly nuggets, but it doesn't matter. The left are strong, but not as strong as it might be, and the right have hitched their wagons to Keir's caravan - not the other way round.
What to make of the rest of the new appointments? Slotting Anneliese Dodds into shadow chancellor is a good shout. Upon her election in 2017 she served loyally with John McDonnell, obtaining his endorsement, and helped work up Labour's green industrial programme. She was part of the party's economics road show, for instance. This will at least mollify the left who are happy to take John's recommendation as good coin, even if they don't know her terribly well. And for those who enjoy entertaining counterfactuals, it's likely Anneliese would have got picked for this position had RLB won. Giving Lisa Nandy shadow foreign was probably not much of a surprise, though it will be noted in the scheme of the Westminster pecking order that she was awarded a more senior position than the woman who actually came second. Folks can read into that what they will. But from the standpoint of making an impact, as we saw in the leadership election Lisa easily had the best of Andrew Neil and would therefore prove more than a match for the hapless Dominic Raab in the post-Covid world. Despite an unwelcome propensity to be economical with the actualité, from Starmer's point of view a top drawer media performer with a proven ability to think on her feet will, he thinks, make her an asset to the new leadership.
Other appointments? I suppose the return of Ed Miliband is something Keir's core supporters will appreciate. Still popular in the party, politically it reconnects with the pre-Corbyn era and effectively parcels Jeremy's time off as adeparture from the norm. Now liberated from the Blairist constraints said to have saddled him between 2010 and 2015, we'll see whether there is radical mettle in his soul. The moving in of Jonathan Reynolds to shadow social security is interesting. Rare among the centre right of the party his idea of "radical welfare reform" isn't privatising and marketising everything, unlike some. But he is supportive of the basic income, which we hear today is now part of Spain's response to the Coronavirus crisis. Having an advocate for it in this position is encouraging. Scotland was only ever going to be given to Ian Murray, bringing back Charlie Falconer as shadow attorney general was entirely predictable, as was shifting Emily Thornberry to international development and giving David Lammy a prominent role (considering his exemplary work around Grenfell Tower).
Who's in and who's out - which is all of Corbyn's top team except for RLB, Jonathan Ashworth, Angela Rayner, and Emily - is jolly good fun, but what about the politics? First, Keir has not gone out of his way to troll the left and appoint some of the party's biggest idiots. Positions for the likes of Wes Streeting, Jess Phillips, Neil Coyle, and Margaret Hodge was sure to severely damage his creds as the unity candidate and, well, undermined the capacity of his team. Having one eye on the brief, while giving under the counter briefings to the lobby hacks wouldn't have done. As regards wider alignments in the party this spells the end of Unite's disproportionate influence over the party leadership. It's certainly true many trade union tops in other unions felt their nose was put out of joint these last few years, both in terms of Unite's out manoeuvring them for influence and the Corbynist pressures coming upwards from their activist wings. Why else, despite the over long contest, did many general secretaries scramble to convene candidate endorsement meetings before pressure could build from lower down the union echelons - a lesson learned from 2015 when the collective apparat were caught on the hop. And so now Unite is more out in the cold and the other union leaders enjoy more pre-eminence - again, a return to how matters were pre-Corbyn.
Overall though, folks claiming this is a neoliberal or Blairist restoration are wide of the mark. The left are right to harbour serious concerns about Keir Starmer, and his commitment to a Corbynish platform during the election probably owes more to positioning than genuine enthusiasm, but the politics of what we're seeing is a return to soft left Fabianism. A politics of brainy and socially concerned technocrats dispensing justice through a top down plan here, and tinkering with the state machinery there. This is a step back from Corbynism, which despite the criticisms that can be made of it recognised itself rooted in social struggles and class politics, whereas this - in as much as it tells itself a story of its lineage - is closest to ethical socialism (i.e. a better society is a nice idea as opposed to a material necessity) and therefore is liable to be overly wonky, remote from what's actually happening in the real world and, well, boring. But perhaps after the turbulent time we've had and the Coronavirus crisis, boring might just be what the electorate four years from now wants.
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Dear Corbyn Supporter,
With 275,560 votes (56.2%) vs Rebecca Long-Bailey's 135,218 votes (27.6%) and Lisa Nandy's 79,597 (16.2%) Keir Starmer is the new leader. Sometimes politics is totally, straightforwardly predictable. Also the left candidates for the deputy leadership didn't do fantastically, what with Richard Burgon getting 80,053 votes (17.3%) and Dawn Butler receiving 50,255 (10.9%) in the first round. Alas, the crank right had little to shout about - Ian Murray could only muster 61,179 votes (13.3%), despite my endorsement.
Fallow times for the left, then. Or are they?
I'm extremely sceptical of Keir Starmer's leadership. His pushing of the second referendum after 2017 either demonstrated conscious complicity with an obvious campaign to undermine Jeremy Corbyn, appalling naivete, or - considering how central Brexit was to the Tory revival - an unseemly tone deafness. These are not qualities that recommended Keir as a serious leadership candidate, but alas. Here we are. We're going to have to live with someone whose first instinct is to praise the government when they're doing well, and keep quiet when they're not - an approach sure to set us up for future election victories.
What does the left do now? It's very likely tens of thousands of party members are considering their position. If you're one of them, you should stay. This isn't to say the Labour Party must be the be-all and end-all of your political focus. As a number of comrades have noted, the eruption of Corbynism and the drawing of virtually the entire left into the party has left the field open for other forces to fill the street and community campaigning niches. Most obvious is the rapid growth of Extinction Rebellion and its radical liberal politics of personal responsibility and accountability, with its daft stunts like clambering on top of trains and activists gluing themselves to the front of Labour's battle bus. The end of Corbynism means this sort of organising by the left will no longer get neglected. However, the shift of focus doesn't necessarily entail dumping party membership. Especially when there are plenty of battles coming up.
Regardless of my Starmer scepticism, he was elected on a Corbynist-lite programme. And as we're seeing the editorial board of the bosses' house organ, the FT calling for a new settlement along these lines, the political room for backsliding is blocked by a largely left wing membership and an emerging bourgeois common sense - though I strongly suspect the latter will count for more than the former. But this is no room for complacency. Not only can we expect attempts at rolling back manifesto commitments, but also the limited democratic advances made in the last five years. Prepare for a lot of dishonest hand-wringing over the imminent EHRC conclusions, and the best efforts of the right to try and purge prominent leftists. We're likely to see some trolling too, with the inviting back of horrendous scabs like Ian Austin and John Mann, and finding jobs for backbench phantoms of Labour's recent past. In these circumstances there is no need for a purge if the left can be expected to purge themselves. These initiatives and moves need resisting not just because it weakens the left in the party, but because they weaken the left and, yes, the viability of the Labour Party as a whole.
Therefore comrades who've had a bellyful (and seriously, who hasn't?) should approach the matter not as an issue of ideological purity but as pragmatic class politics. Keep the membership and follow your own political priorities outside the party, but support comrades in the party when it comes to crucial votes, meetings, and selections. That's it. And as quid pro quo, for comrades whose focus remains Labour stuff they should seek to use whatever leverage they have in the party to support and publicise activism and struggles taking place outside of it. This isn't particularly difficult, nor is it a big ask. Rather it's maintaining what is already happening in a lot of places, of preserving the relative cohesion of our movement.
Consider the position of the left at the moment. Apart from a few irrelevances, for the first time in my political life the left is largely united and pulling in a common direction. Even with the catastrophic defeat and the subsequent arguments about who should stand for the left, what is unique about this moment is how the left hasn't turned in on itself. There's been a dribble of support from the active left over to camp Keir, but it has been clear sighted about how the class interests of our people are best served by Rebecca Long-Bailey's candidacy. I hope this clarity and seriousness continues as we grow accustomed to the new politics of the post-Covid era.
For the left in Labour, resistance is the name of the game but, to borrow a phrase, not opposition for opposition's sake. Criticising the new leader when Keir makes his mistakes, continuing to advocate for policies and strategies that keep our coalition together, resist the spurious Coronavirus Union Sacrée and carry on forcefully attacking the Tories and, crucially, defending Starmer from the inevitable Labour right carping so they can get back to their long 90s comfort zone and, crucially for them, their former prominence and power. The left might have very little to no confidence in Starmer, but that doesn't mean we don't want him to succeed. We do, but success is measured by the demands of the moment. Our job is to ensure he and the rest of the party are up to it.
And this is where those comrades whose focus outside of the party is crucial. We must resist the tendency to fragmentation and squabbling, but continue to learn from and keep accountable to one another. We need to keep ourselves honest. As someone who was once completely sucked into the party machinery, I know how a total fixation on the party can insulate one from wider politics and distort your perspective. Likewise, total neglect/outright hostility runs the risk of ceding conventional politics entirely to our enemies. The left then must stand with one leg in and one leg outside the party, that is how we stay united. This is our responsibility, no one else's. The future will not be kind if we fail.
Best,
Phil
A frightful ghoul stalks my nightmares. Boris Johnson makes a complete hash of the Coronavirus crisis, which is what he's presently doing (despite what the polls think), and he then screws up the subsequent peace with austerity 2.0. After all, we have to pay for all those bail outs. Yet, even then, despite a smooth new Labour leader at the helm we still lose. Because with everything else gone to pot, the Tories decide on replaying the 2019 general election. And Labour hasn't drawn a single bloody lesson from December's catastrophe and lose because significant chunks of the party can't stop banging on about Brexit.
A portent of siren calls to come hails this time from Rafael Behr, who uses the occasion of unprecedented crisis to moan about Brexit. Padding out his piece, we are pointed to the tomb of Tory orthodoxy, wherein lies the mouldering bones of laissez faire and small statism. If these can be interred in the ossuary in the first throes of the crisis, he muses, then further down the track surely a Brexit delay and an extension to the transition period - lobbied for by the European Union, but so far resisted by Johnson - could be pulled off after a few more weeks of lock down. His second argument is against the very real threat Coronavirus poses, Brexit seems like a petty, trivial, and small-minded affair which this crisis could confirm and then write off as a bad idea. Unfortunately, this sounds very much like Coronavirus-conditioned wishful thinking.
Politically, the pandemic has changed a lot. But that doesn't mean we're in Year Zero. A number of leftist writers have argued, including yours truly, how the government have skipped the most expeditious means of addressing employment and welfare problems (i.e. the payment of a flat, relatively generous basic income) in favour of measures designed to protect the wage relation, keep punitive social security arrangements in place, and guard against the principle of income deriving from anything but work. Like duh, capitalist states are going to protect capitalist economies, and that's true of any mainstream party regardless of political colours. In this sense, the Tories are ensuring that, at least where the fundamentals of political economy are concerned, there will be no great reset. Their pre-Corona budget set out a strategy for big spending, and the (intentionally blank) manifesto gives them plenty of room to liberally raid Labour's discarded document and do whatever they see fit.
And doing whatever they see fit has the dual project of preserving class relationships, which is to be achieved by their continuing political dominance. And, yes, that means carrying on with Brexit. As Rafael observes, Johnson does have wiggle room here as some two thirds of voters, or thereabouts, are chill with delaying the negotiations and having an extension to the transition period. And it's probable Johnson will take it up in time once the practicalities assert themselves. Yet, seeing as his winning formula of sticking to Brexit made his political fortune, for as long as possible he will stick with the rhetoric of getting it done. The problem then comes with what happens next. One extension is fine, but given this crisis is with us for at least six months and rolling lock downs could be a feature of everyday life for the next year, the danger lies in the number of times the talks are extended and/or its length. The longer this goes on, the politics of old, the angry impatience with delay and Brexit thwarted will find ingress back into political life, and the greater the potential cost to Johnson.
This is where the danger to Labour presents itself. Considering who we're about to make our party leader, Keir Starmer's base is, to put it euphemistically, enthusiastically pro-EU. And despite prior promises of Brexit being a settled issue, fools could easily rush in where Rafael happily treads. Coronavirus-induced Brexit delays are going to be seized upon to reopen the arguments we've enjoyed these last four years. I don't think it's going to be particularly helpful for Labour to enter into the politics of reconstruction and recovery with a prominent and vocal strand calling for a reassessment of Brexit, up to and including rejoining the EU as full members. What it would do, however, is throw Johnson and the Tories a life line when they most need it. Don't let them deflect attention from their reckless necropolitics and general incompetence, but this is precisely what reopening the Brexit debate on remain terms will do. It will then be Labour who'll be accused of exploiting a serious crisis to thwart a democratic vote, and Labour who'll be seen to disrespect the memory of those voters who didn't make it through the pandemic. And the result? The same polarisation, and the same outcome.
If the new leadership has any sense it will abandon the Coronavirus timidity evidenced by Keir Starmer's candidacy, and ignore the temptation to bang the remain drum as Johnson founders in the Brexit negotiations. If we are to believe the forensically forensic hype, surely we're not about to lose focus as the task as the politics of recovery looms over everything?
Long time readers know I supported Rebecca Long-Bailey for Labour leader. It might therefore come as a surprise that my deputy vote went to ... Ian Murray. This appears a bit incongruous considering everything written here in recent years and, well, my choice for leader. Why have I found Ian's pitch so attractive? In brief, here are my reasons:
1. As a discerning writer of all matters politic, one must move with the times. Stay relevant. A wind is flapping about the Labour Party, and the gale that blew the left wing leadership off course has forced them onto the rocks of marginality. To be taken seriously one simply must ditch the hard left's beached hulk and bail out on the position takings of the last four/five years. And the rewards? There might be retweets from Stella Creasy, an occasional article in Unherd and CapX, and basking in five minutes of fame as a Corbynist-turned-sensiblist. I'm sure in time the smug supremacism and advocating for hospital car parking charges will come. Backing Ian is the best way of having my totally good faith apostasy taken seriously, and would secure my relaunch as an outrider for the New Moderation with a Marxisant turn of phrase.
2. I am a loyal Labour Party member who believes everyone has something to contribute, and Ian has a great record we can draw on. Just look at Ian's successful winning ways. Scottish Labour have fallen to just a single parliamentarian on two occasions, and Ian was just that only man left standing. Never mind Edinburgh South is one of the wealthiest constituencies in the country, and doing what Ian does to ensure victory there is very much not the way to win all the other Scottish seats doesn't matter. He wins where Labour loses, and that confers upon him a special status. He demands the party must learn from him!
3. Principles matter, and there's no higher value than ... winning. It's all about winning. Ian notes in his campaign material, Labour needs to win elections. As he eloquently puts it, "Only by winning can we have a Labour government." No other candidate has offered as sharp an analysis about the party's predicament. We need to win, and by saying we need to win we will be convinced that we need to win. Winningly winning, Ian's emphasis on winning certainly wins my vote. And by banging on about winning, we will win.
Oh noes. According to the latest poll, the Tories are on 54% and Labour are stuck at 26%. 72% are satisfied with Boris Johnson's performance and ditto for the government as a whole. There are a few points that arise from this polling, quite apart from why pollsters are requiring call centres to carry this out for them when workers should be sat at home and stymieing the spread of Covid-19.
Firstly, polling electoral intentions are utterly pointless - a point the article above concedes. It isn't just that elections are now postponed, but also the moment we're living in is fleeting and highly unusual. Voting intentions today aren't voting intentions four years hence, though it is beyond likely the politics then are still going to be dominated by this crisis and the subsequent recovery. Also, Labour isn't figuring in the wider political imaginary - apart from scabby MPs coveting the settling of scores. This isn't because Labour haven't been taking to the airwaves making their criticisms known as Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell both have ventured powerful criticisms of the government's handling that echo points long made by health campaigners and NHS workers. It is, sadly, because most people have tuned out from what they're saying. The double whammy of election defeat and the stupidly, unnecessarily long leadership contest has simply ruled Corbyn out as a contender. No doubt this will change with the election of a new leader next week, but in the mean time can't do anything but depress Labour's numbers.
The second explanation is so obviously obvious even a politics prof would get it. In times of national emergency, there is a tendency for people to rally around the government because, well, there is nothing else they can do. We see it in country after country, the support for incumbent leaders have gone up. Even Donald Trump, whose handling of the Coronavirus crisis has proven spectacularly incompetent and has doomed tens if not hundreds of thousands to otherwise avoidable deaths has enjoyed a bounce in approval ratings. Hence the criticisms, of which there are legion, that can be made about the government completely bounce off or do not find a mass audience.
Think about it like this. Facing an invisible adversary individuals are powerless against, the avenues of agency are radically narrowed. Abiding by the letter of the government's advice is an obvious means of doing something. And as someone who's been out everyday during the crisis to get in my state-sanctioned exercise, its effect has proven striking. Virtually no cars on the roads. Very few people in our local park. But staying home is not enough. As police reports suggest, we've descended into a nation of curtain twitchers with neighbour informing on neighbour, and suspicious people (i.e. anyone happening to stroll by) sparking unease and dread across the land. The likes of Derbyshire Police should be mocked for their over-the-top scouring of the Dales and Peak District by drone, but they're sublimating the eye-spy proclivities of millions of scared and frustrated people. The stymied agency does have its positives though, such as the public round of applause NHS workers received on Thursday, the setting up of mutual aid organisations, and the hundreds of thousands who've volunteered in response to the government's call. Things have got so bad that even Twitter is bearable, being used for good-natured bants and a means of whiling away the hours positively. And this in turn reflects on the government. As the state is the legitimised institutional expression of country and therefore representative of the "national community", it condenses the hopes of beating this disease and finds projected onto it what you might call aspirational agency - what its populace would like to do, but can only effect through collective effort. In this case, what the state is apparently doing on their behalf.
This cannot persist, and will not persist. China and Italy have already seen outbreaks of violent unrest, and while it would be stupid to suppose the UK has this to look forward to with any sense of inevitability, these polling figures won't last forever. For as long as the emergency is perceived, unless the government does anything else egregiously and obviously stupid most will continue to give them the benefit of the doubt. What happens when normality arrives, and how the Tories are going to try and turn the clock back, this will be the crucial time. Therefore it's not worth paying any mind to polling until then, except as a curio for future historians.
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"My voice will not be stilled, I’ll be around, I’ll be campaigning, I’ll be arguing, and I’ll be demanding justice for the people of this country." Thus spake Jeremy Corbyn at his last Prime Minister's Questions at Wednesday lunch time. As per the etiquette of the Commons, Boris Johnson paid him a more courteous tribute than some trading falsely as Labour MPs. And with that, the Commons broke up early for Easter. When it returns, in all likelihood Johnson will face tougher questioning from the obsequious press pack than his new opponent at the dispatch box.
That's for another time. Sadly, Jeremy's time as leader came to the calamitous ending his opponents always forecast it would. In large measure thanks to their own scabby efforts. But while the awful 2019 general election will always be associated with his name, in the long-term Corbyn's legacy will come to be appreciated as a necessary correction to the party. Not just because the movement he occasioned into being recovered Labour as a moral crusade with a moral purpose, as it should be, but also, more crucially, Labour was once again fused with a new class base that can only become more important with time.
As advanced on many occasions on this blog and elsewhere, the stark age effect we see captured by sundry polling - younger people voting Labour, older people voting Tory, younger people more pro-EU, older people Brexity, younger people socially liberal and progressive, older people more socially conservative, and so on, is not an outcome of "values" or, in conservative and alt-right parlance, of brainwashing by a permissive media and lefty university lecturers. It is an effect of class recomposition, which expresses itself long age lines. By way of a quick explainer, since the expansion of the state after the war growing numbers of workers have been drawn into employment whose object is not the production of surplus value, and therefore profit, but the reproduction of the social relationships, institutions, and technologies of population management advanced capitalist societies depend on. Following the arguments of Italian post-Marxism, the character of their labour is immaterial. Their concern is the production of relationships, of data and knowledge, of care and socialisation processes.
From the 1970s onward, immaterial labour underwent a double expansion. Despite the best efforts at curbing public spending in bouts of capitalist revanchism across the Western world, the state grew in size and dispersed itself among semi-autonomous (and occasionally competing) institutions. Simultaneously, some of these functions were hived off to the private sector, while increasingly the offshoring and decline of manufacturing saw jobs replaced by an expanding for-profit service sector, such as retail, warehouses full of call centres, adult care and, more recently, the growth of the gig economy. This recomposition of labour is a decades long process, and it stands to reason the younger you are the greater the likelihood the entirety of your work career comprising immaterial work of some form.
What had this to do with Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party? In the first place, there was an alignment of values. Immaterial work is fundamentally about relationships, of our capacity as social beings getting exploited for the benefit of an employer. But that sociability demands an aptitude to rub along with others from all kinds of backgrounds, with all kinds of characteristics. This is one thing self-identified cultural conservatives cannot get to grips with. Liberal institutions aren't responsible for socially tolerant values, it's embedded in the character of the work underpinning the class relationships of the system they defend. Jeremy Corbyn's politics, its internationalism and anti-racism is most closely aligned to the spontaneous common sense of our rising class of immaterial (or socialised) workers. More so than Ed Miliband's Labour with its racist mug, of the clamouring for immigration controls by the Labour right, and certainly more than two metres distance from Boris Johnson's noxious, opportunist racism.
Second, Corbyn's Labour spoke to the general material conditions of immaterial labour. He spoke out against the precarity endured by millions of workers. He spoke up for the public sector, cynically starved of resources by the Tories who saw public spending cuts as their easy passage into office following the 2008-9 economic crisis. And as a means of reinforcing the class relationships their party serves and is sustained by. He stood by young people who have been criminalised, scapegoated, and super-exploited while both parties have traditionally looked the other way, and championed the interests germane to them without the abysmal triangulation and failed cynicism characteristic of his predecessors. And thirdly, Corbyn's Labour took up the immediate interests of immaterial labour - the housing shortage, crap pay, mounting debt and, above all, the climate emergency. In so doing, Labour has cohered itself a new base among the new working class. To put no finer point on it, Jeremy Corbyn saved Labour as a going concern as well a rejuvenating it through two waves of huge membership increases, striking deep roots into and contributing to the political coherence of immaterial workers. Labour has provided for them a collective political focus neither existing trade unions nor other organisations have managed, contributing to its emergent consciousness and a shared sense of interest - a politics that will not go away when Jeremy retires to the back benches.
Unfortunately, improving on the potential shown by the 2017 general election was thwarted thanks to a splintering of the uneasy coalition Corbyn was then able to construct. In 2019, being the party of the new working class was necessary, but it wasn't a condition sufficient for turning in a creditable performance. It showed Labour's core vote has grown appreciably versus the party's previous electoral outings under the Labour right and the soft left, but this is a concentrated vote. Our constituency's "inefficient" geographic distribution, coupled with Johnson's more adept handling of Brexit's class politics, and the wedge the remain movement - cheered on and abetted by Labour's parliamentary fifth columnists - were able to shove between Corbyn and the pro-EU base chipped off a million or so crucial votes. Were the situation different, were Brexit not an issue the antipathy many (mainly older) Labour voters had with Corbyn might have been swallowed on anti-Tory grounds. But the combination of the two were too much.
Nevertheless, Corbyn's great legacy is not just re-energising the party by aligning it with 21st century class politics, but being the most effective opposition of my life time. To the centrist hacks and the idiot MPs, their idea of effective opposition is opposing zero hour contracts by championing one hour contracts, or extending tenants' rights by increasing the period eviction notices require by a week or two. Meanwhile, Corbyn has wrenched British politics to the left, forcing first Theresa May to abandon the overt austerity politics of Dave's misbegotten administration, and despite Labour's defeat in December (you know, the one the right won't stop reminding the left about being the party's worst performance since 1935) you had a pre-Coronavirus crisis chancellor unveiling big spending. Rishi Sunak did not announce the Tories' conversion to Corbynism, but it's unlikely they'd have pitched in the direction of state intervention and serious infrastructure commitments were it not for the spadework done by the Corbynist shadow treasury team and the advocacy of John McDonnell.
There is no greater compliment than having enemies adopting your priorities and politics. And while there are significant differences between Jeremy and Keir Starmer, the most likely successor, there is schadenfreude in watching the likes of Labour First shill for a candidate whose policy platform they've spent their entire history struggling against. Our party's history enjoys its ironies too. The uncertainty starts to arise when it comes to navigating the changed class politics of the world during and after Coronavirus. The myths underpinning public spending and the limited efficacy of the state have been utterly destroyed, disproved in the stark realities of income guarantees, unlimited funds for the NHS, and business bail outs. As Keir, like many other Labour politicians, haven't got the first clue about the dynamics underpinning Labour's support - not even an instinctive grasp of them - I fear a future in which the party will pass up opportunity after opportunity, and let the Tories cruise back into office. Jeremy Corbyn, for all his faults, did understand the necessary direction of march. It's therefore up to us on Labour's left to carry on struggling, carry on fighting, and carry on pushing the lessons of the last five years. It's either this, or ruin.
