When you've been involved in labour movement politics for a while, chances are you have a Wes Streeting story. Here's mine.
Back in 2008 when the British National Party had nine seats on Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Stoke became a hotspot for anti-fascist activity with rounds of regular campaigning, leaflet drops and demonstrations. One of these occasions involved a march organised on the same day the fash were having a national mobilisation. They were forced to demonstrate in the arse end of nowhere in Fenton, while the anti-fascist march (more or less) had the run of the city centre. Before setting off we had the usual speeches, among whom was the newly-elected NUS president, Wes Streeting. After our fill of platitudes, marched out of the car park, around the roundabout and ... we were stopped dead by the fuzz who'd decided Hanley was off limits after all and were directing us down a deserted side street. Our SWP friends charged the police lines in anger, prompting some not-at-all helpful headlines that evening. I was a good way back from this and happened to be yards from El Presidente. Once the commotion became clear you could see the panic in his eyes. All the careful grifting in the bowels of Labour Students and the NUS, all those "Wes for Pres!" chants performed solo by Richard Angell at conference, it would all be for nothing and that safe Labour seat would be denied if he was caught anywhere near the fracas. At this point he exclaimed to everyone not paying any attention that he had "better go", and quickly scarpered with a hanger-on in tow.
It was lucky for Wes's career that on this occasion, fate had found him positioned in a demo where he could exit unnoticed - except for this Potteries-based anecdote noterer. And fortune carried on smiling. He was fortuitous to leave office before his hapless successor, Aaron Porter, got well and truly destroyed by the student movement against tuition fees. It was also impeccable timing how Helena Kennedy just so happened to have a plush job lined up for him as chief exec for her charitable foundation, one that happened to allow him time generous enough to chase that safe seat. Everything was set. The time to campaign for selection, getting elected for Ilford North, and from there a cruise to the front rank of politics. Unfortunately for Wes, time started working against him just as he made it into the Big House. Crowbar number one was the election of Jeremy Corbyn, which rendered him politically irrelevant outside of Twitter spats and providing off the record quotes to the lobby hacks. And crowbar number two has gone and inconvenienced him again. With Keir Starmer poised to win Labour's leadership, insipid days are here again, the likes of Wes can look forward to business as it should be. In preparation for the new era he's popped out a pamphlet to say Corbynism without Corbyn is a non-starter what with its state controls and stuff. How history has tittered at the timing. As I write the government have announced the nationalisation of the railways, on top of packages guaranteeing workers' income and a pantheon of policies designed to ward off the iron fist of the invisible hand. Poor old Wes. We're not seeing blue Corbynism, but we are seeing state intervention in the economy to an unprecedented scale.
Actually, don't feel sorry for him. Because his pamphlet indulges the same sort of myth-making we've heard before. Corbynism was an anti-working class middle class politics. Corbynism looked to the past and not the future. The election was lost because of the manifesto. So snoring, so boring. What then does Wes offer by way of an alternative. He boldly sets out his stall:
The next leader of the Labour party needs to hit the reset button loudly enough that the voters notice. That doesn’t mean that we need to jettison every policy, embrace the damaging economics of austerity or seek solace in past victories. But it does mean building a transformational economic policy that people can believe in, a worldview that provides security and opportunity in a turbulent world and a political culture that is open, welcoming and inclusive. (p.6)
Ah, if only Wes hadn't spent the last five years stretching every sinew against this very vision. Le sigh.
Now, I'm not about to suggest Wes's pamphlet is complete trash. Some of the criticisms he makes of the 2019 manifesto are formally correct, such as being pretty rubbish on social security - a point on which the Liberal Democrat manifesto was better than Labour's. We see a critique of the 10% stake in larger businesses, which - it's a fair cop, guv - is seen as a tax grab, and a call for reworking welfare so it's more responsive. Certainly a cause the left needs to take up beyond throwing money at the problem, lest those on Labour's right interpret this in terms of more conditionality and more market delivery. Overall, apart from the odd nod to Blairist nostrums (tuition fees, the stupid opposition of consumers vs producers strongly implied in Wes's opposing of outcomes to means), you might describe this as a critique of the 2019 manifesto from the standpoint of ... Labour's 2017 manifesto. That period of history to have completely fallen down the centrist memory hole, simply because even now they cannot reckon with it. And so instead it is subsumed into post-Corbyn sensible sensiblism as if it has been their point of view all along.
To be fair, there are other good ideas here too. Such as putting relationship building and interaction at the heart of elderly social care, initiatives aimed at raising the status of care work, supporting the "foundational" economy (now known as the "everyday" economy since Chuka Umunna passed beyond the veil), and some good wonky stuff too. The Green New Deal/Industrial Revolution gets a full outing, though Wes manages to get through it without once mentioning Rebecca Long-Bailey - a wilful oversight as he's not afraid of name dropping Rachel Reeves, "political thinker" Liam Byrne, Angela Rayner, and the GMB as if it's the only Labour-affiliated trade union. And, of course, NATO is trotted out as an example of Labour's "internationalism" as opposed to the party's long accommodation with and soft soaping of big power politics.
To be honest, Wes's pamphlet could have been written by any of the Fabian Society's correspondents. It shares the colourless policysplaining tone of all its literature, reiterates the party/movement divide by locating politics in its entirety to peddling nice schemes and implementing them from above, and crucially ignoring questions of how to. For a piece starting off with a quote from Antonio Gramsci, like all Fabian stuff this pays no attention to power - how to get it, how to wield and shape it, and how to keep it. Putting the flaws of the Corbyn project at the feet of a manifesto and the leader's anti-imperialist bent, yet again, paints over the near miss of 2017, and more crucially disarms the party well before the 2024 election. If you can't appreciate the centrality of Labour's new base, and the character of 2019's Tory vote, you're not likely to surf these dynamics into office. It's that simple. As such Wes epitomises the problem with Labourism: a head full of fine policy ideas, but not the first clue on how to put them into practice. Saying we've got to win elections is a banality, not a revealed truth. Let's hear about how we're going to win them instead.
It's doubtful the last minute intervention of Coronavirus is going to sway the direction of the Labour leadership contest and despite my best efforts, Keir Starmer is still the most likely to win. Therefore what he says and does about the crisis now matters because he will shortly be holding Boris Johnson to account, and making the demands the Tories "acknowledge" but pointedly refuse to do anything about. Unfortunately, worryingly, just as Johnson is asleep at the wheel, judging by his comments so far our would-be Leader of the Opposition is also napping on the job.
In Keir's most recent article we see the outlines about what needs to be done. He rightly calls for a finance package to help businesses and workers through the mess, and criticises the government for not doing so. "If the government fails to appreciate that what is now a health crisis will soon be a fully-blown social-economic crisis, then they will have failed to grasp the severity of the situation", he writes. He calls for regular financial statements, a task force comprised of experts, business, unions and others to determine what stimulus measures are required, and for the government to collaborate with international efforts at bringing down infection and collaborating toward a global response.
I've got some issues with this. Left wing supporters bristle at the suggestion Keir's some sort of centrist, and make a virtue of his Trotty past and good works done as a campaigning lawyer. Just don't talk about his time as Director of Public Prosecutions. Okay, accepting these arguments as good coin then why is his contribution to critiquing Johnson's crisis management diluted to the point of being homeopathic? From the off Jeremy Corbyn has offered concrete demands that will make the lives better for our people as Coronavirus rages. As has Rebecca Long-Bailey. As has Richard Burgon. And if these are not to your political tastes, even Lisa Nandy has branded the government's Coronavirus strategy shambolic. Keir here makes no concrete demands beyond the wonkish: a task force, a statement. Useful, yes, but not the point to emphasise when people are facing drastic cuts to income and dwindling shop shelves.
Want more centrism? Keir has it. You'll note that his criticisms of the government pussyfoots around the perimeter of the unfolding disaster, suggesting Johnson and friends haven't grasped the full weight of the crisis. This recycles the tired old assumption that, despite what the Tories do and the damage they inflict, in the end they're wrong and misinformed and a good bit of evidence and argumentation is going to make them see the light. For instance, the rhetoric Keir has used about austerity as a failed experiment (annoyingly oft-deployed by Jeremy Corbyn too) makes the assumption the last lost decade of cuts took because Dave's Tories were mistaken. Nothing else. This Fabian blindness that has done so much to blunt the Labourist critique of society and depress its intellectual curiosity spills out of the centrist doxa, and helps Johnson get off the hook by spinning his biopolitics of Coronavirus as honest errors. The truth is much more damning: their reaction to the disease is a mere extension ruling class politics. Denying the materialism of political argument is never an encouraging sign, and undermines the self-generated hype about Keir offering a "forensic" opposition.
This is not point scoring. It's deadly serious. If Keir is to lead Labour's response then he has to up his game. If he wants to be meticulous and detailed, it requires something more critical than ambushing Boris Johnson with buried stats. If he wants to inspire, he's got to go beyond wonkish platitudes and trying to be all moral by avoiding hard criticisms. For its part the left criticises Keir because we want an opposition that can articulate the common interest against the Tories, because we want an alternative and not a simulacrum weak on Johnson and clueless about the causes of Johnson. And crucially, a party and a movement that can defend our people and win. We want him to be successful. If Keir falls short and doesn't sort the politics out people will die. It's that straightforward.
Today is an anniversary, my Twitter birthday. No, I can't believe it either. 11 years of mindlessly watching the timeline refresh itself with doses of stupidity and dishonesty. But it never used to be like that, honest! This post has nothing to do with wistful nostalgia mind, it's about setting down what I know about the medium in five easily digestible tips on how to get the most out of Twitter politically. Okay, I'm in no position to give advice as I don't always follow these rules myself, but they are what they are.
1. The most important rule - protect yourself. Richard Seymour has written at length about the mental health costs in his Twittering Machine, and they are real. There are some exceptionally bright folks on Twitter who inform, educate, and entertain to coin a phrase. You can make great friends on the site and find a sense of camaraderie, a digital jouissance in certain shared moments. But what can transmit humour and good times can also disseminate despair. Hitting the feed and getting hit in return with a scrolling wall of depression and defeat is not something I'd recommend anyone. And then there's the constant background of snarking, bad faith, outright lying, and character assassination pervading absolutely everything. On top of that, you might occasionally or permanently attract trolls whose sole raison d'etre range from irritation for attention's sake to wanting to hurt you, and this is especially the case if you're a woman, a person of colour, gay, or trans. If you want to use Twitter politically, you've got to think about ways of dealing with all this. Mute, block, report early and often, and ignore those who are concerned with getting a rise are where you should begin, but don't be afraid of taking extended breaks or not looking in your mentions for a while.
2. Which brings me to the second rule - avoid the slanging matches. I've been in enough of them myself to know how much of a waste they are. Your blood pressure will rise and the crimson mist is bound to descend, but seriously. Save your energy. Likewise, avoid trolling randoms. Mocking the powerful and privileged is fine but if you must, but body swerve tussles by ignoring their supporters and stans. Besides, wouldn't it be better to do something more constructive instead?
3. Stans, oh yes. They're everywhere. Our side has them, and so do they. New tribes come together with much rapidity and mutate and vanish with abandon. See how seamlessly currents of Corbynism and, shudder, FBPE Twitter have fused in the abominable Starmerstandom. It's truly cringe-making and, well, weirdly middle-aged - like most UK political standoms. As a rule though, it's not just the stans who should be avoided but more generally conspiratorial thinking. This is trickier than you might think, because nude-nudge wink-wink who benefits-style tweets are a common place across politics Twitter. But there are those who deploy it as a rhetorical device, and those who really believe. And all too often, we know where it can lead. Steer clear of the freaks, weirdos, conspiracy theoroids - block them if needs be - and not only will your experience be better, you're less likely to disseminate something of theirs and get tainted in the bargain. For Twitter's memory is forever and shaking off past mistakes is difficult.
4. Those are the don'ts, what about the dos? As tweeters, we are all content creators and amplifiers. You do you when it comes to content, and feel free to emulate your twitterly heroes, but you should absolutely amplify the left. If you really think a tweet is pithy, entertaining, or links to something you rate then share it, don't simply like it. Sharing something multiplies the chances of it being seen outside the bubble of left Twitter or whatever, whereas likes sit uselessly and do nothing. It should be common sense, but it's always amazing to see people appreciating viral tweets by not actually passing it on to others to see. Bizarre. Don't be bizarre.
5. Sharing is what we do, but we should do more than inflate the bubble of whichever area of Twitter one resides in. Because we're trying to push out beyond our ghetto, the left - especially men, especially white folks - should try and amplify minority and minoritarian voices. Women's campaigns, trade union battles, black and minority ethnicity takes, solidarity with LGBT issues, we have a duty to bring out and draw attention to struggles that might slip under the radar. Not because it's jolly interesting, but because if it's ever going to be anything the left must strive to be a movement of movements, and following this through in our collective diffuseness can help create new ties and push the process along.
Those are my five pennies worth. Feel free to share yours in the comments.
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He's bringing sexy back. Well, maybe not but Keir Starmer wants to see the return of Alastair Campbell to the Labour Party. This brings back memories from early in the campaign in which Keir said he would not rest until everyone who left the party over anti-semitism were back in the fold. We know that's coded repartee for the right wing departee, such as Change UK and other miserable toerags, as per the Tory-supporting John Mann and Ian Austin. The question is with a commanding lead, as suggested by the latest YouGov why Keir wants to reach out to these dreadful relics, especially when the core of his support stood by Jeremy Corbyn and feel anything but a frisson of warmth when their names are uttered.
It's all about burnishing them unity creds. Having scooped up Labour First, Paul Mason, Sadiq Khan, Momentum's Laura Parker, and, whisper it, His Blairness, demonstrating this desire more isn't going to hurt his chances. Campbell stomped off like a stroppy three-year-old back in the summer, but reaching out shows Keir to be the better man, of someone putting aside past grievances and showing the party is once again welcoming to his sort. It's a conciliatory move that builds on similar from John McDonnell, who was keen to head off another bout of infighting just as the parliamentary shilly-shallying over Brexit and the general election ratcheted up. Of course, Keir is more credible when it comes to this because of his remainy remainism, and a practical demonstration of his centrism for wanting to bang up benefits cheats on 10-year stretches.
This seems to me to have two consequences, whether anticipated or fortuitous happenstances. The first is neutralising trouble from the Labour right. Known now for the scabs they always were, this self-same section of the right were the ones who provided the press briefings and stirred the pot during the Ed Miliband years and, before him, likewise undermined Gordon Brown. As most of these hitched their tiny wagon to the Jess Phillips farce and, defeated, meekly boarded the Lisa Nandy express, inviting back their lost kin draws a line under the previous regime and the clock starts ticking anew. Perhaps one or two of them will get jobs too, and I'm sure they'll repay their gratitude with a steady stream of leaks from the shadow cabinet to their favourite journalists. There are still others for whom Keir will never feature on their Christmas card list because he served in Corbyn's leadership team, and will prove as petulant tomorrow as they were yesterday. You can try mollifying them, but its going to be a complete waste of time - as Keir will find out when the EHRC report drops, they will use it (and anything) for scorched earth factional advantage. They are not going to stop until the left are put back in the box, and anything looking remotely Corbynist is purged from the policy platform.
While we're paddling in centrist waters, the second moment in play here is affecting an ambition old Tonty long nurtured: the unification of the Labour and Liberal traditions (in Blairspeak, two moments of the "radical tradition"). The new membership surge Labour has experienced contains not a few who, over the last few years, decamped from the party and shacked up in the Liberal Democrats before returning to the fold to get their man the top job. And if the members flow, perhaps so will those voters lost to the yellow party in December. It's also going to make the LibDems much more constructive in their approach to Labour - RIP Jo Swinson nonsense. This is handy because the way the Tories are looking to tilt their electoral system even more in their favour, like it or not Labour is going to have to come to some sort of arrangement with the LibDems and Greens ahead of the next election - assuming the Tories' position isn't totally destroyed by an as yet unanticipated cataclysm. Keir's unity pitch then is not just aimed at those in Labour sick of infighting, but those outside wanting to see some sort of unified opposition to Boris Johnson. And it could work.
Nevertheless, Keir is helped by neither of his opponents wishing to contest his unity pitch. Lisa Nandy is more interested in being this contest's "truth-teller". Ironic considering her habitual mischaracterisation of the positions of others. And Rebecca Long-Bailey's campaign, which has much to recommend it, has gone hard on policy and, consequently and despite her best efforts, allowed her challenge to be seen coming from one wing of the party as opposed to Keir's floaty ascendance above the fray. Indeed, if one was even more cynical, Keir's courting of Campbell and friends is about consolidating control and diluting the left by contriving a situation where the resignation letters pile up making his particular unity more unifying via (self) exclusion. A recipe for winning an election, perhaps, but not one that bodes well for the social and political change we need to see.
Despite the recent guest posts making the case for the three leadership candidates, it will come as no surprise to readers that I'm supporting Rebecca Long-Bailey. But let's start off with a conciliatory tone. The truth of the matter is whoever wins the contest, they could win a general election in 2024, which is why I find the overwrought concerns about electability based on what happened in December a bit puzzling. The power of the right wing press as a means of cohering older voters will have declined five years hence. Brexit as an issue will be dead and buried (well, we'll see), the polarisation we see around class cohort lines expressed as a generational war is not disappearing anywhere fast, and with the consequences of decades of climate inaction becoming increasingly obvious, all three Labour contenders are electable. Which is why this leadership contest is so important.
As far as I'm concerned, Lisa Nandy is a non-starter. There's the equivocation over backing workers against bullying bosses - you know, one of the reasons why the labour movement was set up in the first place. Her slippery approach to political commitments, like simultaneously arguing for and against the abolition of tuition fees. The "friends" who have gathered around her campaign, among whom number the very worst of Labour MPs, recent past and present. And then there is the small matter of habitual dishonesty. To face a liar with an inveterate fibber of our own is just stirring up trouble. This is a real shame, because Lisa is not without commendable qualities. During the campaign she has occasionally offered thoughtful positions, such as this on BBC reform and refloating the notion of the foundational economy. And she's undoubtedly an accomplished media performer. Her supporters are right to laud her interview with Andrew Neil - she breezed through it. Nevertheless, a Lisa Nandy-led Labour Party would be a huge step backward. On party democracy, on understanding the relationship between it and the wider labour movement (and movements beyond that), hers is a recipe for insulating Labour from the currents in society that nourish it, look to it, and expect it to act in their interests. The shiftiness of her campaign and her unease with politics outside of Westminster is a brew from which a new, grey managerialism can emerge. One that could be enough to win an election, but not face up to the challenges that cannot be ducked.
And as we're talking about elections, we have the frontrunner who is, apparently, uniquely electable. What exactly this "electable" is supposed to consist of I'm waiting for an answer except, of all Labour's recent leaders, Keir Starmer resembles Tony Blair the most in coiffure and style. When we examine some of the reasons, two others immediately crop up: an ability to be the unity candidate or, if you're feeling ungenerous, the all-things-to-all-people pick. Corbyn supporters love him, as do the soft left, as do the less unhinged members of the Labour right. With a membership weary of almost five years of non-stop internal warfare, you can understand why his appeal, well, appeals. The second strand is continuity remainism. As well as not pushing for mandatory reselection when he was at the peak of his powers, Jeremy Corbyn's second big mistake was not using his authority to push hard for an acceptance of a (soft) Brexit in Labour's ranks. Instead, remain ran riot - abetted by the likes of Keir, Tom Watson and, I'm afraid, other senior shadcab members on the left like John McDonnell and Diane Abbott. The cultivation of remainism means there's now a ready constituency for the ploughman-in-chief, and they can project whatever they want on to him, whether it's a (sensible) close post-Brexit relationship with the EU to the completely daft desire to campaign to rejoin. Unfortunately, both these impulses are inherently conservative - rather than forge something new, for many Keir promises to wind the clock back to pre-referendum times. Rather than consolidate the Corbyn revolution, for many Keir offers a respite from having to fight new and unpleasant battles, even if ultimately it means folding everything in on itself. The policy platform Keir offers appears superficially attractive, but one question his advocates have failed to answer is if he was so radical, why as Director of Public Prosecutions did he advocate for banging up those convicted of benefit fraud for 10 years? Or getting in the way into queries about the activities of undercover cops in protest movements? Or announcing MI5 and MI6 agents will have no case to answer if they were found to be involved in extraordinary rendition or torture during the Iraq War? The appalling errors made during the John Worboys case? The ludicrous attempt at prosecuting someone who joked about blowing up an airport on Twitter? There is no explanation for any of these unnecessary or baffling decisions, and given how lukewarm Keir has showed himself on matters democratic inside the party, there are not sufficient grounds to believe his position taking in this election is sincere or will resist pressures coming from the right. Perhaps this is where Keir's really stood politically all these years. But then why is he happy to talk about stuff from decades ago, including past Trottery, and not what's happened between the years of 2008 and 2013? Such reticence does not bode well for the coming years for Labour, in or out of office.
And there is Rebecca Long-Bailey. Variously criticised for not announcing until late in the day, punting controversial pitches, getting attacked for Stalinist/Vatican influences, and not, it seems, suddenly emerging from nowhere and repeating an inspiring insurgency as if it was the summer of 2015 all over again. All while simultaneously getting ruled out for being continuity Corbyn. There are fair and there are unfair criticisms, and it's clear to tell which from which. But there are three very good reasons to support her candidacy. The first, on the terrain of conventional politics, is charisma. She might not be a sharp as Lisa Nandy in an interview, or have the Blairish eminence conferred upon Keir Starmer, but RLB is more relatable than both. She comes across as warm, funny, but competent and on top of her brief. And as we have years before the election, she doesn't need to be over-polished from the off. There is room for her to grow into the role of leader, and having been tempered in the ridiculous failed coup of 2016 and the vicious infighting since she has the requisite ruthlessness Corbyn lacked. A RLB-led Labour Party won't have its energy sapped because the scorched earth tendency in the parliamentary party will find themselves squashed - if they don't recuse themselves first. And also, while the Tories and their friends will try pinning the continuity Corbyn tag on her it's much more difficult to do. Some comrades might not like her positioning on nuclear weapons, the royalty, and anti-semitism but she's moved quickly to stop these lines of attack from being amplified. It won't stop them of course, but this and a distinct lack of a Corbyn-style baggage caravan might prevent such stories running away and running amok.
The second, which we haven't seen enough of, is thinking about the leadership pitches in terms of class politics. Alone among the candidates, RLB understands not just the party's relationship to the labour movement, but the wider relationship it must have with the emergent new working class. Nowhere does she demonstrate this better than in her taking up mandatory reselection. If the party is to grow more and become embedded in the lives and communities of our class again, the barriers of entry and participation have to be lowered and its role as organiser, educator, articulator, and servant emphasised. This road begins with the thoroughgoing democratisation of the party, the subordination of the parliamentary party and council groups to the membership, the devolution of policy making. The effective de-institutionalisation of Labour as an instrument that stands over our people and condescends to its electorate every so often - the model favoured by the Blairite die-hards and implicit to the pitches of Lisa and Keir - has to be the aim, a party that is the movement of movements that understands politics to be much more than Westminster, and be a means of capturing all aspects of life in its rich molecularity so we can collectively swarm over and swarm out opponents. This isn't just a nice way of organising. To quote Keir Starmer's wonkish mantra, we have to model the behaviour we wish to see. The party then is a microcosm of the kind of society we're working towards, and RLB pre-empts this much better than either of her opponents.
And there is the programme. No ifs, no buts, the climate emergency has to be front and centre. RLB and her support have said enough times she was the one who literally wrote the Green New Deal - now sensibly restyled as the Green Industrial Revolution - and Lisa and Keir both have tried annexing it to their pitches. But the GIR is not some stand alone piece of work, it was embedded in Labour's 2019 programme for renationalising and democratising the utilities and public transport, increasing the economic footprint of the state, renovating public services, and tackling poverty, insecurity and low pay, building enough houses to meet demand, and so much more. Again, this propsectus is not good because ideological reasons but because it meets the requirements of Labour's base: the desire for a good, unhurried, and fulfilling life and a habitable planet to enjoy. RLB's vision builds on the currents of hope Corbynism stirred up, and provides a means of realising them.
As I said atop this post, this election isn't about picking an election winner. All three candidates are capable of winning in 2024 and having the pleasure of seeing off Boris Johnson. But it is about who is most likely to win, and what they do once they get there. I'm sure Lisa or Keir would prove to be perfectly competent leaders and Prime Ministers in their own terms, but their programmes fall short of what needs to be done and don't think about politics outside of vote-catching. This means the pair of them are unlikely to bed down the possibility not just of future Labour victories but throw away the possibility of the party's utter dominance of the 21st century. This does not apply to Rebecca Long-Bailey. She wins the Labour leadership, we all win. And when she takes Number 10, we all go through the door with her. Why should we and all those our party speaks for settle for anything less?
In the final guest post in this mini-series on the Labour leadership contest, Andy Newman - a GMB activist and best known as chief contributor to the Socialist Unity blog - makes the case for backing Lisa Nandy.
The Labour Party last won a general election in 2005, and in December 2019 was comprehensively defeated by a Conservative Party that had proven itself unable to govern, and was lurching from crisis to crisis. The very credibility of our party to pose as a potential election winning force is now in question.
However, while there has clearly been a protracted secular decline of Labour’s vote since 1997, we must not allow a lazy narrative to ignore the anomaly of the 2017 election, where although we did not win, Labour’s vote pushed north of 40%, and where the party did electrify and enthuse a significant proportion of the voting public. I was a parliamentary candidate in 2015 and 2017, and the second of those elections was much more positive. So what changed between 2017 and 2019?
There is of course a factor that a soufflé doesn’t rise twice, and the insurgent anti-establishment nature of Corbyn’s appeal to some voters had a limited shelf life, and the longer Corbyn was leader, the more apparent became the gap of language, aspiration and experience between his supporters and traditional labour voters. This is not a phenomenon unique to the UK, and last year the Australian Labor Party suffered a debilitating loss, as it proved unable to bridge the gap between its big city supporters, often graduates with fairly liberal and green views, and its working class voters in places like Queensland.
In 2017, our party supported Brexit on the basis of respecting the referendum result, which neutralised a highly divisive issue. The subsequent drift by the party towards remain had two components. Firstly immersing the party in parliamentary games and Westminster Bubble shenanigans, which angered Labour leave voters and made Labour seem utterly part of the establishment. Keir Starmer was largely responsible for this, though he was not alone. The second aspect was a complacency that Theresa May’s struggles in parliament were damaging the Conservative Party so much, that Labour just had to wait it out. This strategy is associated with Len McCluskey and colonised the party’s leadership, including Rebecca Long-Bailey. Both of these developments demobilised the party from the type of active campaigning in towns and communities we needed.
Alone of the current leadership candidates, Lisa Nandy correctly argued that Labour should have continued to respect the referendum result, and that we should have shown leadership in promoting our own type of Brexit, consistent with our Labour values, and forcing Theresa May to back us. This was good judgement, that would have put us in a much stronger position in the general election.
Another thing that changed between 2017 and 2019 was a further retreat by the Corbyn supporting left towards into a self-referential bubble. Ever since Corbyn was elected it was clear that his support was not connected with an increase of activism in social movements or trade unionism, that would have engaged with ordinary voters. But this weakness was partly concealed by the accident of the 2016 leadership challenge, which forced Corbyn himself, and Momentum, into an outward looking campaign, albeit an electoral one.
The constitutional endowment of the Labour Party is based upon two strong institutional components, the Parliamentary Labour Party and the affiliated trade unions. The membership in the constituencies holds a weaker hand, in terms of its institutional weight, though obviously democratic participation of the membership is vital for the health of the party. As a mass electoral party, the most effective way of moving opinion within the party is to shift opinion in the outside world, among the voters. Unfortunately, a large part of the energy by Corbyn’s supporters has been squandered on internal battles within the party, where, for example, constituency delegates have stood up at Conference to attack the trade unions, and huge effort has been spent in pushing to deselect MPs. The result has been a party seemingly more at ease with infighting than in seeking to become elected as a Labour government. Long-Bailey’s commitment to “Open Selections” is a mistake. There is already a perfectly adequate mechanism for local parties and trade unions to remove a sitting MP, through the trigger process, and the fact that it is rarely used is because most Labour MPs are doing a decent job. Parties that do have “open selections”, such as the SNP and LibDems, are no more likely to replace their sitting MPs than Labour, suggesting that the issue is being raised as a signal of support for constituency parties to exercise discipline over the PLP, which would be a recipe for protracted civil war in the party, and unelectability.
The issue of “electability” is a constant theme of Keir Starmer’s supporters, and there does seem to be an implicit suggestion that because of all the candidates he most looks like Hugh Grant in Love Actually, then he would be taken more seriously. However, Keir’s pitch is very much that he would be the best performer at the dispatch box. So what? Voters don’t care about PMQs, and given the size of the Conservative majority, as soon as this leadership contest finishes there will be almost no media coverage of what Labour does in parliament. What Keir Starmer offers is a return to the safe territory where Labour’s vote has been in long term slide and from where we don’t win. Once embarked in that direction, caution and conservatism will gradually dilute policy away from the transformative agenda that we need.
Rebecca Long-Bailey offers a more radical policy proposition, but there are three weaknesses. Firstly, paradoxically her base of support seems narrower rather than broader than Corbyn’s. Secondly, her emphasis on open selections suggests that she would have an uneasy relationship with the PLP. And thirdly, although she is a northern woman, her policy pitch seems divorced from the concerns of those traditional Labour voters that we lost to the Conservatives in 2019.
A strategic weakness of Corbynism was to overestimate the social and electoral weight of left liberal voters in big cities, and of younger voters who for conjunctural reasons feel insecure due to precarious jobs and accommodation. These factors are certainly relevant, but inequality of wealth and power in Britain is not just generational, but also predicated upon class and geography. Small towns, especially that have been deindustrialised or in coastal communities, feel forgotten and ignored, and many voters there feel that Labour no longer speaks for them or understands them.
Focus groups and voter feedback show that Lisa Nandy is liked by those voters we lost, she is promising a turn towards campaigning rather than focusing everything on Westminster, and she will deliver stability to the party. Furthermore, if you agree that the worst outcome would be a Keir Starmer victory, then it is more likely that Lisa could beat him on second preferences than Becky could.
In the latest guest post in this mini-series, Naomi Waltham-Smith (@auralflaneur on Twitter) makes the case for backing Rebecca Long-Bailey. Naomi is an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick and a member in Keir Starmer’s Holborn and St Pancras constituency.
The case for Rebecca Long-Bailey rests upon the three Es or what I want somewhat cheekily to describe as an up-to-date alternative to that traditional training ground for the ruling class, PPE, and one more fit for the global grand challenges we face today: Political Education, Environment, Economics. Together these add up to a clear, decisive response to the most urgent and intractable obstacle facing centre-left parties today: the crisis of democracy. Of the three candidates, only Rebecca has a cogent analysis of the backlash against the market-liberal consensus found across rich democracies today (see the excellent work by Jonathan Hopkin and Mark Blyth on this) and, crucially, a compelling narrative about how to forge a return to politics from a place of anti-political disaffection.
After 40 years of Thatcherite deference to the market and entrepreneurial subjectivation, we need an economic and political revolution on the same scale as 1979 to give back power to those who justifiably feel they have lost control over their own lives. This is how you knock down “Get Brexit Done,” and not, as Keir Starmer has suggested, by calling into question the credulity of Tory switchers and, by implication, their appetite for change and empowerment. This anger, difficult to assuage, will need to be channelled, as Rebecca acknowledges and as the more insurgent Corbyn of 2017 did, but it is Bernie who is giving the future Labour leader a masterclass in this.
When Rebecca spoke enthusiastically about wanting to see members debating economics, it was music to my ears and not only because, as a lecturer, I have skin in the game. After a bruising defeat in which Jeremy’s leadership was seen as a significant factor, much of the debate in this leadership campaign has centred on the issue of electability. We are witnessing the forceful re-emergence of the false choice between principle and power. In 2012 Stuart Hall bemoaned that “the left has no sense of politics being educative, of politics changing the way people see things.” Laura Pidcock was right to argue recently that the ambition of politics ought not be to adapt your principles to what is popular but “to make popular your principles.” If Labour doesn’t, it will cede the ground to the right—with disastrous consequences.
To galvanise the electorate around a socialist vision, popular political education — not simply for but organised by the grassroots — will be essential. Lisa Nandy’s positioning as the candidate who’s listening came spectacularly unstuck in her interview with Andrew Neil: “I’ll empower you but only to do what I judge to be empowering.” Rebecca, by contrast, recognises that there’s no point in listening without making room for debate and disagreement, and without ensuring that there is equality when it comes to the power of voices heard. This is why one should not fall into the trap of assuming (as figures on the left including Andrew Fisher and Laura Parker have done) that the apparent policy convergence around the 2017 manifesto means that there’s little to choose between the candidates. On democratisation, Rebecca is the only candidate unafraid to give members a say in selecting candidates and in policy-making. When Keir and Lisa argue against open selections and in favour of empowering councillors instead of members, the electorate will see this for what it is: holding onto the reins of power by meting it out to the lower rungs of middle management (who can be easily managed) out of fear that unleashing the power of grassroots might shake things up — and they’ll vote again for the Eton-educated racist who is promising to do just that in their name.
Keir makes the same mistake on political education by reducing it to a training “college” for the next generation of councillors, MSPs, AMs, and MPs. Of course, we need to foster more working class talent and break down the obstacles to holding office (as the Ashcroft report confirms, the perception is that too many Labour councils, mired in inertia, are not on the side of the people they were elected to serve), but a top-down approach flies in the face of this ambition. The rhetoric of accreditation also capitulates to the profoundly undemocratic marketisation that is eroding education in this country and its capacity to be a vehicle for social change. Trickle-down education doesn’t work any more effectively than its economic counterpart. Rebecca’s vision for democratised political self-education is about restoring a deliberative, agonistic dimension to public debate, responding directly to calls more direct forms of democracy as faith in institutions has crumbled. One cannot hope to beat a right populist with moral paternalism.
This belief in the mobilising power of political education underpins Rebecca’s strengths on environmental and economic issues. There is no doubt that, as one of the authors of Labour’s Green Industrial Revolution, Rebecca far outstrips the other candidates in her commitment to rapid decarbonisation, ecological restoration, and climate justice, as well as to the industrial strategy and extension of democratic public ownership required to achieve these goals. The climate emergency is the single most urgent issue facing the world today and, as Labour for a Green New Deal’s scorecard confirms, Rebecca is head and shoulders above the pack on this. Nothing more really needs to be said, except that communicating this urgency and the power of her proposals to make a real difference remains a challenge. It wasn’t just that the 2019 campaign failed to put the GIR front and centre, as Rebecca has rightly observed. As Alex Wood points out, if the GIR is to bridge the cleavages in the coalition Labour needs to build, its potential must grasped by all its elements for it to make good on its promise to promote a new socialist common sense and this will be most resilient if communities are able to cultivate for themselves an understanding of how the just transition will materially benefit them. Again, Rebecca understands that the GIR needs to be embedded in collective, democratic struggles for power and for a reinvigorated, socialist notion of the good life, rather than emanating from a moralistic injunction to do the right thing.
To defeat the Tories, education in economics is also solely needed to wean the electorate off old wives’ tales now engrained as common sense. The tide is already turning against austerity — which is why an anti-austerity platform isn’t going to cut it against Johnson’s gestures towards greater state interventionism and investment — but there are lingering misconceptions around affordability and credibility. In 2019, Labour undoubtedly got its messaging wrong, but it also failed to tackle the false, yet widespread, analogy between state and household finances and the zero-sum conception of the economy. Similarly, a recent survey showed that, while voters want fairer taxes, the myth of the deserving rich persists in the national psyche. Bernie is challenging this by teaching the American electorate about the labour theory of value! Only when Labour’s potential voters can articulate for themselves the measure of their exploitation will the movement from below needed to propel Labour to victory below take off. Rebecca gets this.
To take on Johnsonomics at a time when the hegemony of neoliberalism is wobbling and offer compelling alternatives to his economic nationalism will require rigour, agility, and a willingness to listening to the most forward-thinking economists. Rebecca hasn’t got the attack lines on this quite right yet, but she alone among the candidates has demonstrated the intellectual curiosity and aptitude for learning about economic policy needed for this task. She’s enquiring enough to revive the Economic Advisory Committee convened by John McDonnell, but not every member and certainly not every potential Labour voter is going to read Ann Pettifor or Marianna Mazzucato, so grassroots self-education will be key.
It may be that Keir should be taken at his word, but the case for Rebecca doesn’t depend on distrusting him. Without the big vision and analysis, defending the policy platform of 2017 or even 2019 won’t be enough. Nor will competence. Bland talk of unity effectively dilutes politics into the technocratic management against which electorates are rebelling. Rebecca’s imagination and capacity to grow can reignite collective politics when it’s most needed.
This is the first of three guest posts by comrades on the left putting the case for their choice for party leader. The author, Cllr Susan Press (@susanp80 on Twitter) has been on the left of the Labour Party for decades, and sets out why she's backing Keir Starmer.
Somewhere out there in a parallel universe Labour is getting set for its first General Election with Jeremy Corbyn as Leader. The past five years have been tough and it took time to win over the PLP and general public but after a narrow escape from leaving the EU with a close referendum in 2016 the polls suggest it’s finally “Time For Real Change’, to use the 2020 election slogan. What a relief it will be to see Prime Minister Cameron finally depart after 10 years of austerity.
Nice fantasy but it didn’t happen did it ?
If I am entirely honest with you I am not sure that I ever thought it would.
Long before the thrills of Glastonbury and Seven Nation Army, I would chair modestly attended Conference fringe meetings with what would now be regarded as a stellar line-up. Corbyn, McDonnell, McCluskey, Owen Jones, and the marvellous Tony Benn. How proud was I to be a bit player in this determined fight back against Blair and New Labour. I still am and always will be.
But in those days the idea of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Leader would have been met with looks of astonishment from all of us small band of Labour lefties. Here was someone who had devoted his life to the most unfashionable and difficult causes. We used to jokingly refer to him as the ‘ alternative Foreign Secretary” as he was always on the way to or back from Palestine or South America. You never met anyone with less ego or less interested in personal political aggrandisement. And then the world turned upside down.
Years before in 2006 my first encounter with Jeremy Corbyn was at a Labour Briefing pre-Conference curry in Manchester. At the time John McDonnell had just announced he would be standing for the leadership when Blair resigned. Despite our 100 per cent support for this brave attempt to overturn the status quo – which ultimately failed when the now Shadow Chancellor couldn’t get the nominations for the ballot against Brown - Jeremy agreed with me that sadly it was highly unlikely it would ever be the case in the foreseeable future that a left candidate could win. The rest is well-documented history. How it was basically Buggins turn in the Campaign Group and the debate needed broadening. How Jeremy got on the ballot with a minute to spare. And how in a heroic campaign he defied 100-1 odds to become Labour Leader.
But for Brexit I still believe things could have been very different. But amid the horrors of the early hours of December 13 I also thought at least on a human scale that I was glad Jeremy Corbyn would not have to endure much more personal abuse. Four years of media hatchet jobs had done their work big style.
Day after day voters would tell us in my marginal constituency that they had always been Labour but wouldn’t vote for Corbyn as PM. It was heartbreaking. Whatever had saved us from annihilation in 2017 it sure as hell wasn’t going to save us now.
It is hard to part company with comrades on the left but the truth is it was crystal clear we were heading for catastrophe and we didn’t have an oven-ready candidate experienced enough to replace Jeremy. Had the result not been such a disaster, there was a lingering if unlikely hope that John McDonnell (who had actually wanted to be Leader and would have commanded support still) might be persuaded to stand. But that ship sailed with Johnson’s 80-seat majority.
These days I am not just a Labour Left activist. As a councillor for the past six years I represent a ward in West Yorkshire with two food banks and a lot of deprivation. But there are also people who are doing OK, people who didn’t vote for us last time or even vote at all. We need all of them on board to stand any chance at all of clawing back ground – let alone forming a government.
Does the PLP bear any responsibility for this? Sure they do. However the turn the Party as a whole took after the so-called chicken coup by MPs didn’t just lose us support. It spawned a bunker mentality and understandable determination to protect the leadership from the top right down to the grassroots. It got toxic. Very. Any criticism of Corbyn and you were a Tory. Anti-semitism was an invention (trust me as a member of the NCC, it wasn’t). Any concerns about election prospects were dismissed on an increasingly hysterical social media amid the cries of ‘bring it on’ and JC4PM. To be frank a lot of it was delusional. And as much to blame as Brexit for what followed.
So here we are with another leadership campaign. But it is not 2015. What made that campaign so amazing was its message of hope and authenticity from someone who had spent his life in the labour movement. Someone who didn’t have to keep saying the s-word as everyone knew he was a socialist and always had been. We wanted a fundamental shift in the Labour Party after years of watering down our values and we were right even if it went wrong in the end. Hindsight is easy and luck wasn’t on our side as neither was the media but that has always been the case even if this time it was unprecedentedly vile. A lot of mistakes were also made by the LOTO office according to those closer to the coal face and all that will no doubt be revealed in due course. However there has been a game-changing shift. Which may help us in the difficult years ahead.
Not one of the leadership candidates could in all honesty be described as on the right of the Party. And whatever silliness is being said about ‘ true’ and ‘proper’ socialists, after 40 years on the left of the Party I am not buying the line there is only one candidate we can vote for. Truth is there is not a batsqueak policy-wise between them.
So like that well-known Blairite Paul Mason I am voting for Keir Starmer - the candidate who has best chance of inspiring trust and convincing the unconvinced to come home to Labour. Who can cope with the pressure and take Johnson apart at the dispatch box and hold him to account when Brexit unravels. And, with no disrespect to the others, someone with a much longer track-record of standing up for human rights and social justice.
"Our leadership debate isn’t going to be as interesting, passionate or fun without Emily Thornberry. She brought so much to this debate. She’s a true fighter, a tough opponent, and a good friend", so says Lisa Nandy. I suppose she has to be nice or, to put it in the wonkish vernacular of Keir Starmer "model the behaviour" we'd like to see in the party. Yeah, Emily is a good laugh. She can be charming and sounds like a jolly companion for an evening of gin tasting, but I don't see why we have to fool ourselves. Emily's leadership bid was completely pointless and possibly, from her point of view, damaging.
Falling short of the required CLP nominations threshold by two, she took to Twitter to thank her supporters, her team, and made the standard warm unity noises. The only clue it gives for her motivations is a desire to "widen the debate." But widen it to what purpose exactly? Back in 2010 and 2015 there was a clear rationale in this direction for letting Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn onto the ballot paper. In 2019, you could make a similar argument for accepting Ian Murray onto the ballot paper, despite the craven, obsolete politics. The "debate" isn't a fun exercise in interesting discussions but about the vision and strategy required to take Labour back into government. What did Emily bring?
According to her website, she's been a campaigner and an effective performer in the Commons, which meant she was the right sort of person to lead Labour's comeback. This is certainly true - of the field she was by far the most experienced parliamentarian. And she is good at the despatch box, if Westminster theatre is your thing. Yet none of this tells us where she stood. Looking at her answers to questions, we get bits and bobs on campaign technology, on anti-semitism, on experiences and resources, and the most perfunctory of analyses on why Labour lost the general election (it was because we offered too many policies). That answer might suit the dwindling Progress groupies, but kinda overlooks the main reasons. Perhaps there was an element of avoiding a mea culpa here as, during the election campaign and long before, she was quite happy to carry on making the case for a second referendum and is partly responsible for the switch Boris Johnson exploited with alacrity.
On the one occasion Emily did venture into offering a political position during this contest, it was a disaster. Speaking at the Bristol hustings earlier this month, she was all for seizing empty properties from landlords to help resolve the housing crisis. Good stuff. But alongside this she has her frankly horrible social housing scheme whereby young people wanting a council property would be put into a lottery to get one, but then be kicked out when they reached the age of 30. "More radical than Jeremy Corbyn", indeed.
When it comes down to it, the lack of a pitch - which the other three candidates have - failed completely to differentiate her from the crowd. Relying just on character or the opinion that "I'd be rather good at being leader" isn't going to impress anyone thinking about how Labour can retool and win back lost ground. Sad to say, as much as a laugh Emily is, conveying the message that the main thing wrong with Corbynism was its being led by Jeremy Corbyn as opposed to Emily Thornberry was a hiding to nothing. For this reason, there was nothing to gain from "widening the debate" and allowing her the opportunity to rob Liz Kendall of her record for the lowest vote in a Labour leadership election.
Has her leadership bid improved her chances for a big job in the next shadow cabinet? Very low. If Keir gets it, then I can see her shuffled into a less showy, more minor role. He will want to appoint some MPs keen on returning to front line action after their self-imposed exile toward the rear of the opposition benches. And, unfortunately for her, Emily proved herself to be a loose cannon - something I can't imagine the frontrunner wanting to deal with as he's busy establishing himself in the public eye. As for Rebecca Long-Bailey, despite the threats by the usual moaners, she is likely to have a greater pool of people to pick from than Jeremy did as some, especially on the soft left (and no doubt encouraged by her appointing Lisa to something). Again, the indiscipline and hard remainism counts against Emily here and therefore I'd expect RLB won't be too keen either. You see, here is her big mistake. If the motive for making a leadership bid was the acquisition of a new, or maintenance of her senior position afterwards, you've got to show you bring something to the table. With her baggage, and her poor showing at the nomination stage all Emily has accomplished is a demonstration of her dispensability. No following, no weight, sadly she might just have done the next stage of her career in.
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Comrade Keir Starmer? Some folks have been advocating for him on the basis of past Trottery, and not least the good works his campaign have heavily promoted from before his time as Director of Public Prosecutions. Peculiarly, his plans to hand out 10 year sentences to people done for fiddling social security isn't so highlighted. Realising he can't live off past glories forever, or "borrowing" material from Rebecca Long-Bailey's campaign, Keir's campaign have released 10 pledges of their own.
What do we have? Increasing income tax for the top five per cent and a clamp down on avoidance. Abolish universal credit, defend universalism and the NHS, and abolish fees and keep with the life long learning programme. The Green New Deal and tough action on air quality. The introduction of a Prevention of Military Intervention Act(?) and a review of arms sales. Common ownership (qu'est-ce que c'est?) and no to outsourcing. Defence of free movement for EU citizens, a compassionate immigration system and a call to close Yarl's Wood and similar. Repeal the Trade Union Act. Abolish the House of Lords, a properly federal system with devolved powers, and localised investment banks. A pledge on equalities. And lastly, a united party, a mass membership, and forensic opposition to the Tories.
I know some comrades have cast a critical eye over the pledges, locating this as a (cynical) attempt to shore up support among leftist members who are unsure about RLB and like the cut of Keir's jib. And yes, his proposals are less specific than her positioning and give him plenty of wriggle room later on. Nevertheless, this is much better than Lisa Nandy's offering, and at least he doesn't have to lie about his opponents. Anyway, I'm sure we'll return to these over the coming weeks and, if he wins, the next four-five years. What is interesting is, despite Keir being a centrist-friendly candidate, how a little bit of leftism has brought actual centrists out in a rash. For James Bull, this is pale pink Corbynism destined to lose. For David Aaronovitch, abolishing universal credit and tuition fees "are plain dumb" and will bring Labour difficulties on the doorstep. And for the ever-bloodthirsty John Rentoul, Keir's military pledge is "spineless". Considering a left programme twice got more votes than the centrist efforts of 2005, 2010, and 2015, you might think this elementary fact would give them pause.
This needs situating in relation to the slow rewrite of the election result by the Labour right and their chummy hacks. Instead of a ruinous intersection of Labour's pitch to remainism and the monstering of Jeremy Corbyn, an unforgivable slandering of a good man they had no small part in, the real reason for Labour's loss was its being too left. What the electorate really wanted was a distillation of purist Blairism. Yes, because that is exactly why millions of former Labour voters supported Boris Johnson's Tories with its promise of "change", and why canvassing team after canvassing team returned with tales of enthusiasm for "public sector reform", increasing the retirement age, and keeping hospital car parking charges.
This is so self-evidently stupid. With increasing polarisation along the lines of property (or lack thereof), growing private debt, blocked career aspirations, a different experience of being working class, and the small matter of global heating, a centrist prospectus that offers nothing but backward-looking nostalgia is so pathetically inadequate to the moment that even the Tories aren't touching it with a barge pole. That and the small matter Labour's new base won't vote for it, nor would it win back the former Labour leavers who find wonky, technocratic politics repellent. Say what you like about Keir Starmer, he at least seems to understand this basic fact of contemporary electoral politics.
The other aspect of this is less a reaction to Keir's pledges, but the opposition of assorted Blairist riff-raff to the idea Labour should do something different, like community organising, building the party as a movement and, as per Richard Burgon's suggestion, setting up a free paper. They just don't get it. But then again, it's not surprising. These people got their moneyed positions thanks to a previous generation's factional manoeuvring in the party. They not only lack the first clue about organising, as Change UK reminded us, they just assume everything clicks together. Having glided into their seats via the helpful efforts of others, from their point of view politics isn't about organising and struggle. It's a matter of marketing. Hence why we get idiocies like we want to win power, not spend time protesting. Or that organising communities is a waste of time.
News flash. While it might be the case Labourism has, from inception, been quite accepting of its role as the B Team of politics and has preferred to pretend there is no relationship between its roots in the organised working class and the kinds of things it should do in office, those days are long over. Or they have to be over if Labour is to ever have a sniff of power again. When the party is locked out of politics, which demographic imbalances, Tory institutional advantage, and the coming gerrymandering will do their best to cement, the only thing the party can do is organise. Only by linking up with community groups, listening to what's happening in areas we need to win, campaigning on the concerns that matter, produce our own media work-arounds of the anti-Labour monopoly, contest the political terms of our predicament and, unusually for Labour, offer political leadership on the key issues of the day instead of capitulating to Johnson and his mates in the editorial offices, this is the only way Labour will get anywhere. The prospectus offered by the likes of the ludicrous Ian Murray is, well, the utter failure the Labour right have manufactured in Scotland. Now that's what I call an inspiring vision.
Before the last election, we heard a lot about how know political party has a God-given right to exist. In their hostility to Keir's pitch, let alone RLB's campaign, what we see is the kamikaze willingness of Labour's idiot tendency and the party's false friends to test this - and us - to destruction.
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Up to 50 MPs are planning on quitting the party if Rebecca Long-Bailey wins the leadership election, so writes Rachel Wearmouth over at HuffPo. According to ever-anonymous "party insiders", this bloc of 35-50 (depending on who you ask) would either sit as independents or resign immediately and force by-elections. In an uncharacteristic display of honesty, Neil Coyle revised down the figure and said about a dozen were plotting away. And why? Because continuity Corbynism would be a "recipe for disaster".
Let's unpack this. One of the whingers who put the figure at 50 MPs is obviously bullshitting. When you look at the complexion of the parliamentary party, the mood - if anything - is characterised by an absence of factionalism. The division between remain ultras and Brexiteers has vanished, though largely thanks to the near wipe out of the latter - despite their best efforts. And while demarcations exist between the Socialist Campaign group, the soft left, and the self-described (and identifying) "moderates", those embittered and twisted by anti-Corbyn hatred number, well, about 12 to 15 MPs. Furthermore, these irreconcilables are somewhat marginalised in the parliamentary party. They might be spoiling for a purge-tastic revenge on the left and will be looking for any excuse to launch one (hello EHRC report), but given the torrid five years we've just been through the desire for a witch-hunt is the preserve of the few, not the many.
Why are they moaning then? After all, at various points in the past we had been assured that the policies weren't the problem, Corbyn was. Or the variant of domestically the party's on the same page, the difference instead is over foreign policy and defence. Well, RLB's platform is where most of the party is. So much so, Keir Starmer and Lisa Nand are helping themselves to select morsels. And yet she hasn't made any noises about withdrawing from NATO, abolishing the secret services, or handing over the launch codes to the Kremlin. Perhaps they were lying all along about the domestic policy consensus and believe the counter-productive policies of 20 years ago are just the ticket, despite getting roundly rejected in 2010 and 2015. Or, as is more likely, they can't stomach serving in a party where their eminences goes unrecognised and they have to submit to mandatory reselection. And perhaps they're not pleased by RLB's pledge to deal with their shenanigans "ruthlessly" should they carry on their scorched earth nonsense.
Whatever the cause of their beef, there's no reason to try and treat with them because, as Wes Streeting(!) observes in the same HuffPo piece, the Change UK failure demonstrates there's no viable future outside of Labour for a centrist split. It's much worse than that four our would-be splitters, I'm afraid. As Chuka Umunna and Anna Soubry found after abandoning their parties, the lobby hacks just weren't as interested in listening any more. If your relationship to the media is built on being a reliable leak-happy "insider", making yourself a rent-a-quote outsider is like signing the redundancy papers. If Margaret Hodge, Neil Coyle, Liz Kendall and whoever go on their merry way they can look forward to a very quiet five years on the back benches without even the excitement of knife edge Commons votes temporarily puffing up their importance. And what is more, they do not represent anything but themselves. Remember how pitifully their anointed one did? Seeing them depart Labour's ranks contains nothing but upsides for a RLB-led Labour Party. A pity then that for the reasons just mentioned few if any will resign themselves to anonymity and sadly, no focus-grouped visits to Nando's.
Do things change if one of the other candidates wins? Yes, in the sense they won't be petulantly dropping resignation hints every five minutes. But no because they will find other reasons to rag on Lisa or Keir, and make themselves the big I am. In the first, it will be Lisa's principled defence of the Palestinians and her chairing of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East. And for the latter, it will be his keeping key Corbynist policies and having some figures from the last five years stay in the shadow cabinet. When the situation requires an anonymous quote, the sectarian right will only be too happy to stump up the goods.
Unity with these people then will only be achieved at the expense of jettisoning Labour's entire platform, becoming a pale pink imitation of the Tories, and looking forward to permanent electoral defeat. And the price of keeping them in the tent is the prospect of interminable factional warfare, the sapping of members' morale, and making Labour look an unserious laughing stock. If RLB wins she should immediately move against them, and if there's anything about Lisa or Keir, they would do so too.
Dear Lisa,
As the candidate of the soft left it would be reasonable to expect your positioning to be situated somewhere between Rebecca Long-Bailey and Keir Starmer. Yet more than Keir, who seems to say a great deal about nothing and offers fuzzy screen grabs of other candidates' policies when forced into making a commitment, it is you who worries me more. It's not the refugees from the Jess Phillips car crash buzzing around your campaign, nor do I find your role chairing Owen Smith's aborted leadership challenge in 2016 overly bothersome. The issue is the politics or, to be more accurate, your inability to be accurate.
Consider your remarks at last Saturday's hustings in Bristol. On the question of private involvement in the public sector, you said there was a role for business and there's something to be learned from them. Whatever. More troubling was your supplementary attack on top down statism and the assumption it is better than cooperative or municipal ownership alternatives. All very well and good, except that the aim of this criticism - Rebecca Long-Bailey's platform - isn't proposing top down nationalisations either. It was almost as if you were channelling one of Yvetter Cooper's occasional interventions, who also had a problem understanding Labour's nationalisation position. To help aid clarity and save you the time of reading the 2017 and 2019 manifestos, the party then and RLB now is not proposing swapping well remunerated managers in the privatised utilities for Whitehall mandarins, but the democratisation of these services. In other words, making public ownership mean something as the industries are controlled by and run for the benefit of workers and consumers. By all means quibble with the viability and desirability of this policy, but take it on its own terms instead of lying about it.
I'd also like to draw your attention to RLB's position on open selection. Whether constituency parties should open the process of selecting candidates out to wider publics or keep it the sole preserve of the dues-paying membership is one debate, but RLB is quite clear that Labour MPs should face reselection as a matter of routine. Anything is better than having to make a negative case against an incumbent to trigger a contest. And yet every time this question is raised in hustings, from you we get the mealy-mouthed "I think we should be focusing our attention on getting rid of Tory MPs, not replacing Labour MPs." What a load of dishonest rubbish. First of all, the Scottish National Party operates with mandatory reselection and they have considerably less trouble getting shot of Tories than the befuddled mess that is Scottish Labour. And second, how can you be for democratising policy making and bringing the party closer to the communities alienated from it if you're happy for MPs to be insulated from political change? You either trust members or you don't. And, in conjunction with this, your proposal to elevate the standing of councillors in the leadership gate-keeping process shows you do not.
And last of all, there is the main plank of your leadership campaign. That Labour hasn't been talking to "the towns" and is concerned solely with the metropolis. True enough, Labour's adoption of the second referendum position was like flipping the party's leave constituencies the bird though, unfortunately, it had very little choice if it wanted to survive as a going concern. Though while critical of the leadership and, by extension, Keir Starmer for railroading the party straight into the side of a mountain, you can't find it in yourself to take the likes of Tom Watson (West Bromwich East), Mary Creagh (Wakefield), Anna Turley (Redcar), and others to task for lording their second referendumism over their constituents. The defeat wasn't just baked to perfection by the leader's office. But the main problem with your position is a studied refusal to understand Labour's challenge. Labour has neither a towns problem nor a working class problem. What the party does have is an old people problem or, because we're being accurate, a class cohort problem. And there really is no excuse for framing the difficulties thus. The voter data has roared through politics land, washing up in MP's offices, newsrooms and think tanks alike. The geography issue is an effect of age, of towns emptying of younger workers as they seek opportunities elsewhere while older people and retirees stay behind or migrate in. The red bridge you're fond of talking about needs building not from the north to the south, but between the generations. However, because you like to pretend this is a town and left-behind-working-class thing, that leaves your pitch flirting - perhaps intentionally - with the crudities of Blue Labour and its repugnant embrace of petty prejudice. I would ordinarily put this mistake down to errors of interpretation, or simply viewing the data differently, but your demonstrable bad faith on other issues suggests otherwise.
As you haven't got the time to take in manifestos or familiarise yourself with polling data, I won't keep you much longer. But I will say it is possible to make your case without lying and playing sleight of hand games with the positions of your opponents, but you choose not to. Fibbing, distortion, and politically convenient misreadings are the order of the day. Therefore your demonstrable dishonesty should disqualify you from the leadership and, as we're being honest, it puts a question over your suitability as a MP. And because you're playing a shifty game, the voters you think you are best-placed to win back and the new base we have to keep would see straight through your bullshit. There is nothing but calamity ahead for a Lisa Nandy Labour Party, and that's why I won't be voting for you - and neither should anyone else.
Yours sincerely,
Phil
