If the peers decide to proceed, they'll probably pass their motion but what will it achieve? I ask, because in the lead up to trigger ballots they serve to remind the membership that the party needs MPs who will actually deliver for our people instead of their bank balances, social standing, and self-importance. Of course, our lords are not spontaneously reacting to the sacking of a popular peer: it has to be placed in the context of long-term plotting and destabilisation, at the heart of which is Tom Watson. And as it happens, Isabel Hardman has an interesting piece in the latest Spectator looking at the Labour right's strategy in more depth.
I've expended many words on their plight over the last few years, and especially their strategies and stunts. Driving a wedge between Corbyn and Corbyn supporters on the issue of a second referendum was and is one such ploy. Talking up and amplifying anti-semitism as a means of damaging the leadership instead of working to resolve the issue is another. And while this probably won a few people here and there away from the left, the real direction of travel has been the dissolution of the right. Before the first coup after the EU referendum, the parliamentary party majority behaved like such entitled, spoiled brats that it turned a layer of Corbyn sceptics against them. I was one of them. And since, their efforts at making out Labour is "confused" about Brexit and is uniquely anti-semitic has had the consequence of demobilising their own support. You win faction fights by gaining numbers, not shedding them all over the place. The resignations from Labour of sundry MPs - the CHUKists, Iain Austin, John Woodcock - were also self-inflicted wounds. How then to wrestle the party back from the membership, cause as much disruption as possible, but actually grow your support? This is the right's strategic dilemma.
According to the Speccie piece, Tom Watson and friends scent an opportunity. Corbynism, apparently, is in crisis and a symptom of this are divisions over Brexit and anti-semitism and, if you spend five minutes peering at left Twitter, ostensible comrades are denouncing ostensible comrades and falling out over these and other issues. And after months of difficulties (not least, those awful results) there is a sense of siege and paranoia at the top of the party. In this context Watson's criticisms and denunciations should be taken as calculated interventions. This ratcheting up of tensions amount to a cold coup, of attempts "to surround and destabilise Corbyn and his lieutenants, until they resign of their own accord". Meanwhile, Watson tries cutting a shop steward-style figure among his colleagues, someone armed with tea and a sympathetic ear who channels discontent and tries keeping disaffected MPs on board. The piece credits him with preventing six or so from jumping ship, but it must rankle that former close ally Ian Austin was among the departures.
Helping keep the right wing show together at Westminster is one thing, but out in the wilds of the party membership? We are told that Future Britain, the supposedly innocuous ideas factory launched by Watson back in March, is going to expand and become a centrist Momentum with the clear object of removing Corbyn. And one way it will go about its business is "that this voice will become so deafening and destabilising, with a blizzard of angry letters and protests against the leadership, that it makes it impossible for Corbyn to continue." Please, try not to laugh. Angry letters. Unfortunately for Watson and friends, time is not on the plotters' side. As Hardman notes, an election is very likely in the Autumn and the worst outcome could happen: not a Boris Johnson-led government, but Jeremy in Number 10. Their Herculean task is not only to manoeuvre Corbyn into resignation, but ensure there is a soft left replacement - albeit one Watson can control - in place to take over. Angel Rayner and Rebecca Long-Bailey are touted as possible replacements, though you get the sense no one's asked them if they fancy themselves the pawns of absurdist right wing fantasies.
Because we are talking absurdism here. The moment for a centrist Momentum with any chance of getting a hearing was during the second leadership election. Look how Labour First and Progress have thrived these last three years, despite relaunches and a rebrand. How might another bland, say-nothing group succeed where they have miserably failed? And as for the tactics, good grief, a letter writing campaign? Is this the best Watson's celebrated tactical genius can come up with? And how do they think they're going to unseat Corbyn when the left are incomparably stronger than in 2016? This is truly desperate stuff, and what Isabel Hardman has produced here is a feel good piece for the Labour right, a rosy picture of their dire situation. Because for all their clever-clever politics, they assume no one to their left can see what they're doing. Indeed, what kind of factional operator telegraphs their intentions to a mass market politics publication? Some facts. As much a load of MPs would like to see Corbyn gone, few are in the mood to pick a fight. The summer is here and their energy and morale has already been sapped by the exhaustion of the Brexit process - they haven't got the will or time to mount the sort of energetic challenge any serious attempt at toppling Corbyn requires. Why do you think the peers are flying the kite instead of PLP dissidents? And, yes, there is the small matter of MPs attending to their own constituency organisations in advance of the coming trigger ballots. A move against Corbyn in the summer months would galvanise members as we have seen before, recruit new activists, and create a more challenging environment for anyone part of a putative coup hoping to be reselected. In all, it's a dose of wishful thinking.
The truth of the matter is in four years the Labour right do not understand, or seemingly want to even comprehend what has happened to the party and what Jeremy Corbyn is. People don't support him because he's a kindly chap who's done a bit of activism, but because of the politics he represents. Corbyn is the lightning rod for a current of opinion fed up with dog-eat-dog nothing will ever get better, the grey miserablism of the rich getting richer while basic services fall apart, hate crime is on the up, wages and jobs are crap, housing is in short supply, the climate emergency is virtually ignored, and the future is filled with uncertainty and despair. They cannot grasp that the electorate has changed and new groups are moving into politics in large numbers - and want their needs and concerns addressed. Corbynism isn't a thing because new arms are getting twisted by old hands, as Watson once put it, but because its politics are the most appropriate form of working class politics at the moment. The gruel the Labour right offer in contrast is straight up anti-Corbynism and nothing else. There is no strategy for keeping the party's coalition together, no diagnosis of the challenges we face, and no clue how to take the Tories on and win. Like old school Trots of decades past for whom matters like sexual equality and racism were to be addressed after the revolution, so one's eyes cannot be lifted to the political horizon until Corbyn is pushed into retirement.
When you read about this stuff, when your social media feeds are cluttered with whingeing, stupidity and dishonesty about the Labour Party, it can be dispiriting. You can understand why some people throw their hands up and find other things to do. But the situation we're in, and why the Labour right are reduced to having untouchable proxies do their work for them is because they're pitifully weak - perhaps the weakest they've ever been. And their failure to realistically consider their capacity vs the rest of the party merely underlines this point. Whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad, and as they shrivel and decompose their collective imagination is befogged by delusion and make believe. And even better if you are, like me, exasperated by their antics and want to see something done you don't have to wait it out. You can take action. The best way to put a stop to this nonsense is by getting involved and recruiting people. Make sure you attend your CLP and branch meetings. And make sure you vote to open reselections when the trigger ballot is held.
17 comments:
Bravo.
Bravo.
«People don't support him because he's a kindly chap who's done a bit of activism, but because of the politics he represents. [...] They cannot grasp that the electorate has changed and new groups are moving into politics in large numbers - and want their needs and concerns addressed.»
I think that while there are number of "useful idiots" in the PLP, that is pure careerists who don't understand politics, most of the Mandelson Tendency understand really well that the "left behind" do “want their needs and concerns addressed” and that Corbyn represents them. They just object to that, they want to make sure that the "left behind" are not represented. The guiding principle of the elites they work for is "There Is No Alternative", which was not a claim, but an aim: to make sure that every alternative to thatcherism does not happen.
Normally when a large segment of the population is left without representation their politics emerge outside the representative system, usually as riots. But the english elites have not given representation to the servant classes for a thousand years, and survived every riot pretty well. They had to allow the servant classes some representation when industrial war satarted to require mass armies, but currently the english elites believe that they are fully under american protection, and therefore they will not have to call to arms the servant classes in any near future.
«want to make sure that the "left behind" are not represented. The guiding principle of the elites they work for is "There Is No Alternative"»
This is how a commenter on "The Guardian" describes this:
“I'm nearly thirty, which means I grew up under Major (just), Blair and Brown then Dave and Nick. In my considered opinion and the opinion of my peers - you couldn't fit a fag paper between them.
Frankly my generation grew up not being listened to. We walked out of school in protest at the invasion of Afghanistan - nothing happened. We marched against the invasion of Iraq - nothing happened. We marched against increases in tuition fees - nothing happened. We voted when we came of age - nothing happened.
Now, most of us have stopped marching and many have stopped voting because nothing happens - and the generation below us saw this too, as their older brothers and sisters, cousins or even parents became cynical and jaded because we were so consistently and so constantly ignored.
It's interesting that this article talks about party meetings and local debates. Personally I currently work a 12 hour day when commuting is taken into account and 10-12 hours is pretty normal for everyone I know, traveling from the homes they can afford to the place that pays enough to afford the home. We're too tired to piss around debating local councillors in a system that has never, NEVER listened to our concerns.”
The Blairites are a shower of cunts. Deselect them.
"I've expended many words on their plight over the last few years, and especially their strategies and stunts. Driving a wedge between Corbyn and Corbyn supporters on the issue of a second referendum was and is one such ploy."
Actually, the Labour's Rights tactic has not been to drive a wedge between Corbyn and his supporters. Most of the Labour Right's attacks on Corbyn have been simultaneously attacks on the very ideas Corbyn's supporters also support. Even in relation to anti-Semitism, its quite clear that the majority of Corbyn's supporters, and Labour voters in general, see it for what it is, a manouevre against Corbyn, and an attempt to equate Ant-Zionism and criticism of Israel, with anti-Semitism.
Its not intended to drive a wedge between Corbyn and his supporters, but to drive a wedge between Labour and what the Right see as a reservoir of centrist voters out there - which does not exist - but which they seek to rally around a New Labour Party, which they will seize from Corbyn, logo and all.
Its not the Right that drove a wedge between Corbyn and his supporters over a second referendum, but Corbyn himself, by pursuing such a stupid and reactionary position in the first place. If he had not doe so, both he and his position in the LP would have been stronger to resist the Right,a nd also the position of BJ, and the hard right would have been weaker in the country.
"And since, their efforts at making out Labour is "confused" about Brexit and is uniquely anti-semitic has had the consequence of demobilising their own support. You win faction fights by gaining numbers, not shedding them all over the place."
But, Labour's position on Brexit is "confused", and it is confused because the underlying position, which is pro-Brexit, as pursued by Corbyn is reactionary, and to reconcile that with the position of the vast majority of the party is anti-Brexit has required fudges even greater than those pursued by May to reconcile similar contradictions in the Tory Party.
There is no massive centre ground of politics out there waiting to vote for Blairism, but there is a huge reservoir of anti-Brexit politics out there, much of it the same milieu that brought Corbyn to power, as Leader, and that almost got Labour elected in 2017. That is overriding everything else, and quote rightly as opposing Brexit is indeed a struggle that determines this generation.
Centrist politics can provide no long-term solutions in the current conditions,as Macron is demonstrating in France, but that does not mean that by utilising the majority support for Remain that now exists in the country, which is mobilised, energetic, and which can only grow in size over the next few years - and probably become even more militant if Brexit is pushed through somehow - that the Blair-rights, cannot seize that ground, as indeed the rapid growth of the Liberals, Greens and others has demonstrated, so as to form a majority electoral coalition.
That Corbyn is allowing them to do that, by abandoning the progressive, internationalist position over Europe, so as to cling to a reactionary nationalist agenda is the real crime, and is what is likely to be the cause of his destruction, but unfortunately also, probably of the current Left project in the LP along with it.
"Angry letters. Unfortunately for Watson and friends, time is not on the plotters' side. As Hardman notes, an election is very likely in the Autumn and the worst outcome could happen:"
Quite the contrary. Time is on the side of Watson and the Right. Over the last four years, the Corbyn Left, and Momentum faield to push forward their advantage by pushing through democratic reforms. They and Momentum went out of their way to say they didn't want to introduce mandatory reselection, or to deselect even the very right-wing MP's that had organised the coup against Corbyn.
Even now they puss-foot around with the plotters, and with the question of reselection, even with the watered down proposals for trigger ballots rather than full blown mandatory reselection. In the 2017 elections most sitting MP's got a free pass,and the same in the 2019 Euro elections.
Momentum and the Left seem to have put little real effort into developing a large cadre of professional politicians that could be selected to fight Westminster seats in any GE that occurs in the near future.
If there is a GE in the Autumn, we will almost certainly have large numbers of existing right-wing MP's simply waved through to stand again. Once elected they will have every opportunity to simply cross the floor to sit with the Liberals, and rebel Tories, but they may even do that, having been selected, in the election period itself, making clear that they are standing on a clear anti-Brexit, anti-Corbyn, anti anti-Semitism platform.
Effectively standing in some kind of alliance with Liberals, Greens and with the SNP/Plaid on an anti-Brexit ticket, they would win a clear majority in parliament. The LP would be screwed all roads up with no slected candidates, candidates brought in at the last minute, and with much of their progressive support deserting them to vote for anti-Brexit candidates.
Corbyn's strategy has been short sighted and appalling.
Thank you.
I am not sure I have commented here before but I read often. Primarily it is, of course, the kind of politics represented. But, also, many have just had their fill of the high profile 'dynamic' 'leader' in UK politics - it has hardly served us well. Next week we get another such - though with a set of 'credentials' all his own. Let's see how he fares in No. 10.
It should not be dispiriting - they are fighting hard because they know we may actually succeed. But, as you suggest, their strategy feels like a bust. Let's see.
Paragraph 3 is especially good. This split has been going for so long that it's very easy to forget which side you started on. I'd kinda forgotten that I actually started out not voting for Corbyn and voting for Watson.
Also, whilst I agree with your analysis of the Right's ideological vacuity, I also wonder about the extent to which Corbyn's support comes from simple party loyalty. I know a lot of longer-term members with a kind of "my party, right or wrong" attitude that found the coup deeply offensive as a result. Fairly moderate members who hadn't voted for Corbyn suddenly started talking about treachery.
Not sure about coups and that but FFS Labour's position re Brexit is "confused" because the public/ membership are either confused or at odds with the leadership. The only thing confusing is your confusion over this point.
And let's be clear about this - essentially ignoring as they do Brexit is like Atlee acting like WW2 was a peripheral issue and what Labour should worry about was inequality.
Yes BUT... the ONLY issue of the day, and that which will have the greatest impact on ordinary people is Brexit, and clearly the leadership is for it and the party (and majority) against it.
No confusion.
This is the single reason why any "coup" has purchase, otherwise the people who voted for JC in the first place would still be thinking his farts smelled of perfume.
«attitude that found the coup deeply offensive as a result. Fairly moderate members who hadn't voted for Corbyn suddenly started talking about treachery.»
As to this, I know that A Burnham has a bit of reputation as a brownista careerist, but I greatly, greatly appreciated that he remained in Corbyn's shadow cabinet when everybody else was making a theatre of leaving it, doing his job as a Labour supporter, and that he then tweeted:
«It is for our members to decide who leads our Party & 10 months ago they gave Jeremy Corbyn a resounding mandate. I respect that & them»
and he had previously written, while competing with Corbyn for the leadership, quite honestly and fairly:
«but he also praised Corbyn for having brought the contest to life. “The attacks we’ve seen on Jeremy misread the mood of the party because what people are crying out for is something different. They are fed up with the way Labour has been conducting policies in recent times,” he said.»
I personally regard Burnham and other centre-left brownistas like him as the proper right wing of Labour, while I thought that libertarian-elitist Umunna was not part of Labour.
«the ONLY issue of the day, and that which will have the greatest impact on ordinary people is Brexit»
And here we go again with the usual mandelsonian propaganda: actually even if many people have strong opinions about brexit by far the largest impact on ordinary people is from national policies, foremost ever rising housing costs in the few areas where there are new jobs, and then the worsening wages and Tc&Cs for workers, the cuts against the NHS and social insurance, all the topics that J Corbyn has been trying to discuss in his PMQ work.
"Leave" or "Remain" will have a pretty limited economic impact, according to the the BoE 8-10% of lower GDP growth over the next 10-15, so that in 2035 GDP instead of being 128% of today's would be around 120% of today's. A big cost, but nowhere as big as that of national tory policies.
«and clearly the leadership is for it and the party (and majority) against it.»
Seems to me more "splittist" propaganda, because what is clear to me is that Corbyn has declared several times that he not only campaigned hard for "Remain", he voted "Remain", would vote "Remain" again and J McDonnell stated that Labour is "Remain" party; but Labour had made an "anti-splittist" compromise between the leadership and the majority on one side and the large "Leave" minority to go for "soft exit", a compromise that was endorsed by a large majority of "Remainer" members and activist both at national conference and in the national executive.
"the usual mandelsonian propaganda"
Golly I wish I lived in your world of Milnesque propaganda where Mao's Famine was a food shortage and mass collectivisation of Ukraine was a Great Leap Forward.
"Leave" or "Remain" will have a pretty limited economic impact, according to the the BoE 8-10% of lower GDP growth over the next 10-15...
10 per cent lower GDP over the next 10 years. Have you any idea how much this means? It is double the impact of the 2008 recession. Only someone for whom this is not an issue could be so complacent, or stupid.
"by far the largest impact on ordinary people is from national policies, foremost ever rising housing costs in the few areas where there are new jobs, and then the worsening wages and Tc&Cs for workers, the cuts against the NHS and social insurance, all the topics that J Corbyn has been trying to discuss in his PMQ work."
But, its all those areas that will be hit hardest from the economic consequences of Brexit! Moreover, you do not take into account the differential effect of such an economic shock, and its longer-term effect. An 8-10% reduction in growth in itself would be bad enough, but how bad for each person depends on your economic position. If you are rich, the consequence may even be beneficial; if you are a small capitalist employer, probably is beneficial, in so far as a general economic slowdown does not destroy your business, because you will benefit from higher profits resulting from lower wages, etc.
Most significantly, Brexit will strengthen the hard right, and so hard right governments will push through all of those policies in relation to the nation issues you mention, to ensure that the economic crisis falls on the working-class via even more austerity etc. There is a simple reason that Bojo and the Tory hard right want to distance the UK from the EU, and cuddle up to Trump, its because the UK as a US colony, or vassal state, will see all of those same anti-working class measures that the US takes for granted, will be imposed on the UK even more harshly.
I see Andy Burnham slightly differently. I see him as a deeply nauseating, conniving and calculating twat.
He has simply calculated what he thinks is his best medium term plan and he waits in the wings to be anointed as the next Blairite king.
And when they do get rid of Corbyn he can say to the base, see I was loyal and am your true friend, vote for me for the continuation of Thatcherism! Now meet the shadow chancellor, Jess Phillips!
Of course in no way will the hard right be strengthened if we decide to forget all about that vote we had a few years back and just don’t leave. They will really take that well won’t they!
I think elements of the left are really inflating Britain’s place in the grand scheme of things. Personally speaking the breakup of the United Kingdom is just too delicious a prospect to turn down. I just want to see the Brexiters faces as their beloved union is dismantled and little Englanders are reduced to eating chlorinated chicken out of dustbins (surely the real motive behind brexit), is that too much to ask for and isn’t it sort of divine justice?
Sometimes bitter lessons need to be learnt, and I think the British need some bitter lessons. Best for all concerned.
Sometimes progress means taking a few steps back, it isn’t linear.
I think what "anonymous" XYZ etc above says is PRECISELY what the JC-led clique really think.
Which is why the hard left, like the hard right, so often dehumanises its opponents and ends up with death camps. What echoes of the Fuhrer in his bunker raving that annihilation is precisely what the German people deserve for not having been Nazi enough.
There's really nothing much more to it - people don't change, and neither does politics.
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