That said, there are a few things missing in this account. The report tells us about the popularity, or lack thereof of Jeremy Corbyn, and provides graphs aplenty covering 2017 and the lead up to the 2019 election. While true, this was not some Durkheimian social fact warranting neutral observation and notation: Corbyn's ratings started off bad and for the following four years he was systematically screwed by the press and the broadcast media. You don't have to take the word of an embittered factionalist as gospel, repeated content analyses proves it. This matters. The power of the newspapers is thankfully waning, but broadcast media takes their cue from the editorial offices and in turns determines what are the main political issues of the day. Not addressing this basic point, which the authors know is true, does undermine the scientific creds of the report.
Perhaps this is related to the second thing that goes unexplored: "factionalism". When this is bandied about by mainstream commentators and politicians they're talking about the left. Everything from blocking right wing trolls on Twitter to asking people to vote for a left wing NEC slate is not on. What factionalism never refers to how the right behaved, from its apparatchiks to Labour MPs who, from day one, did everything in their power to destroy Corbyn's leadership. They said it was a going to be a disaster, and worked tirelessly to make it one. What the report's authors mean by factionalism is something of a symptomatic silence, so let's spell it out. The media was stacked against Corbyn's leadership, but it was Labour MPs from the Deputy Leader down who gave them the attack lines, leaked the documents and highlighted the weaknesses: they enabled the onslaught, and were the ones cheering when Labour seats fell - if they were able to save their own skins. There is a ridiculous school of thought that suggests none of this matters, as if voters would look upon the political equivalent of a chimps' tea party with indulgence if it wasn't for Corbyn. Why then did Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell obsess over media management and use carrots and sticks to make sure MPs toed the line, particularly before 1997? Perhaps it has something to do with fractious parties not winning elections?
Labour Together's assumption of a diplomatic silence gets in the way of reckoning properly with the impact of Brexit. In 2017 Labour deftly killed it as an issue and denied Theresa May the election she wanted to fight. Had the party adopted the 2019 positioning then, she would be the one presiding over an 80-seat majority, with Boris Johnson a high profile and annoying back bencher. Following that election Corbyn should have moved quickly to affirm Labour's backing for a negotiated settlement, such as Norway Plus. This would have anchored Labour to an exit, but the softest possible exit. Instead it was left ambiguous which gave the second referendum/remain-at-any-price crew room to start driving Labour's policy. This was a failure of his leadership, and easily his most catastrophic mistake. Yet he does not bear this cross alone. No one forced Labour MPs, including the current leader of the party, to bang the drum for remain. Nor were they forced into backing a referendum campaign that not only aimed at driving a wedge between Corbyn and EU-friendly Labour voters, but in fact later split over the issue. Brexit was a battering ram, alright. Johnson wielded it to collapse the so-called red wall seats, but not before the remainers had used it repeatedly to pulverise the party's standing. The appalling EU election results and the panicked adoption of the second referendum was the result, and the Tories got the election they wanted on the ground of their choosing.
We'll look at what the report says about future strategy tomorrow, but I'm not holding out much hope for keen insight. The reason for looking at politics as it really is, for soberly and honestly addressing our achievements and failures even - no, especially if it upsets and makes for uncomfortable reading for those who would prefer delusions - is so we don't repeat the past. While the Labour Together report is right to point out the failings and mistakes Labour made and stress the importance of long-term processes, it lacks an explanation of why the party expended so much effort struggling with itself. It's understandable: Ed Miliband, Lucy Powell and friends don't want to point fingers and their diplomacy is an effort to present something that cannot be dismissed lightly. Indeed, they were not entirely innocent parties in the nonsense of the last few years. But if your analysis misses the one thing that ate away at Labour for over four years, destroying its coherence and its electoral chances, then you're not preparing the party adequately for when it comes back. Because it will. In their own ways, Blair, Gordon Brown, and Ed were each destabilised by elements of the Labour right. What's going to stop them from doing the same when they think it's Keir Starmer's turn?
20 comments:
Oh dear! Typical pro-Brexit stuff, though not as stridently self-righteous as Lavery & co. What makes you think a"soft"-Brexit/ Norway-plus stance would have satisfied pro-Brexit forces after the 2017 election? Losing any say over EU rules but still having to abide by them? Who would that have satisfied? But your logic is clear: Labour should have backed May's efforts to achieve a "soft" Brexit in 2016-17. The only trouble with that is that the membership wouldn'd have tolerated it. I'm not saying aclaer pro-remain stance would have won us the 2019 election, but it would have fared much better than the incoherent fudge foisted on us by McCluskey, Murray, Milne & Co in their determination to thwart the wishes of the membership.
Won us? I thought Jim Denham was a member of the Alliance for Workers Liberty. A Trotskyist-Leninist cult with a "leader for life". I'm not sure we in the Labour Party have anything to learn from the AWL and the worshippers at the shrine of Matgamna
There needs to be better internal discipline. Slagging the leadership in public/ press just undermines the party and of course, in itself reduces the chances of winning an election. Imagine slagging the CEO and the senior team if you worked for a company you would not last long in post. This is all very obvious and basic. I hope going forward there is more coherence regarding this.
«But your logic is clear: Labour should have backed May's efforts to achieve a "soft" Brexit in 2016-17. The only trouble with that is that the membership wouldn'd have tolerated it.»
But the membership did tolerate it, in the 2017 elections for example. There are also endless surveys that show that in 2017 and subsequently most of the membership wanted "Remain" but was nearly everybody were well prepared to compromise for "soft exit". For example from LeftFootForward in 2019:
“while 72% want a second referendum, just 29% say they oppose Labour’s Brexit policy. On the other hand, 47% say they support Labour’s stance.
And while the FT reports a wedge between Labour members and Corbyn, the Labour leader remains popular with members. Around 65% think he’s doing well as Labour leader versus just 33% who think he is doing badly. When asked why they think Corbyn has not backed a second referendum, just 23% of Labour members said it’s because he supports Brexit. This compares with 34% who say he doesn’t want to lose voters and 12% who say he is waiting for the right time to announce his support for a second referendum."
And this is from LabourList in 2016:
"Times/YouGov polling released this morning shows that 52 per cent of people who backed Labour in 2015 and a Leave vote in the EU referendum have doubts about their continued support for the party.» «This week saw the release of a Fabian Society pamphlet, in which high-profile Remain supporters such as Emma Reynolds argued that Labour has “a moral duty to respect the result of the referendum”. Today’s polling found that while 48 per cent of the 3.5 million Brexit-supporting Labour voters were sticking with the party, nine per cent now back the Tories, eight per cent back UKIP, seven per cent back other parties, three per cent would not vote, and 24 per cent do not know how they will vote."
In 2016 it was already clear how the 2019 election was going to go.
«Corbyn should have moved quickly to affirm Labour's backing for a negotiated settlement, such as Norway Plus. This would have anchored Labour to an exit, but the softest possible exit.»
That actually was the initial position of Labour, but it was not explained well, rather than ambiguous.
«Instead it was left ambiguous which gave the second referendum/remain-at-any-price crew room to start driving Labour's policy.»
Whether ambiguous or not, the anti-Corbyn crew tried to turn both Labour "Leavers" and "Remainers" against Corbyn, some calling him a closet "Remainer" because of "brexit in name on only", and some calling him a closet "Leaver" because of the acceptance of the referendum result; what the anti-Corbyn faction found what worked best was working up the "Remain" oriented majority, so they focused on that, and they would have focused on whatever worked best against Corbyn, whichever position he took.
«This was a failure of his leadership, and easily his most catastrophic mistake.»
The failure of his leadership was to care too much about party unity, appointing first a cabinet with several prominent thatcherites/likudniks, who used their positions to attack him, and trying to keep together too hard the extreme "Remainers". Johnson was far more ruthless within his party, taking the gamble to throw out 20 popular and historical "Remain" and "one-nation" MPs, and he won, because they were easily replaced, because most people vote the party symbol, don't even know who the candidate is.
Corbyn's achievement is that Labour did not split apart from a few fools, and that can be considered a success, except that means also that the SDP/Liberal style thatcherite wing has remained within Labour.
«There needs to be better internal discipline. Slagging the leadership in public/ press just undermines the party and of course, in itself reduces the chances of winning an election.»
There is a difference between political dissent, and those who aim precisely to reduce the chances of the party winning the election. For example J Corbyn and R Hattersley were openly and extremely critical of New Labour's thatcherite policies by whig entrysts and Tony Blair in particular, but they never worked to make New Labour lose elections.
"Anonymous": by "we" I mean the working class (who, by the way, voted overwhelmingly for Remain in 2016).
@Jim Denham
Social classes C2, D & E voted for Brexit by a proportion of 64% - 36%. Social class C1 which I would describe roughly as non-manual working class voted for remain but only by a small margin (51%-49%). All this ignores the fact that many working class people didn't vote in the referendum and more people are in the ABC1 classifications than in the C2DE classifications so there is an analysis by a group from LSE which points out that the typical Brexit voter is not a C2DE voter. That's a fair if seemingly paradoxical point, but it has been leapt upon by various left remainers to mean the working class is really on their side. But the working class certainly did not overwhelmingly vote for remain. Anecdotally many were furious with Labour for going down the second referendum root, beyond being on a different side of the Brexit debate it says the party was not willing to listen or even abide by a democratic vote.
Eric
I always wondered who could speak on behalf of the working class - who would have thought it would be Jim Denham? It think someone called this 'substitutionism'.
The working class will be grateful to him and the 'People's Vote' campaign for saving them from the fate of the poor Norwegians, with their lack of 'say over EU rules'.
How much say did the working class have over the Maastricht Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty, or any one of the EU rules?
When people start using the categories of bourgeois sociology as a definition of class rather than a Marxist definition based upon the sale of labour-power, you know they are batting on a sticky wicket.
Approximately 75% of Labour's 2017 voters backed Remain, whereas approximately the same proportion of Tory voters backed Leave. Virtually all of those Labour voters are working-class, as defined by Marxism, i.e. scientifically rather than subjectively, whereas the vast majority of those Tory voters are petty-bourgeois. They are part of that cohort of the population that comprises the 5 million small businesses in Britain, between 12-15 million owners and their families.
The fact that there are, and has always have been some reactionary sections of the working-class is not, and never has been a reason why socialists should tail the rather than try to drag them away from those reactionary ideas.
"How much say did the working class have over the Maastricht Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty, or any one of the EU rules?"
As much as it has over any other piece of UK legislation! In other words, it periodically elects MP's, who discuss and then vote on such legislation. With Maastricht, it was drawn up with the participation of Thatcher and other UK politicians for example.
The difference is now that Britain as a third rank global power will have to accept all of the rules decided by others, be it the EU, US, China and so on, depending on who they feel beholden to in order to get some kind of trade deal, but will have absolutely no say in the formulation of the rules by these larger powers that Britain will then have to simply accept. It is the greatest abandonment of sovereignty ever seen!
I have to use bourgeois sociological categories because that's the only statistics we have. It's a step up from pure guess work/wishful thinking, but yes these statistics are problematic. However they point firmly towards the fact that far more workers voted leave than remain. The numbers are simply overwhelming.
But yes as you point out, so what. We don't need to trail the reactionary majority, stick to your principles even though socialists are in the tiny minority. Start by stop kidding yourself that remain voters are starry eyed proletarian internationalists and that leave voters are reactionary petite bourgeois hobgoblins. Virtually nobody voted either remain or leave out of socialist or internationalist principle. You may have your principles and I may disagree with them (and I do) but can we at least just get the obvious facts straight.
Remain is used as a wedge issue against Labour ultimately because it is effectively a way of dividing the working class. And the same can be said of leave of course. If you didn't reject the referendum before the vote, you can't undermine the result if you don't like it. That's democratic principle and the only way for you to stop hammering on that wedge is to accept democratic principles as indeed Phil has done.
Eric
How is it the only data we have? We have the number of wage labourers in Britain, and we have the number of small businesses/self employed in Britain. That gives the data on the proportion of workers as against petty-bourgeois. I leave out the bourgeois, because they now represent such a tiny minority.
A look at the membership of the Tory Party shows its membership dominated by those petty-bourgeois, as is its core voter base, and those are the people who voted Leave. Similarly, it is workers who predominantly vote Labour, and 75% of Labour's 2017 voters voted Remain.
You may not like the fact that the working-class is not comprised of blue collar factory workers, but the fact is it never has been, as Lenin also had to point out to the Narodniks who had that same petty-bourgeois hang up. As Lenin points out, on Marx's data for 1861, there were more domestic servants than factory workers.
The working-class today is employed 80% in service industry, which itself is highly varied. Some of it is low status low paid work, but significant amounts of it is high-skill/high value work, which is where many young workers, concentrated in cities and metropolitan areas are concentrated. They now represent the vanguard of the class.
"If you didn't reject the referendum before the vote, you can't undermine the result if you don't like it. That's democratic principle and the only way for you to stop hammering on that wedge is to accept democratic principles as indeed Phil has done."
So, because I accept the principle that we should have periodic elections - actually I would prefer annual elections - and do not follow the Anarchists in rejecting the idea of elections in principle, if the Tories win such an election I then have to accept Tory ideas?
That has nothing even to do with bourgeois democracy, which gives me the right to continue to oppose the ideas that won a majority in that election, even if I am in a tiny minority, and to try to frustrate them, to convince others that they were wrong, and to get another election in which the results of the previous one are overthrown.
Why is it that those who make an obsession over this referendum result want to throw out all of the basis principles of democracy, and turn it into some all determining event to which everyone must bow down, and renounce their former beliefs, never to mention them again?
After all those who lost by a much larger majority in 1975 (2:1) never stopped wittering on about it for the next 40 years. The LP itself ignored the referendum result and a large GE defeat in 1983, and continued to argue for leaving the EEC/EU. I don't recall during all that time anyone saying that they had no right to voice their opinions having lost not just one vote, but several by such large majorities.
The political problem of a “soft Brexit” is not so much following EU rules while having no say over them; it is Freedom of Movement. Membership of the Single Market means accepting Freedom of Movement and Labour had got itself into the position before 2015 that it had accepted Freedom of Movement as a problem. Gordon Brown’s “British jobs for British workers” is impossible while being a member of the Single Market. Having “Control Immigration” on a tea mug implies leaving the Single Market as does constantly saying that people’s concerns about immigration are legitimate. (Jeremy Corbyn was popular with the membership, in part, because he was in favour of Freedom of Movement while both Burnham and Cooper had gone down the "legitiamte concerns" rabbit hole.
The present position of Tony Blair appears to be that the UK should have stayed in the EU but renegotiated Freedom of Movement. That also appears to be the position of Guardian columnists like Jonathan Freedland and some of the Lib Dems. That is a pipedream. Freedom of Movement is a central pillar of the Single Market and has been since Margaret Thatcher helped to create it. The UK was the leading proponent of expanding the EU to the east and the south and the new members are very keen on Freedom of Movement. It is highly unlikely that the other EU members have any desire to consider reform of Freedom of Movement, and none of them see it as a problem. The UK economy was redeveloped from the 1980s onwards on the basis of membership of the Single Market and that meant accepting Freedom of Movement. Brexiteers were allowed to propagate, with little opposition, a narrative that Freedom of Movement had been imposed by an anonymous elite, was negative but could be ended with no economic cost.
Labour’s problems over Brexit go back a long way, and ultimately stem from taking positions without thinking about the long-term implications. Statements were made that resonated with participants in focus groups and appeared to score in opinion polls without thinking where they led. Then the MPs who were most active in supporting a referendum and in repeating the “legitimate concerns” soundbite sat at home during the referendum campaign.
The Labour front-bench couldn’t get a “soft Brexit” to stick with the PLP because that meant accepting Freedom of Movement. This was never said openly but most of the PLP wanted to have their cake and eat it. Focus groups said that electors wanted an end to Freedom of Movement while wanting the benefits of membership of the Single Market, and they didn’t have it in them to say that this wasn’t possible.
Guano
Boffy:
"A look at the membership of the Tory Party shows its membership dominated by those petty-bourgeois, as is its core voter base, and those are the people who voted Leave. Similarly, it is workers who predominantly vote Labour, and 75% of Labour's 2017 voters voted Remain."
Be honest have you actually looked at the membership of the Tory Party? It's completely irrelevant to the question at hand by the way, but I'm getting the feeling I am dealing with somebody who just makes up their facts as they go along.
Workers predominantly vote Labour? Maybe but very probably not. A large number simply don't vote and combine that with workers who vote for other parties I suspect Labour attract quite a small proportion of the working class vote. But let's be honest neither of us have looked at this question and there aren't any statistics that use Marxist categories. This is all guess work.
Do you perhaps mean it is workers who predominantly make up the Labour vote? (That's a very different question). Then yes that seems more likely. But in what proportion? Again neither of us have the facts. More guess work.
I don't find it especially surprising that the majority of Labour voters are remainers. But I will grant that this is not guess work.
I feel no compulsion to think that the majority of workers voted remain from what you have said. It is just guesswork. I would also be surprised if a majority voted leave, though it's pretty clear more voted leave than remain.
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The rights and wrongs of the EU referendum seem pretty trivial now in the middle of a global pandemic and large international protests against police violence but here we go.
A referendum is not a general election, if a course of action is voted on in a referendum then that course of action needs to be seen through even if it takes time. That should be obvious and it is obvious to pretty much everyone. You could have protested against the referendum at the time saying that such decisions should not be made via referendums but you didn't, non of the continuity remain types did because all of them are/were calling for a second referendum. You don't have a leg to stand on. A lot of remainers accept this.
Isn't analysis of the 2016 referendum result by housing tenure also insightful?
Private tenants were the most heavily Remain demographic, most likely because it the youngest of the four. Homeowners with mortgages were also marginally Remain.
Homeowners without mortgages voted Leave (which makes sense as they'd skew older) but social tenants were the heaviest Leave voters of all.
Could social tenants have been especially Brexity because their housing situation meant they were unable to move (as there was no social housing available anywhere they'd like to move to) and would thus be easily outcompeted in the job market by immigrants (because immigrants pretty much by definition are geographically mobile)?
«social tenants have been especially Brexity because their housing situation meant they were unable to move (as there was no social housing available anywhere they'd like to move to) and would thus be easily outcompeted in the job market by immigrants»
That's a very interesting point of view, but also lower income London constituencies with lots of social housing tenants voted heavily "Remain".
My impression is that lower income people voted heavily "Leave" not so much because they are afraid of immigrant competition in their home towns in "the north" (north of Watford), but because so many of them have to move to London and the Home Counties to find jobs, and there they have to compete with immigrants for low-end jobs and low-end private housing.
There is a vital detail that is often forgotten: EU immigration to the Home Counties and London was not perceived as being much of a problem as long as it was french, italians, germans, ... that is people from high income countries, and thus not really in wage or housing competition with internal immigrants from "the north" to the Home Counties and London. The statistics where 90% of workers in places like Pret-a-manger in London are from the lowest income EU or Commonwealth countries are relatively recent.
That's a very interesting point of view, but also lower income London constituencies with lots of social housing tenants voted heavily "Remain".
But of course: not only are London's social housing tenants heavily BAME (and naturally repelled by the racism displayed by all too many Leave politicians), but they are also already in a place with plenty of jobs.
My impression is that lower income people voted heavily "Leave" not so much because they are afraid of immigrant competition in their home towns in "the north" (north of Watford), but because so many of them have to move to London and the Home Counties to find jobs, and there they have to compete with immigrants for low-end jobs and low-end private housing.
That's an interesting viewpoint, given that I've seen an awful lot of hatred of the Northern working class among Remainers, of the "why can't those entitled brats just fucking MOVE to where the jobs are?" variety.
I think the divisions over brexit were so multiple inside and outside the Labour party that Corbyn could not realistically have offered Norway or Norway+ what ever that means. Every group wanted incompatible outcomes and none were willing to compromise. Mr Corbyn did his best but that reasonable man faced insane factions unwilling to be reasonable. A complex of antagonism for which he was not responsible. The tories off course will break their promises over Brexit and never intended to keep them. But the remainiac geniuses handed then an 80 seat majority. So they can ride out the unpopularity.
Blissex,
The vast majority of people who would consider relocating for jobs would be young adults who do not yet have school-age children. Since the under-35s voted overwhelmingly Remain, this would imply the northern Leave voters which you see as concerned about competition with immigrants for jobs and housing in London and the South East were thinking not of themselves but of their children: am I right in my supposition?
Keith,
I'm not sure that Norway+(customs union) was even possible: IIRC to join the EEA as an EU non-member you have to be a member of EFTA, and that isn't compatible with being in customs union with the EU because being in a customs union means surrendering control of your trade policy to it.
And even the more realistic soft Brexit option (EEA/EFTA with customs border in Irish Sea) would meet with strong opposition within the Labour Party, from both Remain extremists and from Blue Labour types opposed to Freedom of Movement.
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