Wednesday 7 October 2020

Keir Starmer's Trade Union Dramarama

At a stroke, Labour is set to lose £700k worth of funding next year. This follows Unite's decision to cut its donation to the party after the large "shut up and go away" payments made to the so-called Panorama whistleblowers. Seen as a shot across Keir Starmer's boughs, Len McCluskey warned the party must stick with leftwing policies or receive less monies. Fair enough, you might say. And why not, unions are the self-defence of organised workers. They're not a piggybank.

Truth be told, Keir's success in eschewing the left has proved successful so far - if you judge success by the metrics of the Tory press playing nice, good personal ratings, and the slow collapse of the Tories' polling position. As discussed here many, many times, an opposition ostentatiously going out its way to not be too oppositional and saying nothing policy-wise is quite deliberate. And by the yardstick the leadership have set themselves, it's working. Though of late there has been a frecon of a change, less a nod and more a wink to the left. Last week, on the occasion of Black History Month, Keir said this should be on the school curriculum. Later, he reiterated his commitment to the Corbyn-lite pledges that sealed his leadership deal, including higher taxes for the well off.

None of this is enough. Weighing the politics of Starmerism, the balance is visibly, undeniably tilted toward the status quo. Even banging on about Tory incompetence instead of challenging the politics of Covid-19 isn't the cleverest. This blunts the Labourist critique of what the Tories are doing, and disarms the party when Johnson is replaced by dishy Rishi or another horror off the Tory benches. But for the pointy heads on the Labour right, this is totally fine. The numbers speak for themselves and moving left threatens to undo the work already done. In fact, some will be very happy with Len's criticisms of Labour. They despise trade union leaders who insist on speaking out when affiliation fees are misused, so their ears are closed on that score, but seeing Len is a bogeyman of the Tory press, having him criticise Keir sends a message to those soft Tories who like the cut of the Labour leader's jib but find Len and the strawmen confections of trade unionism off-putting. It hammers home the fact of Labour's "new management".

As this blog has argued before, you don't need to go back to Tony Blair to understand Keir's strategy. It's a rinse and repeat of what Ed Miliband did a decade ago. Having won the leadership on a weak but nevertheless recognisable social democratic offering, Ed immediately pivoted to the right, accepted Tory commonsense on the deficit, debt, and the "need" for some cuts, and kept tightlipped about policy for the next couple of years. Remember how opposition to the introduction of the bedroom tax was slowly and painfully extracted from him? The danger is that, in many ways, Labour's position now isn't as advantageous as it was then. The Liberal Democrats were in government, eliminating a mercurial third party alternative to the Tories, and the debacle of Labour's leadership of the Better Together campaign in Scotland hadn't yet manifested. In the early 2020s the party is hobbled by this disaster, and the LibDems are back as competitors in swathes of seats - though the possibility of a deal with their new leader can't be discounted.

Under these circumstances, Labour needs its left. Awkward trade union leaders and #StarmerOut trolls all. Present triangulation has, as a by-product, contributed to the decomposition of Labour's left. As people are put off, they leave. But this carries with it a negative multiplier. In 2017, the size of the party became an electoral factor in and of itself thanks to the scale of the activism it directed at the election, and the fact Labour was so large practically everyone knew someone who was a party member who'd be making the face-to-face and immediately familiar case for putting Jeremy Corbyn in Number 10. This feat was not repeated in 2019 for a variety of reasons, but the more people the party sheds its weight diminishes faster than even a Johnson crash diet can achieve. It reverts back to the pre-2015 type, a free-floating party with little to nothing anchoring its policy propositions.

This matters, because it makes Labour's job of winning much more difficult. With huge votes piled up in the big cities, some Labour people might be tempted to think this doesn't count. The party can afford to lose tens of thousands of left wing and radical votes in the urban centres if it means getting back socially conservative former Labour voters and liberal centrist voters in the marginals. I know this is what their attitude, I've heard it with my own ears. This perspective is utterly self-defeating. The people they sneer at and think don't count aren't just present in the big cities, they're spread across the country. Not evenly, but enough in enough places to make a difference between whether a seat stays or becomes Labour, or doesn't. The precarious workers, the immaterial labourers of our changing working class are everywhere, and cannot be taken for granted. Not voting is an ever-present threat to Labour.

Perhaps, following the Ed strategy, we'll see a pivot back to soft left policy in the future. But this will likely be diluted just as his pitch was by compromises with Tory positioning and clever, clever efforts at triangulation. It didn't work then, and it's unlikely to do so while the underlying political economy of voter polarisation persists. This means making choices: acknowledging colourless managerialism is almost at the end of the road, and start making political criticisms of the Tories to contest the ground now on which the election will be fought later, or carry on alienating significant swathes of the base, making it much harder to win them back when the party really needs them. This is what needs to be done and, unfortunately, I have very litte confidence Keir Starmer and his inner circle of wonks, nerds, and evil bastards understand the dynamics of Labour's support, let alone the need to switch it up.

Image Credit

12 comments:

David said...

Yes but...

It's pretty clear this cut was made in response to the libel settlements recently. See this from the Graun:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/07/len-mccluskey-warns-starmer-unite-moves-cut-labour-affiliate-funding

Say what you like about the rights and wrongs of the case, and that decision, at least the AS issue is out of the news for now.

I have to say I don't like to see people wielding their money power so obviously, so crudely, so publicly, and in such a self-defeating manner as Len is doing here. All he is doing is grandstanding with his member's money. It used to be my money - no more, thank God.

Dipper said...

Agent McCluskey doing a great under-cover job for the Tories.

Boffy said...

You would have though that McCluskey would have now been Starmer's biggest fan, given that Starmer has become a bigger Brexiter than Corbyn, and is promoting all of the economic nationalist delusions of the Lexiters based on the theory of building Social-Democracy In One Country!

Boffy said...

"The people they sneer at and think don't count aren't just present in the big cities, they're spread across the country. Not evenly, but enough in enough places to make a difference between whether a seat stays or becomes Labour, or doesn't. The precarious workers, the immaterial labourers of our changing working class are everywhere, and cannot be taken for granted. Not voting is an ever-present threat to Labour."

This is absolutely correct, and is part of why the strategy set out also by Paul Mason is crazy.

Boffy said...

"This means making choices: acknowledging colourless managerialism is almost at the end of the road, and start making political criticisms of the Tories to contest the ground now on which the election will be fought later, or carry on alienating significant swathes of the base, making it much harder to win them back when the party really needs them. This is what needs to be done and, unfortunately, I have very litte confidence Keir Starmer and his inner circle of wonks, nerds, and evil bastards understands the dynamics of Labour's support, let alone the need to switch it up."

Again quite right. Its a version of the mistake made by Blair, but in reverse. Blair took the core vote for granted, to chase after middle-class Liberals, thinking the core would vote whatever, which resulted in Labour's support declining steadily after 1997. Now Starmer thinks the progressive, more liberal minded, new working class core (as you rightly say spread across the country) will continue to vote Labour as a lesser evil to the Tories, as he searches after the reactionary, dying, old working-class in the urban areas, many of whom were never Labour voters to begin with anyway!

Anonymous said...

Personally I only disagree with one thing. The Lib Dems are screwed under Davey.

This is a man who is to the right of many Tories on economics - so have zero chance of picking up much of the centre left / progressive vote. If Ed Davey called for the privatisation of the police, I would not be shocked - he is a true "far right" free marketer.

And on social issues he is so "woke" that moderate Tories won't touch him either. Essentially he's unable to appeal to the floaters on either side, because he's fishing in the "G4S and Serco are forces for good and trade unions must be crushed utterly" and "we need more rights for non binary people" and "The Euro is a good idea and we must adopt it" camp - which is a tiny tiny number of voters.

He also has had a continual negative opinion rating (both Corbyn and Swinson have had the odd positive one), and the party has seen zero poll bounce since he was elected leader.

Blissex said...

«some Labour people might be tempted to think this doesn't count. The party can afford to lose tens of thousands of left wing and radical votes in the urban centres if it means getting back socially conservative former Labour voters and liberal centrist voters in the marginals.»

That was exactly the reason why post referendum Labour had a "soft exit" position: most "Remain" members and voters would have preferred "2nd ref", but they were willing to compromise for "soft exit", and those who were not willing were in constituencies with large majorities, while many "Leavers" where in constituencies that 10-15 years of New Labour had turned into quasi-marginals.

At that time the same people were opposed to that tradeoff, now they endorse it. But now the same people support Starmer's “get Brexit done” policy supporting the Conservatives towards a hard exit with a minimal FTA.

Blissex said...

«It reverts back to the pre-2015 type, a free-floating party with little to nothing anchoring its policy propositions. [...] making choices: acknowledging colourless managerialism is almost at the end of the road»

But the anchor is there, and the managerialism has a definite colour: thatcherism, because "We are all thatcherites now" and “Labour would only win if the party championed aspirational voters who shop at John Lewis and Waitrose”, as Peter Mandelson, Tristram Hunt, etc. beautifully summarised, because those affluent voters love thatcherism. Indeed most Conservative policies that Starmer is offering those voters to manage more competently are thatcherite (but less whig than Thatcher herself was).
"Red" Gordon and "Pinko" Ed were heavily criticized by the "centrists" for being too far to the left to gain the votes of affluent "Middle England" voters. I guess that (not) "colourless" Starmer has no intention of being accused of the same.

Blissex said...

«Keir Starmer and his inner circle of wonks, nerds, and evil bastards understand the dynamics of Labour's support, let alone the need to switch it up.»

The New, New Labour sillogism is the same as that of New Labour: the Conservatives win elections, we want to win elections, so we must be like the Conservatives, only more competent.

From that point of view, look at the Conservatives: their support in terms of membership and activists is vestigial, they have turned into a brand and the party is merely a marketing operation funded by big "sponsors", and they win elections.
Why can't New, New Labour be the same, and eliminate the interference of the "trots", that is members and activists, with the policies chosen by the big "sponsors" (as long as they are not the trade unions)?
As "The Guardian" is transparent in their enthusiams, they were recently reporting quite enthusiastically that big "sponsors" were ready to fund New, New Labour again.

The real calculation is I guess the same as that with New Labour: if there is no mass centre/centre-left party, and voters can only choose from far-right Conservatives, right-liberal LibDems, and centre-right New Labour, most centre and centre-left voters will continue vote for the lesser evil, and those who switch to abstention don't matter.
It worked in 1997-2007, when abstentions rose a lot as the New Labour vote collapsed, but the Conservative vote collapsed even more, and the LibDem vote only rose modestly. But it worked I think only because the Conservative vote collapsed even more because of the memory of the 1990s crash: today the Conservatives have 10 years of booming living standards for "Middle England" as a record, and as long as that continues no argued about "competency" is going to work.

Blissex said...

«and the party has seen zero poll bounce since he was elected leader»

As usual, leaders are tiny electoral factors (the only modern exception was Tony Blair, as he was widely detested, and his leadership lost New Labour a good chunk of its voters).
In large part because many voters don't even know who the leader is, compare:

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Ed_Davey
9% Positive opinion 15% Negative opinion 18% Neutral opinion 42% Have heard of

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Keir_Starmer
28% Positive opinion 28% Negative opinion 26% Neutral opinion 83% Have heard of

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Boris_Johnson
40% Positive opinion 35% Negative opinion 24% Neutral opinion 99% Have heard of

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Rishi_Sunak
48% Positive opinion 17% Negative opinion 23% Neutral opinion 88% Have heard of

Jim Denham said...

I think you'll find this particular piece of fake-left posturing by McCluskey is simply the latest irresponsible and factional manoeuvre aimed at getting the United Left to reverse its decision to back Steve Turner in the next GS election, in favour of McCluskey's favoured successor, the millionaire solicitor and bad loser Howard Beckett.

BCFG said...

"the millionaire solicitor and bad loser Howard Beckett."

I voted to stay in the EU and still thinking leaving is fucking stupidity on steroids, however I can't help but notice that the remainers were not exactly graceful and good losers! Denham being one of them!

In fact, from Caracas to Minsk, from Kiev to Washington no one accepts defeat graciously anymore.

The world is full of bad losers!