The reinstatement of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party membership, quickly followed by the denial of the Labour Whip, is a cack-handed and malicious act which may have momentous consequences. Sir Keir Starmer's leadership has been characterised by a series of provocative moves against the Left, starting with the departure of Jennie Formby from the General Secretaryship and then the dismissal of the very able Rebecca Long-Bailey from her Shadow Education Secretary portfolio. The accusation of being soft on anti-Semitism has been the excuse for the shafting of both Long-Bailey and Corbyn. Unless anti-Semitism is to be defined as any comment critical of the Netanyahu government's treatment of the Palestinians, the charges in these cases are preposterous. Labour has certainly had its problems with anti-Semitism but these have not been on the scale many in the public have been led to believe by the press. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Starmer's real intention is to purge the Party of the radical social-democratic Left which emerged during Corbyn's leadership. Misgivings about the Starmer leadership have been growing on the Left since the spring, and the withholding of the Whip from Corbyn looks like the last piece of evidence needed to confirm them.
The outline of a new (or old) political profile for Labour is developing. It is Blairite on the domestic front and strongly Atlanticist in foreign affairs. The 2017 and 2019 commitments to a Green New Deal and public ownership of the railways and energy are being dismantled and dropped. It is now clear that anyone who expects serious progressive change from Starmer's Labour is deluding themselves.
For a brief time, Labour was offering an alternative to the austerity and neo-liberalism which have dominated British politics and economic policy for so long. The result was to attract a mass membership, much of it in a new, radical, socially networked working class based in the service sector (and much discussed on this blog). This reached 600,000 and saw Labour become Europe's largest democratic socialist party. Thousands of these members have been walking away in the last few months. Wednesday's news has led me to follow them and resign my Party membership after 45 years. Some friends have urged me to 'stay and fight'. And it is true that the departure of grass roots members like myself will have less impact than a money spider landing on an oak table. The problem is that the only effective protest available to those of us who are not office holders is to withhold our consent and goodwill - and our money.
Starmer's actions are not just driving members out but threatening to start a civil war within Labour. There may be support for him in the Parliamentary Party but trouble is likely on the NEC (where the Left has recently made gains), and in the trade unions and constituency parties. These last have already experienced provocative attempts on the part of the leadership at the suppression of dissent. Corbyn's reinstatement could have drawn a line under all these tensions and been used as a step towards Party unity. The refusal to grant him the Whip, however, makes conflict seem certain. It is hard to believe that those who took this decision were so stupid they did not see it coming. It is more likely they decided to press on regardless because they rate their mission of transforming the Party to be worth a sacrifice of power, in the short term (so they calculate) at least. But the implications may go beyond the short term and cripple Labour for years, driving away into the Greens, the SNP, Plaid, the Communists and radical Left groups many of those who had flocked to the Party in the Corbyn years.
In any event, as far as elections in the next few years are concerned Labour will either be fighting while deeply divided (and therefore unelectable) or offering Blairism Mark 2 (the latter being a prospect which many of us regard as about as appetising as a plate of dog shit). How many will rally to support a political organisation offering nothing more than a slightly softer version of a neo-liberal political economy which collapsed in 2008-9, has been on life-support ever since thanks to quantitative easing by the central banks and which has demonstrated its failings in spectacular and lethal fashion during the current COVID-19 pandemic? It's not just Corbyn and all those he has brought into Labour who have been repudiated here but, Blairism apart, the political and intellectual legacy of a great political party. It is leaving an ideological vacuum in British politics. And nature, as we know, abhors a vacuum.
I voted Labour through gritted teeth from 1997 until 2010. I won't be doing it again.
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28 comments:
Well said Scott.
thats right ive allways voted labour no more maybe plaid next time or if corbyn makes another party i will vote for him. what starmer dont realise he will lose more red wall seats than corbyn did and wont get back the ones corbyn lost
«the fools are forgetting they need the left to stand a chance of beating the Tories in 2024»
My impression is that the goal of their sponsors is to make sure that Labour will never be beating the Conservatives alone, and will always have to rely on a coalition with the LibDems, thus ensuring that it will always offer thatcherite policies, as the LibDems will never agree to anything different from thatcherism.
Their other goal seems to me to make sure that New, New Labour will never again be "infiltrated" by Labour activists and members, and to fully realize this vision New, New Labour *needs* to get rid of Labour activists, members and voters, and turn itself into a marketing machine like the Conservatives, without a movement, and relying pretty much entirely on advertising funded by big donors instead of member subs to win over "Middle England" right-wing voters in competition with the Conservatives and the LibDems, all with thatcherite programmes even if in slightly different flavours.
In this following the Blair and Clinton/DNC models. Here is a comment by Matt Taibbi on the similar goals of the clintonistas:
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/which-is-the-real-working-class-party
“The party of the probable new president just spent years, and hundreds of millions of dollars, in an all-out effort to purge working-class politics from its own ranks, and discredit it as an idea going forward. Every indicator from the just-completed election season suggests the Democrats not only will lose the fight for working-class votes, but *want* to lose that battle.”
I suppose the annoying thing is I can understand Scott's frustration and anger, which I can share - although mainly on the main policy free approach to so many domestic social and economic issues rather than the debates on anti-Semitism. Indeed, my annoyance is compounded by the fact that since I have had any kind of input in elections for the leader I have consistently plumped for a loser - Margaret Beckett, Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper, abstention on the chicken coup and Lisa Nandy - so I'm part of the problem, I guess.... But still, I stay and fight. I wish Scott well and look forward to seeing him back in the party, as I know he will be at some point.
all inevitable under FPTP. If you want to vote to your principles champion PR.
"The right might find the implosion on their watch a reason to be cheerful, but the fools are forgetting they need the left to stand a chance of beating the Tories in 2024. Unless the Labour right is acting true to form and the only power they're serious about is within the party itself."
But, of course that is only what the Right are interested in. Their attempts to sabotage the 2017 election campaign, and allow in the Tories was evidence of that. Its not that the Right prefer the Tories to the Left, but merely that they hate the Left so much that they are more concerned to defeat the Left than they to defeat the Tories.
It is exactly the same as during the Spanish Civil War. It wasn't that the Stalinists preferred the fascists, or desired that Franco would win, but that the main concern of the Stalinists was to oppose any forces to their Left, with the victory of Franco being the inevitable consequence of it.
Its one reason that Paul Mason was right to argue that it is suicide for the left to leave Labour, but also why he was wrong in thinking that the Left could have formed some kind of broad alliance behind a right-winger like Starmer to fight against some vague "neoliberalism".
The left has to stay in Labour and organise itself against the Starmer-rights, and those forces to their right, as well as focusing the immediate attention on the fight against the reactionary petty-bourgeois forces of nationalism and Brexit.
«I have consistently plumped for a loser - Margaret Beckett, Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper, abstention on the chicken coup and Lisa Nandy - so I'm part of the problem, I guess....»
That to me indeed looks like part of the problem. Most of your choices to me look like those of this persuasion: "I wish I was braver and be more of a Labour person and vote for centre-left Jeremy Corbyn or centre-centre Andy Burnham but I am still doing too nicely to risk policies aimed at higher wages and lower property prices".
It is voters like that are the big political problem that the "leftoids" cannot cope with, and the mandelsonians do not want to, which is persuading those voters who are still doing nicely that actually most of them are walking on the edge of the precipice and their main interests are not the same as those of the business and rentier upper-middle and upper classes, but for a solid social insurance system and better wages and pensions for the lower classes into which they risk to fall at any time, that is their personal downside is much bigger than their upside.
I have come to think that many "Sierra man" voters probably are simply in denial about that: since they regard themselves as "successful" they just don't want to even think of the possibility of no longer being "successful", it is a something in which they are too emotionally invested.
On the specific choices, for all that they are married there is a significant difference between Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper: one is still arguably, maybe, part of the brownista Labour right (Ed), the other seems to me an opportunistic thatcherite, more of a mandelsonian than a brownista. Put another way, the two sides of "New Labour" were very different in essence, even if allied.
I wish I was doing "too nicely" to make such choices and adopt such stances, but I'm not. In my case, I am a former Labour Councillor of many years standing who has had to make hard decisions in a post industrial area and who just weeps at (a) most of the party's 'left' leadership who seem to think a couple of slogans does the trick nicely, and (b) the classic reformist right who have left their brains at the heck in desk of British capitalism. I am also, as a result of serous illness, now a paraplegic needing constant social care and whose only mobility is a power wheelchair. Not an easy life, and in the NHS / care debate I see the absence of joined up party policy at the sharp end. But I know that chasm cannot be bridged by left posturing, no matter how attractive. An offer - we swap lifestyles for a week.
«many "Sierra man" voters probably are simply in denial about that: since they regard themselves as "successful" they just don't want to even think of the possibility of no longer being "successful"»
I think there is another aspect that may be politically relevant: my impression is that many of them reckon that if they risked falling from part-rentier paradise into just-worker hell, they could vote themselves a bailout at everybody's else expense.
They however are partly deluded about that: the most important part of that delusion is that would work only if a majority of them had the same issue. Individual "losers" or even a minority of "losers" would not get be bailed out by the majority.
Full employment, good wages and low housing costs, and good social security, even for the lower classes, instead would automatically keep them out of trouble.
«I have consistently plumped for a loser - Margaret Beckett, Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper, [...]
[...] as a result of serous illness, now a paraplegic»
That's really sad, but then please explain how you could vote for Yvette Cooper in 2015, she is one of those "who have left their brains at the heck in desk of British capitalism", and is even the creator of the infamous Work Capability Assessments to push as many disabled people off welfare, a device created by New Labour to persuade Conservative voters that they were the "nasty party" too, as these news from 2010 show (and she has not changed her politics since then):
https://www.theguardian.com/society/joepublic/2010/mar/23/employment-support-allowance-incapacity-benefit
«Yvette Cooper, work and pensions secretary, said the government would press ahead with next stage of reforming the Incapacity Benefit system and will next week announce plans to start retesting the more than two million people currently claiming the old Incapacity Benefit. "In order to lift millions from a lifetime of benefit dependency, doctors will assess 10,000 long term sickness benefit claimants each week," a DWP statement announced.»
Blissex remember you are talking about the Labour Party not some Marxist sect.
Yvette Cooper, Balls etc are entirely consistent with the history and purpose of Labour, which largely has its roots in the Cooperative movement. Many of these 'leftoids' are not - they should be in marginal ideologically-driven sects.
I am continually bemused by comments suggesting we need to be more left wing to win. The Tories won in 2019 so comprehensively largely by people who had previously voted Labour not voting at all.
Three questions:
How did the Labour Party win so comprehensively in 1997 onwards until 2010 after losing the last four elections?
Is it not essential that we target the people who voted Labour before 2010 but Tory at the last four elections?
Why do you think all those Labour Party members, particularly the MPs, who are described as ‘the right’ joined the Labour Party in the first place?
«Yvette Cooper, Balls etc are entirely consistent with the history and purpose of Labour, which largely has its roots in the Cooperative movement.»
I'll quote again Roy Hattersley, not quite an "extremist marxist entryst" :-), as to what is the minimal purpose of the Labour party and the position outside the Labour party of some people:
“Tony Blair discovered a big idea. His destiny is to create a meritocracy. Unfortunately meritocracy is not the form of society which social democrats want to see. [...] Now that the Labour Party - at least according to its leader - bases its whole programme on an alien ideology, I, and thousands of like-minded party members, have to decide if our loyalty is to a name or to an idea. [...] A Labour government should not be talking about escape routes from poverty and deprivation. By their nature they are only available to a highly-motivated minority.
The Labour Party was created to change society in such a way that there is no poverty and deprivation from which to escape.”
How are Yvette Cooper's ministerial and voting records consistent with that "no poverty and deprivation from which to escape" purpose? (Ed Balls as I wrote is not quite like her).
My other usual quote shows that within the very top New Labour there was both a Labour and a non-Labour component, from Lance Price 1999-10-19, and not much has changed in the past 20 years:
“Philip Gould analysed our problem very clearly. We don’t know what we are. Gordon wants us to be a radical progressive, movement, but wants us to keep our heads down on Europe. Peter [Mandelson] thinks that we are a quasi-Conservative Party but that we should stick our necks out on Europe.”
To give examples Andy Burnham (and Jeremy Corbyn and others) seems to me to belong with the hattersleyite "radical progressive, movement", but Yvette Cooper (and Keir Starmer and others) I am pretty sure belongs with the "quasi-Conservative Party" idea. While for example I not sure about Jonathan Ashcroft, and I doubt that he is sure either.
To say that Labour will be going into the next GE with a "Blairite" platform is simplistic going on misleading.
The manifesto will be more right wing than last year's, certainly, but will still be a lot closer to 2017's than 2005's.
The real difference comes in the approach to party management, with Starmer returning to much more like the "old time" model. Rightly or wrongly, his team has concluded that the 2019 GE showed that the Corbynite ideal of an active mass membership bringing election victory to Labour in the teeth of overwhelming media opposition was a failure. Johnson won a landslide because he had a virtual monopoly on opinion formers, and Labour must somehow crack that monolith if it is to return to power.
«Yvette Cooper, Balls etc are entirely consistent with the history and purpose of Labour»
As to Yvette Cooper, to claim that someone who used thatcherite rhetoric like "lift millions from a lifetime of benefit dependency" (implying that millions of disabled are fraudsters), and not just rhetoric to score points with tory voters, but actually implemented that rhetoric in the form of thatcherite Work Capability Assessments outsourced to ATOS, is "entirely consistent with the history and purpose of Labour" seems to me not just wrong, but also quite nasty, and a clear demonstration of what thatcherite entrysm (Peter Mandelson's "We are all thatcherites now) into Labour is about.
This sort of bleating is simply pathetic. Don't people know what the words "class *struggle*" (emphasis on "struggle") mean?
"implying that millions of disabled are fraudsters"
I think what you meant to say Blissex is millions of people fraudulently claim to be disabled in order to claim benefits, which is a scurrilous suggestion. Surely this never happens. I am surprised at you.
«How did the Labour Party win so comprehensively in 1997 onwards until 2010 after losing the last four elections?»
The Labour Party *maybe* won the elections in 1997, but lost the elections in 2001 and 2005, except that the Conservatives lost them more, and given FPTP and that there is a fixed number of seats, accidentally got more seats. The reason why the Conservatives lost even more the elections in 1997, 2001, 2005 was that they crashed property prices in the 1990s, and the reason why they won in 2010, 2015, 2017, 2019 is that they did not crash property prices, and the reason why Labour lost them was that New Labour crashed them in the 2010s.
«Is it not essential that we target the people who voted Labour before 2010 but Tory at the last four elections?»
Not at all: Labour got many more votes (in many cases several millions more) in 2017 and in 2019 than New Labour got in 2001, 2010, 2015. This is all quite clear looking at the numbers of voters rather than percentages (which usually exclude the abstentions) or seats won:
1979: Labour 11.53m, Conservatives 13.70m, Liberals 4.31m
1983: Labour 08.46m, Conservatives 13.01m, SDP-Liberals 7.78m
1987: Labour 10.03m, Conservatives 13.74m, SDP-Liberals 7.34m
1992: Labour 11.56m, Conservatives 14.09m, Liberals 6.00m
with the collapse under very unpopular T Blair:
1997: Labour 13.52m, Conservatives 09.60m, Liberals 5.24m
2001: Labour 10.72m, Conservatives 08.34m, Liberals 4.81m
2005: Labour 09.55m, Conservatives 08.78m, Liberals 5.99m
And the Conservative recovery after New Labour crashed the property market in 2009-2009:
2010: Labour 08.61m, Conservatives 10.70m, Liberals 6.84m
2015: Labour 09.35m, Conservatives 11.30m, Others 6.00m
2017: Labour 12.63m, Conservatives 13.30m, Liberals 2.22m
2019: Labour 10.30m, Conservatives 13.97m, Liberals 3.70m
And even if it were essential, there is the issue of representation: The Labour party is not a content-free vehicle for the ministerial ambitions of its MPs, so that pandering to thatcherite voters with thatcherite policies is just a means to an end, there are already two other parties that represent thatcherites pretty well, and people like Chuka Umunna made the right choice.
Labour was founded to represent the non-thatcherites and somebody has to.
«Why do you think all those Labour Party members, particularly the MPs, who are described as ‘the right’ joined the Labour Party in the first place?»
There are two types of right in Labour: a Labour right, and a thatcherite ("screw-the-disabled", "screw-the-unemployed", "screw-everybody-else") right which should not be in Labour:
* The Labour right (e.g. A Burnham) obviously joined Labour because they agree with the “The Labour Party was created to change society in such a way that there is no poverty and deprivation from which to escape” purpose, they differ on timing and tactics with the Labour centre (J Corbyn), and also on going further than that with the Labour left (T Benn).
* The Mandelson Tendency "Victorian Liberal" style thatcherites infiltrated Labour in order to use the block of traditional ("even a goat as long as it has a red rosette") Labour votes to go to government to enact Victorian Liberal policies, as the core Victorian Liberal constituency in the country can only be a small minority as long as voting is not censuary as it used to be when the major parties were Conservatives and Liberals. For the same reason several Victorian Liberals have infiltrated the Conservatives too, the "Osborne Tendency". Too bad that the "Victorian Liberal" entrysts in Labour in using that block of traditional Labour votes have ended up first losing its scottish part and then its "red wall" part because of thatcherism and globalism.
«Johnson won a landslide because he had a virtual monopoly on opinion formers»
That's mere hand-waving, who are these opinion formers? And weren't the same "opinion formers" all firmly in the May camp in 2017 when Labour also won a landslide? Why is the 2017 result to be ignored?
Only because "accept soft exit" got millions more votes for Labour in 2017 than Keir Starmer's "second referendum" in 2019?
The same Keir Starmer whose current european policy in 2020 is "hurrah for ERG's hard exit"?
Seems a lot of fascination as to why I voted for Yvette Cooper in 2015 From memory it was simple; at that time we could see the looming battle over an EU referendum, and she appeared the strongest in favour of remain and for rights of free movement. It was a toss up between her and Andy B, and he was my second choice. Guess I'll now get the Lexit abuse, but hey ho
Oh, and in terms of disability issues, benefits are just one facet. As important is care, its delivery and funding and overall health inequality matters. Again, this is an example of one dimensional thinking from much of our in house left. I used to do Tribunal representation work for people refused DLA / PIP / Carers Allowance / ESA and remember once being invited to talk to a UNITE 'Community' branch on how they could get into this, but it was clear it was seen as boring and reformist by most of those present - a picket at the local Job Centre would deal with the issue.....even though most disabled people did not sign on in person....
Blissex
disability benefit was used by Thatcher to disguise unemployment figures. Basically with deindustrialisation millions were thrown on the scrapheap, and not only that, encouraged to consider themselves sick, as if it was due to their inherent unworthiness they were out of work.
That's not to say that there are plenty of genuinely sick people, but the concept was massively blurred. Better that they think themselves sick than able-bodied and get angry about the government's failure.
The far-left completely brought into this because it feeds into its prejudices against the working class, who they like to think of as passive, pliable blocks in need of leadership and education, either demonising as ignorant proles (inherently sick) or romanticise as heroic workers.
In any case benefits dependency doesn't only apply to sickness, but it is a kind of sickness like any dependency. It is soma.
Cooper could be said to recognise the dignity of the individual and resist this urge to infantilise them. But of course, this goes against Left-elitist thinking which inherently sees them as sick and deserving of pity and leadership.
Always remember the old socialist slogan, “When the going gets tough, walk away.”
Or something.
«Cooper could be said to recognise the dignity of the individual and resist this urge to infantilise them.»
Those are the arguments that are part of 100%, sterling, ringing, workhouses-are-good-for-you, Victorian Liberalism, the same used during the fight to abolish the tory "one nation" Speehamland system. I guess that most of those reading this discussion, if any, will understand whether they are "entirely consistent with the history and purpose of Labour".
My "imagination" instead tells me that looking at the dates when the Mandelson Tendency entrysts and Y Cooper introduced the new squeeze on "millions of scroungers" they did so to prepare for the 2010 elections a new strong appeal to the nastier among Conservative voters.
That failed, because the enduring illusion of the Mandelson Tendency is that right-wingers vote for nasty policies; but they merely like them, what really motivates their vote is property, and no amount of throwing "millions of scroungers" in the gutter will compensate for New Labour's crashing of the property market. Millions of tory voters are scroungers who want the government to redistribute to them from poorer voters big (starting at £30k-£40k a year) chunks of income and wealth via higher housing cost inflation, and that's their primary vote moving issue.
Thank you for all the voluntary work you have done for the party over all these years. The best of luck to you.
Over 55k people dead in the UK- Leadership...is it that hard?
David Walsh's extraordinary comments and description of his personal situation (which, despite occasionally exchanging emails with him, I was completely unaware of) puts the author of the atl piece, to shame.
Looking back at the 2015 contest data on Wikipedia, no surprise that while Y Cooper and L Kendall bot between then 21% of the membership votes, they got 43% of the PLP nominations.
And among the nominating MPs for them all the usual names: for example Austin, Byrne, Eagle, Kinnock, Leslie, Shah, Smeeth for Cooper, and Hodge, Hunt, Smith, Streeting, Umunna, Woodcock for Kendall.
For the members I can imagine if it was just 4% of who supported Kendall really don't know they are in the wrong party, but what about the additional 17% who voted for Cooper? So many hardcore thatcherites in Labour even in 2015?
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