On "Advising" Keir Starmer

James Meadway's recent article on Starmerism caused a bit of a stir. Writing in the New Statesman, he rightly argues what Keir Starmer is selling is a reluctant shuffle in the right direction at the moment multiple crises are demanding great leaps. The controversy and social media beef comes over the concluding paragraph. James writes,

Starmerism isn’t a secret version of Corbynism and Starmer is not a closet left-winger. Starmerism’s default setting is managerial and its default mode of address is to the political centre. The project around his leadership could, at this point, easily snap into pure New Labour cosplay. Without a defence of the more radical elements of his programme, as they come under attack from the remnants of Blairism, a reversion to the Westminster status quo is virtually guaranteed. But more than this, in the face of a worsening crisis with a directionless government, there is an opportunity for the left to shape the programme and purpose of the next Labour administration.

The passage has been variously interpreted that the left should be advising the Labour leader. As plenty have pointed out, this is difficult to do when leftwingers are locked out of selections and their position in the party should be seldom seen and definitely not heard. But, as James has responded in the round of argument on Twitter, what he's actually arguing is for the left to use the means it has available to it via trade unions, campaign groups, and street movements to pressure the party to move in a more radical direction. He uses the example of Don't Pay UK. The threat of a mass boycott of energy bills in the Autumn shifted Labour onto adopting an energy price cap, in turn forcing the Tories to do likewise. Though in their case, whether it was Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak, it was designed to shovel more state money into energy provider pockets. The point is where there are openings in Starmerism, the left should push and continue pushing. Like Starmer's commitment to oppose the Tory attacks on the right to strike and undo them. Here's a pressure point the left should, and undoubtedly will push on not just to reverse this attack but recast employment law and the role of trade unions.

This is what shaping Starmerism from the left looks like, and it should be uncontroversial. There are defensive struggles, and undoubtedly there will be attacks on our people from a new Labour government was was the case under the New Labour government. But our offensive struggles, our attempts at advance, can wrestle over meanings of Starmerism's political objectives, contest watered-down policies and use them as a hinge to place pressure and to organise. It's what the left have done with all governments ever since the labour movement became a power in the land, and will continue doing regardless of who the occupant of Number 10 is. However, I want to depart from James's argument. While we can debate how closed Labour is to left wing influence internally until the cows come home, it's still useful to engage in policy analysis and critique and, gasp, even make recommendations. In other words, attempting to advise an incoming Labour government from the left is a worthwhile pursuit alongside all the other things.

Have I taken leave of my senses? No. When we talk about 'the left' we often do so with small groups of activists in mind. But in reality, the left is huge. It takes in significant chunks of the Labour Party, the trade unions, and activist groups of various stripes. Some members of non-labour movement parties, like the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Greens, and the Liberal Democrats locate themselves on the left. As do the permutations of the far left, and millions of people of no fixed political abode. And the left does multiple things. It cannot be otherwise given its sociological roots. We often talk about how the left should be doing this or that, but the problem is the left is not one centralised body. It's messy, noisy, often dysfunctional and seldom united. The nearest the left has got to unity in recent times was during the independence referendum campaign in Scotland, when most united behind a Yes vote. And in England and Wales during the Corbyn years, where Labour became the main site of struggle. The truth is most people on the left do their own thing, and when an opportunity appears, as per 2014 and 2015-19, by a process of affinity and networking it coheres.

Trying to impose some sort of organisational unity on this, as per the dreams of latter day Leninists, appears forlorn. At present, locked in workplace conflict, much of the left is either directly in dispute with the government or engaged in supportive/solidarity activities of one description or another. But even now, sections of the left are still focused on campaigning in their community, party business (of whatever party), and everything else. And it will always be the case. Therefore, instead of fruitless arguments of who's doing what and how X is deserving of cancellation, why not lean into our multiple fronts of struggle and activity through a comradely live-and-let-live ethic, and work toward a culture of persuasion over denunciation? I'm reminded of the approach adopted by Communist Refoundation in Italy over 20 years ago. The idea that translates awkwardly as contamination, whereby activists participating in different areas of work would rub off on one another for the good of the whole. What the left should be doing is building up these points of contact through our existing institutions and, where necessary, new ones. We all have someting to offer, and we should all avail ourselves of the opportunity to learn.

Where do writing Dear Keir letters sit in this complex? Another of the key advantages of the Corbyn years was it directly posed the left, particularly the radical left, the question of power in ways it hadn't been for decades. Thinking about what taking office looks like in a liberal democracy with degraded characteristics, how to use the state to transform social relationships while delivering the goods, and thinking through the question of ownership and how to meaningfully enact workers' power in the here and now. For all its flaws, not least the failure to take power in the Labour Party seriously enough, it helped orient us toward what we might have done had we won a general election. Pretending the left is going to make an immediate come back in Labour is fantasy, and indeed no leftwingers remaining in the party believe that. Yet what began under Corbyn - wrestling with the practical issues of governing from the left while dispersing state power - is work that should carry on. James's focus, which critically engages with Starmer's policy agenda, is part of what might become an emerging tradition on the left. The centre left has the Fabian Society, whose sole concern is churning out policy proposals. The issues of strategy and (whisper it) hegemony are left to others, but in its own technocratic way inculcates a habit of mind suitable for a certain kind of statecraft. By generating our own policy, or "advice", the primary beneficiary isn't the Labour leader or the shadow cabinet - most of whom would ignore anyway. It's, again, identifying proposals and articulating demands, sometimes in conjunction with, sometimes independently of other left institutions, and bringing that heft to bear. But also its role can and should be educational in the sense of imagining our project in concrete terms, who benefits, how it challenges capital and class rule, promotes more affinities and solidarities, and so on. It is not a substitution for strategic thinking but a necessary component of it.

Perhaps a good place to build this current would, in addition to critiquing Starmer's proposals for modernising this and that, reflect on one thing most of the left agree on - recent successes in local government. Above all Preston's approach to community wealth building - is worth considering in terms of accomplishments, limitations, wider lessons, and how this experience can inform our critique of Starmer's decentralisation proposals, how it could be modified and built upon, and building a coalition to press towards these ends. Is this too reasonable an approach for us to work toward?

Image Credit