I see there was a strange effort to rehabilitate Labour Together, the right wing think tank/pressure group set up by Morgan McSweeney as his vehicle to organise against Jeremy Corbyn and the left. It's black and white in the book he co-wrote with Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire. Yet, in Sienna Rodgers's piece for PoliticsHome, we hear claims this was not the case at all.
Labour Together was set up as a fluffy broad front, and not asan overtly factional vehicle for the right as (apparently) portrayed. We're reminded that "Lisa Nandy – Starmer’s leadership rival – was a Labour Together director. Rachel Reeves, Shabana Mahmood, Wes Streeting, Steve Reed and Bridget Phillipson partook, yet so did Jon Cruddas, Jim McMahon, Ed Miliband and Lucy Powell." These characters all went their separate ways when the leadership contest began. Keir Starmer, for his part, was nowhere to be seen where Labour Together was concerned. Rodgers goes on to quote Neal Lawson, chair of Compass and one of the main movers behind the new Mainstream initiative, as labelling Labour Together as the most cynical political operation he's ever witnessed. It looked open and welcoming, but it only had factionalism in mind. This invites an anonymous response that the levels of bad faith involved was "not feasible". Has this person spent any time in politics? "McSweeney is simply a talented organiser who was genuinely interested in bridge-building before figures such as Peter Mandelson reshaped his thinking."
Naivete or yet more dishonesty? The argument against this credulous drivel is, at that time, 20 years working in and around the Labour right, McSweeney's chastening experience as the organiser of Liz Kendall's openly Blairite leadership campaign in 2015 amply demonstrates that he was the man he is today then. We know from multiple accounts, not just the Pogrund and Maguire, that he concluded underhanded methods were the only way Labour could be returned to its rightful owners. The pluralism of Labour Together was only part of the deception. It drew in different strands because, by his own admission, at launch he had no idea who the standard bearer for the right was going to be. Indeed, in this initial period, for McSweeney even a soft left figure might have fit the bill. Like Lisa Nandy who was considered as such at that point. However, by the time of Labour's defeat Starmer had presented himself as a figure that could be steered, and the rest, as they say, is history.
I know the illusio of politics presents itself as a public service, politicians are motivated as such, and that disagreements arise from the tension between different traditions and ideas. But once politics is apprehended for what it is, i.e. the clash of contradictory and often antagonistic interests that are variously contained and constrained - and sometimes not - by the constitutional rules of the game, the sorts of skulduggery McSweeney has pulled off is entirely explicable. It is not a stretch to believe industrial scale lying and deception takes place. Indeed, one only needs to open a newspaper and glance at the politics coverage to know this is the case. Rather, the behaviour of the Prime Minister's right hand man in the Labour Party is simultaneously outrageous and utterly banal.
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5 comments:
As a long time member of Labour until 2021, McSweeney is no different to the fixers in the Blair era, and the whole right wing regional structure that has survived to strangle branches.
perhaps I'm being overly generous but I read Rodgers as saying "here is what some defenders of Labour Together's Early Work are saying", as opposed to "this is what actually happened".
I thought her piece was valuable in terms of laying out the various narratives and counternarratives circulating among warring factions.
eg if the Labour right's best defence is something as preposterous as "ah McSweeney was a Good Jedi before being corrupted by Darth Mandelson" then that tells you something about their contact with reality.
Here's a tale about a man named Morgan.
He was a bit of a gambler who liked a flutter on the horses. One day he placed a bet on a horse that he saw training and fancied, and it won. A bit later, the same thing happened. It couldn't be coincidence. It had to be that he had the magic eye. So, he spends several weeks watching horses train, decides on a guaranteed winner, and takes all his savings out and puts them on Sir Keir at 6-2 in the National.
The day dawns and the weather looks favourable. The going is good, and the opposition are donkeys and a carthorse. Sir Keir romps home. Morgan is rich! He's made it. But, wouldn't it be even better if he owned the horse, and so got the glory as well as the money? And he could train him so he'd be even better!
So he buys him. And the next race Sir Keir runs like a pregnant mare on ketamine. Morgan doubles down and in the following race Sir Keir starts running backwards. Morgan can't believe it. It's the only horse he has so he can't replace him. It can't be his training techinique - that's infallible. He tries again. This time Sir Keir refuses at the first, then rolls over and squashes his jockey. The punters are furious and start shouting abuse at Morgan and his horse. He's fuming. So much for glory!
The last race of the season and Sir Keir is a rank outsider at 500-1. Barely anyone puts a bet on him. The race is on, and Sir Keir is running like he's in custard. He 's trying but he keeps getting his legs tangled and tripping over his own fetlocks. The donkey laps him and the carthorse just stands and laughs as Sir Keir falls into the water jump and lies there as his jockey drowns.
There's uproar in the stands, everyone is laughing except Morgan who slinks away, dragging a reluctant Sir Keir with him. When he gets back to the stables, Morgan shoots the horse, then burns the whole place down while inside it.
«politics presents itself as a public service [...] apprehended for what it is, i.e. the clash of contradictory and often antagonistic interests that are variously contained and constrained - and sometimes not - by the constitutional rules of the game»
But that is a public service! The clash of interests is a given, and politics makes it into a much less damaging clash than the alternatives. Inverting a famous saying, politics is the continuation of war by other means, and those means, even when disgusting, are much preferable to war (to a point of course).
«not a stretch to believe industrial scale lying and deception takes place.»
A clash based on propaganda and scams is a clash of words, which usually is rather better than a clash of swords.
Also for the elites, which then risk less than life during political fights. But that only applies to fights *inside* the ruling elites among factions of that ruling elite, because when the ruling position of an elite gets challenged by a different type of elite then things get ruthlessly physical quickly.
«not a stretch to believe industrial scale lying and deception takes place. Indeed, one only needs to open a newspaper and glance at the politics coverage to know this is the case.»
Harold MacMillan "Diaries" 1963: «It is wonderful not to read the newspapers — except a rapid glance through The Times. It makes such a difference. One feels better, mentally and morally, not to be absorbing unconsciously, all that steady stream of falsehood, innuendo, poison which makes up the Press today, apart from purely informative sections.»
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