It's been one of the most bad tempered elections seen in many a year. Opponents accused opponents of all manner of things as the contest itself descended into mudslinging and skulduggery. No, this is not the Gorton and Denton by-election but the vote for Your Party's Central Executive Committee, the results of which were announced on Thursday morning. The Jeremy Corbyn faction, For the Many, won 14 seats. The Zarah Sultana-backed Grassroots Left took seven seats, and the remainder went to independent candidacies. Corbyn and Sultana are also two of the four elected public office holders under the collective leadership arrangements, with Corbyn set to be YP's parliamentary leader.
Following the results, Corbyn released a mom and apple pie statement that said he wanted to build a "positive and inclusive party" and congratulated members on voting for a "mass socialist party that takes the fight to Starmer and Farage." Sultana likewise put out an emollient piece that emphasised the need to work together, but that calls for accountability and transparency "need to be respected". After the heat, may there be light?
Unfortunately for YP, it's likely this leadership election is going to leave lingering bad feeling. As late as yesterday Laura Alvarez, Corbyn's famously combative significant other, was absurdly musing about infiltration from Labour Together into YP. Which invited supportive comments that, in terms of tone, one might expect of a frothing conspiracy theory Facebook group. And this was typical of the standard of debate that raged across social media. There was precious little discussion about strategic direction, and a great deal of questioning the motives of those unwilling to extend Corbyn saintly status. Those supportive of the Grassroots Left were little better, as false character assassination and boilerplate Trot denunciations were flung in the opposite direction.
It might be possible to overcome the entrenching of divisions in YP this election has thrown up, but there remains significant obstacles to internal harmony. The first is the propensity of the nascent bureaucracy to trample over membership decisions. For instance, the instruction from conference was to allow dual membership with other parties (i.e. keeping YP open to other far left organisations), but it was down to the CEC to sort that out. This was ignored as "known" and "suspected" members of said outfits were barred from standing in these elections. A case of starting as they mean to go on? And then there was the edict that suggested people who served as officers in active unofficial YP branches would be ineligible to run for lay positions when they're finally inaugurated. A right recipe for the "inclusion" Corbyn waxed about in his statement.
And this is before we get to the main problem: how YP has spectacularly wasted its opportunity, and in so doing allowed the Greens to almost triple in size, become a true mass party and is now the vehicle for the political recomposition of the working class. A prize that was in front of YP's leadership cadre, but decided to pass it up for criminally petty reasons. That said, politics buzzes with volatility. If YP is able to stabilise, set aside its internal nonsenses, and start facing outwards it could build up a presence through consistent community, workplace, and street campaigning. And if it does, this would be a good thing for British politics. A small but viable presence could, in the spirit of socialist competition, act as a means of keeping the Greens honest. It could threaten swathes of inner city Labour-held seats where the Green presence is hitherto patchy, and a second strong radical force could work to tilt British politics as a whole further left. Cue a return to 2015-2020 levels of mainstream media hysteria and howls of outrage from politicians who treat their Commons sinecures as private property.
This is where YP can go. But it's now up to them - is this where they want to go, or is further recrimination and needless bloodletting more its style?
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12 comments:
All that is not solid has become a waste of time. Your Party had their chance as have the Labour Party for so many years. We need another future for our country. I will be voting Green for the first time to build towards that future.
I'll be interested to see whethher YP lasts as long as Alba in Scotland, formed in 2021 and now moribund and unable to afford to stand in elections. Seems 23000 voted in the YP election. I'd like to see the geography of the votes. In the revolutionary press there are articles from the proto branches - each paper carries the reports of the ones set up by their members - which show a patchy network in some big towns and cities. As you say, the reports exaggerate differences, show esoteric debates over policies and throw out criticisms that make reconciliation impossible.
Interestingly, especially for revolutionaries in YP, it now faces a situation of dual power internally. Is Corbyn Kerensky about to be overthrown by a Lenin and Trotsky as YP continues its path to irrelevance.
I'm guessing you did not see this: Why I Have Joined the Greens
As YP member after last nights election result we are stuffed.
I agree YP is a busted flush, Sultana and Corbyn are one trick ponies and the Greens have shown they can play those tricks along with a few others. However, I doubt very much The Greens will become the political recomposition of the working class, or at least not the working class that actually does 'working'. A problem with the archaic concept of 'working class' in modern Britain, is many people commonly referred to as 'working class' lie on a spectrum from actually working for their livelihood to not actually working at all for their livelihood, and the class interests are obviously very different depending on whether you are towards the end that consistently makes net contributions or the end that consistently receives subsidies. Maybe talk of 'working class' needs to come with a foreword on which 'working class' is being referred to.
Nowhere.
Sadly it demonstrates all too clearly that Corbyn is not fit to lead anything. He seems a decent man and I am sure he has been an excellent constituency MP, but he seems completely out of his depth trying to run, let alone create, a party. This has been an absoulte mess from day 1, and unfortunately Sultana is just as bad. They are strong minded, ideological, determined, and persevering, but lacking any political craft or insight. YP is a crap name, and it is a zombie party, but not in a fun or deadly way - just in the sense that they are dead but don't realise it.
Perhaps take a leaf out of the lib dems' book, and focus down only on those seats where the Greens are not strong enough to challenge from the left.
I suspect more will leave YP now for the Greens. My problem is that I used to be in Greens and I ain’t going back. Leopards do not easily change their spots and I don’t think 200,000 members will shift that. If anything the factionalism in YP may well reappear in the Greens. And like YP it will get very nasty. In fact behind the cheesy smiles it long has been.
Mark James. Just wondering if you might be able to expand a bit on your leopards not changing their spots comment, just in the spirit of forewarned being forarmed.
All political parties have factions, and all will have people who try to use the rules to their benefit, or look to influence thos rules so that they disadvantage others. The sort of person who will raise points of order and point out that section 4a paragraph 3 says...while everyone else rolls their eyes. People who love procedures and obsess over process, but are not interested in working with others or compromise. So, good luck finding a party that doesn't suffer these sorts of fools.
It's fascinating when someone reveals their true nature in comments on a platform like this. Kamo opines that much of the working class is really the shirking class (®Daily Mail) who receive subsidies rather than make "contributions". Contributions being purely financial in this context, so raising children, caring for loved ones, helping others, supporting your local community, none of that counts (doesn't add to GDP, see) whereas lucrative 'work' that loads people with debt, encourages gambling, pushes unhealthy food, creates waste, pollutes and treats people like disposable objects (the sort of thing that private equity and hedge funds and all those other excrescences of extractive capitalism indulge themselves in) and generally makes life worse gets his nod.
The obsession with working does make me wonder if he loathes his job and resents the fact that his 5 bed detached house, Range Rover, skiing holidays and private school fees are forcing him to keep doing it. Let it go! Write that novel! Sail the med! Don't leave it to bitter retirement when you'll be cluttering your club, brandy in hand, muttering about the wokerati that stole your dreams, nostalgic for an imagined past of racial purity and ritual in gently crumbling hallowed cloisters of looted marble.
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