Keir We Go

It turns out Obi Wan Kenobi was right: "This is not the party leader you were looking for, move along". For many the news that Keir Starmer has been elected leader, with the support of many who previously said that they were Corbynites, will have felt like a dagger to the heart.

Twitter and Facebook, and probably Instagram too, are full of people saying that they are going to leave the Party. I suppose knowing when the party is over and bowing out gracefully is a better look than being the last guest desperately looking for the last can of lager (not that I speak from experience, you understand).

In the words of the The Clash the question now is: should I stay or should I go? But that seems to be the wrong question and one that is self-obsessed. To be honest, unless you are an MP nobody cares much whether you stay or go. Right-wing MPs will be glad to see the back of you as they drag the party back to what they regard as "sensible politics". Members who felt overwhelmed by the influx of new members in 2016 will be relieved that a sense of normality has restored.

For those of us who had left and rejoined and for those who were enthused by the ideas that Jeremy Corbyn had we now have to face up to reality. The road to parliamentary socialism is not just paved with our dead, but actually isn't a road at all, its an illusion. Perhaps more of a chimera. Even had we won the election in December what we would be building now would not be socialism but social democracy. Certainly an improvement on unfettered neo-liberalism, but for many the differences would be barely perceptible.

That said, the Labour Party with 784,151 members (minus the 300 who resigned this morning) remains the biggest grouping of left-wing activists in Europe. Yes, many of those people have just committed an act of political hari kari, in electing a man with the personality of a dung beetle (hard on dung beetles I know), but 135,218 still voted for the left-wing candidate, who to be honest was not exactly inspiring either. 

The fact is that life in the party for those on the left is about to get quite tough at one level and just continue as normal at another. There is little doubt that this "victory" is a victory for the PLP. And, there is no doubt that they will want to press home their advantage. Unlike those on the left currently calling for us to unite behind the leader the PLP are vindictive to their core. They showed that when they sacrificed the poor and the defenceless in the election because they could not stand the idea that we might get a left-wing government.

In doing so, they were more than happy to put into power the bumbling and hapless Eton old boy whose handling of the current crisis might well end up costing hundreds of thousands of lives. But, be under no illusion, none of that mattered to the Labour right, whose sole focus since 2016 has been to prevent a situation where the left was able to consolidate its position by winning an election on a radical manifesto of reforms that with the benefit of hindsight do not seem so very different from what the government have just implemented.

The left is at a crossroads and has a very real choice. My fear is that far too many people on the left will make the wrong choice yet again and continue to spend an inordinate amount of time campaigning for and supporting people who despise them in the delusional belief that any Labour MP is better than a Tory.

We don't have to make the Labour Party a fetish if the goal is socialism. Scrabbling to take positions in CLPs just to stop the right from having them is a colossal waste of time and energy. Campaigning for right wing parliamentary candidates and councillors only too happy to implement Tory cuts for which Labour then gets the blame was never a sensible move. If people haven't learned by now that simply having a Labour Party membership card does not  actually mean that you believe in social justice, then I don't know where they have been for the past three years.

There are, however, small chinks of light. Firstly the Campaign Group of Labour MP's, now led by the man who we should have had on the leadership ballot, Richard Burgon. That is a grouping of 30 or so left-wing MPs. They will need to step up and provide not just leadership, but a connection between the left membership and Parliament. The Campaign Group has always been good at supporting strikes and demos, but it will need to be more pro-active if we are to make staying in the party worthwhile.

I would like to see the Campaign Group making it their priority, once it is possible to do such things again, to get out to left groupings, such as Labour Left Alliance and to start a very real dialogue about how we support and extend their work in return for their supporting ours. That needs to be not just us listening to them, but far more important them listening to us.

Secondly, the Covid crisis has highlighted the importance of ordinary, usually unsung workers. Many of those workers are not unionised so when the crisis recedes, probably over the summer, the same unethical employers who exploited them in the first place will expect a return to normality. In place of a clap on doorsteps we must campaign, alongside the left in trade unions, for proper recognition for these essential workers. We may never have this opportunity again, and it won't last for long. We should be thinking now about how to create alliances of Labour, left activists and trade unionists to press home the real recognition that being essential should mean being properly rewarded and having working conditions that maintain dignity and respect.

These are dark times for all of us, but particularly for those who idealistically believed that Labour was a vehicle for socialism. It is up to all of us on the left, whether in the party or outside, to work together to overcome the electoral fetishism that has continued to hamper our movement. The real battles now - against climate change, against austerity, against future viruses - don't need to be fought in Parliament alone. Indeed, Parliament and our belief in the power of parliament far from being  a help have often turned into a hindrance. Where we can we should work with MPs, but we should remember what Jeremy Corbyn promised and that was people-powered politics. Things change quickly. This is not the end of anything, but if we just retreat into politics as usual it would be both naive and ultimately self-defeating.