Under new leadership

To win the next election for Labour there is a very easy route. Essentially, all Labour need to do is keep repeating that SirKeir is not Jeremy Corbyn and that a Labour government will put ‘Britain first’. As Rachael Swindon commented: “The “moral case for socialism” has been replaced with the language of Britain first. The vision of peace across the world has been replaced by the complicity of silence.” 

 

Labour activists watching SirKeir’s first conference speech would, if they were on the left, have been disappointed. This was not a speech for us. This was a pitch, the first of the many, to the “lost” Labour voters who delivered a Tory victory in December. Those voters, it is now believed by the Party hierarchy can be described as the “new working class”. SirKeir was born and brought up in Surrey and so, like a rock singer determined to find common cause with his audience, found a Grandmother from Doncaster to show how he was steeped in Northern working class reality. As RD Hale comments: “Just what us northerners want - a metropolitan elite who talks about "the desire to change lives for the better" but won't even hint at how he plans to achieve this.”

 

One thing this so-called “new working class” are apparently keen on is patriotism. As the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee put it: “Labour needs to appropriate patriotism as its own… Patriotism will be the weapon time and again to uphold British standards in animal welfare, food quality and environmental rules against bad foreign trade deals.” The problem is that this sounds more like British exceptionalism than patriotism, though perhaps that is just a semantic difference.

And, so Labour far from being a narrow sect concerned with socialism now has to rebrand itself as a party that “will act in the national interest.” Acting in the national interest is code for not kowtowing to the demands of members who for all their commitment and passion have no idea what the “new working class” are thinking.  It is okay within this to be critical of the Tories, after all Labour is still a different party but that criticism must be “a constructive opposition.”

In terms of the current lamentable management of the pandemic it means Labour “will support whatever reasonable steps are necessary to save lives and protect our NHS.” So, whilst offering constructive opposition, meaning in fact moderate and sensible opposition, it is okay to point out “the government has lost control. Our testing system collapsed just when we needed it most.” This both reminds the “new working class” that the Tories, who they supported (alongside most of the Shadow Cabinet and Labour establishment incidentally) that there is an alternative. That alternative is not radical (for which read unrealistic) but a sensible party very like the party they supported, but competent.

It is this strategy of appealing to Tory voters that explains what to those already committed to the Labour Party, particularly the hundreds of thousands of members, might seem as appeasement. When SirKeir says: “The British people want the government to succeed in fighting this virus. We all need the government to succeed. This is the time for leadership,” he is saying two things. First, to the “new working class” he is saying ‘we are not being critical of your government for the sake of it, because nobody wants the Government to succeed as much as the opposition!’ But, more importantly from SirKeir’s perspective, he is setting up the idea that the incompetent Tories cannot provide the leadership that he, and only he, can.

As the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush, a SirKeir critical friend, points out, the new message is not simply coming from SirKeir but other members of his Shadow Cabinet: “Anneliese Dodds, the shadow chancellor, opted to focus on the Conservative government’s “cavalier” use of public funds, and to promise that under her, the UK’s spending would be more cautious and sensible than under the Tories. Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, told the BBC that with Starmer as leader, Labour would always put Britain first, and indicated that the leader’s vow to maintain Corbyn-era tax-rising commitments had been rendered moot by the coronavirus recession.”

SirKeir used his speech to emphasise that “my leadership of this country, will be defined by the values I’ve held dear all my life. By the instincts and beliefs that inspired me to become a lawyer fighting for justice, to become the Director of Public Prosecutions…” Be clear here that was no throwaway line. The reference to his time as the DPP is the CV being presented at an extended job interview. To be fair it gave him by far his best line of the entire speech “While Boris Johnson was writing flippant columns about bendy bananas, I was defending victims and prosecuting terrorists.” There is, however, a double edge to that particular sword, not only that his work for the DPP includes some controversial decisions (particularly around Jean DeMenez shooting for which he couldn’t find any police office in breach of the law) but that many of the “new working class” rather like Boris Johnson’s flippancy and they believed that the EU was going to ban bendy bananas because it accorded with their prejudice. So, poking fun at these things, which had SirKeir’s media friends howling with laughter may not have gone down so well with those potential voters who probably haven’t forgiven the People’s Vote campaign for calling them ‘thick’. 

The more important issue is that The Labour Party now professes a strong belief in values almost as if Labour has suddenly discovered that such a thing as values actually exist. But what are those values? SirKeir doesn’t take long in telling us: “Family values mean the world to me.” Later he adds to the list but not without re-emphasising family: “A country in which we put family first. A country that embodies the values I hold dear. Decency, fairness, opportunity, compassion and security. Security for our nation, our families and for all of our communities.”

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with these values. True, family values, has been associated with the right and usually means being anti-gay, anti-abortion and defined by what it opposes rather than what it supports. But, family values is as clear an indication that you will get that SirKeir is shifting the party away from its grassroots. Decency is rather like Christmas, who could be against it? But, what does it mean? The same for fairness. Values sound good because they can mean all things to all people. Would SirKeir disagree with these values: “We stand for self-reliance, decency and respect for others.”  Or this: “..our hopes for a better world in which law and decency prevail..”

Or, “Our future lies in our beliefs and our values, we need to shed associations that bind us to our past failures...”

 

These quotes are from David Cameron, Margaret Thatcher and Ian Duncan-Smith respectively. The point of including them is not to show that SirKeir is a Tory, though he might be at least a little ‘c’ conservative, but rather to show that using values to define your politics is, ultimately, self-defeating. It is possible that Jeremy Corbyn has also used the terms ‘fairness’ and ‘respect’ at some time, though if he has I couldn’t find them, not because he doesn’t believe in fairness or respect or decency but rather because his speeches tended to have more substance to them.

 

SirKeir knows that in addition to appealing to the “new working class” he has to keep the Labour base. He knows that some on the left will be disgruntled by the tone of his speech and that many will leave the party as a result. I doubt whether he actually wants most of the activists to leave, but I doubt he cares much if Reg and Susan announce on Twitter that they have just burnt their membership cards. Nonetheless, for those members who want to believe he is worth supporting there has to be more than just criticism of the Tories. Hence, the sections on proper funding of the public sector: “And it always ends this way with Tory governments: public services are neglected, cut-back, and left to decline.” But note there is no commitment for further funding for the NHS, for social care or for education. Indeed, nothing that could be framed as a policy.

 

Only on Brexit was there anything that sounded like a policy and it will have been, allegedly, music to the ears of the “new working class” if not to Labour’s members.

 

“And on Brexit, let me be absolutely clear. The debate between Leave and Remain is over. We’re not going to be a party that keeps banging on about Europe.”

 

SirKeir wants us to forget that he was not only a remainer but nailed his colours very openly to the People’s Vote campaign. It was this campaign, together with years of neglect, that led to the collapse of the Labour vote in the so-called ‘Red Wall’ and SirKeir was the architect of that campaign. In March although he said the debate was over he said he did not rule our rejoining. The architect of the most ambiguous policy ever created at the last General Election has clearly learned the error of his ways as now he says that option is done and dusted.

This was a speech aimed at the “new working class” Tory voters who Labour have decided are the key to their future success. It was also, as is obvious from their fawning reviews, aimed at the so-called ‘liberal’ media. But, finally, it was a message for members both those on the right and specifically those on the left of the party. Three times SirKeir said “This is a party under new leadership.” For the “new working class” would-be voters this was code for “I’m not Jeremy Corbyn because you didn’t like him”; for the media this was “you can stop attacking we are no longer a threat”; and to the right-wing members it was “rejoice, we won.”

For the left in the party the message was entirely different. It was an exercise in hubris as the finger was clearly pointed at the activists who had supported Jeremy Corbyn and campaigned tirelessly (and imaginatively) for the manifestos in 2017 and 2019. Whilst most people have homed in on the obvious dig: “When you lose an election in a democracy, you deserve to” the more menacing tone was offered in this little throwaway line: “As I promised on my first day as leader we will root out the antisemitism that has infected our party. We’re making progress - and we will root it out, once and for all.” I don’t want to rehearse all the arguments again here but in once again, amplifying the false narrative that Labour is institutionally antisemitic SirKeir is giving a green light to accusations of antisemitism to be used against any left-wing activitists who have too much to say for themselves in right-wing dominated constituencies. Moreover, he has in a single sentence rewritten the Party’s commitment to the cause of the Palestine people. That he was introduced on stage by Ruth Smeeth, one of the most vociferous opponents of Jeremy Corbyn who dislikes being described as in the pay of the CIA although according to Wikileaks she is listed in a US Diplomatic cable as “strictly protect – US informant”, quite whether that is true or not is difficult to assess but it is widely believed by those on the left who have been less than convinced by the antisemitism “crisis” supposedly engulfing the Party.

Labour’s right in parliament, in the media, in the constituencies want us to accept that the General Election in 2019 was lost through Jeremy Corbyn’s inability to win and by an over-ambitious manifesto. As I pointed out previously those policies had widespread support. As Richard Burgon has pointed out: “So our party now needs to go beyond criticising the government’s incompetence – which it has done well and which is clear for all to see – and layout the policies needed to defend people hit hard by this unprecedented public health and jobs crisis. Many of the ideas were in our 2017 and 2019 manifestos – and Keir reflected many of them in his 10 Pledges. These shouldn’t be ditched. Our election defeat was not a rejection of them, but a result of an election dominated by Brexit.”

 

The truth is that there is simply no way that SirKeir and, as Rachael Swindon describes them his “cabinet made up of chancers, career politicians, backstabbers, warmongers, narcissists, bullies and grotesquely inept, morally bankrupt individuals” is going to adopt anything resembling a radical agenda ahead of the next election. Whilst Labour activists, what will be left of them by 2024, would welcome these policies SirKeir and his Shadows don’t believe that the “new working class” will vote for them, and they certainly do not think that the media will nod them through.

 

As if the new direction needed reinforcing on the same day as his “conference” speech SirKeir sacked three Parliamentary Private Secretaries for defying the whip and voting against the overseas operations bill which Shadow Defence Secretary John Healy declared, “creates the risk that the very gravest crimes including torture and other war crimes go unpunished” before abstaining. Meanwhile, Olivia Blake, Nadia Whittome and Beth Winter were sacked from their front bench roles for agreeing with the Campaign Group of Socialist MPs and opposing a bill that as currently written legalises torture. So much for being a great human rights advocate.

 

Until now I have held that for those still in Labour there remains something to fight for. I am not saying that people on the left should leave the Party en masse, but personally I will not be renewing my membership in 12 months time (I’d write and resign if I thought they would care, but I doubt they would even bother to read my letter). I think it is time that people on the left realised that the Labour Party is not a vehicle for socialism, whether there is a better vehicle out there I am yet to be convinced. But, much of the problem with Labour is that it is, at heart, and always has been, an electoral machine. Albeit a not very successful one. As I keep pointing out the majority of people on the right of the party do not stand for anything in particular beyond not being the Conservative Party. They will do and say anything which they think will make them popular and get them elected. Their refusal to acknowledge their own role in undermining Labour over the past 5 years and handing a massive majority to the Tories is not simply myopia but is rooted in a simple dynamic: they don’t like the Tories, but they absolutely loathe the left. The success of the left capturing the party for a couple of years will ensure that the right will tighten things up because they will not allow that to happen again.

 

Staying in the Labour Party doesn’t mean accepting everything SirKeir says or every anti-working class position taken by every Shadow Minister, but it does mean defending them on doorsteps at election times. There will, undoubtedly, be a purge of the left. The idea is to demoralise us so that the banner of socialism can be driven out of Britain. But socialism is a stronger creed than these right wing chancers give it credit for. And, the crisis that they want to manage is not going away. This means that there will be plenty of struggles. Perhaps for those of us sickened by Labour’s right we need to think about how to organise to defend our communities, workplaces and our colleagues both through our trade unions and through extra-parliamentary actions, whilst we leave Labour’s right-wing to stew in their own bile.