#StarmerOut

 

The latest You Gov poll for The Times puts the Tories on 43% and Labour on 29%. Now as regular readers will know I am sceptical of polls and especially of You Gov polls, but this is clearly very bad news for Labour. In some respects, it should be said, that the Tories are clearly benefiting from the success of the vaccine rollout and the easing of lockdown restrictions in England. But as The Times point out “That is not only YouGov's clearest Tory lead of the year, the 50th in a row recorded by all pollsters, but it pegs Labour as less popular than they were under Jeremy Corbyn.”

The bad news for SirKeith doesn’t stop there. In polls as to who would make the best Prime Minister he is now on 26% to Johnson’s 34%. You possibly remember the excitement amongst Labour’s right when SirKeith was leading Johnson back in the summer. But since then it has been downhill all the way. From a high of 37% in September a fall of 11 points in a little more than 6 months. Even among those identifying as 2019 Labour voters only 58% say they would now vote Labour. To be fair polls tend to show more movement amongst voters than actually takes place but among 2019 Tory voters 71% remain loyal.

Unite to beat the Tories

This news was greeted with the hashtag #StarmerOut on Twitter, and this in turn brought out the Starmeroids who rather than face the truth that Labour is eating itself from the inside, trotted out the usual nonsense. A Twitter user called @Andy67_Mac made the usual call for unity “Why can’t left wing Labour Party members,bite the bullet and unite the party to get rid of BOJO and his cronies. The Tories have a smug grin on their faces because they know Labourer’s in house fighting will lose them the next GE and a Corbyn clone won’t win it either.” Meanwhile Ayesha Hazerika, who spent most of the run up to the General Election undermining Corbyn could only manage “Terrible figures for Labour.” 

Yet another You Gov poll which was published this week makes interesting reading. Amongst Labour members 64% think that SirKeith is doing well as leader, a figure which is, naturally, highest among those who voted for him (89%) and lowest among those who voted for Rebecca Long-Bailey - remember her? - where it is just 17%. However, only 48% think he has changed Labour for the better, with 27% saying he’s made no difference, though quite where they have been for the past 12 months it’s difficult to say. 70% of members want him to stay as leader, and even if Labour performs badly in May 64% think he should remain.

In some ways the polling figures are good news for both right and left. The right are using the response to them as evidence that the only thing stopping Labour storming ahead is the fact that the remaining “Corbynistas” are undermining the leader. The left, meanwhile, are lost in the belief that SirKeith’s unpopularity will lead to votes switching to independent socialists, the Northern Independence Party, TUSC etc at the local elections and this will result in SirKeith being removed.

Nailing the lid shut

For what it’s worth although I will not be voting Labour in the forthcoming Welsh Senedd election I doubt that TUSC, who I will be supporting, will get a seat. I suspect Labour will lose seats and be forced into a coalition with Plaid Cymru. In Scotland anything but a resounding victory for the SNP seems unlikely and in the England council elections it looks like the Tories will emerge the winners if recent polls are anything to go by. In Hartlepool much as I would like to see Thelma Walker get the Northern Independence Party over the line that seems unlikely and the seat will most likely go to the Tories thus nailing the coffin lid shut on Labour’s Red Wall.

What these results show. most clearly, and although they are only polls and should be treated with caution (a fact which Labour’s right, who previously seized on bad poll data to tell us anybody but Jeremy would have been 20 points in the lead, have suddenly discovered) is that from the perspective of the left Labour are a lame horse. The most humane thing we can do is put the poor creature out of its misery. But, the left Twitter response was not #AbandonLabour but, as we’ve seen #StarmerOut. The emotional pull of Labour, even amongst those who have left credentials remains strong.

Reading the comments, and I suppose the same caveat applies to Twittter that these are hardly representative, what is interesting is that the left regard SirKeith as having betrayed what they think of as true Labour values, specifically he is seen as the anti-Corbyn. I wouldn’t argue that SirKeith is anything other than a careerist whose political journey has been calculated to get him exactly where he wants to be. But, it is perplexing, to me, how many people remain in the Labour Party despite despising SirKeith because they retain a belief that passing motions at CLP meetings might make a difference.

Suspensions lifted

I note that Lee Rock and the suspended comrades from Sheffield Hallam Labour Party have this week had their suspensions quietly lifted. In Lee’s case with no further action. In the others with an administrative warning applied. I suspect that similar will be happening throughout the U.K. But, the reason they were suspended in the first place was the removal of the whip from Jeremy Corbyn. That remains in place. What that means is that if there were a snap General Election Jeremy could not stand as a Labour candidate. Left-wing members have been victimised, many of them put through an emotional wringer and for what?

The emotional hold that Labour has over the left in the U.K. I previously referred to as a form of Stockholm Syndrome  and at the time I suggested it was those who refused to leave that were affected by it. But the #StarmerOut trend is evidence that it extends further. It would seem that there are a significant number of people out there who believe that Labour can be turned around. As Julie Harrington, who I have the greatest of respect for, says: “I think Starmer should realise that pissing off the left is most definitely a vote loser for the Labour Party. They cannot win without us. Yet he continues to suspend the left for the most pathetic reasons.” Whilst I agree with the sentiment, the underlying theme is that the left should be in the Labour Party and that if we were that we could turn it into a socialist party (again). 

Trying to turn Labour socialist is like trying to turn margarine into butter. It can’t be done. The fact that they look similar confuses the issue, but they are simply not the same thing. Whenever Labour gets near power the left within the parliamentary or prospective parliamentary ranks get nervous that being too radical (for which read anything resembling radicalism) will lose votes. The fact that so many Labour members are happy with SirKeith’s leadership is all the evidence you need to see that Labour is not, never was nor never will be a socialist party. It is, at best a liberal party. At worst, a conservative party.

Leaked report

When Jeremy was leader masses of us, some 300,000, flocked into the party believing that it could be transformed into a radical social democratic campaigning organisation. At the time we didn’t fully understand that the PLP were, with only a few exceptions, hostile to any form of radical agenda. Even less were we aware that Labour HQ was staffed by people whose politics can best be described as centre-right, though the leaked report suggests that ‘conservative’ would be a fair description.  In CLPs up and down the country the influx of new members was greeted with dismay by many of the established members who were happy to treat the Labour Party as a social rather than a socialist club. Of course not all CLPs are the same and some became bedrocks of Corbyn support. But for many new members they were tolerated at best made unwelcome at worst. The feeling of being an uninvited guest intensified after December 2019 as the right tightened their grip on the party at all levels.

The left parliamentarians, particularly those in the Campaign Group, were so caught up in the possibility of power that they not only turned a blind eye to the witch-hunt taking place under their noses they colluded with it. When Jackie Walker was hounded out of the party she received no support from the Campaign Group, when Marc Wadworth was falsely accused of racism by Ruth Smeeth, nobody came to his aid and when Chris Williamson was accused of anti-Semitism merely for saying that Labour should defend itself John McDonnell, no less, told him that he should apologise to the Zionist lobby including the Board of Deputies.  Rebecca Long-Bailey, we should not forget, not only gave no support to Chris but signed the pledges created by the Board of Deputies labelling support for Palestinian rights anti-Semitic. And, if we are expecting the Campaign Group to carry the flag for socialism we should note their abject betrayal of Jeremy when he was suspended from the party following the publication of the EHRC report which despite its best efforts found no institutional racism in the party.

And yet, despite this leftists continue to see a Labour victory as preferable to a Tory one. As if the reality is not that in power Labour’s radical agenda has been so timid as to be barely noticeable. I believe that many who joined to support Jeremy believe that if Labour do badly in May that this might trigger a leadership challenge. In this election a left wing candidate (Zarah Sultana would be a popular choice) will stand and under one member one vote the, still predominantly, left membership will elect a socialist who will transform the manifesto back into one resembling 2017 and socialist Labour will, somehow, sweep to power. For anybody who has been harbouring those thoughts perhaps seeing them written down will make you realise that this scenario is simply not going to happen.

Leadership challenge

One thing those hoping for a left wing challenge need to account for is that in order to stand for leader any prospective challenger needs 10% of the PLP to sign their nomination. Labour currently has 199 MPs meaning that a prospective leader has to have the support of 19 MPs. There are 34 Campaign Group MPs meaning that a challenge is possible. However, the right fell for one member one vote previously and there is simply no conceivable way that a challenge will occur until they change the rules to favour their preferred candidate. No matter how badly SirKeith is doing, the right will not sacrifice him if they think the party will swing back to the left. But, even if, let’s say, Zarah was to get nominated and win, does anybody seriously think that the majority of the PLP and the right dominated national officers would treat her any better than they did Jeremy? She is already on a target list for the so-called Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. Those smears have disappeared currently because a right-wing Zionist is leading the party they would emerge very quickly if the left were anywhere close to gaining control.

So, whilst it’s nice to see SirKeith under pressure, the left need to realise that we have deserted the sinking ship now is not the time to cling to its flotsam. If the goal is transforming society not merely alleviating its worst excesses then we need to regroup. It’s not even as if we need to pepper the sinking Labour ship with holes, those on it are kicking through the remaining seaworthy parts and letting water flood in. Let’s be clear Labour’s strategy of appealing to Tory voters is failing. This is not 1997 re-run, it’s looking far more like a re-run of 2015. We need to regroup and unite but not to paddle in the stench filled waters of electoral politics. The challenge for the left remains to build organisations which can challenge power in more meaningful ways than putting a cross every few years next to the name of some careerist who turns on us the minute they are in office.