Leaving Labour Reconsidered

In last week’s blog I argued that the Labour Party, under SirKeir’s leadership, had abandoned any commitment to socialism. Whilst I am clearly not alone in thinking this, I did receive some critical commentary from people who remain committed to working for a left-wing Labour Party. I have always maintained that a debate requires two sides and that if you are involved in a debate you should listen to and respond to those who disagree with you.

I was accused of being selective with the facts I presented in order to encourage people to leave the Labour Party. I want to clarify this point. I did not say others should leave the party and was expressing my personal views. If others agree, as many seemed to, it is then up to them to decide what action they intend to take. As it turns out a fair few had already left the party and seemed surprised that it had taken me so long to reach the same conclusion.

Generally the blog got a positive reaction. Such as this from Sheila Gorman Flynn: “Just read your excellent article Dave. Thank you so much for your clear and incisive analysis of the gut wrenching so many of us have faced.”  Or this from Jacqui B: “Just read your blog, Dave. I'm afraid I can never vote labour again. Too old to hang round waiting for another Socialist leader. Which we all know, ain't never gonna happen in my lifetime.”

But, despite this the accusations that I had been selective with the facts are serious enough that I feel I should respond to them. The suggestion was that I deliberately played down the importance of the Socialist Campaign Group, and also gave a misleading account of the ability of the left to dominate the NEC. In addition, I was told that the Labour and socialism dichotomy was a false Aunt Sally set up without explaining what exactly I meant by socialism. And, finally, it was asserted that by even suggesting that I would not campaign for Labour I was undermining any chance of a Labour victory.

Socialist Campaign Group

I’ll take these in order. The Socialist Campaign Group includes Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott, Richard Burgon and Zarah Sultana all of whom were acknowledged in last weeks blog. According to their Twitter account the SCG currently has 34 members. The Labour Party has 201 MPs in Westminster. To put that in simple terms, 83% of the Parliamentary Labour Party are not part of the Campaign Group. Just 17% are. That figure is important because to mount a leadership challenge you need 20% of the PLP.

Their recent online rally attracted around 8.5k participants according to RedFlag website. The Campaign Group Facebook page records some 90k views.The difference in numbers is those who took part ‘live’ and then those who have looked at the recordings. As a technical issue that views figure can include multiple views and also those who have watched for only a few seconds. So whilst 90k is impressive the actual number of people is probably lower. The rally included speeches from a range of left-wing MPs including Jeremy Corbyn. I am not saying that the rally is unimportant it is clearly an opportunity for the left to rally behind their torch-bearers. I have now looked at some of the videos and nowhere is there talk of a leadership challenge. Whilst Jeremy talks of politics beyond parliament he does not say what this amounts to. But, as I have stated previously, I have no criticism of Jeremy Corbyn who was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise putrid political environment. Had Labour’s right got behind Jeremy’s leadership I am convinced he would now be Prime Minister and the Labour Party would be a very different organisation.

I have attended numerous rallies over the years, some addressed by current or former members of the Campaign Group, and I have often wondered at the end of them what am I supposed to do now. I remember one rally in Chesterfield during the miners strike where Tony Benn announced to great cheers “Dennis (Skinner) and I are going back to parliament to put down an early day motion.” A friend turned to me and said “well that’s it then. The NCB will crumble now.” And, yes that was sarcasm. Rallies are important but they are no indication of your actual strength and, this is more my point, they perpetuate a myth that most of us are followers and all we need are the right leaders to get what we want. 

The problem with the Campaign Group is not, however, a lack of ambition, but rather that they are, predictably, focused on Parliament. This is not surprising. They are MPs, it is what they are paid to do. But they do not, in my opinion, offer a strong reason for anybody to stay in the party. Is it better that there is a strong left presence? This rather depends whether you believe that Labour can be a vehicle for progressive social change. Personally, I feel bad abandoning these MPs, but on the other hand I don’t particularly feel that they are ‘my’ MPs. I don’t get a sense from the Campaign Group that they particularly see a dialogue with other socialists as key to building the left in the U.K. Rather, we become reduced to a fan club looking to them for leadership. To be fair, this will seem to those determined to stay inside Labour as a very harsh judgement, and perhaps it is. But, for all the years of left-wing MPs making fine speeches and supporting good causes how much closer are we to realising that left-wing Government. That it seemed so close recently is not evidence that it is achievable, but rather the opposite.

This week there were two votes in Parliament in which I would have expected left-wing MPs to be against. These votes essentially legalise torture, rape and even murder by British agencies. So why, I have to ask, were there only 20 names from Labour in the ‘no’ lobby. If MPs are more concerned not to offend the whip than stand against the legalisation of torture and rape then really, how left-wing are they? As Labour Left Alliance wrote in an email to its members this week:

“It is a shame that almost half of the 34 members of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs (SCG) followed Starmer’s whip and abstained on both bills. In our view, these MPs should either grow a backbone or leave the SCG, if this group actually is to play a role in fighting to preserve the gains made under Corbyn and organising the left in the party in an effective and democratic manner.”

Leadership challenge

I am also told that I should see the potential for a leadership challenge because they are only 6 short. Let’s be clear it might as well be 600. If there were 6 more MPs supportive of the Campaign Group they would have identified themselves and would have voted against these torture bills. The only way the campaign group can mount a leadership challenge is either through winning 6 Tory held seats in by-elections which is unlikely. Even if the NEC elections go well for the left, and that is still to be determined, any candidates would have to be selected in their constituencies and then endorsed by the NEC. The alternative would be a series of extraordinary events reducing the threshold as Labour’s right lost 30 by-elections. That is even less likely. So, for the foreseeable future all talk of a leadership challenge is simply that - talk.

I want to be clear here. I am not saying that the Campaign Group are not worth supporting. Neither am I saying that the people who logged on to watch them speak should not have done so. But, it is not clear to me exactly what my support for the Campaign Group amounts to? Yes, it is nice to have supportive MPs who oppose the government with conviction, but the Campaign Group have existed since 1982, be honest, how important have they been in your life up to now? That is not to say that the Campaign Group could not be instrumental in setting up an extra-parliamentary organisation but is that what they are calling for? I realise that for those still committed to the Labour Party and convinced that it can be turned into a genuinely campaigning socialist organisation this sounds like defeatism and betrayal. I regret that but it is my opinion, and I believe that history supports that opinion. Moreover, it is my opinion as I said last week that the party is now moving indelibly to the right.

That belief got me into trouble with one writer who claimed, somewhat counter intuitively, that the party has not turned away from the left at all. Their evidence for this is that the members have not all suddenly started supporting SirKeir, and that the left will re-emerge at the next conference. It is true that there are still plenty of left-wingers in the party, the 90k who watched the Campaign Group rally no doubt contained a number of them. But the evidence for the right turn is to be found in the leadership election where 275,000 voted for SirKeir. The left candidate, and member of the Campaign Group Rebecca Long-Bailey received 135,000 votes, less than half of SirKeir and only just over a quarter of votes cast.

The argument here is that the members who voted for SirKeir will realise that he is not the leader they thought they were getting and will turn against him. There is no real evidence for this, although the LabourList surveys suggest that his star is not quite as bright as he would probably like.  That said, some 50% of LabourList readers were happy with his leadership compared to 48% who were unhappy. So, perhaps there is a groundswell of disaffection out there. The question is where is this to manifest itself? And, will this dissatisfaction last if Labour finds itself ahead in the polls.

An Opinium poll for The Observer gave Labour a 3 point lead last week whilst an Ashcroft poll for the Daily Mail revealed that more people think SirKeir would make a better PM than Johnson. (Apologies for including a link to the Daily Mail but I don’t want to be accused of making this up.) Now, we on the left, might point out that given the appalling nature of the government and their incompetent handling of the pandemic the shock has been that they maintained their lead for this long. The point is that a poll lead and the electorate seeing SirKeir as prime ministerial is not fertile ground for either a leadership challenge or a move to reassert the party as a left-wing organisation. Given that the majority of Labour members believe, according to another Ashcroft poll, that winning elections is more important than having principles, the right will see these results as vindication for distancing themselves from the 2019 Manifesto. In this scenario there is only one direction the party is heading and it is not to the left.

If a leadership challenge seems highly unlikely in the short term then the left can still win control of the NEC. I was accused last week of playing down the importance of the NEC. I described it as Labour’s ruling body so I’m not entirely sure how I played down it’s importance, but what I said which upset a couple of people was that it contained a built in right-wing majority. To be fair, this may have been an over statement. Those of us still members will shortly get a vote and I will use mine to support the left-wing slate. For the avoidance of misunderstanding here. My membership renewed for 12 months in August and so, unless expelled, I remain a member, if a somewhat uncommitted one, until next year.

National Executive Committee

Contrary to the impression that I may have given last week the make up of the NEC is more complex than stated. There are 38 people on the NEC. In addition to the 9 CLP reps there are also elections for the Young Labour, BAME Labour, and the newly created Disability reps. In addition Scottish Labour and Welsh Labour have a place each. There are 13 trade union delegates who split roughly 50-50 left-right. There are 3 Front Benchers, 3 PLP members and 2 Councillors - all of these are on the right. I should be clear some of those I’m describing as on the right would describe themselves as ‘centre-left’ or ‘moderate’ but in as much as they are SirKeir loyalists I regard them as on the right. The left did well in gaining CLP nominations so perhaps I was wrong to dismiss the NEC as inherently right-wing, that said even if the left win all 9 CLP positions the NEC will be split 50-50 right-left.

Since SirKeir became leader there have been two important NEC votes. First on a change to the voting system and second on the new General Secretary. On both these votes the left lost. Whether the elections will shift the balance decisively one way or the other is difficult to see, but generally speaking the NEC tends to support the leader of the party, although sometimes very narrowly. In other words, although it is conceivable that the left could win control of the NEC it is unlikely that will significantly change the direction in which the leader wants to take the party. Indeed, one of the first things new General Secretary David Evans did was to issue an edict forbidding CLPs to discuss the leaked report, payments to so-called “whistleblowers” or the EHRC report. The NEC could have overturned that decision, which was anyway unconstitutional, but did not do so.

Those who choose to stay in the party perhaps need a justification for doing so which is more than just winning an election. The idea that by winning “control” of the NEC or supporting the Campaign Group or by having left-wing delegates on the conference floor (should we ever see a conference floor again) that they are bringing socialism closer is an appealing illusion. To believe otherwise would involve saying that they are staying in a party that is diametrically opposed to things they believe in. To spend your time fighting for left-wing causes within Labour you need the occasional victory. A motion passed at a CLP meeting, a left-wing candidate elected to the NEC or even a prospective parliamentary candidate fill the time between elections. But do they have anything to do with socialism?

Socialism defined

Labour’s left have always made much rhetorical use of the word socialism without really defining what it is. It used to be summed up in Clause 4 Part 4, but the Blairites removed that and the members have not managed to get it put back in. I wrote a blog entitled ‘What is socialism’ last year. In it I wrote:

“If we consider the conditions in which socialism is likely to evolve, it is unlikely to be as a result of the election of a Labour government. As desirable as such an event may be the last time I checked socialist revolution was not an objective of the Labour Party. That election would be a symptom of a deeper crisis not its catalyst.” 

I then went on to suggest ways in which socialism would differ from capitalist: “Production of goods would not be for profit but to benefit society. Decisions instead of being motivated by maximising advantage for one enterprise (regardless of the effect on other institutions or wider society) would be taken to increase the well-being of the community. People would no longer have most of their life chances determined by where, and to whom, they were born. Education would be available for all, and every child would have the opportunity to reach their full potential. There would inevitably, in such a society be a change in people’s attitudes.”

A few weeks ago I followed this up with a piece entitled ‘Can you imagine’ in which I asked readers to imagine a society which was socialist. This is what I had to say about democracy:

“Democracy will not be casting a vote for one of an identikit array of people who want to “represent” you. A socialist democracy would create an informed electorate who would make decisions based on both evidence and their lived experiences. The officials and administrators would not work for the mayor or the local council but for the people. All positions of civic responsibility would be open to all, shared and subject to democratic recall.”

I find it just a tad irritating, therefore, to be accused of not defining socialism by people whose only reference point seems to be that it is stopping the Tories. Those who criticised me, and they have the right to do so, whilst telling me that I had set up a straw man argument did not tell me one positive policy that they could see being enacted in the coming months. They did not describe the progressive policies that somehow we would maintain by committing our energy to the Labour Party. They certainly did not explain how supporting a Labour Party led by SirKeir would lead to socialism. Instead they criticised my lack of enthusiasm for internal party politics and accused me of not defining what I meant by socialism and of aiding the Tories by not campaigning for a party that is looking decidedly conservative in its approach.

I may be entirely wrong about the future socialist society and about how it will emerge. I may be wrong about the nature of the Labour Party. But it does occur to me that if the main aim of socialism is to stop the Tories as so many people claim, then why do the left in Labour not embrace the Scottish National Party who are clearly the anti-Tory party north of the border? Why does Labour’s left never stand down in favour of the Lib Dem’s in seats where they are the clear favourites to oust the Tories? Why do the Labour left spend so much time organising to beat the right in various internal elections but then turn out to support right-wing candidates for local and national elections? If such a strategy is defensible when the leader and manifesto are on the left even if your local candidate is not, how is it defensible when the leader is dragging the party slowly, but inexorably, rightward based on an analysis that says “it’s no good having good policies if you are not trusted”?

Again I have to be clear. I am not advocating an electoral pact with the Lib Dem’s, though to be honest if I were in Scotland I’d probably support the SNP. The obsession with elections is part of Labour’s problem, and no amount of tinkering (including advocating PR) is going to change that. Labour is first and foremost an electoral party. It’s constitution commits it to maintaining a parliamentary party. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. But those elections take part in a capitalist parliamentary democracy where for most of the time the views of ordinary people can be safely ignored. As Stevie Wonder once put it “you only come to visit us around election time”. For a while I hoped that a left-led Labour Party could be the catalyst for progressive social change. I was wrong. The establishment, including its adherents embedded within the Labour Party itself, were never going to allow it. 

The Labour Party is a vanity project for people who should know better. I was desperately trying to think of a counter argument to this in terms of all the good things Labour has done. The NHS, the welfare state, equality legislation are the usual examples, the last two of which were actually designed by liberals (Beveridge and Steel). But these are easily countered with PFI, student tuition fees and, the low blow, Iraq. To that we can now add turning our backs on the Palestinians. Labour politicians and their supporters (on both left and right) like to think of Labour as the moral high ground of British politics. But, their claim to moral superiority rests on shaky grounds. Of course, there are outstanding individuals but even in a barrel of rotten apples it is possible to find a couple of decent Coxes. The point is that it is not the individuals, per se, but the very system that is corrupting. In the end I am forced to conclude that John Bernard who left a comment last week is probably right:

“It is the duty of all good socialists to do precisely nothing to enable a Labour victory in 2024 for two very clear reasons. First, it will not deliver change that amounts to anything, and second and most importantly the myth that somehow Labour cannot get elected unless it moves to the right and abandons a policy agenda which is and was the very raison d'etre of Labour.”

Reasons to be within

 

 

In the UK, it is widely held that the most obvious route to socialism is via a Labour Party victory at a General Election. This assumption rests on a couple of claims which are, at best, debatable. First, it is held that Labour is, was or could be a socialist party. Second, it is held that socialists within Labour can win power within the party. Third, it is held that only the Labour Party can bring about the socialist transformation of the UK. Fourth, this rests on a belief that it is possible to use the electoral system, perhaps with some modification, to bring about fundamental change which would, in effect, be revolutionary.

These beliefs have been responsible for generations of socialists devoting their time to the Labour Party in the, in my opinion, forlorn hope that one day that party would transform society. I do not doubt the sincerity of those who hold these beliefs, but I would argue that every one of those beliefs can be challenged. Indeed, over the past few weeks in this blog I have done precisely that. Last week I tweeted my frustration at the direction being taken by the current Labour leader and asked why I would want to campaign for a party that no longer appeared to want me as a member.

The majority of replies, as I would expect from people who follow me, were supportive. A fairly typical reply was from @SamBell43371625 whose membership trajectory is, I suspect, very typical. “I left the Party over the Iraq war, joined again when Jeremy Corbyn became leader,” they wrote “My membership lapsed in March but I decided not to rejoin, however, I expect I'll always vote Labour. Maybe!” Whilst @JudithRKramer wrote: “I am so conflicted about staying in the party at the moment. The ridiculous stance on the bill has left me incandescent with rage. The Tories still accused Labour of being anti military even though maj abstained.” 

Self-indulgent navel gazing

Those struggling to maintain their commitment to Labour were certainly in a majority of the 177 replies I received, but as the tweet got shared the tone of the debate coarsened as evidenced by this response:

“All this self indulgent naval (sic.) gazing is futile. It’s the nation you have to win over. They have turned their back on the last offer and only by engaging with them will there be a Labour Government. Please don’t make Labour unelectable again🙏” 

This tweet, whilst of no particular consequence in and of itself points to a problem that those of us on the left of the labour movement continually encounter. When, as when Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the party or Arthur Scargill was leading the historic and heroic miners strike, we are in the ascendancy, the right wing do everything in their power to ensure that we cannot win. We now know that there was what can only be described as a ‘conspiracy’ against Jeremy Corbyn at the very top of the Labour Party. 

We know, as a matter of documented fact, that Labour’s right-wing and establishment were more comfortable delivering what must surely rate as the most incompetent government the UK has ever seen for fear of the alternative. That alternative was not the socialist republic of Great Britain, as the Mail might have us believe, but a government so far to the left of anything we have seen in the UK in living memory that it was as if the ghosts of Lenin, Marx and Trotsky were being offered the keys to Whitehall. 

Many of those now demanding that left-wingers knuckle down and get their man elected were organised around the ‘People’s Vote’ campaign and on Twitter coalesced around the FBPE hashtag. One such user, Susan Bagheri, responded to my tweet:

“Keep with the infighting and make sure Labour are never elected to government again. Just what this extreme Tory government wants so they can continue fleecing the poor and the country.” Another gave the following advice: “And there we go. When you get fed up with tory governments, kicking off non stop because you can't have everything your own way gets you nowhere.” As a Twitter user calling themselves ‘Middle of the Road’ said “Why would you even think something like that, let alone say it out loud? Are you trying to help the Tories? Are you aware that Labour has only EVER won elections when led by Centrists like Starmer? Or does winning elections and getting rid of the Tories not matter to you?”

These responses are variations on the “navel gazing” theme. That arguing that we do not want to spend hours trudging the streets for a party we no longer believe in is wanting to have ‘our own way’. The suggestion is that those on the left now leaving Labour are simply petulant children. If this were true you would think that the ‘grown ups’ would be glad to see the back of us. The truth is that this is a calculated insult by those who literally used every trick in the book (and a few they wrote themselves) to ‘get their own way’. 

Reasons to remain

There are reasons to remain in the Labour Party as @RobDug wrote: “The best reason to stay is understanding how Labour works. The leader doesn’t control the party, the NEC does and socialists in the party are vital to vote. Corbyn was frustrated by Blairites in the party, we can do the same..” He was not alone in suggesting that the NEC has an incredible amount of power within the party. Other variations on this theme included the advice that the leader does not make policy but rather that the party conference does. The more socialists there are in the party the better placed we are to influence these policy making forums.

There are 40 people on the NEC of which only 9 are elected from the constituencies. The NEC has a built-in right-wing majority. The right lost control of the party for 5 years, it is inconceivable that they will not change the rules to ensure that the NEC remains permanently on-board with their agenda in future. For all their talk of ‘unity’ and ‘working together’ the right of the party are still smarting from the Corbyn years and it would be a major shock if the power of the members was not systematically diminished in the coming years, and certainly way ahead of any election.

But, if you stay, will come back the refrain, you can fight to prevent this. All that is needed is for enough of us to be in the party and we can prevent the right from taking control. @gawdyhall put this in positive terms: “Just think how satisfying it is to re pay the compliment of the far right blairites!” Whilst @jeremyfwilcox1 seemed to think all that was necessary was to find the right insult and I would see the error of my ways. “By leaving you are only demonstrating that you do not understand the importance of solidarity.” 

I can see the appeal of taking it to the right and giving them the metaphorical ‘bloody nose’ they have just presented to us. However, these appeals are based on emotion not analysis. The fact is that the right have always been more devious than the left. They have used, and often abused, the rule book to force through what they want. The left are very often on the backfoot in these manoeuvres. Even at the height of ‘Corbynism’ the right of the party were confident enough to not only set up a shadow organisation based in the party’s HQ but also to brief the press continually to undermine the leader. 

It is my honest opinion that there is no way back for the left. I understand that Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and younger left wingers such as Richard Burgon and Zarah Sultana are still in the party. It is yet to be seen whether the right use the EHRC investigation to launch an attack on left-wing MPs, but it is no secret that the Zionist lobby within the party (and without) have a hit list of left-wing MPs they want expelled from the party. I certainly don’t think it is realistic to think of mounting a left-wing challenge to the leadership at present. So, the advice from @sontwit “A bigger Labour Party can change the leadership when we’re in power. Just like the Tories did last time,” seems highly optimistic.

The appeal of staying in the party may not just be political of course. I understand and appreciate that many people have long-standing friendships within the party and leaving would be to walk out on those relationships.  There is a compelling reason to stay with Labour and I have mentioned it previously, though nobody suggested it on Twitter. At the last General Election Labour received over 10 million votes. Many of those were from ordinary working class people who maintain their belief in Labour to deliver reforms which would make their lives better. If Labour had not constructed a false narrative of the working class deserting to the Conservatives, this could be cited as evidence that socialists should go where the working class go. But I have reached the conclusion that far from following the working class, socialists should be leading them and that means being truthful about the Labour Party.

This raises the issue of quite what I, and I assume others, want their socialist activity to amount to. People tell me that as a left-winger in Labour I should organise with other left-wingers so that we can pass left-wing motions, get delegates to conference, control CLP’s, get members elected to the NEC (Labour’s ruling body), elect left-wing councillors,  perhaps get a parliamentary candidate and generally keep the flame of socialism burning within the party. It’s a lot of activity, but having taken part in all those things over the years I have to ask how many of them are genuinely concerned with socialism?

Is this really what I want?

I will concede that even a reformist social democratic party might appear to be an improvement on the Tories, but if the goal is to be better than the Tories I wonder why Labour’s right are so intent on emulating them. It should be becoming obvious to anybody capable of rational thought that our political and economic system are in mortal peril.  The pandemic has simply exacerbated the downturn which was coming anyway. Labour no more has an answer to a capitalist slump than any other neo-liberal party. So when @DavidAScruff asks:  “when it comes to putting an X on a ballot paper,  where are you going to put it?  Anywhere other than next to a Labour candidate will keep Tories in power.  Is this REALLY what you want?” it is the wrong question. 

The issue is that when the next election comes round am I prepared to knock on doors and try to convince people that Labour will deliver policies that will fundamentally change their lives? There are people who believe that SirKeir might evolve. One Twitter user, @Newtons_Laws, says: “I’m confident policies will evolve in a socially responsible way. I see the man himself as just as honourable as his predecessor. The message must be saleable to most people, though, otherwise it leads to nothing.” 

There is a problem with this view and that is not how Starmer or his front bench (which is, incidentally, most of the parliamentary party) are framing debates. In last week’s blog I spent some time looking at the direction of the party and the phrase SirKeir used most in his speech to conference was “under new leadership”. I could be wrong but my guess is that very little of the 2019 Manifesto will survive to 2024.

Labour is now an obstacle

To sum up I am convinced that Labour far from being a vehicle for socialism is now, as it has always been, an obstacle in its path. Ultimately, the Labour Party will prove to be irrelevant to the transformation of society. The real danger is that we enter a period of revolutionary change and ordinary people rather than believing in themselves will continue to look to the Labour Party for leadership. That may seem a far fetched danger to people committed to getting a Labour Government, but that stems from what is a very pessimistic disposition shared by many socialists. Socialism is very often viewed as a desirable, but unobtainable, chimera. The best we can hope for is a mildly progressive political party bringing in a few reforms whilst attempting to manage capitalism more efficiently than the Conservatives. How often has SirKeir pushed the mantra of competence with the clear message that he can be trusted (another favourite word) to competently manage a system that is, at its heart, chaotic?

Of course I fully expect people to push the line that I am being both defeatist and engaging in a fantasy. I have argued to stay in the Labour Party up to now not because I believe the left will somehow take control. Even before the December defeat I had suggested that anything but a victory would be catastrophic for the left:

“A General Election, particularly one in which we lose, is going to leave many activists burned out and disillusioned. Moreover, we will be subjected to a gloating Labour right, supported by the massed ranks of the media, telling us that Labour lost a ‘winnable’ Election because it was too left-wing. Some MP’s we currently consider to be on our side will join in with the demand that we must pursue “sensible” policies for there is no point in having great policies if you cannot implement them.”

Those who in responding to my tweet by reminding me that the goal was to stop the Tories are right. The whole focus of the party is to be in government. Very little else matters. But, managing capitalism is not the same as fighting for socialism. Julia Larden, who seems to be on a one-woman mission to keep Labour left was all over the debate prompted by my tweet and said in one exchange: “However, the LP needs its left-wingers, inside the party,  working to keep it left after recent setbacks,  or we could be out of power for ten years or more.  If you have no time for anything else internal votes still important.” 

But, I am far from convinced that the party can be turned to the left again. Certainly not in the short term. The more likely scenario is that the right will tighten their grip, and the left will spend all their time working for small symbolic victories and then go out and campaign for a predominantly right-wing party with a right-wing (or what they will call moderate and/or sensible) manifesto come the next election. I respect those that want to do that, but I have poured enough energy into futile causes over the years to decide that this is one I’d prefer to sit out. 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shaping opinion

 Opinion polls play a major role in our political culture and many people see them as an indication of how people actually think about particular issues. They are, these days, often supplemented with focus groups which appear to confirm the results of the opinion polls they are set up to examine. Such is the poverty of ideas in political life these days that politicians often say things like “It’s no good having the correct view on everything if no-one trusts you to put it into practice.” This has become the line being pushed by “senior” Labour politicians as they seek to ditch the policies that made Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto so popular. That particular line was presented by Shadow Treasury Spokesperson Bridget Phillipson during a ‘Labour To Win’ online rally, but we can expect to hear it more and more as Labour desperately try to get back into Government.

 

The problem with relying on “what people think” to guide your policies, is that so-called public opinion is not quite as objective as Labour (and they are not alone in this) would have you believe. But first a disclaimer. If you care to look back through my blogs I have been critical of opinion polls but have also cited them. Does this make me a hypocrite? I should add that I spent the best part of 25 years teaching research methods in higher education. Students would often ask:

“How do I know which polls to trust”, to which I would usually reply:

“In practice, people tend to trust the polls which confirm what they already think, and work hard to disprove the ones they disagree with. For us (I meant social scientists) we should look at the questions asked, the sample and the time frame. In truth we are as prone to confirmation bias as everybody else.”

 

But the major issue with “public opinion” is not that polls have methodological problems, but they also have what we might call ‘ontological’ problems. Aware as I am that people reading this might be resistant to social science jargon I’ll explain what I mean. If you are going to try to measure a thing, any thing, you need to be clear what it is and what would be an appropriate measuring tool. A tape measure is a pretty good measure of length; and either metres or feet tend to be standard. You don’t spend much time, I’m guessing, debating whether a metre is a metre. It just is. Unless you are a philosophy undergraduate and the less said about them the better.

 

So, what is an opinion? We all have them, and they are clearly important, but what they are precisely remains elusive. That is the ‘ontological’ problem. In short ontology refers to the state of being. For our purposes what we can say is that being able to measure ‘opinions’ is not quite the same as being able to define precisely what they are. Now, quite rightly you might be wondering why any of this is important and whether it has any political ramifications?

 

Claire Ainsley, Labour’s new Director of Policy had this to say about polling in a paper in Political Quarterly:

“Public opinion is clearly central to political decision making.”

But, she does not attempt to define what ‘public opinion’ actually means, though to be fair nor do many policy analysts. She does go on to say:

“But the practice of using public opinion in politics is fairly blunt, and has not necessarily been experienced by the electorate as a democratically enriching process.”

 

I don’t disagree with her but she tends to take for granted that the electorate want democracy to be enriching. In truth, whilst this sounds good it is layering concept on concept, because I have no idea at all what a “democratically enriching process” would look like. What she proposes sounds good. Policy which is led by the public. But, on closer examination it is not a move away from public opinion, but a reshaping.

 

“Public attitudes-led policy making suggests that politicians should start with where the public is, and build from there,” as Ainsley puts it. Although this might sound as if policy making simply mirrors the prejudices of the electorate, Ainsley wants to build in checks and balances. Relying on public attitudes, she notes, could lead to the populism popular on the continent but instead she proposes “that it is possible to use public insight and inclusive democratic innovations to develop policy that has public legitimacy, is based on evidence, and is tested amongst the public.”

 

This is important for, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, this view that Labour must get in tune with the electorate is being repeated by the front bench. In the online rally Bridget Phillipson, went on to say:

“..we do need to understand the priorities of the people who haven’t been giving us a hearing. We need to listen, learn and use their language.”

 

This view that all you need to do is listen to ‘ordinary people’ and reflect back their demands in language they recognise is a persistent one in politics, particularly amongst Labour’s right-wing. This leads to the conclusion, as Phillipson puts it that,  “Our language and our framing must reflect the world as our electors see it..” However, beyond saying that Labour should not commit to spending too much or blame austerity for everything there is very little evidence that ordinary voters have been engaged. Rather, the entire speech was a swipe at Labour’s membership which is clearly seen as too left-wing and too out of touch with ordinary voters to engage ordinary people.

 

This brings us back to public opinion. The problem that Labour’s right-wing dominated front bench have is that they seem to believe that there is such a thing as public opinion and that Labour between 2015 and 2019 was not listening to it. They are clearer however what it is not than what it is. According to Philipson the voters Labour needs to speak to, “..don’t follow the news much, they don’t follow Labour politicians on Twitter and they don’t have time to follow the detail of policies that don’t affect them.” These voters, according to this new orthodoxy are disengaged from politics entirely and don’t appear to have much idea what is going on. Nevertheless, we can gauge their views from opinion polls and attitudinal surveys, and when these are translated into policies, these Tory-voting ex-Labour voters will abandon the Tories and sweep Labour to power. It would be laughable if they weren’t so sincere.

 

There has been little attempt by political scientists to understand the nature of political opinions. For data obsessed politicians and journalists opinions are held up as some form of objective measurement of what people believe. The implicit understanding is that opinions are fixed so if, to paraphrase the old saying, the opinion won’t come to the party’s mountain, then the party will have to come to the opinion. The role of politicians in this is not to convince the electorate of anything but simply reflect back to them what they already think. Any sense that politics should be about debate and argument is lost because, especially these days, people reject policies which do not accord with their already formed views.

 

An academic paper by political scientist Stanley Feldman gives a hint of one of the problems of relying on opinions. It is not that opinions do not matter, but that they are related to what he calls core or basic beliefs. As he points out:

“Basic beliefs may affect people’s evaluations of public policy issues not only through their preferences for government action but also in terms of their retrospective evaluations of government performance.”

 

In other words, in formulating policy it is not enough to try to emulate people’s expressed opinions unless you are clear that you are in tune with their core beliefs.

 

Opinions on particular issues, Brexit, immigration, the environment, party leaders etc., are not fixed. Indeed, the truth is that most people do not spend much time thinking about them at all. If presented with an opinion poll they will answer the questions posed, but then in most cases, forget about the issue and go back to catching up on the latest gossip from the world of celebrities or sport. But, whilst opinions on issues may be short-term and malleable, behind these are a set of core beliefs that are more difficult to shift.

 

The problem from Labour’s point of view is that many on the front bench (and their acolytes in the constituencies) are not clear about their own core beliefs. As was indicated in the Ashcroft post-election survey this group overwhelmingly endorsed the proposal that “the most important thing is to win a General Election even if that means making a compromise on principles.” To be honest if you are without principles to start with, those compromises are less painful than they might otherwise be.

 

There is, of course, a fatal flaw for any party pursuing policy on the basis of “starting where people” are at. People’s opinions are often contradictory, political policies cannot afford to be if they are to be credible. People’s opinions can change fairly quickly dependent on events, political parties need to be able to respond to events whilst maintaining their commitment to their policies. But, the biggest flaw is that whilst people want a party to reflect their core beliefs, they also expect a party to lead and to have principled positions. Most people don’t expect a party to simply reflect back their prejudices but expect to be convinced to vote for them. And it needs to be said Tory voters do tend to be more loyal than many Labour ones.

 

If defining ‘opinion’ is difficult, no less so is deciding what represents ‘public’. Politicians often refer to “the public” when they want to show that they are not being partisan. But the public is not an amorphous grouping with one opinion, but is segmented by, amongst other things, gender, ethnicity, class, geography, education, age. These segments are overlapping and people can exist in more than one of them.  Opinions may well differ both between and within segments making attributing an opinion to a particular segment incredibly difficult.

 

Public opinion does not exist in a social vacuum, it is entirely a social construction. Opinion polls do not simply reflect people’s views they help shape them. The way a question is asked, see almost any YouGov poll for evidence, can suggest what people are supposed to be thinking about, even if they do not necessarily tell you what you should think. A question for example such as “Anti-Semitism was a real problem in the Labour Party and the leadership should do more about it”, does more than test your opinion it reinforces the view that Labour has a problem with anti-Semitism (this was part of a battery of items used in an Ashcroft poll).

 

For Labour, if it wants to be credible, the task is to create policies that can transform Britain and then go out and argue for them with passion and commitment. If people disagree have a dialogue with them, be prepared to explain why the policies are in their interests, but accept also that people whose core beliefs are, to put it in simple terms, Conservative, will not be won over to Labour’s cause no matter how much their beliefs are pandered to.

 

In the General Election 2019 over 10.2 million people voted Labour. The immediate task is to ensure that the vote in 2024 does not fall below that. Remember that Ed Miliband’s version of Labour managed 9.3 million, whilst even Tony Blair only managed 9.5 million in 2005. Chasing voters by reflecting back to them beliefs that seem more Tory than Labour will not only fail to win over Tories, but may also lead to demoralisation amongst Labour voters. Of course the base will always vote Labour but that base is not sufficient to deliver a victory, and following the excitement generated by the 2019 manifesto is going to be difficult to enthuse if most of the policies, as seems likely, are sacrificed on the alter of public opinion. Whilst, some right-wing Labour voters may return, the danger is that by appealing to the illusion of public opinion far more left leaning voters, especially younger ones, will simply not bother to vote at all.

 

Let me be clear, I am not saying that Labour cannot win with their current strategy. There is growing disillusionment amongst Tory voters with the handling of the pandemic and that is without the inevitable additional chaos which will be caused by the now highly likely no deal exit from the EU. But winning is not enough. The Tory media will allow a Tory-lite Labour Party into office if they are themselves disillusioned by their own party, but they will also hold a Labour government to its manifesto commitments in a way which they would never do with the Tories. This is especially the case if that manifesto is designed with “conservative” minded voters at its core.

 

Public opinion, such as it is, is able to be manipulated by the establishment so that people without any discernible stake in the system will continue to vote for the continuation of that system. Jeremy Corbyn managed to change the narrative by refusing to play the game. By circumventing the mainstream media for 5 years Labour felt like a real alternative. SirKeir has quickly taken Labour back to ground on which the Tories can always out-perform Labour. For all their talk of going “forwards, we don’t need to reenact the past”, the fact is that Labour is trying to rerun the 1997 Election when Blair won a landslide. That victory, as I have pointed out previously, was as much a result of the collapsing Tory vote as enthusiasm for Labour. If in the midst of the worst pandemic in living memory and it’s atrocious handling Labour is still trailing in the polls, it does not auger well for Labour going forward. The Tories will almost certainly change their leader before the next election, if Labour fail to change theirs then despite having victory handed them on a plate, Labour will, yet again, leave the election feast with only crumbs.