Climate change

Nature | Climate change and system change

Amazingly neither the LAW steering committee, nor Tees, nor Dulwich have anything to say about the climate emergency. Jack Conrad shows why London LLA is right to link ending ecological degradation with ending capitalism

Runaway climate change is now an almost universally recognised danger. The global climate system probably sits on a razor’s edge. Only the self-interested, the downright ignorant or the wilfully complacent refuse to own up to this fact. If we take temperatures in the northern hemisphere from 1000 CE to the present moment in time, we see alternating ups and downs, but then, around 1880, a sudden and very steep upward curve occurs. The result resembles a hockey stick. Already average global temperatures are 1°C above pre-industrial times – given the time span, very big in climatic terms.

Two additional points.

Firstly, while the climate constantly undergoes change, that happens within a relatively stable equilibrium, within a self-adjusting system. Till recently most scientists thought that all large-scale global and regional climate changes took place over a timescale of many centuries or millennia: ie, at rates hardly noticeable during a human lifetime. Gradualism was the ruling orthodoxy. That is no longer the case.

Climate scientists now recognise that quantitative change reaches a trigger point and then flips over into qualitative change: “All the evidence indicates that most long-term climate change occurs in sudden jumps rather than incremental changes.” Such conclusions were long anticipated by Marxism. Frederick Engels in his Dialectics of nature described the jump or leap: “qualitative change … is determined by a corresponding quantitative change.” Given the right conditions, climate change can be triggered by some relatively “small perturbation”, one system then tips over into another. New, radically different weather patterns, prevailing winds, oceanic currents, etc, kick in.

Second point. Scientific opinion is overwhelmingly agreed: the temperature rises over the last 100 years or so are primarily due to “human activity”. We really are living in the Anthropocene. Industry, agriculture, transport and domestic heating release carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and other such greenhouse gases which have a determining climate impact.

We’ll always have Paris

A recent report by the International Panel on Climate Change projects that global warming will continue at the current rate of ~0.2°C per decade and reach 1.5°C above pre-industrial times around 2040. However, 1.5°C could easily be exceeded in half that time – around 2030 – and 2°C reached by around 2045.

Though theirs is an inexact science, climatologists fear that 1.5°C itself represents a boundary, a tipping point. If correct, after that we could see much reduced cloud cover, an end of the ice caps, soaring temperatures, rising sea levels and the inundation of low-lying cities and fertile planes. Because this might happen within a, relatively speaking, exceedingly short period of time, it could conceivably threaten the “survival of human civilisation”. Given the continuation of existing social relations, expect mass migrations, resource wars and pandemics.

True, there is the 2016 Paris climate agreement. Its 195 signatories pledge to limit emissions, so as to ensure that temperatures do not exceed a 1.5°C increase. But the Paris agreement is voluntary, vague and contains all manner of get-out clauses.

And, suffice to say, the leaders of all countries are in thrall to the mantra of economic growth. Typically this is done in the name of ensuring the wellbeing of all. But in reality outcomes are extraordinarily unequal. The mass of the world’s population barely ekes out a living. Meanwhile, the few accumulate staggering riches. Forbes reports that 1% of the world’s population own 45% of the wealth.

Then there is Donald Trump. He threatens a US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement this year. The 45th president has already rolled back the Obama administration’s environmental measures and is on record as saying that global warming is a hoax concocted by the Chinese government in an attempt to hold back US industry. He is, of course, one of many influential climate-change ‘sceptics’ operating in high politics.

Jair Bolsonaro, Matteo Salvini, Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland come from the same mould. All view action on climate change as an imposition on national sovereignty and a barrier to growth. These counterrevolutionary revolutionaries seek to undo the ‘evils’ of the October Revolution, roll back democratic rights, stoke up blood-and-soil national chauvinism and extinguish even the possibility of socialism. That is the meaning of the so-called populist right.

So should the left rally to the defence of Paris and seek allies amongst greens, NGOs, liberals and ‘progressive’ capitalists, such as Bill Gates, George Soros, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg? Absolutely not. Two main reasons.

Firstly, we have already demonstrated the criminal inadequacy of the Paris agreement. Its maximum goal could actually represent the tipping point that brings civilisational collapse. Why uphold that? We must stand for working class political independence. That requires developing our own programme – not calling for a Jeremy Corbyn government, a general strike or the formation of soviets so as to ensure the implementation of the Paris agreement.

Secondly, it should not be assumed that protests, declarations and speechifying against the danger of runaway climate change automatically leads to progressive conclusions. Environmentalism usually comes with an ingrained acceptance of capitalism as the natural order and easily leads to demonising the urban and rural poor, especially females, in the so-called third world. This is decidedly the case when it comes to the so-called ‘population problem’.

Population

In fact, each society possesses its own population laws. Put simply, the reproduction of the human species takes place within different social formations and under different historical circumstances – something the reverend Thomas Malthus palpably ‘forgot’. His theory of population floats outside a theorised history and therefore took no account of the fundamental distinctions that exist between one society and another. Eg, 11th century feudalism had significantly different population dynamics compared to present-day capitalism.

The peasant family – indeed broadly speaking patriarchal production as a socio-economic system – has an interest in maximising the number of children. Put more accurately, maximising the number of male children – a vital distinction. Sons are treasured because they remain within the family and through marriage bring in extra wealth in the form of dowries, wives, inheritance and in due course their own children. Girls leave the family and marrying them off costs a small fortune … their birth is often the cause of mourning in pre-capitalist social formations. Female infanticide was therefore frequent.

The peasant family is a unit of production. Boys and girls alike labour in their father’s fields from the age of five or six and, of course, not in return for money wages. Food, clothing and shelter are provided – little more. After the age of 10 it is reckoned that children are fully paying for their upkeep. From then on it is gain. Male heirs are also expected to maintain parents into old age. Children are therefore unpaid labourers and a form of social insurance. Given high infant mortality rates, it can easily be appreciated why it is a case of ‘the more, the better’.

Under capitalism – apart from its more primitive, unrestrained and brutal forms – children are an enormous expense for the proletarian family, from the cradle and now well into adulthood. During the industrial revolution, it is true, parents sold their children into work from a tender age. Children of eight or nine did 12 and 14 hour days (until the factory acts). Families could only survive if all available members brought in some kind of wage package (the wife was frequently pregnant – and, lacking reliable birth control and with the peasant mentality still lingering on, she was also typically burdened with a brood of young children hanging on to her breasts and skirts).

What of the present-day proletarian family? It is a unit of consumption. With universal primary and secondary education, and around half the school population expected to go on to university, the financial outgoings are considerable. Prudential, the insurance company, estimates that on average children cost over £40,000 each. Even after graduation many mums and dads go on to help out their offspring with mortgages, etc.

Certainly nowadays the simple reproduction – not expansion – of the proletarian family requires two adult incomes. True, average individual hours have been forced down – in 1846 parliament passed the first 10-hour act (for what was a five and a half-day week). Full-time male workers in Britain now notch up an average of 39.2 hours. But the workforce has expanded significantly, not least by drawing in more and more women. The total number employed is now over 32 million. Roughly a threefold increase over the 1930s. At the beginning of the 20th century females made up 29% of the workforce. Now it is 48%. Women workers today do on average 34.3 hours. Adding those figures together, the family unit nowadays is more exploited and certainly under more psychological pressures. There has been an intensification of labour and of relative exploitation. Not least due to these extra drains and life-limiting pressures, on average women have children later and fewer in number compared with the recent past.

In 2018 the average woman in Britain had 1.7 children – down from 2.6 in 1960. What is true of Britain is also true of other so-called developed capitalist countries. Even India is down to 2.3 children per family and is clearly heading to the 2.1 replacement rate.

Techno solutions

There are many brilliant scientists, engineers and technologists who are furiously working, using their considerable talents, to bring about the so-called ‘third disruption’ (the first was agriculture and the neolithic counterrevolution, the second was the machine age, in particular the use of fossil fuels). The high tech utopians of Silicon Valley fetishistically worship artificial intelligence, quantum computers, gene editing, nanotechnology, 3-D printing, electronic aeroplanes, driverless cars, solar energy, etc. Amongst their more modest claims is that technology “can save the Earth by 2030”.

However, as shown by William Stanley Jevons back in the mid-19th century, such innovations, no matter how revolutionary, lead to a paradox. Increased efficiency results in cheaper commodities, which in turn results in increased demand, and with that comes the increased use of resources. The Jevons paradox is his one and only worthwhile contribution to human knowledge. Amazingly, early Fabians, such as Sidney Webb, George Bernard Shaw and Herbert Somerton Foxwell, considered Jevons and his marginal utility economics far superior to Karl Marx’s labour theory of value. Deservedly, however, Jevons is now nothing more than an obscure historic footnote.

Nonetheless, the point has been made. Capitalism treats increased efficiency merely as an opportunity to increase demand. Exchange-value rules. Not use-value. Capitalism moves according to a simple formula: M-C-M’. Money is laid out in order to secure materials and labour-power with a view to one objective and one objective alone: gaining more money. That law of political economy controls the capitalists themselves – even the greenest of greens amongst them – and makes capitalism the most uncontrollable, the most rapacious, the most polluting, the most short-termist system imaginable. Frankly, if one wanted to design a system with the intention of wrecking nature, it would be capitalism. Capitalism is a mode of destructive reproduction.

Overcoming climate change means fighting the logic of capital

Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

Labour Left Alliance launch | Two roads

James Marshall argues that the Sheffield conference of the Labour left faces fundamental choices

The idea of establishing the Labour Left Alliance was first mooted last year. Why? Because of the obvious failure of Momentum. After Jon Lansman – sadly with the blessing of Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott – had carried out his anti-democratic coup, to all intents and purposes Momentum became the property – the plaything – of just one man.

Consequently, the left of the Labour Party has gropingly, hesitatingly, often falteringly, moved towards some kind of unity. The crucial question, of course, is what sort of unity?

The LLA boasts of having around two thousand signatures to its appeal and a growing list of affiliates and local branches. It is, of course, a work in progress. But it will be the Sheffield conference which will decide the basic character of the organisation. The agenda looks massively overloaded. Nonetheless, we must hope that sufficient time is allotted for serious debate. Without that we will probably get a sad repetition of past dead ends.

Essentially there are two models on offer vis-à-vis the aims and constitution. The first comes under the name of London LLA. It advocates a membership organisation and politics and structures befitting a left opposition in the Labour Party.

The other proposals come from Tees Valley Labour Left, Dulwich Labour Left, and the steering committee of Labour Against the Witchhunt (and Sheffield Labour Left). Differences between Tees, Dulwich and LAW SC/Sheffield are secondary and, from our viewpoint, politically unimportant. They amount to variations on a lowest-common-denominator theme. Unsurprisingly all of them are politically conservative and organisationally mimic the elaborate structures of the Labour Party.

Without doubt, the approach advocated by London is far superior.

Politically it is unashamedly bold. London wants to commit the LLA to “working class rule” and a transition to a stateless, moneyless society based on the celebrated principle, “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”

London also recognises the necessity of breaking with capitalism and its ecologically destructive cycle of production for the sake of production. Note, the International Panel on Climate Change warns that we have no more than a couple of decades before the world’s ecosystem experiences a series of devastating “tipping points”.

Unfortunately, the London comrades fluffed one of Marx’s most famous …. and surely urgently relevant conclusions. Hence we have: “1.2. Opposition to capitalism, imperialism, racism, militarism and the ecological degradation of the planet through the ruinous cycle of production for the sake of production or profit.”

There is no problem with opposition to capitalism, imperialism, racism and militarism. It is the “ecological degradation of the planet through the ruinous cycle of production for the sake of production or profit” which constitutes the problem.

Theoretically this formulation is illiterate. Production for the sake of production and profit are split apart, treated separately, counterposed. For the philistine this might amount to just two short words. But that is really, really stupid. It is like saying there is nothing important separating the biblical command “thou shalt not commit adultery” and the command “thou shalt commit adultery”. Only a single word separates the two. But a world of difference.

Marx should be read seriously and treated seriously. In Capital he logically began by defining the commodity. It is a use-value which also has exchange-value. He then painstakingly develops the category of exchange-value and eventually arrives at the equivalent form. Gold becomes money, the universal equivalent. From here he shifts from the formula C-M-C and reverses it with what we know from everyday capitalism: M-C-M.

Yet from the viewpoint of the capitalist this makes no sense whatsoever. Why engage in the trials and tribulations of production, why take the risks of having to find a buyer, when you end up with the same amount of money that you started out with?

No, the capitalist aims to realise a profit: M-C-M’. The capitalist ends with more money than they start with. According to their whims and fancies, the capitalist spends that augmented money on all manner of ‘how to spend it’ luxuries.

However, capitalism consists of many capitals. Competition forces the individual to plough the vast bulk of their profits back into production. Making bigger and bigger profits becomes a necessity in its own right. Production becomes a compulsion, driving the capitalist endlessly forward.

Hence we arrive at this passage in chapter 24:

Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets! … Therefore save, save, ie. reconvert the greatest possible portion of surplus-value, or surplus product into capital! Accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake: by this formula classical political economy expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie, and did not for a single instant deceive itself over the birth-throes of wealth.

Making a profit appears perfectly rational. The worker goes to work in order to secure wages, so as to be able to secure the means of subsistence – food, clothing, housing, transport, etc. The capitalist lays out money to hire workers in order to make a profit, with which they are able to purchase luxury food, luxury clothing, luxury housing, luxury transport, etc. It would appear that all their material needs are more than satisfied.

Upon investigation, however, capitalism turns out to have an irrational rationale. Because of competition, the desire to make a profit becomes a necessity which, by its own logic, crashes through every social, every natural barrier. Workers are subject to constant and unremitting attack; their trade unions and political parties are controlled through numerous restrictive laws, neutered through corruption or simply overpowered using brute force.

Nature is pillaged, raped and used as a latrine. Ecological degradation is inevitable.

This has nothing to do with the evil intentions of individual capitalists. Capitalists prove not to be masters of their own system. No, they are merely personifications of capital. The system controls them. As such capitalists are subject to externally imposed laws of accumulation. They are compelled to accumulate for accumulation’s sake.

Clearly, therefore, the London formulation requires a little, but vital, cut.

Theoretically it only makes sense if it reads: “1.2. Opposition to capitalism, imperialism, racism, militarism and the ecological degradation of the planet through the ruinous cycle of production for the sake of production.” Fortunately, a number of comrades have submitted an amendment to that effect.

That problem aside, London understands the necessity of linking the future we strive to achieve with the immediate programme needed to bring it about. The battle for democracy must be won. Abolish the monarchy, the standing army and the House of Lords. Establish a single-chamber parliament and disestablish the Church of England. In the same spirit of extreme democracy London calls for proportional representation and annual elections (one of the central demands of the Chartist movement). In short, the “democratic republic”.

London is no less bold when it comes to the Labour Party. Conference must be sovereign. Labour MPs should no longer be self-serving career politicians. Towards that end, they must only take the average skilled workers’ wage. A principle enshrined by the 1871 Paris Commune. LLA must oppose the very idea of career politicians. Nor must LLA itself become a vehicle for aspiring career politicians. A real and present danger.

Moreover, MPs must be subject to automatic reselection. The Parliamentary Labour Party must be brought to heel. Subordinate the PLP to the national executive committee.

London not only envisages fighting for all pro-working class organisations to affiliate to the Labour Party: trade unions, political groups and campaigning organisations. The symbolic importance of equipping the Labour Party with a new clause four is also fully appreciated. Not, it should be emphasised, an attempt to raise, Lazarus-like, Sydney Webb’s Fabian clause four from its grave. Let it rot. No, instead, a clause four inspired by the teachings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

Another excellent set of proposals from London: the LLA’s annual conference must be the source of all authority. It decides policy, it elects a leadership. It can also change policy. It can also change the leadership. True, London allows for trade union and other such affiliates to the LLA. But their role is strictly limited. The LLA is envisaged as a membership organisation firmly controlled by the membership.

No less relevant, the constitution presented by London is not prescriptive. What officers are needed, what they are expected to do, the setting of membership fees, how big branches should be before being given an official imprimatur – all such details are all left open-ended. Besides being clear, simple and easy to grasp, London’s proposals have the great virtue of being mercifully short (690 words).

Long and limited

By contrast, what is on offer from Tees (1,870 words), Dulwich (1,550 words) and LAW SC (1,245 words), is long-winded and already nearing its sell by date – eg, “opposes the witch hunt against Jeremy Corbyn”. And Corbyn has had a dreadful record when it comes to the witch-hunt. Not only has he maintained a studied silence as his own comrades are thrown to the wolves. He has consistently sought to appease the witch-hunters.

The political aims are extraordinarily limited. There is opposition to austerity, the ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ smear campaign, etc. Good, but hardly a transformative vision about what society we aspire to achieve. Capitalism, the state, wage-labour go without mention and therefore, albeit by absence, they are taken for granted, treated as natural. Nor does global warming, the climate emergency, the danger of ecological disaster rate a mention. Critics might talk of climate-change denial. Unfair surely, but the comrades are undoubtedly suffering from tunnel vision.

When it comes to the Labour Party itself, perspectives are no less limited. There is the call for democracy. Once again, however, the lack of vision is obvious. Eg, this formulation: LLA “both supports a left leadership against attacks by the right, and is independent and able to criticise our left wing leaders when necessary.”

“When necessary”! LLA must not content itself with the illusory programme of running capitalism in the interests of the working class. In effect that amounts to sub-reformism, in other words common or garden social liberalism. Yet that is exactly what “our left wing leaders” – Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Rebecca Long Bailey – have been advocating. For them the rule of the working class, the abolition of wage-slavery, a moneyless, stateless society, based on need, are foreign territory.

The LAW SC proposal – like those of Tees and Dulwich – in effect mirrors the Labour Party apparatus and its organisational fetishes. Inappropriate and totally myopic. Why should a left opposition in the Labour Party copy the elaborate federal structures, intricate rules, bureaucratic checks and balances and accept the ideological boundaries set by the contemporary Labour Party? Frankly though, this is the habitual approach of too much of the British left. It reveals an internalisation of the attitudes, assumptions and interests of the labour and trade union bureaucracy.

We must explain this constantly repeated pattern of behaviour in materialist terms. It cannot be put down to individual oddity, personal weakness or some congenital tendency to betray. The Labour Party, as presently constituted, is a bourgeois workers’ party. The Labour left is the natural home for trade union militants, socialist campaigners and those committed to working class liberation. But Labour’s position as the alternative party of government means that the Labour left is also a breeding ground for careerists who, slowly or swiftly, evolve to the right.

Common sense easily becomes that politics are about winning elections. Policies are put forward because they can be ‘sold’ to the electorate. Ultimately it is, of course, the press, the media, that decides what is sensible and what is to be dismissed as sectarian craziness. Anything that appears to get in the way of winning elections must therefore be avoided like the plague. Hence debate has to be restricted, bureaucratic controls imposed and awkward minorities sidelined or otherwise silenced.

Worryingly then, LAW SC insists that groups can only affiliate if they are “broad left” or represent “special interests”. Code for excluding what we might call ‘far left’ organisations. Tees LLA is explicit: members of “other socialist political parties” should be barred. Do we really want to impose our own version of the 1920s anti-communist bans and proscriptions? Dulwich even proposes a “conduct and compliance unit”. No, no, no. By contrast, London wants all good communists and socialists to join the Labour Party … and the LLA.

LAW’s proposals can be taken as the main object of criticism. Tees and Dulwich are just longer, more complex, variations on the same dismal theme.

To all intents and purposes LAW’s steering committee wants to see LLA as a two-tier, two-chamber organisation. Conference can pass whatever resolutions it wants. Meanwhile the organising committee – made up of delegates from all manner of local branches and political and trade union affiliates, does the actual business … and goes its own way. A recipe for confusion, conflict and failure.

In other words, conference is to be a talking shop. LAW proposes a cabinet, but one neither elected nor accountable to parliament (conference). London proposes no bifurcation, no split in the lines of authority. Conference must be sovereign l

The one to back

London LLA’s constitution provides the solid foundations we need. Apart from the silly formulation “or profit” in 1.2, it is theoretically sound, politically ambitious, concise and untainted by the pernicious politics of witch-hunting. Fortunately amendments have been submitted correcting the error. We urge delegates to reject attempts to composite, obscure and fudge. Compare the London proposal to those presented by the LAW steering committee, Tees and Dulwich. It is clear which one is the best

  1. Our aims and principles
    1. The Labour Left Alliance brings together organisations, groups and individuals with a view to pursuing these aims.
    2. Opposition to capitalism, imperialism, racism, militarism and the ecological degradation of the planet through the ruinous cycle of production for the sake of production or profit.
    3. The replacement of Labour’s existing clause four with a commitment to socialism as the rule of the working class. We envisage a democratically planned economy and moving towards a stateless, classless, moneyless society that embodies the principle, “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”. Alone such benign conditions create the possibility of every individual fully realising their innate potentialities.
    4. Towards that end Labour should commit itself to achieving a democratic republic. The standing army, the monarchy, the House of Lords and the state sponsorship of the Church of England must go. We support a single-chamber parliament, proportional representation and annual elections. Labour needs to win the active backing of the majority of people and should seek to form a government only on this basis.
    5. We seek to achieve the full democratisation of the Labour Party. All MPs, MEPs and MSPs should be subject to automatic reselection. All elected Labour Party members should be expected to take no more than the average skilled worker’s wage. The Parliamentary Labour Party should be subordinated to the National Executive Committee.
    6. We support Labour as the federal party of the working class. All trade unions, cooperatives, socialist societies and leftwing groups and parties should be brought together in the Labour Party. Unity brings strength.
    7. We shall work with others internationally in pursuit of the aim of replacing capitalism with working class rule and socialism.
  2. Structure
    1. The Labour Left Alliance is a membership organisation. Members are required to accept our political aims and principles and pay an annual fee (to be set by the Organising Group).
    2. We believe in the free and open exchange of ideas and viewpoints. But, once the LLA has agreed a particular action, we seek to achieve the maximum unity. That cannot be imposed – it has to be won.
    3. We expect all LLA members to be in the Labour Party and encourage all those not already involved in local Labour Left groups to become active in one or help set one up. Our aim is to organise all members in local and regional LLA groups and branches. We also welcome, on all levels of the organisation, those who have been suspended or expelled as part of the witch-hunt against the left.
    4. LLA conference meets at least once a year. Conference will consist of either individual members or delegates (at a ratio to be decided by the Organising Group). Conference debates aims and principles, agrees political strategy, votes on motions and elects a leadership.
    5. If 30% of affiliated groups and branches or 30% of individual members so wish, there will be a special conference.
    6. Affiliated groups, LLA branches or any 10 LLA members can submit one motion and one amendment to conference.
  3. Organising Group
    1. The OG functions as the leadership of the LLA. The OG is elected at conference. Conference decides on the size and functions of the OG.
    2. The OG elects its own officers on the basis of immediate recallability. The OG can coopt members, given particular needs. While coopted members shall have speaking rights, they will have no voting rights.
    3. The OG should meet at least quarterly, in a face-to-face or an online meeting. It can also make decisions via email or other agreed communication channels by a simple majority of those voting within a given timeframe. It produces regular minutes/reports to LLA supporters. If possible, meetings should be scheduled well in advance (at least one month).
    4. The OG decides on the level of affiliation fees for groups and organisations and needs to approve all requests for affiliation.
    5. All decisions at all levels are made by a simple majority of those voting (excluding abstentions).
    6. The OG can set up working groups and sub-committees on any particular subject.
Democracy and the Labour Party, Elections in the Labour Party

The terrible logic of appeasement

Carla Roberts says that candidates in the Labour leadership elections can – and should be – pressurised from the left

We know, of course, that Jeremy Corbyn is not, and never has been, a Marxist. He is a sincere, but dithering, left reformist who will do anything to try and appease his opponents rather than fight them – we have had plenty of opportunity to witness this political weakness over the last five years.

And yet we have to admit to still being gobsmacked about his proposed nominations for the House of Lords. Firstly, the man is supposed to be a republican. Why on earth would he nominate anybody for this wretched symbol of privilege, whose only purpose is to stop and delay the ‘commoners’ from making any decisions that are seen as too radical? We note that Labour’s manifesto in the 2019 election promised to abolish the House of Lords (though it wants it replaced with an elected “senate” – but why should there be any checks and balances from above or “the regions”? Surely they’re voting for MPs in those “regions” too).

During his first leadership campaign in 2015, Corbyn told Channel 4 News he saw “no case” for appointing new peers. A position he should have stuck to. But he quickly backtracked, successively nominating, amongst others, Shami Chakrabarti in 2016 and, in 2018, former witch-finder general Iain McNicol. As general secretary of the Labour Party, McNicol helped to launch and maintain the witch-hunt against Corbyn and the left and appointed many of the rightwingers who still control layer upon layer of the party bureaucracy. He now goes by the fetching title, Lord McNicol of West Kilbride, and makes ample use of claiming the attendance allowance of £305 per day (which he enjoys in addition to subsidised restaurant facilities and travel expenses).

His nomination was a way to sweeten and hasten his overdue departure from the general secretary post. We would have preferred it if Corbyn had tried to get him sacked outright – was there no chance of a majority on the national executive committee for that? Still, we can understand why Corbyn went down this route: it was a way to get rid of one of his biggest and most powerful opponents in the middle of the civil war, when he had everything still to play for.

The situation today is vastly different – Corbyn has finally been forced out of his job. Which is why we really cannot see any rational reason for him nominating Tom Watson, just before his own departure as leader of the Labour Party. For four and a half years, Twatson did everything in his power to undermine the leader. He orchestrated both coups against him, launched a number of open letters, and cohered the right wing inside the Labour Party. So, even if Corbyn had foolishly promised him a seat in the House of Lords in order to get rid of him just before the election, the result of that election surely should have led him to rip up that promise – after all, Watson’s activities have played a huge role in making sure Labour under the ‘unelectable’ Corbyn got trounced.

But the fact that Corbyn seems to feel the need to honour that promise just shows that he is and remains very much part of ‘the system’ – an honourable and thereby rather ineffective Labour politician. The nomination of the former speaker is easier to understand. John Bercow has been on a journey. Beginning as a Monday Club Tory he is now described as an “independent”. He certainly made life difficult for Theresa May and Boris Johnson over Brexit. That said, we are more than puzzled that Corbyn’s close comrades, Karie Murphy and Katy Clark, would be interested in taking up a position in that house of privilege. Like the hundreds of people who have over the years rejected the so-called ‘honours’ bestowed by the monarch, real socialists should just say no.

This is part of the astonishing legacy that Corbyn leaves behind. Yes, there was a mass influx into the party, a real sense of hope that things could be different. But we have to be honest: the political opportunities that opened up with Corbyn’s election were all but wasted. There has been almost no progress in terms of the democratisation of the party. Corbyn squandered the opportunity to reintroduce the mandatory reselection of parliamentary candidates at the 2018 conference, by instructing Len McCluskey to use Unite’s block vote to stop open selection. And, worst of all, Corbyn and his allies have silently stood by and watched, as hundreds of his supporters were thrown to the wolves in the ongoing witch-hunt in the party.

The refusal by Corbyn and his advisors to stand up to the right is already having serious political consequences that go far wider than the Labour Party: council after council is banning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which before long could well be declared anti-Semitic and thereby illegal (witness the decision of the German parliament). Perhaps we will soon see official regulations characterising anti-Zionism as violating official anti-racism, being closely associated with terrorist tendencies and therefore notifiable to the Prevent bureaucracy (I am little bit surprised it has not happened already). Any war in the Middle East, especially if it involves Israel, will increase the intensity and scope of the ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ smear campaign. Anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism could easily fall into the net too.

10 pledges

This is, of course, why most of the candidates in the Labour leadership elections have been falling over themselves to sign up to the so-called ‘10 pledges’ published by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. They all want to appear respectable and seen to be doing ‘everything in their power to eradicate anti-Semitism from the party’. However, most members know from first-hand experience that this is based on a lie. Anti-Semitism is not rife in the Labour Party – there have been a miniscule number of genuine cases, while most allegations were trumped up in order to smear Corbyn.

No wonder really that Rebecca Long Bailey’s enthusiastic support for the pledges has been hugely controversial on the left. There is a real risk that this has, in effect, handed the leadership to Keir Starmer: support for her campaign, which was only ever lukewarm, has cooled considerably as a result.

The reason is obvious. The pro-Tory BoD demands that the Labour Party hands over its disciplinary process to “an independent provider” (the BoD would probably volunteer itself) and wants to decide who should or should not be a member of the party: “prominent offenders such as Ken Livingstone and Jackie Walker” should receive lifetime bans, the BoD demands.

As a much-publicised open letter by Labour Against the Witchhunt to Rebecca Long-Bailey (signed by almost 4,500 people) states,

The BoD is not a neutral body, but one with an evident political agenda: to attack, weaken and destroy any opposition to the systematic and brutal oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli government. The BoD encourages the conflation of criticism of the Israeli government (anti-Zionism), with anti-Semitism (hatred of Jews). The BoD, and its individual officers, have maintained open hostility to Labour since Corbyn took leadership of the party. They organised the ‘Enough is Enough’ demonstration outside parliament in March 2018, which was clearly aimed at weakening and attacking Jeremy Corbyn.

We believe that the BoD’s ‘10 pledges’ are an outrageous political interference by an organisation that is overtly hostile to today’s Labour Party and everything it stands for. If implemented, these policies would, for example, result in the suspensions and expulsions of the thousands of Labour members who have stood in open solidarity with those wrongly accused of anti-Semitism, including Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone and Marc Wadsworth.

It was refreshing to see that Richard Burgon, standing for the deputy leader of the party, used the official hustings meeting in Liverpool last week to volunteer his position: “I have not signed and will not sign the 10 pledges. I have concerns, for example, about the outsourcing our disciplinary process.” He also said that he wants to work with all Jewish organisations and not just the ones the BoD considers worthy (needless to say, Jewish Voice for Labour is excluded from its list). He also pointed out that, “On the IHRA definition, the party agreed to add in a clear statement that it wouldn’t undermine freedom of expression on Israel and Palestine. These are points I want to raise with the Board of Deputies.”

Dawn Butler, at the same hustings event, also said she has not signed the pledges – however, in a rather rambling contribution, she suggested that instead she wants to make sure that the “report being produced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission into the Labour Party is fully implemented”. Without even knowing what kind of results or recommendations this biased body will come up with! Even the centrist, Angela Rayner, who has signed the pledges, disagreed with its key demand to hand over the disciplinary process: “I don’t want to outsource the problem – we have to deal with it ourselves.”

Rebecca Long Bailey would do well to row back on her support for the pledges – though her campaign manager, Jon Lansman, is probably stopping her from doing so. But, just like Corbyn, she will never be able to bend backwards far enough to appease the right. Surely, that is a lesson we all should have learned over the last five years.

Open selection

Lansman and Long Bailey have instead decided to go for the ‘open selection’ ticket to save her campaign. Momentum has sent out a rather strange email, celebrating this “huge news”: “Our movement has been pushing for open selections for years, and this announcement shows that Rebecca is a Labour leadership candidate who really listens to members.”

Well, it is not exactly the whole movement that has been pushing for open selection, is it, Jon? As soon as Corbyn became leader, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy – which then still involved Lansman – ditched its decades-long demand for the mandatory reselection of all parliamentary candidates, because Jeremy Corbyn was reluctant to go for it (in one of his many futile attempts to keep the right on board). And in the run-up to the 2018 party conference, Momentum argued against open selection, pushing for the lame reform of the trigger ballot instead.

However, when the campaign for mandatory reselection became absolutely huge in the party, Lansman changed tack and jumped on the bandwagon – one week before conference. Only to jump off it again at conference itself, when Corbyn let it be known publicly that he favoured the reform of the trigger ballot. While over 90% of the Constituency Labour Party delegates voted in favour of the rule change, the unions voted it down and went with the NEC compromise on reforming the trigger ballot. We have seen how useless that rule change has been – the few trigger ballots that did take place ended up with the confirmation of the sitting MP.

It remains to be seen though if this is enough to turn around Long Bailey’s faltering campaign. There is no doubt that she will join Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy on the ballot paper. Unite is about to nominate her, pushing her over the required 5% hurdle from affiliated organisations. The official decision will be made on January 24, but United Left, which won a majority of seats on the 63-strong Unite executive in 2017, has already endorsed her – and, somewhat more surprisingly, Richard Burgon for deputy. It would take some extraordinary action by Unite leader Len McCluskey to stop either from getting onto the ballot paper.

Emily Thornberry will hopefully soon go the same way as Jess Phillips, who has just stepped down from the leadership race – into political oblivion. Phillips proved to be absolutely useless, even when playing to a friendly media. Thornberry, on the other hand, has managed to alienate the left and the right and is bound to drop out of the race soon, having secured zero nominations, either from CLPs or affiliates. Lisa Nandy, who has just been nominated by the GMB union, has done surprisingly well and might yet slip in through the middle – she has quite successfully positioned herself as the ‘sensible candidate’ between the cold careerist, Starmer, and the Corbyn continuity candidate, Long Bailey. She probably does appeal to many of the over 100,000 new members who have joined since the 2019 election (the majority of whom will probably be somewhere on the political ‘soft left’, rather than the hard left or right of the party). In this context, it is interesting to note that only 15,000 people have paid £25 to become ‘registered supporters’ of the party in order to vote. Compare that to the 180,000 who made use of this provision in 2016 – overwhelmingly in order to support Jeremy Corbyn.

This leadership election is an important, politically fluid period and it gives us an opportunity not just to sound out the various candidates, but to attempt to pull them to the left – and in so doing influence Labour members to fight for what is necessary. We urge Labour members to set Long Bailey a number of conditions before they agree to their CLP nominating her. All of these demands go to the heart of the ongoing civil war in the Labour Party:

  • Will you retract your support from the Board of Deputies’ 10 pledges?
  • Will you campaign for Labour to support the boycott, disinvestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign?
  • Will you campaign for Labour to fight for the abolition of Trident and for unilateral nuclear disarmament?
  • Will you campaign for the mandatory reselection of all parliamentary candidates and the further empowerment of Labour members?
  • Will you issue an apology to Chris Williamson and ask him to rejoin the Labour Party?
Democracy and the Labour Party, Elections in the Labour Party

Put pressure on Rebecca Long-Bailey

CLPs should demand the Labour leadership candidate distances herself from the ‘10 pledges’, writes Carla Roberts

Labour’s leadership contest has plunged many leftwingers and socialists into demoralisation, depression and despair. We hear of dozens, if not hundreds, of Corbyn supporters who have already dropped out of the party or who say that they want to abstain in the leadership elections. This is understandable, considering the quality of the candidates and their political platforms. But it is also entirely useless as a political strategy and exactly what the right in and outside the party was hoping for.

From our point of view, the Labour Party remains an important arena of the class struggle. This dictates that we actively intervene in this struggle. We have a lot of respect for Chris Williamson, the only MP who actively stood up to the witch-hunters and defended those falsely accused of anti-Semitism. But in our view he was wrong to walk out of the party – and he is wrong to try and set up a new left organisation, which we doubt will differ much politically from what is already on offer: People’s Assembly, Stand up to Racism, Trade Union and Socialist Coalition, etc.

This leadership election is an important, politically fluid period and it gives us an opportunity not just to sound out the various candidates, but to attempt to pull them to the left – and in so doing influence Labour members to fight for what is necessary. There is no question that all the candidates could do with being pulled in that direction. Things have been dominated by a contest to see which of them is prepared to take the biggest dump on the political grave of one Jeremy Corbyn. As expected, Jess Philips is in the lead in that respect, closely followed by Emily Thornberry, who only just managed to convince enough MPs to nominate her. She scraped in with 23 nominations, literally at the last minute before the deadline of 2.30pm on January 13. She has, of course, no chance of winning, having managed to make herself incredibly unpopular with the left and the right – and she might yet drop out of the race.

Clive Lewis, who was also struggling to gather more than a handful of nominations, dropped out 20 minutes before the deadline. That has one (admittedly very small) political advantage: it does not confuse the picture about which leadership candidates might be on the ‘left’ – there is nobody apart from Rebecca Long-Bailey. Not that she is shouting it out – in fact, she is doing all she can to convince us she is much more moderate than Corbyn (more on that later).

The contest has also underlined how utterly irrelevant the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs has become since Corbyn became leader in 2015. Instead of developing radical ideas or exercising pressure from the left on ‘their’ party leader, the organisation seems to have all but dissolved. It currently has 22 members and, while all of them nominated Rebecca Long-Bailey, only 11 nominated Richard Burgon, the most leftwing of all the candidates (in his case for deputy leader) – and the group’s secretary! Eight of these ‘socialists’ nominated Angela Rayner for deputy leader, including ‘Momentum MPs’ Nav Mishra and Sam Tarry (the latter has not joined the Socialist Campaign Group). And Marsha de Cordova actually nominated Keir Starmer!

We should make special mention of Nadia Whittome, the MP for Nottingham East, who made some waves when she announced she would only keep the equivalent of “an average worker’s wage” of £35,000, and would donate the remainder of her £79,468 MP’s salary to local charities. Giving it to charity rather than working class organisations or the Labour Party itself is obviously not what we would advocate, but if anybody thought that this might make her a principled socialist, you can think again. She actually nominated Thornberry.

This makes more sense when we learn that Whittome is close to the wretched Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. She served as a national committee member of its pro-‘remain’ front group, Another Europe is Possible. And, when that got taken over, she was on the leadership of the AWL’s new front organisation, Labour for a Socialist Europe. She only managed to secure the selection as parliamentary candidate after local AWLers organised a smear campaign against the locally favoured leftwinger, Louise Regan. After allegations (never substantiated) of anti-Semitism, Regan was swiftly struck off the short list by the cowardly national executive committee – a fate that was bestowed on about a dozen leftwing candidates in the run-up to the snap election.

Thornberry was also nominated by Dawn Butler MP. Anybody considering backing Butler over Richard Burgon for the deputy leadership (or giving her their second vote) might consider that she also played her part in the witch-hunt: she joined rightwingers who protested against Chris Williamson’s reinstatement in June 2019, stating publicly that she “did not agree” with it and that she “probably would have imposed a tougher punishment”. She thereby played an active role in getting him resuspended. Nobody on the left should support her.

What about Burgon then? He is the best of a bad bunch. He is a staunch Corbyn supporter and did not participate in the witch-hunt. That cannot be said of many Labour MPs. But his campaign statement is not exactly hard-hitting – he clearly feels that he has to appeal to wider forces than just the hard core of Corbyn supporters, who are backing him enthusiastically. In his statement, he defends the last two manifestos, makes ample reference to the “communities” the party has to engage with, etc, etc – but says little about any radical policies he might pursue. He hints at perhaps being in favour of mandatory reselection: “I back a fully democratic system for members to choose Labour candidates.” I doubt that opponents of mandatory reselection would argue that the current system is not “fully democratic”.

Most worrying though is his last sentence: “Whoever is leader, I’ll be a team player focussed on our main task: winning back power.” That is exactly what we do not need: more ‘team players’, who are thinking first and foremost about the next general election, while they sacrifice principle after principle, throwing comrade after comrade to the wolves – all in the name of unity with the right. A unity, it should have become obvious by now, that is as unachievable as it is undesirable.

The last five years really should have taught us that Corbyn’s attempt to appease the right was utterly wrong – and suicidal: the right has finally got its scalp. But it will not stop until the last trace of Corbynism has been eradicated from the party. There cannot be any unity with those saboteurs, traitors and Blairites – and we certainly should not try to pursue it. In reality they should have no place in our party.

Lesson learnt?

Much of the organised Labour left seems incapable of learning that lesson. Witness the swooning, utterly uncritical support that groups like the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and Red Labour give to Rebecca Long Bailey – simply switching their Corbyn fanboy attitude to the next person, even though this one deserves it even less.

The CLPD is “proud” to endorse Long-Bailey, because of her “commitment to socialism” and “the dedication [she has] shown to bring about a transformative Labour government and [her] support for continuing to democratise our party’s structures”. Worse is Red Labour (luckily this group only exists on the internet): it gushes that Long Bailey is “a socialist through and through”.

Both groups have nothing critical at all to say about her – not about her declaration that she would use nuclear weapons; her dumb article about “progressive patriotism” or her enthusiastic support for the Board of Deputies’ ‘10 pledges’ (on how to expand the witch-hunt).

The Communication Workers Union is showing a bit more imagination – it is asking all candidates a range of questions before it decides which to back. None of those questions are particular radical from our point of view and they all deal with issues primarily facing CWU members only, but that is to be expected. Unison, on the other hand, has fallen in behind Starmer, while the executive of the National Union of Mineworkers has nominated Lisa Nandy. Unite is likely to nominate Rebecca Long-Bailey, while the rightwing GMB union might well get behind the vile Jess Phillips.

We go one step further than the CWU. We urge Labour members to set Long Bailey a number of conditions before they agree to their CLP nominating her:

  • Will you retract your support from the Board of Deputies’ 10 Pledges?
  • Will you campaign for Labour to support the boycott, disinvestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign?
  • Will you campaign for Labour to fight for the abolition of Trident and for unilateral nuclear disarmament?
  • Will you campaign for the mandatory reselection of all parliamentary candidates and the further empowerment of Labour members?
  • Will you issue an apology to Chris Williamson and ask him to rejoin the Labour Party?

Momentum

Momentum owner Jon Lansman meanwhile is tirelessly working to make sure that the special place in hell reserved for former socialists who betray the movement is kept nice and warm for him. After Momentum’s so-called leadership body, the national coordinating group (NCG), agreed to back Rebecca Long Bailey and the dreadful Angela Rayner, earlier this week it sent out an email to its members (and everybody else on its database, it seems).

In true Lansman style, that email was not designed to ask Momentum supporters who they think the best candidates might be – after all, supporters of Jeremy Corbyn might well go for a leftwinger like Burgon over the centrist, Rayner. So, to make sure he got the result he wanted, Lansman’s so-called ballot merely allowed participants to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the NCG’s recommendation.

We also had to chuckle when we received Momentum’s email on January 13, inviting us to apply to become a Momentum-backed candidate in the forthcoming by-election to Labour’s ruling body, the NEC (two current executive members, Nav Mishra and Claudia Webbe, were elected as MPs in the general election). Momentum’s email gives a deadline of January 15 for applications – which is exactly one day after Momentum participated in a meeting of the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance, where it pushed for its already selected candidates to be adopted! Lansman really has no shame.

Incidentally, we hear the meeting did not go well and there might well be two ‘left’ slates. Judging by the candidates put up by Momentum for the NEC in the past, that is no bad thing – they can hardly be described as consistent leftwingers. None of them have stood up to the witch-hunt in the Labour movement – some even participated in it – voting, for example, to accept the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance so-called definition of anti-Semitism, with all its 11 examples (many of which conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism). Navendu Mishra selfie with JLMNav Mishra, perhaps the worst of the Momentum lot, was even happy to pose in front of a banner of the Jewish Labour Movement when Momentum organised its daft campaign against David Icke’s speaking tour (pictured). This is the same JLM that was revived in 2015 with the explicit purpose of undermining and sabotaging Jeremy Corbyn.

There will be another meeting of the CLGA next week to try and come to an agreement – but we would not be surprised if Lansman once again jumps the gun and simply publishes his preferred list of candidates. One problem with having two leftish slates is, of course, the electoral system used for NEC elections: Unlike the leadership contest, where members can put their candidates in order of preference, members only have one vote for the NEC.

Having said that, we would argue there was not really very much political difference between most of the Momentum NEC members and those supposedly to their right. The only decent NEC member is Darren Williams of Welsh Labour Grassroots – he has publicly defended Chris Williamson, publishes regular updates of what is going on in the NEC and replies openly on social media when members ask him a question.

One thing is for sure: When all nine CLP representatives are up for re-election, the rest of the left has to unite to make sure that the wretched Jon Lansman does not get back on that committee – we have to stand a left candidate against him.

‘10 pledges’

As Rebecca Long-Bailey’s campaign manager, Jon Lansman will have played a big role in getting her to sign up to the Board of Deputies’ ‘10 pledges’, which were published on January 12. She could have replied, for example, that it is not up to the leader of the Labour Party to commit themselves to such pledges, because this would undermine the democratic decision-making process in the party. But she enthusiastically nodded away in the interview with Sky News, having clearly studied the text of the pledges beforehand.

There is also a huge question mark over the legality of some of them – Long Bailey has now committed herself to handing over “regular, detailed case updates” to “Jewish representative bodies”. Needless to say, in the BoD’s view, that excludes “fringe organisations” like Jewish Voice for Labour, because it is non-Zionist. Pro-Zionist organisations like the Jewish Labour Movement, on the other hand, are naturally included – despite the fact that this organisation certainly has fewer active members than the JVL.

We recommend the excellent open letter to Rebecca Long Bailey drafted by Labour Against the Witchhunt, which makes most of the important political points much better than we could. It has been signed by a number of important experts on the Middle East, as well as left organisations and Labour councillors. It attracted almost 2,500 additional signatories within the first 24 hours – please sign if you have not already done so.

BOD pleddges

Democracy and the Labour Party, Inside the Labour Party, The left

Between a rock and a hard place

The candidates in the Labour leadership election reflect the self-inflicted defeat of the Labour left under Corbyn’s leadership, argues Carla Roberts

Six candidates have thrown their hat into the ring to become the next leader of the Labour Party, but we can safely presume that, in the end, it will be either Keir Starmer or Rebecca Long-Bailey. Clive Lewis and Emily Thornberry could well drop out, whereas Lisa Nandy may not even make it onto the ballot paper. Jess Phillips might have been the popular go-to person for the anti-Corbyn press looking for a nasty quote. But coming out, all guns blazing, in favour of ignoring the result of the Brexit referendum has ensured that most of the media have now turned against her. And she has no chance with the membership anyway. Barry Gardiner briefly “considered” throwing his hat into the ring, and we will have to see how he is positioning himself politically. While he was better on the anti-Semitism smear campaign than most MPs, he is also a member of Labour Friends of Israel and voted for the Iraq war.

Before we start, we should point out how poor all these candidates are. All of them are way to the right of what Jeremy Corbyn stood for in 2015. While Corbyn was a symbol of the victory of the left against all the odds, the current candidates, including Rebecca Long- Bailey, are the living embodiment of the defeat the left has now suffered.

The real sense of hope that hundreds of thousands of people felt after the 2015 election of Corbyn has all but evaporated – for now. By not standing up to the right, by appeasing them over and over again, Corbyn and the rest of the leadership helped to decimate and, crucially, depoliticise and demobilise the left in the party. Instructing Len McCluskey to use his Unite contingent at the 2018 Labour conference to vote against the democratic demand for mandatory reselection of all parliamentary candidates was, perhaps, the most vivid example of Corbyn’s political climbdown. But it was his decision not to tackle the ongoing anti-Semitism smear campaign which really damaged the left in the party. He stood silently by as one supporter after another was sacrificed – all in the vain hope that at some point, surely, enough concessions would have been made to stop the attacks. Needless to say, the opposite happened: for every step back by Corbyn and his allies, the right took two steps forward.

Eye on the prize

This was all justified by the need to ‘keep our eyes on the prize’ – ie, finally getting the keys to No10 Downing Street. We might have to sacrifice this or that political principle and we might have to pretend that anti-Semitism is a huge problem in the party – but at least we can convince enough rightwingers to stick with us. Then, once we’re in government, we can finally show what we’re really about.

That has been the recipe not just of Corbyn, John McDonnell and their inner circle – it is the long-standing ‘strategy’ of much of the organised Labour left: Momentum, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and Socialist Action have been the most blatant in applying this method, which the Labour Representation Committee and much of the rest of the Labour left are also guilty of, albeit to a lesser degree.

We have now seen where this recipe leads – to disaster. From this reformist perspective, we had the perfect leader with the near–perfect social democratic programme – and we still did not make it into government! And no, it wasn’t just Brexit wot did it. The fact that the leadership never stood up to the right in and outside the party meant that the entire established media were able to portray Corbyn and the bulk of the party as a bunch of deranged anti-Semites, racists and crazies. And it stuck – of course it did.

Unfortunately, Chris Williamson was the only MP who stood up against the witch-hunt and campaigned for the democratisation of the party. And we know how that ended for him. Every other Labour MP kept their mouth firmly shut. That includes Richard Burgon, who is running for deputy leader and is probably the best of the whole bunch of candidates. Like Ian Lavery, who briefly considered running for the top job, Burgon at least did not actively participate in the witch-hunt against Corbyn and the left – which is more than can be said of the six candidates for party leader.

That is probably one of the main reasons why Lavery could not gather the required 21 nominations from his fellow MPs. We fear that Burgon – despite, or maybe because of, his endorsement by John McDonnell – will also fail to jump that hurdle.

There is a massive pressure and temptation now to move the party to the right in order to finally become ‘electable’ again. This would, however, mean that we had learnt nothing from the last five years. In truth, the party hardly moved left at all. Yes, hundreds of thousands of new members joined since 2015. But most of them never participated in their local branch or CLP meetings. And, when they did, they were understandably shocked by how bureaucratic, dull and apolitical meetings are. Almost no structural democratic changes have taken place under Corbyn – he did not even dare to touch the now pro-capitalist clause four, which was rewritten by Tony Blair. The so-called Corbyn Review was nothing but a damp squib.

But these are exactly the issues that should be at the heart of our struggle: the democratisation of the party; restoring power to the members and making conference truly sovereign; and we should even discuss getting rid of the position of leader altogether. Instead, the party should have a truly democratic, accountable and transparent leadership. Wouldn’t it be nice, for example, if we could see minutes of national executive committee meetings?

Empowering the members is part and parcel of fighting for a genuine socialist government and working class power – not pursuing a strategy of trying to introduce socialism from above, one step at a time. The biggest problem with this strategy is simple: it does not actually work. Real socialism is the self-liberation of the working class, from below. Otherwise it quickly turns into its opposite.

What a set of candidates

Keir Starmer, the preferred candidate of the ‘moderates’ and Blairites, is posing, somewhat entertainingly, as the Corbyn continuity candidate, in a rather obvious attempt to attract some of the softer lefties. He says he supported the miners in 1984-85 (not many miners remember that one) and even used to be a Trot once. In 1986- 87 he wrote for the short-lived Socialist Alternatives magazine, mainly on trade union matters. Despite its affinity to the Pabloite tactic of deep entryism into mass Labour and communist parties (in anticipation of World War III), the basic character of the journal was closer to the reformism and the identity politics of the Eurocommunists. But have no doubt: this man is today’s Tony Blair.

No doubt, most of the organised left will come out for Rebecca Long-Bailey – bar, perhaps the wretched Alliance for Workers’ Liberty – who, we hear, are even considering support for Keir Starmer (though remainer Clive Lewis is no doubt on the AWL list too). But it is palpable how very little enthusiasm there has been for RLB among the party membership, despite her having been groomed for the position by John McDonnell and Momentum owner Jon Lansman for the last two years. It is easy to see why there is so much hesitation and scepticism about her: she has made a huge effort to distance herself from the left and to be seen as anything but the Corbyn continuity candidate.

There was her underwhelming article in The Guardian on December 29, in which she promised to pursue a policy of “progressive patriotism”. Presumably that was supposed to show that she will not be a US ‘special relationship’ puppet. But in the process she had to resort, rather pathetically, to claiming that the internationalism of the Lancashire cotton workers during the US civil war – the second revolution – was exactly the opposite. A rather entertaining article on The Struggle blog puts her right:

the boycott of southern cotton was not ‘patriotism’, but an act of internationalist working class solidarity with the workers in the northern states and the slaves held in chains in the south. To dress this up in a Union Jack is to disgrace the sacrifice – all too literal – of the Lancashire mill workers.

Then there is her promise that she would be prepared to press the nuclear button, albeit reluctantly: “If you have a deterrent, you have to be prepared to use it,” she told the BBC. “Any leader and any prime minister has to be clear that the security and the protection of the people that they represent comes first, above all else, and they would do anything it takes to ensure the people of this country are protected.”

Or you could, you know, campaign for nuclear disarmament. It used to be very popular on the Labour left to oppose the nuclear obliteration of large sections of humanity. Jeremy Corbyn was admittedly ‘hazy’ on the question and refused to continue to campaign for the abolition of Trident once he became leader. But he never went as far as to say that he would actually use nuclear weapons.

We are also less than impressed with RBL’s running mate – and flatmate – Angela Rayner. They seem to want to recreate the ‘dream team’ of Neil Kinnock and his deputy, Roy Hattersley, which ostensibly was supposed to unite the left and the ‘centre’ of the party – and, of course, ended with Kinnock turning against the left, expelling the Militant faction, etc. The civil war of the last five years has shown clearly that there cannot be any ‘unity’ with the right.

Worst of all though is RLB’s political weakness, when it comes to the witch- hunt in the party. In June 2019, she met with the vile witch-hunter, Stephane Savary of the so called Jewish Labour Movement, and agreed with the JLM that Chris Williamson should be expelled from the party.

She also agreed that anti-Semitism complaints should be handled by an “independent body”. That sounds ever so ‘progressive’, but is actually an absolutely disastrous suggestion. Who should decide if a Labour Party member should be expelled, suspended or otherwise disciplined? The Jewish Labour Movement, perhaps? Or the Jewish Leadership Council, made up chiefly of Tory supporters? Of course not. Members should be judged by their peers. It is an ongoing injustice that employees of the party, chiefly recruited by witch-hunter general Iain McNicol, are dealing with complaints and preparing disciplinary reports – reports which are then briefly discussed by the disciplinary panel of the NEC, often in less than five minutes per case. The legal and governance unit – formerly the compliance unit – should be abolished and replaced by an accountable body democratically elected by Labour members.

After that meeting, she tweeted that “any comments made by anyone linked to the Canary or any other publication, which are anti-Semitic, or perceived to be – I condemn” – exactly the line that the JLM has been pushing for years: if they perceive a comment to be anti-Semitic, then that’s what it is! Any kind of rational definition would go out of the window. A rule change along those lines was quite rightly rejected by the NEC, and then by conference, in 2018.

Left pressure

And RLB is hardly an experienced militant. In 2015, for example, having just been elected an MP, she had to ask a Zionist audience what the BDS movement was.

This makes it all the more important that the Labour left finally gets its act together and starts to put some real pressure from the left on the leadership. The only pressure in the last five years has come from the right – and it has showed. Uncritical support for RLB is even more misplaced and dangerous than the messiah cult we witnessed around Corbyn.

This leadership battle presents the left with an excellent opportunity to do so. Rebecca Long-Bailey has already ‘tweaked’ her campaign quite a bit since her Guardian article, perhaps recognising that members have been less than impressed with it.

Earlier this week, she declared on ITV News that she “would give Corbyn 10 out 10, because I respect him and I supported him all the way through”. Corbyn, incidentally, has “declined” to say how he will be voting in the leadership contest.1)Daily Telegraph January 8 We suspect that has more to do with his ongoing efforts to try and appear neutral than any political problem he might have with RLB.

In her official election platform, published in The Tribune on January 6, she discusses how the party “has been too close to the establishment we are meant to be taking on, whether cosying up to Rupert Murdoch or joining forces with David Cameron in the Better Together campaign in 2014”.

She also discusses the democratic deficit in today’s society and that “the people across these islands are sick of the British state’s distant and undemocratic institutions”. While discussing the need for “a vision for a new democracy”, she writes: “We must go to war with the political establishment, pledging a constitutional revolution that sweeps away the House of Lords, takes big money out of politics and radically shifts power away from Westminster.” Labour’s 2019 election programme talked, much more tamely, about ending “the hereditary principle in the House of Lords, and work to abolish the House of Lords in favour of Labour’s preferred option of an elected Senate of the Nations and Regions.”

That might still be what RLB means, but it does show she can shift. So let’s try and shift her! Before CLPs start nominating her to become leader of the Labour Party, members could, for example, ask RLB some of the following questions, each of which goes to the heart of today’s civil war in the Labour Party:

  • Will you campaign for Labour to support the boycott, disinvestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign?
  • Will you campaign for Labour to fight for the abolition of Trident and for unilateral nuclear disarmament?
  • Will you campaign for the mandatory reselection of all parliamentary candidates and the further empowerment of Labour members?
  • Will you issue an apology to Chris Williamson and ask him to rejoin the Labour Party?

References

References
↑1 Daily Telegraph January 8
Democracy and the Labour Party, Elections in the Labour Party

Corbynism is over

Mike Macnair argues that the very aim of winning government office is misconceived and self-defeating

first published  by the Weekly Worker

Labour’s severe defeat means the end of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the party; he has already said he will step down. The right is demanding his quick departure, in the hope that they can make a coup against the left and purge the party; the left has been pressing for a slower transition in the hope that they can salvage something. Even if the Labour left succeeds in this aim, ‘Corbynism’ as it has existed since 2015 is over.

Corbynism offered, for a while, an actual opposition which could give a voice to those who had been silenced by the insistence of ‘New Labour’ (and ‘Orange Book’ Liberalism) that only free-market solutions were possible. But that opposition has now failed as a result of Jeremy Corbyn and his allies’ commitment to attempting to form the next government – already announced in 2015. 1)Eg. Corbyn, quoted at http://labourlist.org/2015/10/jeremy-corbyn-campaigners-set-up-new-momentum-group/ (Oct 8 2015) The Labour left may survive the defeat; but it is most likely to do so if it accepts that what is on the agenda is the struggle for an opposition and a voice, not – until we have substantially rebuilt the movement – the immediate struggle for a government.

It is constitutional loyalism which lies behind Labour’s ‘governmental illness’ shared by left and right. To overcome the problem needs a disloyalist party, one which seeks in the long term to overthrow the constitution rather than to play the constitutional game. That is – a Communist Party. Such a party would still be needed if Labour could be turned into a real united front of the class by eliminating the witch-hunting operations and allowing the far left to openly affiliate to the party. It will be equally needed if – as seems likely – the right wing of the trade union leaderships put the Labour right back in the saddle and the party is thoroughly purged to prevent a repetition of 2015 in the future.

Effective

The election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader created a fundamental sea-change in British politics which Labour’s defeat has not reversed – yet. The sea-change consisted in the fact that a large constituency of opposition to the claims of neoliberalism, which had been effectively silenced under Blair, found a voice.

Throughout the Blairite ascendancy the subcurrent of popular grumbling could not find open expression. The Labour left remained utterly marginal. Although the far left outside the party could play an important role in single-issue street protests, as in the anti-war movement, its division into confessional sects (and the consequent unprincipled splitting operations of the Socialist Party in the Socialist Alliance, and then of the Socialist Workers’ Party in Respect, in search of apparatus control, and the self-sterilising bureaucratism of Left Unity) prevented it from giving a political voice to the silenced constituency.

Because of this new oppositional voice, Cameron failed to do to Labour in England in 2016 what he had done to it in Scotland in 2014 – get Labour to be ‘statesmanlike’ by backing the ‘establishment’ view, and then knife them with an English-nationalist turn. So it was necessary, for Cameron’s project, to take a sharp turn to the left as the Tories have succeeded in doing under Boris Johnson.

Theresa May fairly clearly thought that a limited rhetorical shift to the left would be enough. But in the 2017 election flatly contradictory messages came from May and some of her semi-‘Red Tory’ advisers on the one hand, and from the Chancellor ‘spreadsheet Phil’ Hammond on the other; and from a media trying simultaneously to promote Tory populism against Labour ‘elitism’ while denouncing Corbyn’s very limited reform proposals as wild ultra-leftism – a story which could not possibly be persuasive. Clinging desperately to it, May came across as the ‘May-Bot’ and lost the narrow majority she had inherited.2)Cf eg. A McElvoy, ‘Is Theresa May’s mix of tax justice, born-again statism and attacks on cartel capitalism a new ‘red’ Toryism?’ The Guardian October 9 2016; and ‘How a gamble that backfired brought Theresa May to the brink’ The Guardian June 11 2017

An immediate consequence was the overthrow, by the UK Supreme Court, of Vince Cable’s abolition of the employment rights by stealth, through raising tribunal fees. The government did not, as Thatcher would have done, promptly reverse the decision by statute.3)More discussion in M Macnair, ‘Rhetoric and political realities’ Weekly Worker August 3 2017 ore, May’s “austerity is over” announcement had to be delayed until October 2018. 4)‘Theresa May declares ‘austerity is over’ after eight years of cuts and tax increases’ Independent October 3 2018 ‘Austerity’ was always really a policy of privatisations and redistribution towards the Tories’ favoured groups; 5)Cf eg C Berry, ‘Austerity is over? It never really began’ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/austerity-ending-hypothesis/. Also, among many others, A Chakrabortty, ‘Austerity is far more than just cuts. It’s about privatising everything we own’ The Guardian May 24 2016 but the abandonment of the rhetoric was evidence that concessions had to be made, as a result of the creation of a voice for the silenced opposition.

The effects persist, in Johnson’s announcement of major infrastructure spending in the north, and in his explicit rejection of Brino by proposing a hard deadline on trade negotiations with the EU. Thus Johnson is still, even after his election victory, continuing to push Brexit-based nationalist populism.6)‘Boris Johnson plans to pour billions into Midlands and North’ Financial Times December 15 2019; ‘Brexit bill to rule out extension to transition period’ BBC News December 17 2019. A more general (if implausible) argument is made by Robert Colvile, ‘Johnson is serious about Tory transformation’ The Times December 16 2019

Concessions can be won from a Tory government – if an open opposition projects a radical alternative. A Labour government, on the other hand, might force through the most effective anti-union laws, as the 1974-79 Wilson-Callaghan government did, or privatisations and fraudulent ‘private finance initiative’ deals which cripple health and education with debt burdens, as the 1997-2010 Blair-Brown government did.

Governmentalism

Corbyn and his associates could only see a way forward through winning a general election and forming a government. The politics of effective long-term opposition were beyond their ken – and remain beyond the horizon of most of the left. This short time-horizon and fetishism of government can be seen in three ways.

First, the Labour right have been campaigning for a Tory victory since 2015, through endless attacks on Corbyn, his allies and his authority, hoping it would allow them to regain control of the party as happened after 1983. In addition, they have been pushing endlessly for the ‘statesmanlike’ remain policy. The right’s victories in moving Labour towards remain were decisive in returning Tory MPs in traditional Labour seats. The Corbyn leadership has done hardly anything to fight this.

Any actual crack-down on the Labour right would have been met with a split and the creation of a new ‘Social Democrat Party’ – leading to electoral defeat, as in 1983 and 1987. Allowing the right freedom to campaign against the party from within, however, has led to just such a defeat – and, moreover, a severe defeat, without even the merit a split might have had of getting rid of many of the right-wingers or creating the conditions for a revival of grassroots party organisations which rightist apparatchiks have held onto and held down. In the medium-term aftermath of the 1931 split and defeat, Labour rebuilt its base. Without ousting the right and de-managerializing the left, that cannot be done.

Second, the Labour leadership has essentially adopted a policy dependent on not confronting the effective monopoly of the advertising-funded and hence corrupt media and the state’s BBC. The very late production of the manifesto – some of it quite good – and the accompanying efforts to use ‘new media’ to get the message across, were too little, too late. The leadership’s policy has been – most strikingly in relation to the ‘anti-Semitism’ defamation – to try to divert attention, and hope any issues except the NHS and ‘austerity’ will go away.

This issue is interlocked with that of the Labour right. To campaign effectively against media defamation, and to get the Corbynistas’ policy messages across, would have required reviving the actual face-to-face operations of the constituency and ward branch parties, as well as Labour working to create its own media. This would require facing down the Labour right, who remain determined to hold on to the party apparat and to keep the party dependent on the corrupt media.

Thirdly, Labour manoeuvring itself into a position where it would be seen as a remainer party was not only the work of the party right, nor even of them together with the purblind ‘left remainers’. Rather, the party leadership has been persistently seeking and demanding an early general election. It was the hope of bringing the government down through parliamentary manoeuvres which led them to support a succession of remainer procedural initiatives in which Tory remainers refused to actually bring the government down. The Labour parliamentary leadership, by stringing along with these initiatives, presented themselves over months as a mere tail to the parliamentary cretinism of the Tory and Lib Dem remainers.

The denouement of this policy arrived at the end of October, when the SNP and Lib Dems backed Johnson’s call for a general election, forcing Labour’s hand and producing an election at Johnson’s preferred time and on Johnson’s terms. 7)J Rentoul ‘Boris Johnson has got the election he wanted – thanks to Jo Swinson’ Independent October 29; ‘Blundering Swinson’s gamble on forcing poll’ The Express December 15 2019 Idiot elements of the left, like Socialist Worker, were still demanding an early election when it was entirely clear that this was Johnson’s demand. But the idiocy was prepared by the Labour leadership themselves over the past four years.

Loyalist delusions

Underlying Labour’s governmental illness is a delusion that if Labour commits to playing by the rules of the constitutional order, partial concessions to the working class can be won through forming a government. This supposition is expressed in the idea that the UK is a ‘democracy’ and that the governmentalist line is ‘democratic socialism’. 2015-19 was a demonstration of the falsity of the idea. The capitalist class does not play by the rules. Loyalty to the United States, and willingness to accept the generalised bribery regime (‘sleaze’), are demanded of British politicians by both the state core and the corrupt media. The demands are enforced by Big Lie techniques: the ‘anti-Semitism’ scandal is only a ‘Zinoviev letter’ on a larger scale. 8)‘Zinoviev letter was dirty trick by MI6’ The Guardian February 4 1999 The Liberal Democrats and the Scots nats are not potential allies of Labour, but political enemies. Concessions are won from the capitalists not by playing nice, but by the combination of carrot and stick; Corbyn and McDonnell’s policy has been all carrot and no stick.

The stick has to be threats to the constitutional order. The concessions of 1948-78 were products of Soviet tanks on the Elbe, mass communist parties in France, southern Europe and in many colonial countries, and broader mass hostility to capitalism as a result of the 1930s and 40s. As long as the capitalists think that their regime will remain undisturbed, the concessions disappear; the brief life of Labour as an opposition has produced some limited concessions.

The future of the Labour Party can go in one of two directions. The first, if unlikely, would be a break with the right and their witch-hunting and constituting Labour as a united front party of the whole workers’ movement – a party of opposition, because it could not hope to form a government at the next general election.

Such a party would need within it an affiliate party which posed socialism – not as moral values but as an actual alternative to capitalist order – and fought openly for the overthrow of the constitution. It would work continuously to discredit both British and ‘European’ nationalism, the monarchy and House of Lords, the officer corps, the sale and denial of justice through the ‘free market in legal services’, the advertising-funded media, and so on: a Communist Party, in other words. That long-term activity would undermine the manipulations of the regime which have allowed Johnson to win.

The more likely future is that the trade union leaders are conned into purging the party of leftists for the benefit of the rightwing, in the hope of a new 1997. This hope is delusional: as we have seen in Scotland in 2015 and in northern and midlands England in this election, the restoration of Blairism leads only to Pasokification and the marginalization of Labour.

But suppose it happens. The left would be motivated to try, yet again, to create a new party. But if they don’t draw the lesson of breaking with the Corbynites’ governmental illness, what they will create will inevitably be a new Syriza at best – the road to another episode of demoralization. It remains the case that what is needed and missing is a party disloyal to the constitution: a Communist Party l

mike.macnair@weeklyworker.co.uk

  1.   ↩︎
  2.   Cf eg. A McElvoy, ‘Is Theresa May’s mix of tax justice, born-again statism and attacks on cartel capitalism a new ‘red’ Toryism?’ The Guardian October 9 2016; and ‘How a gamble that backfired brought Theresa May to the brink’ The Guardian June 11 2017.↩︎
  3.   More discussion in M Macnair, ‘Rhetoric and political realities’ Weekly Worker August 3 2017.↩︎
  4.   ‘Theresa May declares ‘austerity is over’ after eight years of cuts and tax increases’ Independent October 3 2018.↩︎
  5.   Cf eg C Berry, ‘Austerity is over? It never really began’ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/austerity-ending-hypothesis/. Also, among many others, A Chakrabortty, ‘Austerity is far more than just cuts. It’s about privatising everything we own’ The Guardian May 24 2016.↩︎
  6.   ‘Boris Johnson plans to pour billions into Midlands and North’ Financial Times December 15 2019; ‘Brexit bill to rule out extension to transition period’ BBC News December 17 2019. A more general (if implausible) argument is made by Robert Colvile, ‘Johnson is serious about Tory transformation’ The Times December 16 2019.↩︎
  7.   J Rentoul ‘Boris Johnson has got the election he wanted – thanks to Jo Swinson’ Independent October 29; ‘Blundering Swinson’s gamble on forcing poll’ The Express December 15 2019.↩︎
  8.   ‘Zinoviev letter was dirty trick by MI6’ The Guardian February 4 1999

References

References
↑1 Eg. Corbyn, quoted at http://labourlist.org/2015/10/jeremy-corbyn-campaigners-set-up-new-momentum-group/ (Oct 8 2015
↑2 Cf eg. A McElvoy, ‘Is Theresa May’s mix of tax justice, born-again statism and attacks on cartel capitalism a new ‘red’ Toryism?’ The Guardian October 9 2016; and ‘How a gamble that backfired brought Theresa May to the brink’ The Guardian June 11 2017
↑3 More discussion in M Macnair, ‘Rhetoric and political realities’ Weekly Worker August 3 2017
↑4 ‘Theresa May declares ‘austerity is over’ after eight years of cuts and tax increases’ Independent October 3 2018
↑5 Cf eg C Berry, ‘Austerity is over? It never really began’ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/austerity-ending-hypothesis/. Also, among many others, A Chakrabortty, ‘Austerity is far more than just cuts. It’s about privatising everything we own’ The Guardian May 24 2016
↑6 ‘Boris Johnson plans to pour billions into Midlands and North’ Financial Times December 15 2019; ‘Brexit bill to rule out extension to transition period’ BBC News December 17 2019. A more general (if implausible) argument is made by Robert Colvile, ‘Johnson is serious about Tory transformation’ The Times December 16 2019
↑7 J Rentoul ‘Boris Johnson has got the election he wanted – thanks to Jo Swinson’ Independent October 29; ‘Blundering Swinson’s gamble on forcing poll’ The Express December 15 2019
↑8 ‘Zinoviev letter was dirty trick by MI6’ The Guardian February 4 1999
Democracy and the Labour Party, Elections in the Labour Party

Possible Corbyn successors: Unworthy crew

Like Corbyn, none of his prospective successors are prepared to challenge the Labour right head on, says Stan Keable

Although not surprising, Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to stand down as leader after resisting for so long the unremitting bullying by Labour’s right wing and the entire establishment is immensely disappointing for the party’s mass rank and file, who would still vote him in, given the chance.

For all their noise, the right cannot force him out. They can easily muster the required 20% of the combined MPs (203) and MEPs (10) to nominate a challenger, but they dare not, because in a ‘one member, one vote’ contest any so-called ‘moderate’ would be thrashed by the leftwing membership.

Corbyn does not have to go; he ought not to resign – he should stay at his post in order to lead the fight to empower Labour’s membership, oust the party’s pro-capitalism career politicians and bureaucrats and show what the workers’ movement can do in opposition. But that is not Corbyn. His time in office has been frittered away appeasing the right, not fighting them.

In the election for leader and deputy leader, when the time comes, each candidate will require nominations by 10% of the combined Parliamentary Labour Party and European PLP – ie, 22 parliamentarians – as well as either 5% of Constituency Labour Parties or “3 affiliates (at least 2 of which shall be trade union affiliates) compromising 5 percent of affiliated membership” (rule 2Bi).

We can be sure, this time, that no rightwing “morons” will ‘lend’ their nominations to a left candidate. But although the parliamentary left can surely muster 22 nominees, can they be brought behind the same candidates for leader and deputy leader – and how will this slate be chosen? If Momentum is touting Angela Rayner and Rebecca Long-Bailey, as the Daily Mail states, we should treat those contenders with some considerable caution.

What an unworthy crew of potential candidates is on offer. None has stood up against the false anti-Semitism claims, as Chris Williamson did; none has shown solidarity with its victims.

Keir Starmer: chair of the PLP and the preferred candidate of its rightwing majority, he is unlikely to gain the votes of the left membership under present circumstances. His claim to be a “socialist” is accompanied by what amounts to a promise to continue appeasing Labour’s Blairites. True, he seems to have been a member of the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency and served on the editorial board of Socialist Alternatives (an obscure, soft left, quarterly Pabloite publication). But that was in the 1980s – a lifetime ago.

Emily Thornberry: a wolf in sheep’s clothing, she is apparently loyal to both Corbyn and Labour Friends of Israel, which protects her from the anti-Semitism smear. Can garner left votes by using vicarious anti-fascist rhetoric: she would have fought the blackshirts at Cable Street, of course.

Rebecca Long-Bailey: the continuity candidate promoted by John McDonnell and frequently praised by Len McCluskey.Would use nuclear weapons “if circumstances required” – a signal to the capitalist establishment that she would be a loyal servant of the current order.

Lisa Nandy: a ‘moderate’ remainer, she was suggested as a possible leader by the soft left Owen Jones at the time of the Owen Smith (who?) leadership challenge. Resigned from Corbyn’s shadow cabinet in June 2016 as part of the rightwing bid to remove him.

Angela Rayner: softest of the soft left, she preferred Harriet Harman to Corbyn as leader. Voted against an enquiry into the Iraq war and took up the luxury, all-expenses-paid propaganda visit to Israel offered to all new MPs by Labour Friends of Israel. Back in 2015, Angela “ideology never put food on my table” Rayner gave honest praise to Norman Finkelstein’s The holocaust industry as a “seminal” book, but retracted this when faced with the Labour anti-Semitism witch-hunt. When she was shadow education secretary in December 2018, she told the Board of Deputies annual Chanukah reception “how sorry I am for that”. Over the last few days she has pared down her ambitions. The story is that she will run for deputy leader on Long-Bailey’s ticket. Richard Burgon is also considering the same proposition.

Jess Phillips: although the Daily Mail’s favourite, she is being sold as a ‘salt of the earth’ real working class woman from Brum, unlike all those with a London accent. Has the gift of the gab, able to dismiss potential rivals to her left as being not really working class. Has joined with the campaign of expelled Blairite spin doctor Alastair Campbell to recruit 100,000 “centrists” to rejoin the party and prevent figures “similar” to Corbyn “such as Rebecca Long-Bailey or Angela Rayner taking the reins”. She will surely have Tony Blair and some big money behind her campaign – perhaps the prelude to a rightwing split, if a Corbyn-continuity candidate wins. She claims that “millions” have asked her to be Labour leader.

Yvette Cooper: ran against Corbyn in 2015. From the right of the PLP. However, the more thinking sections of the right may well prefer going with a candidate from the shadow cabinet in the expectation that they can be turned against the left – like Neil Kinnock. Doubtless she wants to keep her profile high in the hope of promotion.

Clive Lewis: dabbles with the left occasionally, but has made his position perfectly clear when it comes to the anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism witch-hunt: he is on the wrong side. Lewis talks about wanting to “play a key role in helping rebuilding our party.” By that he means himself as leader and rebuilding the PLP, not Labour’s constituency organisations. He too peddles the line that he will be “able to take the left and centre of the party, and beyond, and be able to defend our democracy and be in a position where aggressive politics of this country can challenge the Conservatives” – code for attacking the left and capitulating to the Blairite right. Paul Mason’s perfect candidate: he too calls for the unity of “left and centre” and “reaching out”.

David Lammy: a failed Blairite, though he has won the support of The Spectator’s Rod Liddle. Stands little chance, given that he is coming from backbench obscurity.

Refound Labour as a permanent united front of the working class

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