Tag Archives: Corbynism

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
Elections

Local elections: No big swings

The local election results should warn us that a Corbyn government is not a shoo-in, writes Eddie Ford 

Ever since the last general election there has been a prevalent notion amongst some sections of the left that a Labour victory at the next election is certain: Jeremy Corbyn will be the next prime minister. But last week’s local election results in England should act as a warning that this is far from inevitable.

Indeed, this publication has always warned that, even if the Labour Party emerged as the majority party in the Commons, that does not necessarily translate into a Corbyn-led government – it is the monarch and the privy council – the establishment – which approaches the politician they think can command a majority in the Commons. Yes, that is usually the leader of the largest party, but it does not have to be. In other words, it is by no means certain that, even if Labour won the next general election outright, Jeremy Corbyn could actually command a majority in the Commons. Remember the 172 Labour MPs who supported a motion of no confidence against him almost two years ago? And what about the army generals who said they would rather “mutiny” than obey orders from a Corbyn government? Yet for some reason the left fails to understand what should be a fairly basic point for any Marxist – the bourgeoisie will do what is necessary if it feels its position is under threat.

For communists, however, the crucial question is not dreaming about the next Labour government, but working for the transformation of the Labour Party, especially when you see who stands behind Corbyn at the despatch box – most with sharpened daggers in their hands.

Anyhow, with regards to the recent local elections, there has essentially been no change since the general election – no upsets or major swings towards any party. Stalemate. Hence, on a 36% turnout – the same as four years ago – Labour gained 77 councillors on a very modest swing, but ended up with no change to the numbers of councils they control (74). It failed to take several key targets from the Tories, such as Wandsworth and Barnet, but it won back Plymouth and became the largest party in Trafford and Tower Hamlets. In fact, Labour had its best performance since 1971 in London on a 4% swing – winning 47% of the vote and picking up 60 seats (it performed more strongly in boroughs where it already had a healthy lead over the Conservatives when the seats were last contested four years ago).

Meanwhile, the Tories made a net loss of 33 seats and two councils with 30.8% of the vote – gaining Redditch from Labour, but losing control of Kingston upon Thames, Richmond upon Thames and South Cambridgeshire to the Liberal Democrats. In London the Conservatives lost 101 seats to finish with 511 councillors, its lowest ever tally of seats in a London local election. However, they retained control of seven councils.

As for the Lib Dems, they had a relatively good night – gaining 75 seats and four councils. But the party still remains far off the vote share it had before entering the coalition government in 2010. Meanwhile, the Greens gained eight seats overall, mainly in London and the UK Independence Party had a predictably disastrous night, losing nearly all of the 126 seats it was defending, with only three councillors re-elected – Ukip won a mere 0.4% of the vote in London. All this caused Paul Oakley, Ukip’s general secretary, to compare his party to the “Black Death” – albeit on the optimistic grounds that the plague had “led to economic growth and the Renaissance”.

Based on these local election results, the BBC projected a national vote share of 35% for both main parties (Labour up 8% since 2017 and the Tories down 3%), with the Lib Dems on 16% (down 2%). A dead heat. On this forecast, at least according to Sir John Curtice – who famously predicted last year’s shock general election result – Labour would win 283 Westminster seats (compared to 262 won in 2017) and be the largest party just, with the Tories only three seats behind.

However, it goes without saying that such projections are notoriously imprecise: Michael Thrasher, a rival forecaster, puts Labour on 261 seats, essentially the same number as the party got a year ago. Historically, oppositions that win elections start a parliament well ahead on the projected national vote measure: Labour in 1993 was 10 points ahead and the Tories were 12 points ahead in 2006. Either way, the figure is well below the 326 required for an overall majority. Turbulent times ahead, which could possibly see a period of precarious majorities, hung parliaments and minority governments – or even national governments seeking to ‘rescue the nation’ from the forces of chaos and anarchy (and Brexit).

Peak Corbynism?

The first thing that must be said is you would expect something more from Labour, the opposition party, under normal conditions (but, of course, we are not living under normal conditions). When you have an obviously struggling incumbent government – seemingly clueless about how to proceed with Brexit, featuring ever sharpening internal divisions, steadily losing votes in the Lords and having just presided over the Windrush scandal – you would expect it to be heavily punished at the polls.

Instead, the Tories came out of the election breathing a genuine sigh of relief – they only suffered a little and the level of pain was acceptable. In the estimation of the Financial Times, the Conservative vote “held up tolerably”, when you consider that the party has been in power for close to eight years and its “policy efforts have been wobbling like a shopping trolley with a bad wheel” (May 4).

Then again, if it had not been for the collapse of Ukip the Tories might have been more heavily punished. Yet it was always to be expected that Ukip would lose its purpose in life after the 2016 European Union referendum and cease to exist sooner or later – probably much sooner, as we are now seeing. Not least when Theresa May did a hard Brexit turn, making Ukip all but redundant – why vote for a joke fringe party with a different leader almost every day when you can vote for the real thing and get things done? Most Ukip voters tended to be Tories in exile, without pushing the point too much, and are returning home.

But, returning to Labour, it did worse than predicted – or at least worse compared to its own predictions: Owen Jones had grumbled a day before the election that the party was “guilty of failing to manage expectations” (TheGuardian May 2). Conversely, George Osborne’s London Evening Standard and various Tory spin doctors hyped up the prospect of a Conservative armageddon, clearly hoping to frighten Tory voters into the polling stations – with some effect, it seems.

Probably more in wishful thinking than psephological analysis, Justine Greening – the former Tory education secretary – said the results revealed that Labour had reached “peak Corbyn” since last summer’s general election. Rushing straight into battle, figures on the Labour right promptly called for an “inquiry” on what went wrong. Particularly annoyed was Chuka Umunna, who at one stage was the great black hope of the Labour right until he pulled out of the leadership contest three years ago under slightly mysterious circumstances. He told the BBC’s World at One programme that advances which could be expected at this stage in the electoral cycle under a “divided and incompetent” government had failed to materialise – “the whole Labour leadership” had to address this failure, arguing that the party’s national executive committee should appoint someone to do a “proper post-mortem”.

Alastair Campbell was also irate, bitterly complaining to a Progress meeting that “if we cannot beat this shamble of a Tory Party, we don’t deserve to be in the game” – before hitting out at Momentum on the BBC’s Today show: “We are really clutching at straws,” he said. “If I see one more person from the Momentum side saying, ‘These are the best results since 1971’ … What planet are they on?” These are bad results, Campbell went on, especially when we are talking about “possibly the worst government in living memory”. Communists would certainly agree that Momentum’s belief that all we need is one more big shove to see Jeremy Corbyn safely ensconced in No10 is deluded.

Jeremy Corbyn, whatever the brave face, must have been disappointed by the results – after all, he had been booked to go to Barnet to celebrate Labour’s success (hopefully he had a refundable ticket). Unlike the rest of London, Labour lost seats in Barnet – doubtlessly the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was a major factor in the defeat, as Barnet has the largest Jewish population in the country at 15%. 1)Or, to be exact, subscribe to Judaism: www.barnet.gov.uk/jsna-home/demography.html In a beautiful irony, the Labour Party in Barnet is controlled by the right, including the Jewish Labour Movement – with one former councillor and JLM member, Adam Langleben, calling upon the Labour leader to come to the borough and apologise to the Jewish community (or a section of it). The anti-Semitism smears were clearly believed by some voters in Barnet, so you could argue that the right brought it upon themselves.

As our readers know, the JLM has led the way in spreading those smears, demanding that Corbyn speeds up the expulsions of anti-Zionists, and so on. By another beautiful paradox, a former Labour parliamentary candidate for the borough (Finchley and Golders Green) was none other than a certain Jeremy Newmark – also former chair of the JLM and chief executive officer of the Jewish Leadership Council. Newmark, of course, has now parted company with both the JLM and JLC after The Jewish Chronicle – widely read in Barnet, naturally – published an internal audit report into his conduct whilst JLC’s CEO, with accusations of financial malpractice and an ongoing police investigation. You would surely think that this scandal might also have something to do with Labour’s relatively poor performance in the borough.

What the anti-Semitism furore is really about, needless to say, is the Labour leader’s position on Israel and Britain’s relationship with the US and its alliance with Israel. Jeremy Corbyn clearly represents an important and welcome change in that respect, Labour historically having been close to Israel and Zionism.

References

References
↑1 Or, to be exact, subscribe to Judaism: www.barnet.gov.uk/jsna-home/demography.html