- Re: Why did Labour lose? Charlie Kimber 3 Archived Message
Posted by Keith-264
on April 20, 2020, 1:44 pm, in reply to "Re: Why did Labour lose? Charlie Kimber 2"
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Antisemitism slurs and party democracy Another big Corbyn-themed issue was antisemitism. For more than four years the lie has been peddled that Labour, and Corbyn in particular, are antisemitic. A tiny number of Labour members have made antisemitic comments or have antisemitic views, although as a proportion far less than is true of the general population. All such examples need to be confronted. Instead, lies about Labour’s “institutional antisemitism”, and Corbyn allegedly acting as a magnet for all those who hate Jews, were deployed for political gain. The slurs began during the 2015 leadership campaign and soon developed into a full-scale assault. This process began with attacks from the Labour right, and was quickly joined by most of the media, supporters of Israel and then the Tories. It was a grotesque reversal of reality—in the case of the Tories’ attack on Corbyn it was racists smearing an anti-racist as a racist. It is the Conservatives who have actively cooperated with real antisemites such as Hungarian leader Viktor Orban. However, instead of angrily refuting claims that it was antisemitic, Labour made concession after concession towards its critics. Anti-racist activist Marc Wadsworth was expelled, Chris Williamson MP suspended and Ken Livingstone driven out of the party—while Tony Blair remained. The party adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism and its examples. This meant accepting it is antisemitic to describe the state of Israel as “a racist endeavour”. It outlawed Palestinians from describing their oppression as racist. None of this halted the tirade of attacks. Predictably, it encouraged critics to demand more and more. During the election campaign the antisemitism slurs came back with added venom. Two weeks before election day, chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said Corbyn’s claims to be tackling antisemitism in his party were a “mendacious fiction”. He added, “A new poison—sanctioned from the very top—has taken root in the Labour Party.” Not to be outdone, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, tweeted that rabbi Mirvis’s “unprecedented statement at this time ought to alert us to the deep sense of insecurity and fear felt by many British Jews”.24 Corbyn’s refusal to confront these lies head-on simply added to his image of weakness. More fundamentally, he had also spent four years failing to carry through any sort of attack on the Labour right. Not one of his bitter critics was deselected—largely because Corbyn himself had approved measures to block any genuine internal democracy. At the Labour conference in 2018, delegates voted for mild reforms that made it slightly easier for party members to deselect their MP and choose another in their place. But there ought to have been a majority for a far more thoroughgoing change that would require every MP to present themselves to local members for endorsement or removal. It did not pass because Unite voted against it, with the union’s leader Len McCluskey saying he was carrying out Corbyn’s wishes. Just before the 2019 conference there was an attempt by Momentum founder Jon Lansman to remove the post of deputy leader, held by Corbyn critic Tom Watson. After a backlash from right-wing Labour MPs and union leaders, Corbyn intervened to block Lansman—handing the right a victory. This protection for the right contrasted sharply with Johnson’s purge of his critics. He did not hesitate to remove the whip from 21 Tory MPs—including Kenneth Clarke, Philip Hammond, Nicholas Soames and Rory Stewart—when they voted against him. Were the policies unpopular—and were they credible? The election was not a rejection of left policies of taxing the rich and taking back privatised industries. Poll after poll demonstrated this, for example one by YouGov a few weeks before the election (figure 4). A poll of Labour-Tory switchers found an even bigger backing for many of these measures. A majority wanted “to nationalise the railways (67 percent), energy companies (56 percent), and water companies (62 percent). They prefer the idea of more public spending (57 percent) to more tax cuts (17 percent), and more of them think that businesses should pay more tax (38 percent) than less tax (13 percent)”.25 The problem was not that people accepted pro-austerity lies or thought the free market was wonderful. The trouble was that Brexit was allowed to become the central issue, on which Labour ended up on the wrong side to many of its potential voters. Brexit overwhelmed a wider class politics. It is also true that Labour’s programme of change would have seemed more credible if there had been a much greater sense of class resistance. When people are involved in strikes, protests and demonstrations they gain a sense of collective unity. They are more open to radical ideas. But we have not seen that sort of resistance. Corbyn’s election as Labour leader was a boost to the whole of the left, raising the confidence that socialist ideas can be popular, but the other side of his success was that union leaders, and many activists, staked everything on his electoral advance. There were no big demonstrations, no encouragement for strikes. Even when the Tories hit the rocks, the only response was parliamentary, not on the streets or in the workplace. Just under a year ago Theresa May’s Brexit deal was rejected by a majority of 230 MPs. It was the biggest ever parliamentary defeat for a governing party. There were never any mass protests, no effort to force the Tories out. Later the parliamentary deadlock forced Johnson to offer a general election on 14 October. Labour ran away, saying it wanted to work with the Liberal Democrats and others to block a no-deal Brexit, rather than go to the polls or take to the streets. Throughout this period many trade union leaders have let down the working class. The failure to push for strikes and the determination to pull everything behind Labour was fatal. It is not automatic that Labour wins elections when there is a high level of struggle, but it is more likely. However, agitating for more struggle should not be posed as a useful electoral move. More struggle is good in itself—welding together working class people across the divides encouraged by our rulers and offering the best hope of working class progress. Is age now the big divide? It has become widely accepted that age, not class, is the defining factor in voting now. The Ashcroft poll found 63 percent of retired people voted Tory, just 18 percent chose Labour. The broader picture is shown in figure 5.26 There is a clear pattern here, similar to one in 2017, but it is far from the whole story. There is a class pattern inside the age groups. Roughly, the poorer you are the more likely you are to vote Labour, whatever your age-group (figure 6). Second, the question of why older people are less inclined to vote Labour is partly rooted in material circumstances. To be clear, I do not mean that all or most pensioners spend their time on luxury trips and defending their wealth from inheritance tax. About 5 percent live in severe poverty, the British state pension is among the worst in the Western world, the social care system is in crisis with 1.8 million people not receiving the help they need and, in the past five years, 170,370 pensioners have died from cold-related illnesses. Nor are all older people crotchety racists singing Vera Lynn or Cliff Richard songs. The ranks of Extinction Rebellion include significant numbers of older people. Older people worry about the planet’s future, their own lives and the future of their children and grandchildren. But it is significant that of those over 65 who vote, 46 percent were previously in the top two categories of “managers, directors or senior officials” or “professional occupations”. For comparison, these categories cover only 35 percent of 45-54 year olds. Over-65 voters make up a third of the AB category, twice as many as in the 45-54 group. On average people get richer as they go through their working life—and the better-off live longer than the poor. In addition four out of five voters over 65 own their own homes.27 This factor matters: someone who rents in their sixties is no more likely to vote Conservative than someone who rents in their thirties. Moreover, older people are far more likely to vote than younger people. “If we look at the 20 constituencies with the highest proportion of 18-35 year olds, the average turnout was 63 percent. The turnout for the 20 constituencies with the fewest 18-35 year olds was 72 percent”.28 One of the factors behind Labour’s problems in the north of England and the Midlands is how some of those areas have aged on average. Table 2 shows changes from 1918-2011. nothing is inevitable about younger people voting to the left. To take an example from the French presidential election run-off in 2017, some 44 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds backed the fascist Front National’s leader Marie Le Pen, but she was supported by just 20 percent of over 65s. Something inside so wrong… The immediate reason for Labour’s defeat was Brexit but this is not the only reason or even, in the longer-term, the most important one. It is crucial to insist on this because there are theories that all that is needed is an anti-EU tweak and Labour will be back on track and delivering for working class people. In reality, Labour has been losing support from significant numbers of workers for decades. In Ernest Hemmingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises one character asks another, “How did you go bankrupt?” The reply is: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” We might say the same about Labour. Tables 3 and 4 show the social class distribution of Labour’s vote over the past three decades. Ctd.... |