- Roadmaps after Corbyn Parties, Classes, Political Cultures
Posted by Keith-264
on November 9, 2021, 9:57 pm
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https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii131/articles/roadmaps-after-corbyn Let me begin with a political fantasy. I suspect it was shared by many in the early months of 2020, after Corbyn had been replaced by Keir Starmer as Labour leader and a leaked internal report had disclosed the extent to which party officials had tried to sabotage Corbyn’s leadership—and after Starmer settled a libel claim with them, even though lawyers had advised the party had a strong case. The political fantasy went something like this. Corbyn, now a humble backbencher, seizes the initiative and leverages his considerable political capital to lead a small group of left mps out of the Parliamentary Labour Party and in doing so overcomes at a stroke the huge start-up barriers to a new political party which our firstpastthepost system imposes. In the first instance, such a breakaway would be a pole of attraction for a significant chunk of the membership who were inspired to join Labour as a result of Corbyn’s leadership (let us say, 100,000 people). There was in this period a window of opportunity for the new party to eclipse the hapless Lib Dems as the third uk-wide party at Westminster in both number of mps—the Lib Dems have eleven—and possibly membership base. It would establish scale, and with scale comes a presence in the mass media—or at least sections of it—and esteem and credibility (not with the establishment, but with the people). It would be in a position to change the terms of the debate, shift the parameters of political conversations, just as the Corbyn leadership managed to do in a number of areas, in their best moments. In short, it would be in a position to engage in the battle for hegemony, for moral and political leadership, something which most of the Labour Party for most of its history, has been singularly unwilling to understand or contemplate. Just as importantly, the new political formation would have solved the psychological problem that bedevils small left-wing groupuscules of attracting people to a project that seems condemned to remain on the margins of public discourse. The new set-up would almost certainly have encouraged the more adventurous unions, such as Unite, under the leadership of Len McCluskey, to begin at the very least to diversify their political funding portfolio and unlock additional resources to help it grow. The result could have been electrifying in my view. But it remained a fantasy. A collective inertia prevailed, a lack of independent initiative and agency, a lack of leadership and a failure to learn the lessons that the recent history lays before us. A veil has been cast over events by those who ought to have the greatest interest in scrutinizing what has occurred. Even the subsequent suspension of Corbyn from the plp in October 2020, on the most spurious grounds imaginable, did little to disturb the fundamental assumptions.footnote1 ‘Stay and fight’ came the cry from Labour mp John McDonnell, formerly Shadow Chancellor, as many ripped up their party cards in disgust. ‘Unite against the real enemy, the Tories’, cried the left as it appealed for Corbyn’s suspension to be rescinded, reduced to begging for re-admittance to a house that does not want it. Nothing it seems has been learned. That the Starmer leadership is more bent on crushing the left in its own party than taking on the Tories and Liberal Democrats is barely discussed. The analogy would be the Scottish Nationalists offering the party leadership to fervent unionists. Post-Corbyn, the left bows its head and hands back the keys, as acquiescent to the status quo as the Labour Party’s tradition of Labourism has been vis-à-vis the institutions of the British state.footnote2 Clinging to Labour or orbiting around it guarantees political paralysis. Yet the absence of a debate on the strategic lessons to be learned is not something the left can afford. Ctd.... |
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