An Open Letter to Owen Jones

Dear Mr Jones,

They say everything is bullshit before the ‘but’, but I’ll have go anyway. Although we disagree on many issues, I am an admirer of your journalism, your idealism and your commitment to engaging with voices across the political debate. Although it may have come as a shock to some, I was not surprised to read your reflective piece in which you outlined your concerns with the present Labour leadership, and posed some searching questions to both supporters and opponents of Jeremy Corbyn. Your call for a ‘politics of good faith’ resonated strongly, acknowledging that those with whom you disagreed could nevertheless make a valuable contribution to discussions on Labour’s future.

But…

Your most recent column in the Guardian was desperately disappointing. By focusing the blame for the present crisis solely on one wing of the party, you absolve from criticism those, including yourself, who ignored the prescient warnings about the likely consequences of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. The ‘unreflective’ writers that you attack were also those who argued that choosing Corbyn would diminish the party’s electoral appeal, make it a voice of protest rather than a plausible party of government, and divide the party internally. In your article, you imply that this critique was hypocritical and unreflective, and partially explains why so many members supported Corbyn in 2015. Not only do you ignore the ways in which the Corbyn-sceptics have been vindicated by events, you also deny Labour members the very agency that you claim they should be credited with. Those who supported Corbyn in 2015 were not simply reacting to an unpopular agenda; they actively chose to support a politician who offered simple, crowd-pleasing slogans to deal with of complex problems, and showed almost no interest in the challenges of communicating Labour’s message to a disengaged electorate. At the time, there were plenty of party members (not just ‘Blairites’, practically an endangered species) who were arguing that, whilst they could see the thrust of Corbyn’s appeal, his personality and policies were out of step with the times.

At this decisive moment, you do the party nor yourself any service by retreating into a comfort zone and sneering at those members of the Labour Party with whom you have previously disagreed. Your mockery of those who previously misjudged the mood of the membership is particularly disheartening. For example, your article pours scorn on Liz Kendall for her arrogance in entering a contest that she expected to win. Indeed, you do not seem to be very keen on candidates who actually try and win leadership contests. It has been a frequent theme of your recent writing that Jeremy Corbyn did not expect to win the election in 2015, but nobly chose to enter the contest to influence the debate. I think you have got this entirely wrong. Entering a leadership contest with no expectation of victory and thus no coherent plan for leadership is an act of irresponsible self-indulgence, as the the events of the last eleven months have shown. You are also contemptuous of ‘Blairites’ who thought that the ‘registered voter’ system would help to temper the radicalism of the membership rather than intensify it. That this has proved inaccurate is beyond doubt. But I do not see any reason to gloat about this. There is a worrying tendency on the left of the party to regard the current leadership as virtually infallible; moderates do not share in the delusion that they are immune from making mistakes and misjudgements.

Since I can scarcely imagine that anyone who was unconvinced by Corbyn in September 2015 will vote for him this time (can you?), the outcome of the forthcoming leadership election will be determined by those members who previously supported Corbyn. Re-fighting the battles of the past will not help them come to a more informed decision, and I hope that the more reflective tone that you demand from your opponents will also be in evidence again in your own writing over the next few weeks.

Yours sincerely,

Joe Skeaping