The Way Forward

Let’s face it without Scotland (and Scotland is now irrevocably lost to Labour one way or another) Labour could never win another general election outright.

Moreover, God forbid that I should agree with David Starkey but on This Week on June 30th he pointed out that our current system is broken. General elections no longer offer a choice — these days the only option is a Blairite government — Tory or Labour. His argument was that the Tories should move to the right but his basic point is correct. What the electorate say more than anything is that it is not worth voting — they’re all the same — no one stands up for me.

FPTP politics only worked when we had a reasonably well balanced two party tribal system. This has entirely broken down. On a superficial level, the interests of the “haves” are not the same as those of the have-nots, although at a deeper level they are identical. Steadily growing inequalities over the past two decades have shown that. A centrist fudge betrays the very people the Labour Party was founded to support. The Labour anti-EU vote has shown that in many parts of the country, that were traditionally Labour, people do not believe that Labour now understands their problems or speaks for them.

The political views of Corbyn and McDonnell are different from those of New Labour. They should be offered to the public.

Currently no party is doing this. McDonnell’s ideas about the New Economics http://www.labour.org.uk/blog/entry/the-new-economics are just as important here as the basic socialist policies set out in Corbyn’s speeches (eg Liverpool 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDfuPyuhskc ). These political views will never get a hearing in the mass media because they are so against the interests of Murdock etc but social media provide a new forum, especially amongst the young. That is how Momentum has grown and I am very optimistic that this can facilitate a new approach.

Whatever happens in this leadership challenge the party is bound to split. If Corbyn gets back (and I believe he will with a vastly increased majority) the “no-confidence” folks will either split off or just continue their sniping. If he is kept off the ballot paper the vast majority of Labour supporters will quit the party and all would go with him if he moved to found a new party (Momentum I guess) with John McDonnell, taking all MPs who support him, his support in the membership and hopefully, most of the Unions with him.

See this article which is written from an antiCorbyn stance but explains what a split would entail. https://constitution-unit.com/2016/06/29/what-if-labour-splits . This seems to suggest that there is no real advantage in being on either side of the split except for keeping the “Labour” name. I do not think this matters. “Labour” is no longer seen by the old supporters as representing them. It could be argued that a new brand name would be an asset.

This new party would represent all the policies you and I support (as espoused in JC’s Liverpool speech) but also, most importantly, lead a coalition for PR. (There is already a substantial campaign for this.) This should also involve an electoral pact. Whenever the next election happens, just one PR candidate would stand against each Tory. (Carolyn Lucas has already said that would have Green support and there can be little doubt that all other minority parties would support it too — even UKIP.) The election manifesto would propose a government with an undertaking to introduce just 2 pieces of legislation, PR and a repeal of the 5 year term. (Possibly also a 3rd — lowering the voting age.) Once that is in place there would be another general election under PR.

I believe that is the way forward to a progressive coalition government that would reduce inequalities and help the people Labour has always stood for.