How far is too far? A moderate’s dilemma.
By Martin Rogers.
Originally published in March 2019 on No Man’s Land.
I had an odd experience last week. There was a meeting of my local Constituency Labour Party. I didn’t go, which is not that unusual these days. A video came out of someone being antisemitic, nothing unusual in that either. What really struck me as unusual was that I didn’t know about the meeting until I became aware of the video. That’s been bugging me for a week, and it came to mind again with the Labour split.
In politics it is helpful to be able to step back from my own views and think of the country first. From that point of view my initial thoughts on the split are twofold:
1. These MPs will have done their country great service if they stop Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Seamus Milne et al getting their hands on the machinery of government.
2. Ushering in years of untouchable Conservative rule is bad thing.
I can understand how these people will have been wrestling with their consciences. I think every Labour member, every member of every party, has to balance what they find acceptable with what they don’t. So far so unremarkable. But the Labour Party under Corbyn is something wholly new. It is an attempt to bring together the populism of Trump with the politics of extreme-era Benn and the worst excesses of the British far left. That means the leadership being made up of Corbyn and his merry band of the far-left which includes anti-Semites, dictator-apologists, unthinking anti-Americanism and a sense of self-righteousness so advanced that bullying and abusing anyone who dares disagree is fine because it’s done by the ‘good’ guys.
The abuse that these MPs have received has been horrendous. The abuse that anyone gets in the current Labour party for not supporting the current leadership, and plenty of other things too, is awful. I’ve never known it even close to being so bad in over a decade in the party. The odd pocket, the odd fight maybe, but not systematic like now. One reason for that is, of course, that many of those now in Labour weren’t before.
But now they have joined. And they, like many others, have spent years telling anyone who dared not to support the current leadership to leave the party, giving them plenty of abuse along the way. Luciana Berger was facing deselection, and moves were afoot to remove the others for thought crimes like wanting to stay in the EU. But when the MPs these people want to leave the party do leave the party, they abuse them for that as well. Funny world.
A few days after Corbyn-ite MPs were showing off their new pledges of ‘loyalty’, it got me thinking. One thing I’ve always found as odd as it is worrying is the fundamentalism in Labour, the belief in purity of soul that comes from being from a Labour family. I’m not from a Labour family. I’m not from a political family. I reached the decision to join Labour on my own. Unthinking loyalty to a political party is as bad as anything else unthinking in politics. My only total and unquestioning loyalty is to my football team.
I’ve been chewing over what to do since Corbyn was elected leader. There have been plenty of times when I’ve thought, probably much like these MPs think, that I can’t honestly try to put the current leadership into power, that Corbyn is temperamentally unfit to be PM, that populism must be fought rather than indulged, that allowing a wanna-be cult of personality to take hold of a party is bad enough but the risk to the country is far greater.
So, what to do? Long ago I decided passive resistance is my own personal way to deal with it all. I will stay a member for the voting rights. That’s not just for the leader, I will turn up to meetings with a vote and I will vote the way that I feel is right. So far, I’ve only once voted for a Momentum member but in that, as in all cases, I voted for who I thought was the best person for the job. Outside of voting meetings I will have a life, enjoy being married and watching football, trying to buy a place to live and get a better job. I try to step back and take a more rounded view of politics, trying to think about the good of the country and to better understand people who aren’t political obsessives.
When I next enter a polling booth I have no idea who I will put my cross next to. Right now I feel that it won’t be for the Labour party under the current leadership.
Martin Rogers has been the member of the Labour party in South London for over a decade. He tweets at @beardysocialist.
