Corbyn/Labour, All the Problems: April 2017 Edition
Despite the name of this blog, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the Liberal Democrats (I just happen to like orange as a colour). I don’t necessarily support them, and I don’t consider myself utterly loyal to any given party — but one party is making themselves damn hard to support at the moment, which is where this post comes in.
Recently there was a protest outside the New Statesman by Momentum activists — one so pointless that giving it greater publicity probably reduces its effectiveness, if anything. The thing is, whilst editor Jason Cowley is no Corbynite, the New Statesman has given space over to Corbyn supporters, including Liam Young’s borderline-hagiographies, Michael Chessum’s view from Momentum itself, and Owen Jones and Laurie Penny. Of course, Jones has since turned critical, and Penny has run away to America, clearly deciding that the high tragicomedy of the Trump administration is better copy (or easier work) than the canyon-low farce of Labour in 2017.
At this point, defenders of Corbyn will insist that he’s “anti-racist, anti-austerity and anti-war”, but the fact of the matter is, Corbyn’s problems are barely even political. On the politics front, policy seems to often consist of carried-over Miliband policies, the slogan quoted beforehand, and the rare, occasional bolt-ons like the VAT-for-school-meals policy snuck out as the Syrian Civil War escalated. But how to deal with the following?
Communications: whatever happens to Corbyn, Seumas Milne should be fired. He’s an atrocious spin doctor, the kind where the phrase “I could do better” can be utterly unironically by almost everyone. Labour’s recent attempt at memes was a prime example, as was the education policy. Labour’s official communications go silent for months at a time these days, which allows the party squabbles and various controversies come to the fore over and over. When Corbyn does speak, it’s about the wrong thing at any given time. Which brings us to:
Priorities: polling organisations have regular tracking polls on what voters’ priorities are, and usually, those priorities shift between immigration, the economy, the NHS, education and maybe — although it is diminishing — crime. Ironically, voters cared little about the EU until Brexit, when it suddenly exploded in significance. So why, since Corbyn’s election, have we heard so much about Trident? The electorate barely gives a fuck about defence in the abstract, and yet discussion over the nation’s nuclear deterrent has at points consumed the Labour agenda for weeks at a time.
A similar issue — here we bring up Jackie Walker and Ken Livingstone — occurs over Israel/Palestine. The Ken Livingstone controversies being dredged up again means endless discussion in Labour circles about whether or not he was right (he isn’t, as a reading of the first three paragraphs of this Wikipedia article (as of April 8th, 2017) confirm). But none of it matters — what matters is that, as the local elections begin, Labour activists are discussing something the public doesn’t care about, in a way that repels them.
Baggage: many amongst Corbyn’s inner circle have been politically active since the late 1970s, and in Westminster politics since 1983. They’ve been more prone than the average politician to dabble in various types of side-politics, such as marches, demonstrations, conferences, articles for far-left publications like the Morning Star, etc.; as a result, a vast audiovisual trail of the last 35 years exists for all of them.
Right now, at CCHQ, an ever-fattening opposition file gathers for a general election with a Corbyn-led Labour Party in it. Why? Because there’s so much to spin as sinister, ridiculous or both; it’s never a good idea, for example, to appear to share some policies with Ultron.
Organisation: right now, the likely strategy is for Corbyn to hold on until conference season. There — it is hoped — the McDonnell amendment will pass, dropping the party leadership threshold to 5% of MPs — or 12, given the current numbers. If Corbyn stands down before 2020, his successor could be elected whilst opposed by 218 MPs. In effect, they’d be leading a party scarcely larger than the Liberal Democrats, but counterweighted by one nineteen times larger.
This is utter madness, and in the long run it’ll discredit the Labour left even further. All the struggles that have occurred so far would be intensified, except with the incoming leader’s support in Parliament potentially even lower.
Plenty of Corbynites complain about Progress, but they would do well to emulate it. And no, Momentum is not that emulation; it has no presence in Parliament, which is where real, influential politics happens on a national scale. Corbyn can talk and talk about giving power to members — but right now, the UK is a parliamentary democracy. Power starts at Westminster before it goes anywhere — and he doesn’t have power in Westminster, even over his own party.
Worldview: when did I get so jaded about Jeremy Corbyn? Back in the 2015 leadership election, to be honest. A good chunk of the cause goes to his remarks about Hamas and Hezbollah, but I’ve implicitly mentioned this above (see ‘Baggage’). Another half was his ‘suggestion’ to reopen coal mines. He walked this back, but it was such a terrible idea on so many levels — even the Conservative Party, unconvincing environmentalists even at the height of Cameron’s hug-a-husky phase, had turned their back on coal. The mines have all closed, their tunnels flooded. Coal is dead, and across the world it is dying as major emitters like China pile their investment into renewables and gas.
So why bring it up? Like Philip K. Dick seeing the glint of a cross on a necklace and coming to believe the Roman Empire never ended, so Corbyn spoke of nationalisation and the last three decades fell away as an illusion: it was 1985, the Miners’ Strike not quite lost, and the chance to win it still within reach.
But it’s not just Corbyn. Blair shows up these days, perhaps aware of being very unpopular, but oblivious to the Clegg-in-2011 toxicity he possesses. And the Corbynites are right when they point out how Corbyn was elected for a reason — the back end of New Labour, and the Miliband era, were both inadequate. Their failings got us here.
The thing is, it’s remarkable how little any of Labour’s factions even hint at the future these days. The Labour Party’s 1945 election slogan was “Let Us Face the Future”; Harold Wilson spoke of the “white heat of technology”; Blair slapped a “New” onto the party to underscore how much he was about Change. None of it seems likely today.
The Labour Party today offers a choice between the old and the older, like a rock band whose members and fans are so obsessed with debating the merits of their indie roots versus their multi-platinum major-label era that they haven’t noticed how they haven’t put out a new album in over seven years, or that the label’s planning on dropping them — or that the kids are all listening to hip-hop these days anyway.
And yes, I just implicitly compared Theresa May to a rapper — this is the absurdity British politics in 2017 reduces you to. But then again, in my defence, Theresa May is rich, uses slang incomprehensible outside her subculture, and has absurd feuds with others in her profession. But that clumsy flow will dominate Spotify charts for the future Labour isn’t currently the sound of.
