The strange downfall of Owen Jones
Owen Jones rose to prominence when he wrote Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class. For anyone who has ever read it and places themselves on the left of the political spectrum, they’d find themselves nodding every time they turned the page. For many on the left, Owen Jones was a crucial voice in the media. It was refreshing to see someone in the media who thought the same things as we did and gave us a voice through his regular Independent column and then, latterly the Guardian.In today’s Guardian, Jones penned a piece, entitled “Jeremy Corbyn says he’s staying. That’s not good enough”. This is a response to that piece and Owen Jones’ wider emerging strategy.
Owen Jones has a crucial position in the media. As the most prominent left wing figure to have such a prominent platform, he has in many cases used this to the advantage of the left. But today’s piece was so disparaging and devoid of any answers, that I feel it merited a direct response.
Jones starts off with a poor analysis of the Copeland by-election. Whilst he identifies that the Labour vote has been in decline since 1997, he completely failed to mention the impact of Brexit and the clear, direct transfer of votes from UKIP to the Tories.
These results show that there was a clear transfer from UKIP to the Tories. Since the 2015 general election, the UKIP vote fell by 9% whereas the Conservative vote increased by 8.5%. This joining of Tory and UKIP voters lost Labour the election. Not Labour voters going to the Conservatives. It doesn’t suit Jones’ agenda to mention this. Copeland voted Brexit. The Tories are delivering Brexit and this has become the defining political issue of our times. While an opposition party has never lost an election to the governing party before, we live in times where political events are becoming even more unpredictable.
Polling does spell disaster for Labour. But in what seems to be an emerging pattern, Jones offers no coherent strategy or answers for improving poll ratings.
Jones is overly pessimistic about the Labour Party. Labour is now the largest party, not just in Britain, but in Western Europe in terms of membership. We can harness this power into turning up at CLP (Constituency Labour Party)meetings, running for internal elections and organising effectively. We can use Momentum as a way to do this, but Momentum has it’s own problems that have to be solved so that we can organise the membership who voted for Corbyn effectively. Most, if not all CLPs have experienced an increase in membership — most of whom flooded into the party due to the election of Jeremy Corbyn. We need to engage these people in CLP meetings and when the time comes, to go along to selection meetings. We need to run trade unionists and people on the left as MPs and encourage people to run as MPs. We need to be on the phone, speaking to people who don’t go to CLP meetings, stressing the importance of them. The left has the numbers — it just has to organise.
During last year’s leadership election, the left set the terms of the debate. There is very little now that the “warring factions” of the Labour Party disagree on. There is very little divergance on policy in the Labour Party. Owen Smith, seen as the “moderate” candidate in last year’s election advocated policies including nationalisation of the railways and reinstating the 50p tax rate.It is clear that the divisions within the Labour Party are becoming less about policy and economics and more about realpolitik and personalities. Your faction is defined, not by your view on nationalising the railways, but who you are friends with.
The reality is that we are in a precarious situation. Labour — and particularly the left of the Labour Party- are held to different standards as the Conservative Party and Labour under the Blair, Brown and Miliband years. Everything we do is scrutinised by the media. Division within the party is manipulated for click bait and the fact that Jones has seen it fit to produce this piece calling for Corbyn to move aside for someone from the “new generation” (read: Clive Lewis).
Instead of providing answers or an alternative, Jones has shirked away by calling for the Labour Party to have “a coherent strategy”. A coherent strategy on what? What should be in this strategy? Jones clearly feels he has the answers, but to the more perceptive reader, these answers are largely thin on the ground. If Jones wants to come gunning for the Corbyn project, then he should lay out an alternative. His strategy of replacing Corbyn, striking a deal, is simply hairbrained. A new leader, as we saw last year, will do very little to solve the internal divisions in the Labour Party.
I understand what Jones is going for — he has pitched himself as a neutral columnist, offering helpful and sensible opinions because he understands that journalists who support Corbyn are not taken seriously. In reality, Jones come off as patronising and self-righteous. It appears that in the Labour Party, there is very little appetite for Jones’ vision — which if you read between the lines, doesn’t quite measure up to his belief in a radical Labour Party, if all he wants is a change of leader and a “coherent strategy”.
In the main, Owen Jones’ capitulation to playing the part of the neutral, observant journalist trying to make himself look helpful and sensible is disappointing to those of us who counted Owen Jones as a valuable voice on the left. He has access to the media that provides the left with a much needed platform. Jones could use the platforms afforded to him as a defence of Corbyn and the direction that the Labour Party is generally taking. He is not a great moraliser and he is not the only one on the left who has criticisms of the Corbyn project. His views are irrelevant and there is very little appetite for his vision within the party. If Jones wants to change the direction of the party, then he is going to have to come up with the answers.
