EYES LEFT The barring of Jeremy Corbyn: what next for the left?
JVL Introduction
Andrew Murray poses the big question of the day, following Starmer’s refusal to allow Jeremy Corbyn to stand as a candidate in Islington North.
Should one stay in the Labour party to fight (if one hasn’t left in disgust or been suspended or expelled)? Or has the left been permanently excluded from all but the most marginal influence in that party.
Either way, what should the left do? Murray offers some suggestions but is clear that the crisis we face will not be swiftly resolved…
This article was originally published by the Morning Star on Tue 4 Apr 2023. Read the original here.
EYES LEFT The barring of Jeremy Corbyn: what next for the left?
Two main strands of thinking have emerged since news of Starmer preventing the former Labour leader standing for the party again. ANDREW MURRAY offers some suggestions that might help socialists to regroup and develop a revived strategy
Should left-wing Labour members avoid risking expulsion to ‘fight another day’ — or has the possibility of fighting another day now been ended by Starmer’s restructuring of the party?
TWO responses have emerged on the left to the decision of Keir Starmer to bar Jeremy Corbyn from continuing to represent Islington North as Labour MP.
They have been neatly expressed. Take first Jon Lansman, Momentum founder, who I first encountered when he ran Tony Benn’s narrowly unsuccessful campaign to be Labour’s deputy leader back in 1981.
Jon’s persistent campaigning on and for the left through sunshine and rather more rain should command general respect.
He is unswerving in his view that the road to socialism lies first of all through the democratic transformation of the Labour Party.
In that sense if one were to render an earthly representation of Sisyphus, it might look a lot like Jon.
Anyway, Jon’s take is — condemn Starmer’s move against Corbyn but protect the Labour left. He wrote on Labour List that barring Corbyn was “an act of factionally motivated victimisation” against a politician who “appeals strongly to some — to many in fact.”
Nevertheless, he urged Corbyn not to respond by standing as an independent in Islington North at the next election.
“As a Labour Party member and … as a former Labour leader, he would continue to be able to speak out on anything he chooses and would have far greater weight than any back-bench independent MP lucky enough to be elected would ever have,” he writes.
Lansman adds, saliently, that “the alternative is probably that thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of Labour Party members will be expelled for supporting an independent parliamentary candidate in Islington North.
“That, of course, is what members of the faction that Keir Starmer has put in charge of running the Labour Party on his watch are hoping for.”
The same concern worries Momentum. They are right.
Peter Mandelson, Starmer-whisperer-in-chief, offered the Daily Telegraph a primer on the Labour rule book, reminding Corbynites that if “they organise and support a candidate other than the person who is standing for the Labour Party, they automatically and immediately lose their party membership. Would that be a terrible thing? There would be few thousand fewer Corbyn supporters in the Labour Party.”
Speaking to the Observer, Lansman went slightly beyond far-from-misplaced anxieties.
“We have to move on from the Corbyn era. We’ve got to focus on the future and the future is not really about Jeremy Corbyn and Islington North,” he said.
The merits of this position are obvious from any perspective that gives the Labour Party the central place in the struggle for socialism, and therefore prioritises maintaining the best possible presence for the left within it.
There is a very different viewpoint available, however. Max Shanly is a less well-known figure than Lansman but a leading rank-and-file activist on the Labour left in recent years and a protege of the late eminent Canadian Marxist Leo Panitch, himself a close friend of Ralph Miliband who lived long enough to be disappointed in the latter’s sons. Like Lansman, Shanly is worth listening to.
He makes two points. One is that the changes wrought by the Starmer faction make a left revival in Labour impossible.
He instances the new nomination rules for Labour leader which set a parliamentary threshold so high that no future Corbyn could ever get over it, the interference in candidate selection which will leave the PLP left bereft of reinforcements and rule changes making a left majority on the party executive unattainable.
It could be countered that Corbyn’s election as leader was an impossibility too. Capitalist crisis can indeed force unexpected shifts, but it’s unwise to bank on the impossible twice in one political lifetime.
Shanly’s second point is more controversial — it is that the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs is a busted flush, ideologically incoherent and stuck deep in the mud of labourism.
“As an organised body of people they aren’t agents of socialist transformation,” he wrote of the Labour left. “They’ve neither the will, the creative capacity, or strategic orientation necessary to achieve it. It’s sad but it’s true.”
Max also announced that he has left the Labour Party. It is easy to see the merits of his case too. Most obvious routes for a left comeback in Labour have been blocked pretty comprehensively.
And it is hard not to be disappointed in the Socialist Campaign Group’s response to Starmer, and the lack of a lead offered by any institution on the left, come to that.
So the left faces catastrophe if it obsesses about Corbyn, at least to the point of supporting him in an independent electoral contest; or it faces disaster if it continues to fold in face of the Starmer-Mandelson offensive.
One leads to mass expulsions, the other to mass resignations. Both have already occurred, of course, in numbers.
Both Lansman and Shanly could be right. But these are platonic insights unless they transition into something like a plan.
Suggestions:
First, just walking away from Corbyn, should he decide he wishes to remain an MP, is scarcely an option. Yes, his re-election would be mainly symbolic but no less significant for that.
Most Corbynites, remember, were attracted by his programme but are not wedded to the Labour Party.
Should he stand, a win against the Starmer candidate in Islington will have powerful resonance and offer an important measure of vindication.
Second, Corbyn himself could help by urging, as Ken Livingstone did when running as an independent for London mayor in 2000, that people should avoid excluding themselves from Labour during the campaign if possible.
Third, beyond Corbyn, focus more on the exclusion of union-backed individuals from consideration as Labour candidates. This is an issue which can unite the left with affiliated unions and perhaps force a Starmerite retreat.
Lord Mandelson has been dining with the prospective Labour candidates produced by Starmer’s gerrymandering, doubtless as a last line of vetting.
This is his description of the company he is keeping: “The guy sitting beside me yesterday was somebody who’d worked in banking, and was now a venture capitalist investing in new start-ups who’s standing in South Wales.
“They’re business people, they are professional people, they are people who work in public services. They are a real cross-section of people.”
In fact, they sound like a cross-section of the clientele of Mandelson’s consulting business.
Given that the reluctance of the Liberal Party to choose trade union candidates for Parliament was a factor leading to the establishment of the Labour Party to begin with, this is a signal matter for the party’s future as any form of class project.
Fourth, address the present chronic lack of leadership coming from left MPs for the most part, or anywhere else.
Strategy isn’t a luxury, and endless retreat isn’t a strategy. Few indeed will sign up for a leaderless struggle against an implacable Labour right wing.
Set out a perspective. Identify the key Corbyn-era policies to promote. Bring together the constituencies being dragooned into choosing unwelcome candidates. Unite with such unions as will to defend democratic principles.
The crisis will not be swiftly resolved, but that would be a start.
LP rules are now so tight, no left perspective will be tolerated. Maybe when LP membership is at such a pathetic level and stale, and a leader wants to encourage more enthusiastic people to join (a la Milliband), the rules will be relaxed, and there will be another opportunity for left-wing views in the LP. But I suspect, not in my life time. Sad that the TUs aren’t putting pressure on the leadership of the LP to be more radical. Shameful that the LP is merely a cigarette paper away from the Tories. Why would anyone want to pay their dues and do voluntary work for such a party?
Many of us, considering the last forty years, regard the ‘Labour Party’ as irrelevant and have abandoned party politics. We have decided to work through other routes. My ardent desire is that my union disaffiliate from the Labour Party.
I’d argue that any fight to protect Labour party democracy can’t be done effectively without putting Corbyn (if he’s willing) at the centre of the fight.
It does matter that the fight should be about Labour’s current leaders respecting the party’s agreed rules and natural justice. Far more people (including journalists) both inside and outside the party expect the rules everyone’s agreed to be followed by all than will fret over attacks by one faction against another.
If you’re going to fight any battle effectively, you have to have on your side a clear, simple issue of principle that most decent people understand and support.
Leaders are expected to be just, do what is right and obey their own organisation’s rules. They’re not supposed to bully people (especially when those being bullied have fewer resources to stand up to the bully). They’re not supposed to twist words and meanings to deceive and mislead.
The wider, previously uninvolved audience does now seem to feel the fight between Starmer and Corbyn is between a bullying, oppressive and unfair “boss” (of whom many have had unhappy personal experience) and someone with right, intelligence and the support of his friends on his side but little else. By coming to Corbyn’s defence they’ll be helping “David” win against “Goliath”. A victory for Corbyn may well feel like a victory for themselves.
I left the Labour Party over the Iraq War and a belief that Labour no longer believed in its founding principles of equality and justice. I was reminded of my conclusion when I saw Starmer’s electioneering pledge to ‘make the streets safe@ a cheap appeal to floating voters, not miles away from another cheap pledge to “Make America Great Again.” Very glad I left.
I like this summary, but it has an exclusively male focus. Omitting consideration of the interests of 50% of the population is not the way forward and assuming that the interests of women are the same as those of men, just because they are members of the working class, is simply wrong.
For women, the struggle against male violence and to defend our sex-based rights is central. Until men on the left wake up to this fact and start working alongside us, we will remain weakened and unable to lead.
It’s a win-win for the factional right. If Corbyn wants to stay in the Party, he won’t stand at the next election and he’ll lose his seat. He’ll become increasingly invisible and will never regain any semblance of power again. If he does stand he will be expelled, as will anyone else still in the Party who supports him. It doesn’t matter a fig that the likes of Luciana Berger supported and stood for office in other Parties. These people are toxic and corrupt.
The “I cannot stay in the Labour Party” Party…might be the answer?
I have just rejoined the Labour Party for 2 reasons i) promises made to my wife (who is a Labour councillor) & Kim Johnson MP to rejoin ‘the fight for Socialism & ii) there is no sign of any coherant alternative, so change can only come from within.
Lansman’s Momentum, the Party within the Labour Party, caused immense damage to the Socialist cause with its autocratic leadership structure reflecting the power ambitions of just one man. I no longer know what being left-wing means as I had to stop reading ‘the Guardian’ years ago, for the sake of my sanity. Every Guardian journalist appears to have their own axe to grind to promote their version of ‘Identity Politics’ rather than the ‘Class Struggle’. Jeremy Corbyn became a target, as did Socialism.
The so-called ‘left’ has always split itself apart with ideological feuds being fought between different factions, as the Tory Party always keeps its differences private. The main advantage that the Tory Party will always enjoy is the support of MSM. Individuals, such as Bojo may be targetted but they never bite the hand that feeds them as they always acknowledge what they share rather than what divides them.
I think Jeremy made it pretty clear recently that his intention is to stand as an Independent. As for Lansman, WHO, on the left, pays a blind bit of notice to anything he says given that there’s usually an ulterior motive behind it.
Of course Jeremy should contest the seat, and for a number of reasons. And in the mean-time his supporters – most of whom are now former members of the LP – should saturate his constituency (and the country in general) with leaflets exposing all the lies and machinations and smear campaigns of the Blairites and the corporate MSM and semi-corporate Tory run-and-controlled BBC and the Jewish newspapers and the many Jewish Zionist groups who have conspired in the black op to destroy Jeremy and the left in general.
In other words do everything we can to get the truth out there to the millions of people who have been deceived and duped and cheated. Talking of which…. I came across the following a couple of days ago which, in effect, sums up the fraudulence of the fascistic campaign against Jeremy and the left (from Novemer 2019, three weeks before GE):
‘Newspaper withdraws claim Corbyn said ‘there is no antisemitism in Labour”
The Evening Standard has removed a claim that Jeremy Corbyn told its interviewer there was “no antisemitism in Labour” after the party denied he said this.
In the first version of the story published in the Evening Standard on Thursday, interviewer Lynn Barber wrote the Labour leader “bellowed” the claim, having lost his temper when the issue was raised.
https://www.thejc.com/news/news/newspaper-withdraws-claim-corbyn-said-there-is-no-antisemitism-in-labour-1.493433
Yes, irony of ironies that the highly toxic Jewish Chronicle should bring it to their readers attention, and as far as I can tell, was the only newspaper/media outlet to do so.
An interesting piece, weakened by its failure to ask why the union movement should keep funding a party that will clearly attack their members’ interests if it gets into government.
Trade unions, like the Campaign group of MPs, need to wake up to the fact that there’s no salvaging the Labour Party, and that the labour movement needs to a new party to represent workers, the marginalised and dispossessed.