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Saving Jeremy Corbyn
I discovered a new font this week. It’s called “Liberation Serif”.
I’ve never heard of this before.
It’s the font which was used to produce the draft of the 2017 general election Labour manifesto which was leaked to the press.
Leaks have happened for ages (remember the ‘you leak and I brief?’), so the claim that this is specific to the highly incompetent organisation of the Corbyn leadership is somewhat spurious.
The likelihood is that this 41 page pdf was leaked by a so-called Labour ‘moderate’ who did so with the sole wish of destabilising the Corbyn machine preparing for this shotgun general election.
The problem is – most people who at a push might consider themselves Labour supporters think the programme for government is absolutely brilliant, visionary and inspiring.
And it’s been invigorating and breathtaking to watch Barry Gardiner MP defend various issues, such as promoting world peace rather than detonating nukes, against problematic journalists.
But this is definitely a ‘tale of two elections’.
An antithesis to control freakery, or the Conservative election campaign, is being played out in the social media in a parallel universe where all the bare-faced shameless lying of Theresa May is being systematically exposed (even if through hyperbolic infographics).
This is still very much Theresa May’s election to lose. She may want to call herself ‘strong and stable’ all she likes – but she clearly is is a paranoid control freak as a politician.
As a person, she seems pleasant enough.
It doesn’t take much to work out why the polls are so bad for Jeremy Corbyn and Labour. That is, even if you were a supporter of Labour, you probably would not wish to be open about it to pollsters given the intense hate campaign of all of the print media.
But you would feel perfectly happy to state support for policies, such as rail nationalisation or keeping fox hunting banned.
And the people you can blame for this are the vast majority of the media – especially the toxic nasty vindictive journalists who find themselves unable to criticise the Labour leadership on eminently sensible polices such as abolition of tuition fees.
Any reasonable person would call this policy ‘aspirational’.
I don’t even understand the logic of these mean-minded hacks – the resurgence of the LibDems evidently has not happened, nor is likely to happen in the general election, meaning that the certain ‘left wing newspapers’ have been working hard for an emboldened Tory vote.
Jeremy Corbyn has been completely ‘monstered’ in the media which is why one respondent in Nick Robinson’s focus group this afternoon called him a ‘snake’. And he has been monstered tragically by the vast majority of the parliamentary Labour Party.
About 172 Labour MPs have worked extremely hard at making the Labour Party unelectable. Quite frankly certain MPs should be running as independents to make way for MPs who are more suitable for the next Labour government to uphold the wishes of the current Labour manifesto.
I have found it very hard to like people who’ve been talking about, almost wishing for, a Labour opposition, namely Ben Bradshaw MP, Gordon Brown, and Tom Watson MP.
John Woodcock MP’s politics I find repulsive.
As John Prescott, former leader of the Labour Party, said yesterday about himself, I’ve backed every single leader including interim leader of the Labour Party. This does not mean that I have agreed with everything he or she has said.
This relentless war against Corbyn has been utterly disgusting and shameless. I’ve loyally supported every Labour leader since I became eligible to vote since the 1992 general election. But I do think he’s done his best despite enormous hostility.
I would understand the affection for Theresa May if she was any good – but she isn’t. She notoriously failed to negotiate adequate budgets for the police service against George Osborne as Home Secretary, where she repeatedly failed on the immigration targets set out in the 2010 Conservative general election manifesto.
May has shown herself – through either by chance or by intention – a serial liar. She discounted the possibility of a snap election many times, before, guess what, calling a snap election.
I don’t particularly care about incessant Tory love-ins on LBC, while all Theresa May can muster to make her sound human on LBC and BBC’s One Show is a love for cooking a spit roast or buying and wearing designer shoes.
And even if a young Tory was encouraged to go into politics because of her shoes – that’s feminism for you.
Her utterances of ‘strong and stable’ and ‘avoiding a coalition of chaos’ are intensely robotic and irritating, treating voters like fools.
Yes – even those UKIP voters who are not idiots, but who nevertheless are incapable of getting the names of senior Labour politicians correct on LBC, e.g. “terrorist” John McDonald (not McDonnell), or “smug” Emily Thornton (not Thornberry).
In a sense, the proposed programme for this new Labour programme seeks to redress the faults of the past. But this is no patch for an outdated Windows XP.
This is entirely new software, with new hardware to support it. The hardware is of course the new enhanced infrastructure of the United Kingdom.
I don’t think it’s possible that to argue that this programme abandons any wish to ‘govern from the centre’. If you’re physically disabled like me, you will recognise the clear wish of Government to not give you a personal independence payment after taking away your disability living allowance.
When I listened to a recent political podcast, an expert, supposedly guiding the Clegg and Miliband era, was talking with complete disdain about the notion of the Left being viewed as being charitable to the vulnerable.
This was exactly the same snootiness that I found utterly contemptible form Rachel Reeves in her bid for government.
It was the same detachment from the reality of lives of people with disability which led out of touch Harriet Harman MP to instruct Labour to abstain from the repellent welfare reforms from the Conservatives.
The only Labour leadership candidate who did not abstain, of course, was Jeremy Corbyn.
The main reason many people deserted Labour during the Blair, Brown and Miliband years – years before Corbyn – was that Labour seemed to be reckless in looking after groups of people
. While Lord Mandelson, who has subsequently claimed that he campaigns every day to get rid of Corbyn, was ‘intensely relaxed’ about people getting rich, it is clear that ‘none of the above’ would have called time on aggressive tax avoidance or the cuts in corporation tax at a time when social care funding has been on its knees.
The NHS has been subject to ‘efficiency savings’, when these are essentially cuts to control workforce costs as envisaged by the management consultants McKinseys. Together with crippling private finance initiative debts, it is easy to understand why the NHS is so susceptible to a cyberattack or continuing problems in patient safety.
The economy is clearly not working for all. Gas bills continue to be astronomic while the shareholders make a tidy profit.
UKIP voters have now all been effectively been safely rehoused in the Conservative Party, and see immigration as the cause of the problems.
The East Coast train line was handed to private shareholders even though the franchise had been returning a healthy surplus to the taxpayer.
To give the Labour top team credit, its manifesto is about to claim a desire to stay in the customs union or single market even if means that the economy will be better off (according to the draft).
To allow Labour some praiseand in particular Jeremy Corbyn, Labour has not signed up to this ‘immigrant bashing’ narrative at all.
The Conservative led-administrations from 2010 have clearly not been at the centre, but in fact very right wing. To give them credit, McDonnell and Corbyn have made clearly the argument that the austerity agenda has not only failed, but it was a political not economic choice.
National debt has gone through the roof, substantially more in 7 years of Conservative-led government than from 13 years of the previous Labour administrations.
Those pesky unconscionable utilities bills, due to a broken privatised economy, are still here. All of this contributes to nurses having to go to food banks to make ends meet.
The lie that ‘politics won from centre’ is further compounded by the fact there are clearly some very nasty, bigoted, racist people who have found themselves in UKIP.
Strangely enough, the BBC have found a group of people who used to be Labour voters who now will vote May, but it is obvious that these people voting May have gone via UKIP in the meantime. Contrary to the highly biased narrative which Kuennsberg and Robinson have tried to portray, arguably, there is not an army of floating voters about to vote Tory, in the same way Cardiff was not won by the end by the Conservatives.
The attack that the programme is a ‘throwback to 70s’ no longer has any teeth as this was an era when it was more affordable to buy a house or to leave university without crippling debt.
The worldwide ‘cyberattack’ on the NHS served to highlight how a lean approach to management does not leave too much lee way for safety even if the minor thing goes wrong.
The decision made in 2015 to save money by not patching up out of date Microsoft Windows XP has come back to bite the Scrooge-like management of the NHS on the arse.
The culure of running the NHS with the bare minimum of resources is one which makes its own workforce feel deeply undervalued – and the lack of investment in people in the workforce is symbolised by the lack of salary increase for years
Critics have thrown every random attack to the leaked draft manifesto. Firstly, it is claimed ‘it is a wishlist with no vision’.
I completely disagree .
You have to be an extremely mean-minded Blairite to say that rebooting the National Health Service and introducing a National Care Service or National Education Service comprises ‘no vision’.
There is a vision in wanting to do something about the number of homeless people sleeping on cardboard boxes on the street – a direct result of economic inequality and ‘market forces’.
Secondly, it is time and again claimed that the manifesto will be uncosted. It is well known that there is a small team which has been pouring over the costings repeatedly, to ensure that they are perfect when published.
And it’s a bit rich to attack Labour for this when it is the Brexit, as negotiated by Theresa May, which is likely to result in a 60-100 billion Euro as a one-off divorce settlement.
The Tories have no vision, and yet this is a truly radical, transformative agenda for government for Labour, comparable in my view to the 1945 Clement Attlee government.
Time to give Jeremy Corbyn a second chance. Vote Labour.
You hate Corbyn if you want to but do you really want to live in a right-wing dictatorship?
Hate is such a strong word.
But passions do indeed ‘run high’ at election time, even if this is the third plebiscite in two years. Indeed, today is the anniversary of the 2015 general election.
The EU referendum was a landmark event in British politics for all the reasons which have been well rehearsed elsewhere. But why it is particularly noteworthy is that it somehow managed to galvanise members of the Conservative party into a strongly anti-EU party under the rationale of ‘will of the people’.
It is this ‘will of the people’ argument which has totally ignored the will of 48% (and even some of the 52%) who have never had an official way to articulate what it wanted to be on exiting the European Union. A perfectly possible position for the Labour Party to take would have been to be side opposite to UKIP but still respected the ‘verdict’ of the referendum.
We all have differing views of ‘leadership’. Angela Eagle MP had her chance to articulate her views of ‘real leadership’ last year at a time when the Labour Party was faced with a bland option of Owen Smith and Angela Eagle, or rather than supporting Jeremy Corbyn.
I heard a new Labour person sneer on the radio the other day, “I’d be surprised if Jeremy Corbyn had a smartphone.”
Let’s get this straight – this is not debate, this is BLATANT AGEISM.
Jeremy Corbyn clearly hasn’t done everything right – but he has been dealt a very bad hand. His 172 MPs are revolting in every sense and, with a few exceptions, have been sitting on their hands and sticking fingers in their ears, when they haven’t been openly slagging off Corbyn as is the wont of Alas Kinnock and Woodcock.
There was never a coherent debate within the parliamentary Labour Party of how the potential policy arms could be reconciled with Middle England.
Let’s be blunt. The behaviour of the ‘liberal press’ has been far from liberal. It’s given a disproportionate time to certain voices and the expense of annihilating the character and reputation of Jeremy Corbyn.
I would list at this point all the Guardian journalists who have been snide, antagonistic, pathetic, vituperative, negative, snide, smarmy, malicious, nasty, uncooperative, arrogant, unpleasant, but I can’t be bothered with them as human beings.
The Guardian has successfully, with others, turned England into a far right dictatorship, where it is acceptable to put up with robotic words such as ‘coalition of chaos’ and ‘strong and stable’ in the absence of a lack of debate about lack of meeting NHS targets including A&E times, the burdgeoning PFI bills, the closure of mental and physical health beds, the lack of access to your local GP, the anger amongst junior doctors over their new contract, the pain of junior nurses with training and cost of living pressures.
The Guardian are the Daily Mail of the left, except with the odd veneer of pseudointellectualism which is now fooling no-one. They spew bile and hatred towards any well meaning debate from left, and it’s pure hatred – in the name of Corbyn being an ineffective leader.
And for a couple of years this has been mainstreamed, and nobody bats an eyelid. The plan B to make UKIP a big force in politics has failed (apart from the fact that racist, elderly bigots have now been safely rehoused in the Conservative party).
The plan C to make the Liberal Democrats the third party has been doomed due to unnecessarily hostile tribalism from its leadership, and problems on its position over gay sex. Also, nobody at all can take their position on an extra penny on income tax for health and social care seriously after their Herculean somersault on tuition fees.
I salute the journalists in Guardian for not only carrying out the most complete character assassination of the left in my living times, but also for trying to extinguish the hopes and dreams of people like me who felt completely stuck in the rut of the same failed policies by the same hierarchy.
And all this for a woman who will not debate her policies, can only go to empty warehouses in England by helicopter, and who thinks that regurgitating the same memes wherever she goes is worthy of her second class degree from Oxford.
That woman can be intensely proud of her pathetic attack on the leadership of the European Union, but I for one thinks that she will get a firm two fingers salute from their leadership when she comes to negotiate the UK position. And 28 are more powerful than 1.
None of Corbyn’s critics can mount a coherent criticism against any of his domestic policies.
Call it what it is, please – this is simply a personal hate campaign with very sinister aspects of ageism.
I have no time for the new emboldened Tory, Unionist and UKIP Party. The Guardian can go to hell too.
Just because I am supporting Jeremy Corbyn as a leader, I am not a “Corbynite”
I have to state a fact.
That is, most of my best friends are ‘left leaning’ and can’t bring themselves to support Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party.
This finding is not surprising, nor is it shocking. In the polls, however reliable they are, Labour is consistently massively behind the Conservatives. But we know that the polls cannot be telling absolutely the truth, in that they were deceptive about the 2015 general election and 2016 EU referendum. Ed Miliband MP in the last parliamentary term had a healthy poll lead, and then went on to lose the 2015 general election. And we all know about Donald Trump.
The problem is that, with the Labour Party brand (of the Labour Party led by Corbyn and McDonnell) having been so comprehensively rubbished, it is very hard for any of the Labour Party in parliament to go out and act as advocates for it. It turns out that many of the proposed policies in private polling have turned to be very popular. And yet the Labour Party in parliament have shot themselves in the foot. And, having declared war so publicly on the membership in the last leadership election, the Labour Party find themselves with ground troops who do not feel supported. The same footsoldiers get a sick taste in their mouth when they receive an email from Ian McNicol asking for money for the party, when they themselves have been denied a vote in the leadership election. Yes, the second one where Jeremy Corbyn won again.
It’s worth deconstructing the term ‘sneering liberal Élite’ for the moment. Just look at how a closet cabal of box office journalists from the Guardian reacted to an article from one of their own, Decca Aitkenhead, about Steve Hilton, psychedelic pant wearing guru of David Cameron in a former life. I agree that it was a well written article containing an abrupt ‘killer question’, in the same elegant way the kill was delivered by Sam Coates and Rachel Sylvester – the kill in question which put to bed Andrea Leadsom’s leadership chances. But one is left wondering what the point of the article was, apart from to belittle Steve Hilton in some way. I don’t suppose Steve Hilton with his lavish lifestyle particularly cares, though my advice to anyone “dishing out” group sneering is to never underestimate the problems people never talk about. Did it produce any valuable insights on how globalisation had brought about inequality, and that both were being rejected in a populist way despite purported advantages? Hell no.
The word ‘sneering’ is, in my opinion, very well deserved. Under the general uber defence of the declining print circulation figures, there has been easy attack that all political bloggers are illiterate and have no formal journalistic qualifications – and so they can be easily dismissed. They haven’t ‘done their trade’ working for Paul Dacre at the Mail or for Jason Cowley at the New Statesmen. I have to say, however, the tone is very much of “sneering”. Rather than engage with any of the ideas you write about, the general approach of the ‘mainstream media’ is generally to ignore political opinion from elsewhere. The definition of ‘sneer’ in the Oxford English Dictionary is “a contemptuous or mocking smile, remark, or tone argument, contemptuous in tone”; the sneer is that most people supporting Jeremy Corbyn don’t want a Labour government or are completely incompetent Momentum T-shirt wearing types. The term ‘liberal Élite’ is, of course, a contradiction in terms. The ethos of ‘live and let live’ is of course not alive and well amongst the majority of journalists who, quite frankly, want to crush Jeremy Corbyn and the current Labour Party. The Élite word though represents faithfully the authoritarianism twang of this type of liberalism – which saw Tony Blair convert NHS hospitals into debt laden PFI poodles of the private sector for years to come, or Gordon Brown to detain suspects without trial.
Unsurprisingly, I have now been blocked by many liberal left-leaning journalists, or Labour supporters. I have always voted Labour for all of my adult life, and this includes at every general election since 1992 after the nadir of disgust at years of Margaret Thatcher. I was, as it happens, living in London at the time. Since about 2010, I had been a paying member of the Fabian Society, but I relinquished my subscription last month. The stunt where one leaflet written by Andrew Harrop, meant to be a free-thinking, independent and not necessarily representative pamphlet, was plastered all over the media designed to be the Fabian Society criticising Jeremy Corbyn was the final straw. I can handle all the conspiracy theories about Bretton Woods, and ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’, on the other hand.
I could have written a public letter to Andrew Harrop, like you see from failed Labour MPs to Jeremy Corbyn in the blogosphere, but quite frankly I couldn’t be bothered to write it, and he certainly could not have been bothered to read it. The Fabian Society for me was not the hotbed of egalitarian, democratic, intelligent debate it could have been, but a group of people where inadvertently the tone had been one of aggrandisement and self-entitlement. I didn’t want to be a member of a finishing school for entrants to the Labour Party, though good for people who have successfully followed that route.
Jeremy Corbyn is not the first person to have ideological problems with the European Union. Lord David Owen himself set out articulately the traditional arguments against the European Union ahead of the Brexit vote. Tony Benn’s views, often running in parallel with Enoch Powell’s, were well intended and clearly set out (for example, wanting to have the power to get rid of officials). There are, inevitably, problems if there are operational difficulties in activating state aid monies in an economy for a steel industry failing partly due to Chinese ‘dumping’ of steel in international markets. Hugh Gaitskell famously warned that to join the “Common Market” would mean the end of 1,000 years of history. The lack of ‘opposition’ to Theresa May is a collective failure of the majority of Labour MPs, and the ‘sneering Liberal Elite’ who are unable to articulate the arguments for building a better future for the UK. I think this vacuum in direction can be seen prior the formation of the Coalition government in 2010 where David Cameron became heir to Blair. It can be seen in the lack of substantial policy contributions from either the Fabian Society or Progress following the decline of Blair. And for all the talk of the toothless Corbyn opposition, I don’t need to remind you of the mass abstention on the welfare cuts, do I? Or the ‘jump? how high?’ response to the savagery and cruelty of the NHS ‘efficiency savings’?
The lack of intellectual drive within Labour means it’s become easy ‘copy’ to sneer at suboptimal local election results with a ‘told you so’, never mentioning the months of relentless rubbishing of the Labour Party brand. It means that well meaning tweeters can remind you of the meme why you should not vote Liberal Democrat, as they gave you Conservative policies in coalition. This completely ignores the fact that some Labour and non-UKIP oriented Conservative voters will want actively to vote Liberal Democrat to prop up a Lib Dem-Conservative coalition. It’s an open secret Tim Farron MP loathes the Corbyn arm of the Labour Party, and would like bosom up to followers of Tony Blair while being scathing of the Iraq War simultaneously.
Personally, I am finding the lack of support amongst some in the Labour Party totally demoralising. Whilst I support Jeremy Corbyn as leader, as indeed I have supported all leaders since 1992, I find it completely dispiriting how so many find themselves unable to offer constructive solutions on burning issues such as disability quality of life, social housing, the NHS, social care, the ‘gig economy’, tax avoidance, school and university education, cost of living, and so on. There are still millions of people who need a Labour government, and the sneering simply cannot go on. To attack people like me who support Jeremy Corbyn without being Corbynite will achieve nothing.
Blaming Jeremy Corbyn for the existential crisis of some Labour voters is unfair
There are some ‘rules’ of politics which generally go unchallenged – to some extent. “Everyone likes choice” – and the “yeah but…”, you have to be given the correct resources to exercise this choice. Some people have more choice than others.
That Jeremy Corbyn has produced such powerful resentment in certain groups of people is of interest, in that people who dislike Corbyn might be expected to let choice to run its course. But even before he had won his second leadership election, voices in the mainstream media and the parliamentary Labour Party had already drafted his obituary. I can’t pretend to agree with all of what Jeremy Corbyn says, but I feel there is a disgust by some Labour voters at Corbyn which would be better directed at themselves.
Not everyone agrees on Israel. Not everyone agrees on Northern Ireland. Not everyone thankfully agrees on Ken Livingstone. But it is rather that some of the strongest advocates of a liberal voice have made it their wish to shut down debate on important issues. I am loath to say that Jeremy Corbyn is an analogue politician living in a digital age, as I feel that gives power to the elbow of ageism which definitely runs as an undercurrent to some of the personal attacks on Jeremy Corbyn. But as Margaret Thatcher herself said, when you resort to personal attacks you have lost the argument.
Once you peel away the misreporting of the domestic policies, which is substantial, the policies are themselves pretty sound and reasonable for anyone ‘left leaning’. It is a genuine phenomenon that the media by and large do not give the Labour Party leadership or membership a fair hearing, preferring to give a dispropotionate voice to critics within the parliamentary Labour Party.
It has long been conceded that the Labour Party represents a diversity of views. As Tony Benn famously said, “People attending Church include some Christians. Labour is not a socialist party, although there are some socialists in it.” Much of the current media talk is inevitably about Brexit, but, for most MPs, what brings the legislation, policies and regulations to life is the caseload of the weekly constituency surgery. I expect that the number of complaints about lack of social housing, delays in A&E, or working in a ‘gig economy’ far outweigh whether UK citizens travelling abroad will be given free health insurance following Article 50.
It has become sexy to talk of an existential crisis within Labour about its identity, but it is my contention that – if you believe in choice – it is unfair for Jeremy Corbyn to be criticised for wanting to implement his view of socialism. The first thing that has to be acknowledged is that Jeremy Corbyn won overwhelmingly the leadership elections of his party nationally twice. The second thing to be emphasised is that Jeremy Corbyn has held robustly the same principles since 1983 when he was elected under the famous ‘longest suicide note in history’ from Oxford first-class honours holder Michael Foot. As the famous Marx brother said, “if you don’t like my principles, that’s OK – I have others.”
If it is inappropriate to say Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t “do digital”, I think it’s fine to say he doesn’t do binary. On the face of it, both Tim Farron MP (who I hear you ask? He is the current leader of the Liberal Democrats) and Jeremy Corbyn MP hold the same views on Brexit, in agreement on free goods and services and free movement of people. But the analogue argument is important, I feel. If you assume that Jeremy Corbyn holds roughly the same views as Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn would’ve voted to remain in the European Union but only just. Tony Benn believed that it was only possible to believe in free movement of capital if you believed in free movement of persons – as Benn put it, “if money can have passports, why can’t people?” Benn objected to a multinational corporatocracy, which is consistent with Corbyn’s support of the EU Posted Workers Directive, preventing undercutting of wages by multinationals. Gordon Brown in 2010 had proposed the migration transformation fund to provide financial support to areas of the UK which had experienced high levels of migration, but this was rejected by the electorate in favour of the coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. That the EU referendum was held to keep together the Conservative Party, with the consequence of splitting the country down the middle, is pure and simple. For example, Jeremy Corbyn has himself reported that in his constituency non-EU families often remain split due to the current legislation which is often perceived as being discriminatory in favour of EU migration?
Where Corbyn, Tony Benn and Farage (and UKIP) are in agreement possibly is the idea that you should not give power to those you ultimately can’t take the power away from. Benn in his diaries talks about all the pain he had in the 1970s being unable to amend EU legislation even as a Minister of the Crown. Where Corbyn and Farage (and UKIP) are possibly not in agreement is that Corbyn believes that the State should be able to intervene in ‘failing industries’. To take as an example, because national policy had led NHS Foundation Trusts to become increasingly within the ambit of EU competition law, like the steel industries, the scope for ‘state aid’ became more controversial. The irony for the NHS is that the biggest threat to its existence has come internally from decades of underfunding – i.e. a deliberate ‘choice’ from a domestic government “taking back control”. Anyway – my point is that Jeremy Corbyn does not benefit from the need to portray these arguments as binary. The media wants to do binary for everything, like “Do you hate Jeremy Corbyn? Does Jeremy Corbyn bow properly? Does Jeremy Corbyn support Ken Livingstone? Does Jeremy Corbyn want to shut down your nuclear power plant?” But where we all have different views, i.e. we live in a democratic society, such an approach is in sheer defiance of democratic socialism.
Jeremy Corbyn has held views of democratic socialism, as indeed many within the Labour Party have, for years before Jeremy Corbyn became leader or before Owen Jones was interviewed for GQ magazine. I would find it impossible to believe that Jeremy Corbyn believes in any other system for the National Health Service other than where we pool risk equally, and where money cannot buy you undue influence. This is going to be of critical importance when we get into an age of personal genomics where the inheritance of certain medical diseases can be accurately predicted at birth. Tony Benn believed that the democratic vote bought you influence not money. I am quite sure that if Jeremy Corbyn is defeated at the ballot box, as so many people within the Labour Party appear to be actively looking forward to, Jeremy Corbyn will too live with that.
Jeremy Corbyn is for me the only constant in this particular scenario, which means that Jeremy Corbyn is not the one experiencing the ‘existential’ crisis. Quite the reverse. The crisis is being experienced by many of those MPs who expected to be serving in a Ed Miliband government (and who abstained on the welfare benefits cuts) and of course the all powerful Westminster lobby of journos.
Is having declining faith in Jeremy Corbyn a good place to be? A personal view.
Jeremy Corbyn was my first choice for leader of the Labour Party twice. I’ve always voted Labour, and I’m currently 42. I don’t consider myself a Euro-fanatic, but I voted ‘remain’ in Brexit. But I must admit when Corbyn said ‘Now the real fight begins’, I got genuinely scared – it had for me, as Emma Burnell opined, all the overtones of someone who doesn’t really believe in parliamentary democracy.
There are some people who believe that Jeremy Corbyn can do ‘no good’. I am not one of them. I have previously supported Corbyn to the hilt, and I think most of his principles in domestic policy are reasonably sound. We are both socialists. For example, I agree with Corbyn on cracking down on aggressive corporate tax a aoidance, and wishing to tackle head-on the crisis in social care and social housing. I agree that fundamentally the situation Labour finds itself is not as such Labour’s fault. I am not a ‘Blairite’ – there were some successes in the Tony Blair governments, and some failures. The history for me personally is that, in the last leadership election shortly after the referendum of June 23rd 2016, I found myself disagreeing with the views of Owen Smith MP and his supporters. I felt that that particular time was not the best time to having yet another leadership election when Corbyn had only just been democratically elected leader – and I felt that the behaviour of much of the Labour Party was pretty unconscionable. In fact, I blocked several Labour MPs on Twitter.
There was an unsaid deal that the parliamentary Labour Party would try to be more professional in experience, such as not briefing the media about offices which they should have vacated after publicly resigning, if the leadership machine communicated better with the PLP. There was an unsaid agreement that there would be at some stage much more useful detail about policies. Whilst not violently anti-Blairite, the spectacle of Anna Soubry MP and Alastair Campbell ganging up on John McDonnell (like Clive Lewis, a follower of mine on Twitter) beyond the pale.
Let’s be clear. Reversing corporation tax to fund the NHS and social care is not a policy in itself – nor is renegotiating the private finance initiative, important though that is. There is, however, an honest conversation to be had about how GPs feel themselves totally overwhelmed by the demand (and so do Accident and Emergency Departments), and, on the whole, people are living for longer with complex co-morbidities such as dementia. GPs will be the first to tell you that ‘ten minute appointments’ do not do their patients justice, and certainly insufficient for a frank discussion about psychological therapies for dementia compared to reaching for the prescription pad. The whole debate about integration has become engulfed in criticism about the sustainability and transformation plans; that there is insufficient money in both the NHS and social care is not in any dispute. On the other hand, for many long term conditions, the decision between ‘health’ and ‘social care’ is totally arbitrary and yet this has a profound impact for individuals in terms of their funding arrangements. The reality of ‘care at home’ is far from the rhetoric and yet the Department of Health is fighting its own battles such as with the junior doctors over their contract – whilst Jeremy Hunt is touring the world boasting about patient safety (neglecting to mention 20 hour trolley waits in England), and seeing if he can aggressively pimp NHS services to a New Trump US. We are all left exasperated wondering what it is that the UK is so desperate to sell to any country, dictatorship or otherwise, far flung or not.
Jeremy Corbyn’s stance is indeed ‘principled’ in that one half of the party faces one way (constituencies wishing to remain in European Union, such as Islington), and one half facing the polar opposite (constituencies wishing to leave the European Union, which as Hayes). But back to Nye Bevan’s old adage, ‘if you stand in the middle of the road, you are bound to get run over’. Corbyn’s political stance means inevitably he will end up annoying many on both sides, especially some in the 48% who oppose a ‘hard Brexit’. Whilst Keir Starmer and pals do not want to soil their lips with the words “hard” and “Brexit”, there is no other term for not being included in the single market, or giving up on the free movement of people. The ‘taking back control’ meme has become rampant, and it seems that every MP is entitled to justify voting like a robot even more on grounds of the fact that ‘this referendum result was delivered by the people’. The case against leaving the EU won’t go away, however, including the 40-60 Euro divorce fee, or the hit the economy will take when the City is not allowed to do EU passporting. But it is said that many Brexiters are prepared to take this hit. Indeed, many Corbyn voters who voted Brexit seem intensely relaxed about Jeremy Corbyn’s performance.
You’d be forgiven for thinking Britain has a bright future, despite the import inflation and problems in finding workers for certain sectors of the economy. For now, Scotland, which voted to remain in the EU largely, has been muzzled, but it will not be long before they ‘take back control’ again and ‘roar again’ as Alex Salmond put it. The Brexit vote has given fuel to Nigel Farage’s rantings on his radio show, having extra rocket fuel from the election of a bigot, sexist, and racist elsewhere. The LBC phone lines are choc-a-bloc with racist and xenophobic rantings about how the ills of the world can be placed at the feet of immigrants. But such criticisms would be to shoot the messenger of this xenophobic racist rubbish rather than the message itself. A major ‘miss’ was there not being implemented a Migration Impact Fund, or Posted Workers Directive, to give areas of high migrant population additional financial support, or legislation to stop the undercutting of workers. But the solution to all this is not Amber Rudd MP, in the same way the immigration levels sky rocketed under Theresa May MP. Without any attempt to limit proportionately migrant numbers, and without funding public services, leaving the European Union is simply a smoke-and-mirrors exercise, and you can bet Nigel Farage will have long gone by then.
I do agree very much that it’s not all Jeremy Corbyn’s fault. There are many head winds in the opposite direction to Jeremy Corbyn. For example, Corbyn daily has to deal with a vicious media and there are rarely any positive noises coming out of the Guardian or Laura Kuenssberg about him. And also, there has been a relentless focus on the ‘Labour rebels’, and the three-line-whip from Corbyn (presumably because Corbyn does not want to be blamed for obstructing Brexit), but one really has to wonder what on earth has happened to those Tory MPs who reperesnt ‘remain’ consittuencies. It is entirely possible, of course, that the Liberal Democrats will take these seats, and then the critical question for 2020 will be who is the largest party. I have a hunch this will be the Conservatives, wishing to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, rather than Labour and the SNP forming a coalition (assuming that there is no sign of a turnaround in Scotland’s fortunes from Jeremy Corbyn and Kezia Dugdale).
Quite frankly, these are desperately stressful times for some people who want to vote Labour. There are some people who think that Jeremy Corbyn is utterly brilliant – and all power to their elbow. But there are also different people who believe Corbyn is overseeing the suicide of the UK Labour Party. Irrespective of your views on EURATOM or the ERASMUS scheme, what are we tell close friends of ours who are EU nationals and remain as ‘bargaining chips’ in the negotiation about to happen? The reality is that we do not know what the attitude of the European Union will be – but guaranteed the hyperbolic importance of England by Nigel Farage over Brexit is not matched by the column inches devoted to Brexit in the continental newspapers. I have a declining faith in Jeremy Corbyn, but my ‘faith’ is being put to the test. I don’t see any other saviour on the horizon, and a third leadership election might make him bullet-proof as far as the membership is concerned. I would feel a lot more reassured if we had more detail on domestic policy, but I understand the problems in predicting the state of the macroeconomy particularly with Brexit and Donald Trump looming on the horizon.
And of course the 2020 general election might be a very good one to lose, if you take away the possibility of Jeremy Hunt negotiating a UK-US trade deal which would kill off the NHS entirely.
Theresa May’s Diary
There are key differences between Theresa May and Bridget Jones.
For a start, Jones was single for a long time. And Bridget Jones always tended to look desperate.
The Labour Party is divided on Brexit – but they’re not the only ones, and it’s not Jeremy Corbyn’s fault. My late father used to tell me that there are some people who will love you whatever you do, some people who will hate you whatever you do, and some people who will always remain indifferent. Many parliamentary Labour MPs have criticised Jeremy Corbyn so much, that further criticisms of Corbyn now over Brexit would be completely hollow. To use an analogy, they have already ‘used up their lives’.
Let me pin my nails to the mast. I am in my early 40s, and was opposed to Brexit for the purposes of the June 23rd 2016 referendum. I don’t think this makes me a ‘remoaner’. I was always a bit concerned about the domestic abuse of the UK governments in state aid rules, and this is clearly of concern with the pre-meditated drastic, severe and chronic under-funding of the National Health Service and social care. I was similarly concerned about whether the EU en bloc with the US would become embroiled in TTIP, a transatlantic trade agreement, which would make it much easier for ‘free movement of capital’ ownership of ‘our NHS’. But I am told by various loud voices that what concerned many, stereotypically outside Scotland and London, was a free movement of workers, many unskilled, undercutting ‘home grown produce’. Unfortunately, some of this genuine concern got transformed into outright racism and abuse, as can be clearly seen in some of the vitriol aimed at Gina Miller.
I get the fact that there are some Labour MPs who represent constituencies representing populations who wanted to remain in the European Union. I also get the argument that you wouldn’t want, ideally, to sell your house, and make yourself homeless, and have nowhere to go to. But the idea that we will know much of the detail of the negotiations this early on is pie in the sky on the whole. Clearly, if it were the case that the European Union demanded forced repatriation of British citizens living in Europe, there would be a strong case not to start the chain of events culminating in us leaving the European Union; but this is quite unlikely, if only we don’t have a clear idea of which EU citizens are living in the UK for a start. It is pretty likely that, in the absence of strong free trade agreements elsewhere, our domestic economy would take a big hit if the UK was not included in the EU single market, but at this point this is a prophecy, and coud be right or wrong like every single other economic prediction.
I understand the need for Labour MPs to make it public that they cannot comply with a 3-line whip set by Corbyn, when their ‘conscience’ will not allow it (and nor will their local membership). We are where we are, however. The referendum, we all know by now, was only legally advisory according to the relevant Act of parliament, but unfortunately it is also the case that the non-binding yet forceful words dropped into every letterbox in the land: “that the Government will implement whatever you decide.” The case for re-running the referendum in some form of other on account of the outright lies is weakened by the fact that every single UK election has had a big degree of lying (remember ‘no top reorganisation of the NHS’ by Cameron prior to the 2010 general election?) Whilst a referendum is not the same as an election, it was David Cameron’s decision to put the issue to a referendum in his famous Bloomberg speech to defuse grumblings in his own party. What this inevitably has done has exposed a split opinion in the country at large, and it would be nonsense to believe that the splitting of opinion is simply confined to the Labour Party.
Whatever you dislike about Jeremy Corbyn MP, for example his famous terrorist ‘friends’ remark, his arguably somewhat patronising tone in giving interviews, his dress sense, his purported lack of patriotism when singing the national anthem, Jeremy Corbyn is in no way responsible for the split within the Labour Party on Brexit. Many of his MPs represent constituencies who do not see the ‘benefits’ of immigration. Many of his MPs represent the polar opposite viewpoint. In as much as the only certainties are ‘death’ and ‘taxes’, one thing is pretty certain in that Jeremy Corbyn MP as leader of the Labour Party would be unlikely to make everyone happy on Brexit. This is not the same as the Labour Party appearing ‘confused’ on Brexit, as constantly levelled at Emily Thornberry MP in media interviews. Quite the reverse, the ‘three line whip’, if anything, is Jeremy Corbyn showing the ‘strong leadership’ or ‘real leadership’ demanded of him by Angela Eagle MP and Owen Smith MP in their failed leadership bids.
Now that the Supreme Court had decided that there is insufficient mileage in the argument that the Royal Prerogative is sufficient to trigger Article 50, a Bill predictably has been laid before parliament, longer than the Bill giving women the vote. Labour and the Conservatives, unlike the SNP and Liberal Democrats, have taken national party lines of triggering exiting from the European Union. I feel that the need for MPs to comply with national policy comes less from the convoluted arguments of Edmund Burke on delegates versus representatives, often misquoted inaccurately, but the issue that otherwise MPs would be acting as independents. There are clearly massive problems down the line, if the US Congress decide to do a trade deal with the UK massively to the detriment of the UK for the political convenience of the governing parties of the UK and US. Or, there are issues if, to gain competitive advantage, the UK feels it must lower corporation tax rates even further to stop capital migrating, say, to Ireland, turning the UK effectively into a ‘bargain basement tax haven’ was warned in unison by Keir Starmer QC MP and Jeremy Corbyn MP. It is not immediately obvious what the UK has to sell in a trade deal to the US apart from its genius – but the rich pickings that would made of the NHS is not “scaremongering” but a genuine issue which lies in the national interest.
Exiting the European Union per se is the starting gun. The current Government has previously talked about repealing the Human Rights Act (ideologically consistent with leaving the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice). There’s no guarantee that xenophobia in some parts of the UK ‘heavily hit by immigration’ will be alleviated short of mass deportation of citizens awaiting guarantees of permanent residence, or by a ‘migration transformation fund’ promised by Labour back in 2010. There’s no guarantee that total immigration levels will fall drastically. We do, however, already know that Indian and Australian Doctors do not feel it is their duty to plug the ‘skills gap’ in the NHS, given the torrential negative perception of the NHS given by its longest serving Secretary of State, Jeremy Hunt. But it would be political suicide if Labour unilaterally came out on the side of the 52% or the 48%. We know that countries of the European Union do not see the four freedoms, in people, capital, goods, and services, as anything other than an unitary package. It’s pretty unlikely that London, even if achieved outright devolution imminently, would be allowed to gain EU passporting rights maintaining a sectoral lifeline for the City.
It’s also pretty unlikely that a small number of revolting Labour MPs, SNP MPs and Liberal Democrat MPs (#seewhatIdidthere) will be sufficient to stop the triggering of Art. 50. Jeremy Corbyn MP, meanwhile, will have to do the best with the deck of cards he’s been handed. Keir Starmer QC MP is right not to get worked up about the semantics of the hard versus soft Brexit. The approach taken by Theresa May MP is substantially one of pragmatism, even if the rhetoric and mood music are more akin sometimes to euphoric Nigel Farage. Many of us reasonably minded like-minded people (or liberal snowflakes) want to reach for the sick bag as soon as we hear about the personal relationship or special chemistry between Theresa May and Donald Trump. Likewise, Jeremy Corbyn can only try to make the best of a bad deal, but, if he is held as being downright obstructive to Brexit, all hell will break loose. I think with import inflation, the skills gap in the UK, and societal discord, Brexit will pan out to be an unmitigated disaster. But it would be wrong to blame Jeremy Corbyn for that too.
And by the way… we know what happened to Bridget Jones in the end.
@dr_shibley
Many Labour MPs are on suspended sentence – and they know it
It’s impossible to escape the conclusion that the failed coup (and it wasn’t even that in the end) did quite a lot of damage to the perception of Labour. At a time when the UK was reaching an existential crisis, as to whether it should be a Union or part of it, Hilary Benn made himself into a political Archduke Ferdinand and precipitated world war within Labour. Benn Junior’s legacy was a real “* you” to the membership, given that it is ubiquitously accepted that the general public will always punish divided parties as a rule of Newtonian classical dynamics.
The post-truth era for Jeremy Corbyn had of course begun long before his second election as Labour’s elected leader. It’s no mean feat for Rafael Behr or James O’Brien to continue their boring whingeing about Corbyn all the time, but to give them credit they need to pay their mortgages. But other people need a Labour government. The meme ‘Britain needs a strong opposition’ laying the blame at Corbyn of course is completely laughable given the torrent of abuse at Corbyn from all of the mainstream media, whether it’s on the inclination of his bowing in official ceremonies, the lack of singing at the National Anthem, or the alleged refusal to kneel and kiss at the Privy Council inauguration ceremonies.
Corbyn does not have the Twitter following with the magnitude of Donald Trump. He would not wish to boast about ‘expanding his arsenal’ either (pardon the unintentional pun about the Holloway Road in Islington). Nor is he best friends with Vladimir Putin. Talking of which, all of the pseudo-commentators who were spitting bullets at Corbyn’s morality seem to have gone deadly quiet about Trump’s ‘locker room’ banter, did you notice?
For all the talk about strong leadership, Jeremy Corbyn is no Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump or Nigel Farage. It’s hard to disagree with his ten pledges, which include the ‘bread and butter’ for many of us on the left wing of politics. Take for example the pledge ‘full employment and an economy that works for all’. George Osborne’s legacy, possibly not meriting a CBE, was to produce one giant ‘gig economy’, with workers having desperately and deliberately poor employment rights, many on zero hour contracts, and many being topped up with ‘working tax credits’ (hence becoming the ‘working poor’). Unsurprisingly, this has done very little to tackle the poor productivity of the UK in general, and the poor tax receipts have been a shocker for running public services safely.
A second pledge is impossible to disagree with. That is, “Secure our NHS and social care”. The emphasis of the current Conservative government has been a traditional one of ‘getting more bang for your buck’ and the euphemistically termed “delivery”, but the crisis in social care has been due to a toxic combination of imposition of private markets and lack of funding matched to demand since 2010. Even Conservative MPs are concerned about the parlour state of social care, which is also having a cost in the economy in people of working adult working age being unable to lead independent lives because of the need to care for “dependents”, for example people living with dementia with substantial caring needs. For a very long time, A&E departments nationally have been unable to meet their targets, and delayed discharges have gone through the roof. But this is not headline stuff due to a corrupt mainstream media – hellbent on their character assassination of Jeremy Corbyn.
No poll, even up until the night of Donald Trump’s eventual election, had predicted accurately the scale of the Republican victory. The general public are continuously being told about the unelectability of Jeremy Corbyn, however, even though British pollsters have a formidably catastrophic recent polling record, for example in the EU referendum or the 2015 general election. No amount of fiasco is too large to displace the vitriolic attacks on Corbyn, whether that be the failure of privatised rail services, the corruption of captains of industry for well known high street brands, an ability to curb the excesses of unconscionably paid people, and so on. But Corbyn himself would be the last person to bank on a three full terms with him as Prime Minister. He is currently 67 – not being ageist, but he would be over 80 if he completed three full terms for Labour. The succession planning for Tony Blair was an unmitigated disaster, reputedly because many of the successors did not want to ‘succeed’ taking up profitable jobs elsewhere.
Talking of which, Jamie Reed is doing himself and Labour simultaneously a favour. There is more of a chance of a pig landing on Mars, than there is a chance of Reed winning in the strongly Brexit seat of Copeland. It is a fact that Labour cannot triangulate itself into making itself very pro European Union for the benefit of many in Scotland and London, while also being anti European Union for very many in England. Whilst there are a few with extreme opinions such as ‘send Muslims back’, there are some who hold the opinion that EU workers are ‘stealing the jobs’ of indigenous citizens due to being able to work at lower salary rates. Theresa May MP has been consistently unable to stick to immigration targets, and Hilary Benn MP would have been better off campaigning on this than sticking the political knife into Jeremy Corbyn? It’s pretty unlikely that Theresa May will be able to deliver on both exiting completely out of the single market and exempting itself from free movement of people, meaning that there’ll be a lot of disappointed people around.
The LibDems have already made their bed, which they intend to lie in. The possibility of another Tory-LibDem coalition beckons (particularly if Kezia Dugdale keeps up her triumphant work of Armageddon in the Scottish labour vote; this catastrophe long predates the Corbyn factor). They in case are not the party of the 52% or the 100%, but the 48%.
I suspect people who claim to want a ‘strong opposition’ want nothing of the sort. They are prepared to continue to undermine Jeremy Corbyn at all costs in 2017, and are fully prepared to see Theresa May secure a mandate for a hardline exit from the European Union.
Jeremy Corbyn for the time being has taken back control of the Labour Party, but his strategy has paradoxically been to make himself not dependent on others to the point of being isolationist. But the strength for Labour will be, as always, when the whole works for the collective good, and is larger than the sum of individual parts. If some people with big egos don’t feel they wish to suffer the indignity of losing under Corbyn for their own beliefs, and want to leave, that can only be interpreted as a good thing. If they can offer constructive criticism as leading Commons select committees, that I suppose is good potentially too. Strictly isn’t bad either.
But if they’re just going to whinge holding onto minor London seats, or larger, they’re better off getting out for the sake of all of us.
Democratic reselections and representation on the shadow cabinet are the only Labour way forward
Whoever is ultimately responsible for the definite purge which is going on within Labour, it is clear that the purge has backfired on a number of levels. As Paul Mason identified, Bristol has now lost control of the council due to centrally-driven suspensions. Secondly, many longstanding campaigners for Labour who have given decades of their time have been ‘purged’ and lost the democratic right to vote. Thirdly, it has been a PR disaster of enormous proportions, of a centrally driven Labour NEC appearing to be incredibly vindictive against their own members, many of whom are not financially well off. Fourthly, its actual basis was very dubious, when it is known that the number of extremist ‘entryists’ are in fact very small, whereas the usual people (e.g. Old Holborn) have claimed it’s the best £3 they ever spent.
Whichever way you look at it, Labour is a joke. And it is telling of the state of Labour as it is that this is held as default as an abusive comment, rather than freedom of expression. When a mature Asian Labour voter told Owen Smith MP that he as a MP was wrong, Smith called it out as abuse. Channel 4 presented last night a documentary based on undercover filming, a textbook hatchet job on Labour, featuring a family relative of Alastair Campbell providing legal opinions. And the number of migogynist, antisemite and bullying events shown was nil.
BBC1’s Panorama fared better. Jon Pienaar did what he could to present an establishment view of ‘we’re stuck with Jeremy Corbyn with a landslide – but now what?’ Cumulatively, BBC1 and Channel 4 added to a long list including the Guardian notably of totally distorted mainstream media. The Guardian’s reporting does not even make the grade of toilet paper when printed out, though Suzanne Moore did a brilliant balanced piece on Momentum Kids only yesterday. BBC’s Panorama uncomfortably yo-yoed between Lisa Nandy MP and Peter Kyle MP, before referring to Owen Smith MP for an opinion.
By any reckoning, Owen Smith MP’s campaign was an unmitigated wholesome disaster. In a leadership bid which was in part supposed to have been precipitated by sexism and misogyny, Smith is reputed to have made a laddy joke about his 28″ inside leg measurement. The descriptions of his long term debt financing of infrastructure were so far fetched that ‘no economist disagreed with him’ (an achievement in itself) and, more’s the point, nobody in the mainstream media including the Financial Times, Mail or Times bothered to opine about it.
For all the criticisms of Corbyn and team, and there are many, the orchestrated hourly appearances of MPs in TV studios was vile. Episodes such as the staff of Seema Malhotra MP not leaving her office in a timely effect spun in such a way as to discredit a longstanding member of John McDonnell MP’s staff, were vile too. Alastair Campbell siding with Anna Soubry in her attack on John McDonnell, despite Campbell appearing to not make up his mind on which policies he actually disagreed with, was pretty ubiquitously reacted to on Twitter as vile; with many of the Twitterari commenting on how a Labour grandee got away with using the ‘twat’ so often on Twitter, when ordinary party members, maybe who had campaigned for the Green Party but who had now re-joined the Labour Party, had been ‘suspended’ according to the NEC’s ‘make it up as you go along’ rules for retweeting Caroline Lucas a few years ago, perhaps on taking back the railways into state control (now a Labour Party policy aspiration).
Ed Miliband MP himself in his resignation speech had asked for ‘people to disagree without disagreeable’ – and yet this is precisely what he and Neil Kinnock then did par excellence. They laid into the currently democratically leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn MP, as if he had no mandate at all, completely ignoring the fact that they themselves had between them had lost more general elections than most of us have hot dinners.
Secondly, their remarkable achievement was completely to ignore the implications of the Brexit vote. There are some very basic level interpretations of how Brexit came about, including being ‘lied to’ (although lies are not a novel idea in election campaigns, if one remembers Nick Clegg’s ‘I’m sorry’ for example), the impact of immigration on local services, the notion of ‘taking back control’, and so forth. I voted as a Labour voter of 26 years for #Remain, being a ‘reluctant remainer’.
For me, a willingness to be part of the European Union goes way beyond the single market, but goes towards a feeling of genuine solidarity with our European neighbours in fighting on public policy issues, such as public health, data protection, employment rights, etc. But there are aspects of being in the EU which I do find difficult – such as the impact it has on state aid of public sector industries in stress, the way in which Greece had been forced down a path of austerity to the detriment of its citizens, the possibility of the EU-US free trade treaty which would have given a carte blanche to multinational takeover of parts of the NHS, the undercutting of wages happening during free movement of labour, and so on. So for me, it can’t be 10/10 for being in the EU. And Article 50 will probably have to be invoked sooner rather than later, if only because our European neighbours won’t want us to delay on this. It was not Jeremy Corbyn’s direct wish to have a referendum; he did not even stand on a manifesto pledge to have one.
Neil Coyle MP at the weekend was asked how he might win given the summer of discontent of Labour. Bear in mind, I went down one morning, with no expenses paid, to support his bid to become a MP in Bermondsey and Southwark. I was disgusted to hear that people like me who support Jeremy Corbyn are merely part of a ‘fan club’. He then had the gall to say he would be re-elected because of the ‘strong Labour brand’, given the monumental efforts he had made to rubbish the Labour brand, such as our leadership and teamwork, all summer. Good riddance.
I had never heard of Peter Kyle MP until he started TV studios slagging off Jeremy Corbyn MP – in other words, he had made absolutely no impact on me on the national stage in terms of policy.
Not everyone who disagrees with Jeremy Corbyn is though ‘disagreeable’. I differ with Karl Turner MP’s views on some things, but I feel he is fundamentally a very bright and pleasant man (having also briefly met him). I’ve met Tom Watson MP – I don’t think calling Momentum a ‘rabble’ as he allegedly did is crime of the century, and he probably was distressed at this summer’s events too. But I think strong arm tactics for the Labour PLP to ‘get their way’ are a mistake, Tom.
In a completely different category though are Margaret Hodge MP and Margaret Beckett MP who did not offer a coherent narrative on where Jeremy’s policies were ‘wrong’, why millions voted ‘Brexit’ and launched into highly personal attacks on Corbyn.
I don’t think people who disagree with Labour’s policies or dislike the leader intensely should be forced to be members of parliament for Labour. It should never be forgotten that the party is totally dependent on the grassroots activists who go round delivering leaflets, manning phone banks, door knocking, and so on. Momentum has never asked for deselections. I think, however, it would be very healthy for a democracy for our Labour CLPs to look at reselections. MPs who are unable to oppose tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance, PFI, the lack of social housing, or the market failure of rail should not be ‘forced’ to MPs under duress, particularly this is in asynchrony with our membership’s views.
And John McDonnell MP is right, though he didn’t phrase it this way. Too many of our Labour MPs love themselves. There are a few who’ve done brilliant work such as Andy Burnham MP on Oregreave, or Debbie Abrahams MP on disability welfare, or Grahame Morris MP on local communities; and there is patently room for improvement in the operations of the top team.
We are where we are. Some of the 170 MPs who have previously had ‘no confidence’ in Jeremy Corbyn will want to campaign on behalf of saving their own seats, despite the mess they caused this summer. It is not far right to oppose that the NHS is now being destroyed at accelerated pace. It is not far right to oppose the savage cuts in social care. The only way forward I feel is for there to be a ‘hybrid’ shadow cabinet, with members put forward by both the Party and membership.
Members of the Labour PLP over criticise the ‘delegate’ argument of the membership I feel. I think what is rotten to the core is the rotten spectacle of Labour MPs behaving like independents not representing their party’s membership. It is not true that all of the Labour Party membership, for example, supports Trident as a weapon of mass destruction.
Jeremy Corbyn is likely to be re-elected this week as the leader of the Labour Party.
As Corbyn says, “Things have to change – and they will.”
Saving Owen Smith
It’s all been an incredible mess.
Take for example Owen Smith MP talking about the EU referendum with David Dimbleby last thursday on the BBC’s flagship programme Question Time.
DD: You said you would like to see Labour going into the next election saying our party policy is to go back into the EU.
OS: Yes.
DD: You ignore the Brexit vote.
OS: Exactly.
DD: Exactly?
OS: Exactly. We need to find out what it is. The Brexit vote set a direction, if we like. We don’t know where we’re going.
DD: You know where you are going. You are going back in.
OS: Well, I hope we are. And I think we should be strong about that.
You could probably fill an entire blogpost with Owen Smith MP’s greatest gaffes. But this is no time for such hilarity.
The latest journey into the Trump school of campaigning involved Owen Smith MP ‘winning’ at something. Yes – winning at getting married.
Cast your mind back to a long time ago – when Owen Smith MP tried to ‘counsel’ Jeremy Corbyn before launching his leadership bid. That bid was to prove it was all about winning.
Embarrassingly, the man whom Owen Smith MP derides for “not winning” is, according to polls which have been known to be unreliable in the past, perhaps on the brink of winning by a landslide.
For me things got so testy I even wrote a non-abusive tweet complaining about Owen Jones MP!
@chunkymark often refers to ‘the man behind the curtain’. This is a reference to that classic scene in the Wizard of Oz, one of my favourite films.
Here, the man behind the curtain included our so-called friends at the Mirror.
Labour crushed in Sheffield by-election just 3 weeks after huge Corbyn rallyhttps://t.co/HNyiZdnibs pic.twitter.com/lddG5UB3Co
— Mirror Politics (@MirrorPolitics) September 8, 2016
Except the man behind the curtain was shouting above the real story, and was not that impressive after all. 
You name any policy area, and Owen Smith MP has made a mess of it. Owen Smith ended up trying to defend why he wanted to back increasing funding to the failed PREVENT policy, accused of causing further problems for UK muslims, in the Question Time debate last week.
This was reported in “The Canary”
Audience member:
You say definitely Owen, you’re the one that endorsed the Prevent strategy…
Victoria Derbyshire Show, Owen Smith MP in the Labour leadership debate on 11 August:
…consider the issue of terrorism: I’d invest in our communities. The Prevent strategy, that is grossly undermined and under-resourced in this country, ought to be at the forefront of Labour’s policy, making sure we foster better community relations in Britain.
Owen Smith MP says he dislikes slogans, when he has often repeated the same slogans ad nauseam in the live TV debates. He accused voters in TV debates several times, “you’re wrong”, even flying completely in the face of all evidence. He has persistently denied that the orchestrated mass resignation of the majority of the Labour PLP was not contributing to the general poll ratings of Labour.
YouGov tracker shows that Labour *led the Tories* in 3 polls in a row over 41 days *pre-Coup https://t.co/vzqU0QDRkN pic.twitter.com/g3cDrqyZMx — Éoin (@LabourEoin) September 10, 2016
Unsurprisingly the members of the Socialist Health Association had backed Owen Smith. I have experience of that organisation which is the most pale, male, stale and useless Labour-affiliated entity currently in existence, having been of ABSOLUTELY NO USE in criticising policy, such as the outsourcing clause of the Act of 2012 or the private finance initiative. – or about as much use as a chocolate teapot or fireguard, being more generous.
Owen Smith MP’s campaign has been so shambolic it now looks as if, incredibly, it will be worse than Zac Goldsmith’s. And he resoundingly lost. The problem now for the PLP after September 23rd will be try to heal the rifts in the meantime, when this fiasco they have created has diverted news media attention away from Tories fighting like ferrets in a sack over the meaning of #Brexit, the introduction of an ill-thought out and highly divisive policy on grammar schools, and catastrophic financial performance of the NHS as a whole. Members of the parliamentary Labour MP now need to get a grip, or they deserve to be deselected. Had they actually done their job properly, and if Corbyn had lost 2020 monumentally if only because of the boundary changes, they could have easily blamed Corbyn. John O’Donnell MP has signalled that he and Jeremy would not be sticking around if Labour lost in 2020, but at the moment the parliamentary Labour Party have no moral integrity to call the shots. Perhaps some in the NEC will call this comment ‘abusive’, but in a healthy democracy, free speech should be welcomed. New members to Labour, say from the Green Party, should be welcomed, many feel, to build a strategic force to end Conservative rule. OK, the Labour PLP can put up their stooges for the shadow cabinet, but it should be remembered in this no-more-something-for-nothing world, if Labour MPs are not up to the job, they should be booted out. I strongly suspect, anyway, that Owen Smith MP having been pushed under the political bus by the Labour MP will be chucked out by the voters in Pontypridd in any case.
The overall incompetence of Ed Miliband’s opposition should still raise alarm bells
If you believe in conspiracy theories, Tom Watson’s offering yesterday of a #TrotskyiteTwist was merely a polite way of him chucking in the towel. Like me, Tom has started resorting to posting cute cat pics on Twitter, but #InternationalCatDay might be something to do with that one.
Whatever your views about #Brexit, it’s worth catching Laura Kuenssberg’s documentary on it from earlier this week. And whatever your views about Laura’s reports, I think this documentary was fascinating, and as balanced as could have been given the circumstances. I remember being somewhat surprised at Laura Kuenssberg asking Jeremy Corbyn at the campaign launch himself whether the launch had been rather ‘lack lustre’, and there were clearly grievances about the degree of commitment from the leaders’ office. But taking the shooting match as a whole, Jeremy Corbyn never struck me more than a 7 out of 10. For him to have pitched it at 10/10 would have been ludicrous. Funnily enough, I don’t think being a lifelong friend of Tony Benn had determined the view of the official Leader of the Opposition. Benn’s views on the 1975 referendum are extremely well known, much in keeping with the contemporaneous Brexit campaign of ‘take back control’. Tony Benn himself apportioned credit to himself for having come up with the idea of giving people a chance to take part in the referendum back in 1968. I think there were two defining factors for Corbyn in his dislike of the European Union (mitigated by his support of protective laws and sense of solidarity). These factors were the pretty awful way in which the European Union had treated Greece, imposing a draconian austerity budget. The other issue Corbyn I think resents is the rôle of EU state aid rules in stopping supporting British industries (say the steel industry which can’t compete with the Chinese dumping of coal.)
The #Brexit decision can of course be interpreted at very many different levels, but the ‘Sunderland roar’ firmly pitches a strand of voters in Labour heartlands who felt a strong disconnect with the views of Westminster. Unlike the Labour PLP, Labour membership contains many people who wanted ‘out’. No matter what reassurances were given about potentially providing extra funding to areas with high flow of immigration (a 2010 manifesto Labour pledge, benefit to the economy), there is a perception amongst some that politicians were in it for themselves. Doncaster, where are MPs including Ed Miliband, voted in favour of #Brexit (69% leave), so Ed Miliband in endorsing a second ‘review’ referendum vicariously in his support for Owen Smith is effectively signing the political suicide note on his own seat.
I shared somebody else’s graphic on Twitter on August 7th.
The issue is firmly: Labour needs to come up with a coherent response to globalisation and immigration. Simply shouting at Jeremy Corbyn, or lambasting him over Article 50, is not actually the response desired by many members of Labour. For many, voting ‘out’ was a last resort – and it would be no surprise to people who have zero faith in the parliamentary Labour Party for the response from Westminster to want to assassinate Corbyn politically; quite ironic given that Corbyn might possibly be more in touch with potential Labour voters than the members of his PLP are.
Yesterday, therefore, Owen Smith MP probably needed the news he had just received a glowing endorsement from Ed Miliband MP, as much as he would have needed the news that he has a fresh diagnosis of genital herpes. But herpes he does not have, and Ed Miliband’s endorsement he has. That Ed Miliband feels that his recommendation is in any persuasive is curious, if not frankly delusional. Ed Miliband, Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair all seem to have they have vast influence on the Labour Party, when they haven’t. If you remember Ed Milliband MP’s actual resignation speech on the day after the election on 8 May 2016, you’ll remember a rather childish quip about the launching of the ‘most unexpected cult of Milifandom’. Actually, I don’t care for Abi Tomlinson’s politics in much the same way as I don’t give a stuff about Russell Brand’s youtube video with Owen Jones, but many people felt a profound sense of shock of losing in 2015. It was not just the defeat, but the scale of it. We went down from 41 MPs in Scotland to one – and England’s vote was awful, irrespective of Scotland. So the idea of Miliband lecturing the membership on which way to vote is doubly insensitive, given that he had himself nearly taken the party to destruction.
Ed Miliband MP has of course got a long and distinguished tradition of making terrible YouTube videos, but this was ironically one of his better ones. Ralph Miliband of course might be turning in his grave at Ed’s recommendation – but blood runs thicker than water. Ask Hilary Benn.
In the context of the YouTube video, I replayed to myself his resignation speech. Ed’s tone was generally much more humble in that one, talking about the need for a wide ranging debate within the party to look at what went wrong despite the best efforts of activists. I remember defending Ed to the hilt despite his terrible performances in the TV debate (including tripping over physically), eating that bacon butty, a refusal to reverse the legal aid cuts, and not a peep about PFI. In the video above it is claimed that Owen Smith MP was always having a ‘word in his shell’ about being more radical, but it is well known from the Guardian hustings that Andy Burnham MP’s radical plan for a “national care service” was strangled to death by Miliband and Balls. Burnham said at the time, “I became disillusioned. This party had no vision. This was not the party of Bevan.” Burnham’s reasoning was members of the public, not just Labour voters, did not want to be terrified about future burgeoning social care costs, parallel to how the Clem Attlee government had introduced the NHS to drive out the inequity of having to pay for your own health.
Ed Miliband’s insignificant video also precipitated me to watch the original Jeremy Corbyn leadership videos (from 2015) on YouTube. There’s quite a lot of them. If you get round any irrational hatred of public meetings or rallies, which some happily say should be encouraged as democratising politics, the content of Corbyn’s speeches are interesting. Even if you strongly dislike him, it is hard to disagree with how the Labour Party had lost its way. There’s one phrase that strikes fear even now: “People like me on the doorstep ended up saying we were going to offer cuts like the Conservatives, but nicer cuts.” The fundamental proposition that the Conservatives had presented deficit reduction as a necessary book-keeping procedure, rather than call it what it is which is rapid shrinking of the public services, is as true now as it was then. The irony of the continuation of New Labour under Ed Miliband in that the drive to present the opposition as ‘fiscally credible’, they completely failed to address how various factors under Labour’s watch had made the economy less resilient (e.g. under regulation of financial markets, high personal debt, housing boom). And not just this – they allowed the Conservatives to dominate the narrative, when Ed Miliband could have merely rammed home the message that debt under five years of the Tories had far outstripped 13 years of debt under Labour.
But the issue is that it is clearly a lie that the Ed Miliband opposition was simply merely incompetent on economics. Whilst it is now widely accepted as a result of John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn that austerity is a political choice not economics-driven decision, austerity was used to drive (it is alleged) disabled citizens to premature deaths, libraries shutting, cuts in the NHS and social care, and so on. Do you remember how Labour also promised to end the ‘something for nothing culture’? The Ed Miliband opposition were incompetent across the board – whether on addressing aggressive tax avoidance, the crisis in lack of social housing, the unconscionable debts of the private finance initiative bankrupting the NHS, the internal market of the NHS crippling the NHS, the abstaining on welfare reforms, and so on. Epitomising this disconnect was Rachel Reeves MP declaring, in an interview in the Guardian, Reeves said: “We don’t want to be seen, and we’re not, [as]the party to represent those who are out of work.”
I have no idea whether Seema Malhotra MP has finally moved out out of her office which she was meant to vacate on her resignation, but I have no intention, despite being a member of the Fabian Society, of attending their fringe events this year in conference. The events list is here. In fact, I’d rather stick hot needles in my eyes, or have my teeth taken out without general anaesthetic. Hopefully Seema Malhotra and the other Fabians will swim happily around their goldfish bowl plotting how next to oust Corbyn. If you think Twitter is an echo chamber, I strongly suggest you dip your toes into the worlds of the Fabians or the Socialist Health Association. Despite my experience in dementia policy, the Socialist Health Association insist on asking a select few old male stale crusties to present ‘their view’, not the view of their membership, to ‘speak to power’ at places such as the National Policy Forum. I unsurprisingly agree with Jeremy Corbyn that the decision making of policy within Labour currently stinks, and is for wont of a better word totally corrupt and ‘jobs for the boys’. Needless to say I resigned in disgust from the Central Council of the Socialist Health Association who are about as socialist as Ayn Rand or Frederick Hayek.
On some happy news, well done to Andy Burnham MP for being voted in as Labour’s candidate for Central Manchester mayor elections next May – and well done to Kevin Lee, Dr Kailash Chand and Debbie Abrahams too.
Andy has always been supportive of my work, whatever you think of his politics?
