Jubilant mood for Labour in the UK
The party and its leadership must not forget the complexity of the position they find themselves in after the June 8 elections
he British people will remember this summer for the rest of their lives. It is starting to feel like a whole decade compacted into mere weeks: despair followed by joy followed by yet more despair, while political certainties that recently seemed rock solid suddenly fall away. After 10 years of pain, austerity might just be in retreat. The idea of England and Wales as some monochrome expanse, full of nostalgia and nastiness and people content to watch as their social fabric is serially wrecked, has been drastically weakened. The horrors at Grenfell Tower are obviously part of the same moment: a hesitant national awakening in which a sense of dread and worry about where we are headed has been intensified by a sudden realisation about the country we have become. Clearly, the decisive arrival of Jeremy Corbyn and his new model Labour Party has been absolutely central to all this. As it turned out, 2017 was the right time for the restoration of moral clarity to Labour’s soul; the correct point too to leave behind the old, stage-managed politics.
As proved by his visit to west London recently, people really do appreciate a politician whose beliefs about the good society are evidently emotional, in the best way. There are now Labour MPs in such renowned lefty redoubts as Kensington and Canterbury. As Prime Minister Theresa May endlessly fumbles, the sense of a leader chiming with his time is powerful. There is, then, much to be hopeful about. And among a vocal minority of online celebrants, post-election joy has been accompanied by entirely understandable triumphalism. Haters, doubters and sceptics have been rounded on. Journalists with any history of disbelief or hostility should apparently resign or be sacked. Labour MPs who once wanted Corbyn to quit should be reciting the socialist equivalent of Hail Marys, and burying any hopes of a return to the shadow cabinet.
Justified resentment
Looking back at the very real woes that preceded the party’s breakthrough, there seems to be some implicit suggestion that a huge crowd of true believers always knew things were on track but could not be heard above the hostile braying. But this, obviously, is not true. Until May called the election, the Labour tribe remained full of justified resentment about the leadership’s lack of energy and commitment in the EU referendum (and in the wake of June 8, the question of what full-bore Corbynism might have done to that vote strikes me as a reasonable one). The challenge led by Owen Smith was a content-free fiasco that deserved to fail. But after Corbyn saw him off, plenty of the leader’s supporters had continuing doubts about the future, thanks to everything from his often butterfingered approach to administration, through a big split within Momentum, and on to all those dire polling numbers. This most self-effacing of Labour leaders would doubtless agree that, even though the Corbyn effect was big, it did not explain everything that happened in the election. In many places, this was a collective and collegiate surge, written by people inside and outside the party. Labour has a specific and long-standing identity in Wales, which was used to see off the Tory threat in fine style.
The same applied in Greater Manchester. As exemplified by what happened in Brighton and Norwich, Labour did well in many places thanks to votes borrowed from the Greens and Lib Dems, whose supporters gladly switched despite the fact the Labour leadership wanted nothing to do with the politics of the so-called progressive alliance. There may have been even more gains if the party had toned down some of its old-school tribalism. There were also limits to the surge that, as the euphoria subsides, Labour needs to think about. In Scotland, the party put on fewer than 10,000 votes. Despite the “dementia tax “, the Conservative lead among people over 70 was estimated to be 50 percentage points. And the syndrome whereby former Labour voters went first to Ukip and then the Tories was real and widespread — as evidenced by a handful of Labour losses in the Midlands, and other places where the Tory vote went up thanks to voters supposedly at the sharp end of austerity.
Looking ahead, one thing above all others is likely to underline the complexities of Labour’s position: Brexit, parked as an issue during the election, to the party’s great benefit, but inevitably set to come roaring back. Corbyn’s advance, I have heard lately, is proof of the demise of the politics minted by New Labour and Bill Clinton’s Democrats, and “the end of centrism”. Events of all kinds now seem to move at light speed. And look at how wildly the political pendulum swings: from Obama to Trump; from the SNP triumphant to Nicola Sturgeon in sudden abeyance; from Europe supposedly in hopeless crisis to the twin leadership of Macron and Merkel; and from the Brexit victory to the glorious shocks and surprises of last week. As the cliche goes, the election proved that no one knows anything any more. But there’s a drawback: that also includes the people now claiming they alone somehow have the key to the future.
John Harris is a journalist and author, who writes regularly for the Guardian about a range of subjects built around politics, popular culture and music.