Labour hustings’ two stars – that’s not Corbyn and Smith
the Labour selectorate, there isn’t actually much between the two candidates when it comes to policy; both (to reiterate my student union analogy) went to great lengths to emphasise how “socialist” they were, thus the argument comes down to one about competence.
But if the main charge against Corbyn is his lack of competence as leader of the Opposition, then it’s difficult to take Smith seriously as an alternative. I mean no disrespect to either. I dealt with the latter when he was shadow Welsh secretary a few years ago and he was engaging and genuinely interested in ideas, a rare quality these days.
The best, however, that could be said of Smith’s performance in this campaign is that he’s performed slightly better than Corbyn’s three opponents last time round – it’s all relative. His “socialist” platform, meanwhile, makes a nonsense of the oft-claimed “threat” that Corbyn apparently poses to “the Establishment”, be it political, financial or media.
My problem with Corbyn is not that he’s left wing, my issue is that he clearly hasn’t had an original thought since the year I was born. And even if he had, he’d have little idea about how to put it into action, and even were that hurdle cleared the presentation would end up being so botched as to render the initiative pointless. Last week’s sillyseason spat with Virgin Trains was a case in point.
And with Brexit likely to produce another economic shock to the UK economy, there’s actually lots of potential space for a credible left-wing Labour leader to inhabit. With the Bank of England and Treasury having exhausted monetary policy, the Prime Minister might be compelled to undertake a very un-Conservative fiscal stimulus, thus provoking a wideranging debate about national spending priorities.
If Labour had a credible posture on that, and more importantly a credible leader to make the case, then it might be making hay, but it doesn’t have either and therefore the opportunity will likely be missed. Labour’s weakness, meanwhile, opens up space for Theresa May to address areas where her party is perceived as weak, i.e. on race relations (though to be fair the former home secretary has form on tackling that), social justice and other “blue-collar Conservative” issues.
What of the Scottish dimension? Despite recent grumblings from Corbyn’s London office, Kezia Dugdale has overwhelming support in her MSP group and while her deputy Alex Rowley remains on active manoeuvres there’s no clear means by which he could challenge her (following, one assumes, Corbyn’s re-election) or produce an outcome Corbynistas would deem acceptable. If Owen Smith isn’t the answer to Jeremy Corbyn, then nor is Rowley a coherent response to Dugdale. That’s why the Scottish Labour leader felt sufficiently strong to say she’d be voting for Owen Smith, a move that prompted one “leading figure” in the UK leader’s London office to say Ms Dugdale should be put “out in the wilderness” for her “sectarian provocation” in backing Smith.
At the same time, it struck me last week that while Corbyn remains lamentably tone-deaf on the constitution, his critique of the SNP was more compelling than that of his opponent. While Smith bought into dog-eared mythology about Scotland being a “radical and socialist country”, Corbyn highlighted the more pertinent point that although the SNP’s good as “adopting the clothes of the Labour tradition” in Scotland, its programme in government doesn’t match the rhetoric.
I also found myself agreeing with Corbyn when it came to Brexit. Smith’s call for a second referendum is problematic on a number of levels, not least, as his opponent pointed out, because you can’t really question the outcome of a democratic vote simply because you don’t agree with it. But then Smith is clearly setting up the European issue for next summer’s leadership challenge.
Yes folks, the anti-Corbyn strategy isn’t really any more sophisticated than that: an annual war of attrition in the hope that the moderates will steadily gain more ground and the incumbent eventually sees the writing on the wall. To that end, Smith’s candidacy is as much about showing the moderate cause in the party isn’t dead as it is about winning.
There is little appetite, meanwhile, for a split, Parliamentary or otherwise. Although it might appear logical in theory – a moderate Labour Party versus a Corbynista one – the practical reality would be incredibly messy. While the majoritarian PLP might secure significant private funding, the trade unions would pour resources into the Corbyn wing, provoking a political arms race which would culminate in an electoral massacre come 2020. Labour’s difficulty would most likely be a further Tory and Ukip opportunity.
A lot rests on how the Corbyn camp responds to the outcome of the current leadership election contest. If they go to war, further purging the Labour Party of undesirable elements, then the moderates will have little choice but to keep on plugging away, however desperate or hand-to-mouth it appears strategically. Many I’ve spoken to are acutely conscious of how Micawberish they sound: “something will turn up”.
“In the long term the moderates will win because the hard left never can,” one told me, “largely because they don’t want to – it’s not their aim.” They believe that in the “new politics” (which is, of course, much like the old) insurgencies can implode almost as quickly as they emerge, but time in itself is not a very compelling strategy; something may very well turn up, but it might be too little too late.
Even so, old hands in the Scottish Labour Party comfort themselves that if the party emerges from its current tragi-comedy then the long-term damage won’t be as obvious in Scotland, where the party – albeit much diminished – looks much as it did a decade ago. As I said earlier, it’s all relative.
‘‘ Given the obvious leftward drift of the Labour selectorate, there isn’t actually much between the two candidates