Why Labour control-freaks fear Corbynites
THE Labour Party netted well over £4 million last week in 48 hours as a reported 180,000 registered supporters paid £25 hoping to have a vote in the Labour leadership. Some thousands were weeded out, but the number left was way more than the entire membership of the SNP – which stands at just over 120,000. In just two days. That’s a business model that would make Donald Trump himself envious.
Perhaps Labour should have civil wars on an annual basis to boost party finances. It may come to that. Labour MPs who signed the no confidence motion in their leader, Jeremy Corbyn, say they won’t give up even if, as looks likely, he wins the leadership again this summer. They say they’ll stand again next year, and the year after that, even though a tidal wave of new Labour members threatens to sweep them into the storm drain of history.
From the smile on Corbyn’s face on Friday morning, as he launched his campaign for re-election, it was pretty clear who most of the “25 pounders” are expected to vote for. And no, not the Pontypridd MP Owen “I’m normal” Smith – champion of the anti-Corbyn PLP. He had a difficult week, rebutting claims that he is a Blairite stooge of the pharmaceutical industry.
Smith seems a decent enough bloke, though unmemorable. He even looks like a local government official. Most Labour members haven’t a clue who he is, which is hardly surprising since he only joined in 2010 and has kept a decidedly low profile ever since. Such is the state of the Labour Party that no-one dares stand for leader if they had been around when Tony Blair was in charge. They are, like Angela Eagle, seen as collectively responsible for Iraq.
In some ways, Smith is a sign of just how much the Corbyn effect has changed British politics. He insists, despite the rumours, that he too is of “the left”.
Smith’s top policy proposal – apart from kicking Corbyn upstairs into a fictional post of party president – is a £200 billion investment programme that looks suspiciously like People’s Quantitative Easing. This was the much-maligned economic policy unveiled by Corbyn last year and rubbished by his then Labour leadership rivals as “economically illiterate”.
Indeed, everyone seems to be talking PQE, or at least Keynesian state investment these days – even Theresa May, according to Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK. He coined the term People’s Quantitative Easing, to distinguish it from the orthodox money printing of the Bank of England which simply goes to prop up the banks. Some £375bn has been printed so far which has been great for bankers’ bonuses.
But everyone seems now to realise that this isn’t a very sensible use of the “money tree”, as QE is sometimes called, because it just inflates asset prices, principally house prices.
But Labour MPs seem determined to deny Corbyn credit for having restored Keynesian economics to centre stage, or for having achieved what no Labour leader has for decades: restoring the party’s mass membership.
There are now well over 600,000 Labour members, supporters and affiliates. More than 300,000 have joined the party since Corbyn first stood for the leadership. They’re dismissed by some Labour MPs as Trotskyite hangovers from the militant 1980s.
Yet most of these new members weren’t even born in the days when the Derek Hattons of this world were trying to take over moribund Labour branches.
Most of the new members are millenials, without Marxist baggage. They just want decent jobs, fair taxation, free education, a strong NHS and no more illegal wars. These used to be core Labour values and it is a measure of how far the parliamentary wing of the Labour Party has departed from its own traditions that such ideas are seen as dangerously radical.
Labour MPs are running scared of their own shadows, accusing their own party members of being abusive, anti-semitic misogynists issuing hate on social media. Owen Smith claims that Corbyn is somehow responsible for all this even though hardly a day goes by without him condemning it. All of which is very reminiscent of what happened during the Scottish independence referendum of 2014.
That was where the current wave of mass re-engagement began, as working-class voters who’d given up on politics suddenly became politicised by the Yes campaign. There was anger then too. Better Together’s Jim Murphy accused the Yes campaign of being responsible for angry hecklers at street meetings. In the demonology of the Labour PLP, the Corbynites are direct descendants of the Cybernats. There is the same establishment fear of activism and similar use of anonymous abusive remarks to smear the other side.
John McTernan, the former Blair spin doctor, still insists that “Salmond could have stopped the abuse if he wanted” and says that the same applies to Corbyn, as if he were Turkey’s Recep Erdogan with power to shut down the internet. Of course, no-one should defend abusive language or hate speech wherever it comes from. But as in 2014, the abuse clearly comes from both sides, and the idea that mild-mannered Jeremy Corbyn is inspiring any hostility is incredible. He simply isn’t capable of such invective, as he demonstrates at Prime Minister’s Questions every week.
Labour MPs’ loathing of Corbyn is deeply personal, as evidenced by the way they refuse to support their own leader at PMQs. Ordinary Labour members find this inexcusable. The silence is deafening from the Labour benches when the Labour leader enters the debating chamber. As his performance against Theresa May confirmed, Corbyn lacks ready wit, is easily diverted and finds it difficult to ask follow-up questions. But none of this is helped by his own MPs effectively siding with the Tories.
There was further speculation last week that the “Gang of 172” – the Labour MPs who signed the motion of no confidence in Corbyn – are preparing to create their own autonomous Labour grouping in Westminster. They could all resign the Labour whip and seek Mr Speaker’s recognition as a different party.
One columnist even suggested they should call themselves the ILP – though a grouping more different from the socialist, pacifist and largely Scottish Independent Labour Party of the 1920s could scarcely be imagined.
A much more likely name for the breakaway (no-one is going to emulate the Jenkinsite Social Democratic Party of the 1980s) would be the National Labour Party. This was what the right wing supporters of the former Labour prime minister Ramsay MacDonald called themselves when they joined with the Conservative in his National Government in 1931. That didn’t do too well. Most were defeated in the subsequent election as the Tories were left to dominate British politics through the Great Depression.
Could history repeat itself? Rebel Labour MPs detest their leader so much that some might prefer to see the Tories in power rather than Corbyn.
But this is not the 1930s, and a Labour-Tory coalition, informal or formal, is inconceivable. A rebel breakaway would lead to civil war, and the Corbyn side has the Labour brand, the trades unions and the constituency organisation.
Rebel Labour MPs are right to fear deselection, but it won’t be Jeremy Corbyn who orders the cull. Local Constituency Labour Parties seem quite prepared to do that spontaneously. They showed their power last week by mobilising some 150,000 new supporters to put their money where their mouths are.
Labour MPs thinking about “crossing the floor” to Theresa May’s Tories might be advised to do so before the stampede begins.
Labour MPs’ loathing of Corbyn is deeply personal, as evidenced by the way they refuse to support their own leader at PMQs. Ordinary Labour members find this inexcusable