A second coming for Corbyn
Over the decades, the British Labour Party has taken pride in describing itself as “a broad church”, implying the existence of differing shades of opinion within an organisation nonetheless wedded to a common purpose. The characterisation has often masked deep differences.
More than 50 years ago, the singer-songwriter Leon Rosselson satirised the party’s centrist tendencies in verses that seem equally applicable to many of the MPs who revolted some months ago against a leader overwhelmingly elected by Labour’s members last September.
Firm principles and policies are open to objections, Rosselson sang in 1962 in the Battle Hymn of the New Socialist Party, And a streamlined party image is the way to win elections. In a particularly stinging stanza he goes on to say: It’s one step forward, one step back, our dance is devilish daring/ A leftward shuffle, a rightward tack, then pause to take our bearings./ We’ll reform the country bit by bit, so nobody will notice it/ Then ever after, never fear, we’ll sing The Red Flag once a year.
Back then, the party wasn’t ashamed to call itself socialist. Until the mid-1970s, though, the wide-ranging socialistic measures instituted by the post-war Labour government of Clement Attlee largely remained intact as part of a tacit allparty consensus. It was in part Labour’s failures that paved the way for the advent of Margaret Thatcher. One of the many deleterious consequences of the neoliberal/monetarist ascendancy was to shift the presumed centre of politics sharply to the right. Thus when the supposedly centrist Tony Blair led Labour back to power in 1997, Thatcher was able to hail him as a worthier ideological heir.
Throughout the Blair years and beyond, Jeremy Corbyn was a principled backbencher, frequently taking a stand against his party’s policies and occasionally facing expulsion alongside his comrade-in-arms John McDonnell. No one saw him as a leader.
He barely made it on to the leadership ballot last year, but the incredible enthusiasm his campaign inspired ought to have served as an eye-opener to his colleagues. Corbyn won almost 60 per cent of the vote. A plot to destabilise his leadership was launched almost right away. In an onslaught unprecedented in its viciousness Corbyn was dismissed as a throwback who made the Labour Party unelectable. Charges of anti-Semitism and sexism are regularly flung at his supporters. The bulk of Labour MPs picked the Brexit referendum as a trigger, directly blaming the result on Corbyn’s lack of enthusiasm for EU. It emerged more or less immediately that they planned to act even if the popular verdict on membership of the EU had gone the other way. Last Saturday it emerged that Corbyn’s mandate had been renewed. Not only that, he managed to secure a bigger vote on a larger turnout than last year, and his margin of victory would probably have been wider had the party apparatchiks not imposed a January 2016 cut-off on members eligible to vote. It is obviously true that overwhelming backing among party members and supporters does not automatically translate into winning margins. Labour’s overall polling figures are low, but that’s true of social-democratic parties across Europe. And the commonest alternative for those disenchanted with the status quo is the far right.
A deeply divided Labour is unelectable. But compromises are being contemplated at the party conference under way in Liverpool. Should most MPs be willing to meet the leadership half way, and the centre shifts back to where it belongs, Labour may well not be a write-off in early polls.