Reflection and unresolved tensions in Labour inquiry
The blandly titled Election Review 2019 has attracted a lot of attention for its three main conclusions: that Jeremy Corbyn was unpopular; that Labour tried to face both ways on Brexit; and that the party’s spending promises were not credible. Given that these fairly obvious conclusions were well known the day after the election, if not before, what is going on?
Who is behind this inquiry?
Most of the coverage has focused on former leader Ed Miliband – who was one of 15 commissioners who
oversaw the report – not least because it allows sarcastic comments about his own record of winning elections for the Labour Party.
Miliband’s role is significant, because he is close to Keir Starmer. Miliband helped Starmer get into parliament, and Starmer repaid the favour by bringing Miliband back into the shadow cabinet as shadow business secretary. The report is clearly designed to be helpful to Starmer, and repeats his trademark emphasis on party unity.
What is more, the commission was assembled by a group called Labour Together, the former director of which, Morgan McSweeney, is now Starmer’s chief of staff. McSweeney ran Liz Kendall’s brave campaign for the Labour leadership in 2015.
Even so, the commission is a genuinely pluralist group, including noted Corbyn supporters Ellie Mae O’Hagan, a journalist; James Meadway, a former adviser to John McDonnell; and Manuel Cortes, general secretary of the transport union TSSA.
What do Corbyn’s inner circle make of it?
Privately, most of them hate it, and they refused to cooperate with it. Their rival version was a report drawn up for Jennie Formby, appointed by Corbyn as the party’s general secretary, and leaked in April. It pinned the blame for Labour’s defeat on Blairites working against the leader from within.
Publicly, however, there isn’t much in the Labour Together report for Corbynites to disagree with, and Momentum, the pro-Corbyn pressure group, says it welcomes “the recommendations on improving Labour’s digital campaigning”. It also notes that the report recognises the need to “offer a bold programme of economic transformation that can unite Labour supporters across the country”.
That twin message of economic radicalism and party unity is being picked up by pragmatic Corbyn supporters as a way of trying to influence Starmer in their direction.
What effect will the report have on Labour members?
The Momentum statement is an acknowledgement that there is a battle being fought for the minds of party members, many of whom were once inspired by Corbyn and who still hope to rekindle that idealism but who were traumatised by defeat. Many of them fear that Starmer is a Blairite in Milibandite clothing, but they gave him the benefit of the doubt in the leadership election.
Miliband’s involvement in the inquiry is important because he retains a lot of affection among the Labour grassroots, and he is seen as a guarantor of the radical egalitarianism of Labour’s programme.
For others involved in the inquiry, however, it is seen as a chance for political education, particularly in some of the realities of electoral politics: hence the platitudes about a “mountain to climb”.
Hence, too, the unresolved tension at the heart of the report about the significance of the election before last: was it the moment when Corbynism nearly won, or was it a fluke result produced by a uniquely bad Conservative campaign when people felt they could vote Labour without consequences because there was no chance they would win?