I have been ill over the summer; I wish I had written this earlier as the wheel tracks of the political debate in the Labour Party are probably too deep for these thoughts to take hold, or maybe not, some of the articles bookmarked here suggest some deeper thinking is going on. This blog article examines the inter left dialogue and what might be done to promote a greater left unity. It notes the number of people who voted for Starmer and Corbyn, it’s a lot, and suggests that these people are key to the future platform pursued by the Labour Party. We need a majority that will build a fair and principled discipline system and a democratic policy development process that allows out membership to lead the party.
Inside the Labour Party, Corbyn’s coalition is broken and is not going to be put back together. The political strategy, vision for Labour and culture of that part of the old left majority now coalescing around #starmerout, and articulating, still, that Starmer lost the election due to his part in pushing the Remainer position, their pandering on the issue of immigration and their disgusting organisational practices creates a pretty insurmountable barrier. It’s a rose-tinted view of the last four years which is neutralised by the facts and arguments in this article, Starmerscepticism: An Unsentimental Approach.
Keir Starmer, like Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader because the membership thought he was the most left wing candidate that could win. Looking at the results of the Leadership election, we can see that the Left lost over 175,000 votes since 2016. This means that 10,000s of people voted for Corbyn in 2015/6 and for Starmer in 2020. Another metric showing the Left’s loss of grip is that only five MP’s lost their reselection battles, and some won them handsomely. Corbyn’s internal voters were no longer following Momentum nor its sectarian and careerist passengers nor the Unite leadership.
A new left majority is not going to be reconstructed without talking and listening to those who voted for Starmer. Many of them will have done so because of his 10 pledges, which promises a significant policy continuity with the Corbyn leadership.
Telling people they’re idiots or just even wrong is not a good start point for convincing them but then there are those who are not interested in building a new majority; it’s the being right that counts for them.
Dave Levy i.e. me
Building a new majority with power has been made harder by the decision to use STV as the electoral system for the CLP division of the NEC. The sectarian nature of this decision is shown by the fact that it is the only division to which this is applied; most egregiously it has not been applied to the Councillor division. It has been done to weaken the power of the Momentum led left, in the hope that Progress/Labour First will benefit from this manoeuvre; they are running a slate under the banner of “Labour to Win” which includes a couple of re-treads who have a poor record in defending member’s rights, unless in the case of Johanna Baxter, that member is Iain McNicol.
What do we do next? Support and/or motivate the CLPD in returning to its primary cause, campaigning for Party democracy and support the Grassroots Voice 6, which is the only broad slate. After the election, we’ll see just how powerful the groups are and how attractive an independent appeal can be made, particularly by Crispin Flintoff.
While I find much to be attracted to in the Open Labour platform, their political practice, by their divorcing of accountability to the platform by choosing their candidates by all member’s ballots, reinforced by those they chose or confirming support for powerful incumbents in the case of Alice Perry makes building coalitions through supporting their slate difficult. Ann Black & Alice Perry should be unacceptable to those on the left and those who want a Party built on respect for the membership. Ann Black, in particular, has a long track record of voting to exclude and discipline members of the most trivial of reasons and her period as Chair of the Disputes Committee culminated in the 2015/2016 purges. Black also voted for all of McNicol’s gerrymandering proposals for the 2016 Leadership election including the exclusion of 125,000 members. She was joined in both these activities by Johanna Baxter. (I am unclear of Perry’s voting record on these issues but she has voted to sanction or refer to the NCC over 1000 members.)
I shall thus vote for the Grass Roots Voice slate of six candidates, which remains an alliance and is supported by a broad range of Left caucuses, including Momentum, CLPD, Grass Roots Black Left , Don’t Leave Organise, Jewish Voice for Labour, LRC and Red Labour.
I shall be looking for ways to talk to members of Open Labour who support the 2019 manifesto, want to stand up for human rights and want a disciplinary system complaint with the principles of natural justice applied to all members irrespective of their faction and/or alleged offence. We can only build a united party if we turn our backs on political victimisation, and the tactics of bullying, slander and corruption and implement a member led party where all members are valued and their rights respected.
ooOOOoo
It’s important to express your preference as accurately and completely as possible, i.e to state as many preferences as possible, although your vote will count for very little after a couple of transfers. The last person to be elected, the 9th, is interesting, but if you have voted for a complete six candidate slate (that is winning seats), it is highly likely that two of those slates will be contending for the 9th seat and so your vote will not transfer to another slate/candidate. Despite this, I will pick up Crispin Flintoff, who organises “Stand Up for Labour” and is campaigning for fairer CLP funding and Mark Macdonald who is a lawyer and wrote the opinion/advice that Corbyn had to be on the 2016 leadership ballot paper.
I do not have votes in the Disabled or Youth divisions.
This has taken too long to write and post; arguments about the nature of the post-Corbyn left as been reignited by Newsnight last night where among other things, Dianne Abbott points out the remarkable silence of Starmer on Brexit since he was elected. Much of the conversation about this is not healthy for the Labour Party but those who voted for Starmer need to begin to ask if he is as committed to the 10 Pledges as they want.