The election of Keir Starmer as Labour leader represents a huge step backwards from the period of leadership under Jeremy Corbyn. It is a blow to the left of the labour movement and to all those hoping for policies in the interests of working class people, for the Many not the Few. But the agenda of the right-wing backers of Starmer will be undone by the coronavirus epidmic and they will not find it as easy as they thought to push the Party all the way back to the Blair years.
What we must not do, as unfortunately some on the left seem to be doing, is throw our hands in the air and start tearing up membership cards. To them, we would say, paraphrasing Tony Benn, “and what will you do the following day?” The struggle for socialism has always been a marathon and not a sprint and this website has never subscribed to the idea that the election of Jeremy Corbyn was a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for socialist change. Those who did not anticipate setbacks along the road were not being realistic.
What must be understood is that there will be competing class pressures on Keir Starmer as leader and Angela Raynor as deputy leader and it is by no means a foregone conclusion that the Labour Party will see a sudden metamorphis from a rich political pasture to a desert.
The pressure of Labour’s right wing
We are under no illusions that one pressure – from Labour’s right-wing – will be significant. Starmer was backed by the majority of the anti-Labour press for one reason only, because they see him as the best candidate to bring the Labour Party to heel. He was supported by most of Labour’s old guard right-wing because these dinosaurs have always been opposed to the mass, radical membership that has grown up in the last five years.
Unfortunately, many of those on the ‘soft left’ wing of the Party have swallowed hook-line-and-sinker the disgraceful allegation that Labour is somehow institutionally anti-Semitic, as well as the argument that Labour’s policies and Jeremy Corbyn were ‘unelectable’.
As Jeremy Corbyn’s wife said, in a rare public intervention, Jeremy was “vilified” in the media and “attacked by his own party” for the four and a half years he was in charge. “The last four years,” Tony Blair’s former spin doctor, Alistair Campbell said in a Financial Times video, “it’s been a fucking disaster for the Labour Party.” Never mind the fact that the Labour Party achieved its highest membership in modern times and managed to pay off all its debts from membership subscriptions alone.
Never mind the fact that Jeremy Corbyn achieved a bigger jump in Labour’s vote in 2017 than in any election since 1945. Never mind the fact that even last December, Labour’s percentage vote was higher than that achieved by Ed Miliband in 2015 or Gordon Brown in 2010. Indeed, without the collapse of Labour’s vote in Scotland, which was entirely down to the right wing’s long-term domination of Scottish Labour, Labour nationally would have won both elections easily.
Labour’s right afraid of the membership
What put the fear of God into Labour’s right wing was the fact that Jeremy Corbyn’s election reflected the radicalism of the working class as a whole, as it was transmitted through the party membership. People were fed up with austerity – and still are – but the insecurities of working class life are another world to the social and political lives of many Labour MPs. Corbyn’s election reflected a mood within the working class in general, something the right wing and even some lefts, have never understood. It was an “insurgency” as one commentator in the Financial Times put it. “In many respects,” he wrote, “the big surprise of the populist insurgency is that it has not been bigger. In another age, the 2008 crash might have triggered a revolution. Instead, Mr Corbyn and his fellow travellers are now capturing the seething popular resentment”. (September 11, 2015)
It was the radicalism that flowed from that, writ large in Labour’s manifestos in 2017 and 2019, to which the right objected. That and the fact that a greatly increased and uppity membership were in danger of putting too many cosy careers in jeopardy. The sabotage by the right wing started literally on the day Corbyn was elected and it did not stop for one moment. For four and a half years the right-wing, including lame-duck deputy leader, Tom Watson, relentlessly sabotaged and undermined the leadership. Keir Starmer, we haven’t forgotten, played a role in that too. Unfortunately, many ‘Labour’ MPs are happier to see a Labour Party defeated rather than see a left Labour Party in office.
“Doing something different to what he said”
What will happen under Starmer’s leadership? His appeal to many party members revolved around his supposed calls for unity. “We have come out of this [leadership] contest as a better party” he tweeted, “more united and ready to build a better future.” But there is more than a suspicion on the left that his pitch for leadership had a different, hidden agenda – why else would notorious right-wing Labour politicos be backing him? Why else did the majority of the anti-Labour press back him?
Margarent Hodge suggested before the result was declared, that if Keir Starmer was elected, “I fear [she meant “I hope”] The only way he can turn it [the party] round is by doing somethiing different from what he’s telling us he’s going to do now”. Precisely. The Times of Israel announced Starmer’s election purely in terms of his being “a Zionist with a Jewish wife”, adding that he vows to “tear out this [anti-Semitism] poison…”
The right wing will now want the leader to carry through their programme, which would mean a mass purge of members, a complete dilution of Labour policy and – high on their ‘shopping list’ – a return to the fake party ‘democracy’ of the Blair years, when the MPs had a disproportional say in the election of the leader and conference was a stage-managed leadership rally. Robert Shrimsley, writing in the Financial Times, March 30, is clearly singing from the same hymn-sheet. Referring to the suspension of parliament, he suggested, “The new Labour leader can meanwhile use the time out of view to settle internal issues, clamp down on anti-Semitism, purge the most factional Corbynites and appoint a credible, experienced shadow cabinet…” (emphasis added).
The pressure of economic crisis and austerity
But there is a second and equally significant pressure that will be brought to bear on the new Labour leader. Even before the coronavirus epidemic, there was a growing hostility among millions of workers to what Jeremy Corbyn called a “rigged” economic system. Established politicians and parties were subject to greater suspicion and outright hostility than ever before. That would have been a process that was set to continue anyway, but it will be ten times bigger in the aftermath of the pandemic.
Keir Starmer’s first serious test will be his relationship to Boris Johnson, a figure reviled by the big majority of Party members. Starmer has said that under his leadership. Labour “will engage constructively with the government, not opposition for opposition’s sake.” Now that Corbyn is out of the way, it has been suggested that Johnson will invite the leaders of the other parties to briefings or to the government’s ‘Cobra’ meetings. Some have gone further and suggested a coalition, as there was in wartime, from 1940 to 1945.
Calls for cross-party cooperation
George Freeman, for example, a former Tory transport minister, has called for a cross-party ‘Covid cabinet’. Peter Mandelson, another former Blair spin-doctor, has echoed this. “If Keir Starmer manages to hold the government’s feet too close to the fire,” he says, “a coalition of some sort will begin to look more attractive to Johnson and if Labour is invited in it might be difficult to refuse,” (Financial Times April 3). Disappointingly, even some trade union leaders have supported the idea. Manuel Cortes, whose TSSA union backed Starmer, has called for the parties to “work together” to beat the pandemic.
In the face of opposition from Labour party members and some MPs – including Jeremy Corbyn himself – Starmer, while he may forgo a formal agreement with Boris Johnson – might agree to informal contacts and briefings. But however ‘informal’ the support for this Tory government might be, it will still be seen by many as propping up a reactionary government, and one that is utterly incapable of dealing with coronavirus as a national emergency.
In our editorial on March 30, we wrote the following: “The calls for political cooperation between the main parties – even from Tory MPs – will find an echo, although the real purpose of a cross-party effort (or even a coalition) is not so much to share the burden as to share the blame when the going gets tough. In the Second World War, the promotion of Labour MPs into the wartime cabinet had no other purpose than to persuade workers to cooperate with anti-strike legislation, wartime austerity and sacrifice…”
Ten more years of grinding austerity
We would say exactly the same thing now. Cross-party cooperation is a cloak for austerity and unpopular government policies. The coronavirus crisis is not yet over, but when it is, there will be a price to pay.
Given the crash in the world economy and the particular crisis of the British economy, the Tory party and the class they represent will want to burden the working class with the cost of beating Covid-19. We are facing potentially another ten years of grinding austerity worse even than that which we have endured over the last ten years.
Another political columnist, Gideon Rachman, put it like this: “…as the human and economic damage caused by Covid-19 mounts, so old political divides are likely to re-emerge, widen and become more bitter.” (March 30, Financial Times). We think he is absolutely right except that, if anything, he understates the huge clashes between the classes that will come in the next period.
Even before the coronavirus epidemic, the British and world economy was slowing down. Economists are now predicting that as a result of a global lock-down there will be an economic recession greater than that after 2008. Some are even speculating that the coming recession will be a slump greater than after 1929. It is in these circumstances that there will be new demands for austerity for the 99%, while the 1% grow fatter. As always.
Climate change has not gone away
Neither must we forget the most serious challenge facing humanity; although it has been pushed out of the headlines in the recent months, global warming is still the gravest of longer term threats. Climate change will continue to create extreme weather events that will occur at great human cost and these will also work their way through economic and political processes like any other, enormously exacerbating an already-existing crisis.
It is in the context of this firestorm of events – one might say a ‘perfect storm’ of problems – that we have to see developments inside the Labour Party. It is inevitable that the social and economic imperative of newly-imposed austerity will have a dramatic effect on the consciousness of working people, on the members of all the big trade unions and, not least, on the membership of the Labour Party.
That imperative will be expressed through the active membership of the Labour Party, including those who voted for Starmer. They will look with renewed approval at Labour’s last election manifesto. They will read Starmer’s “ten pledges” and expect him to stand by them. They will look at his promise not to impose candidates on CLPs and expect him to keep it. What will Keir Starmer be able to do then? How will Angela Raynor react to that?
The balance of class forces
It remains to be seen how the balance of class forces will work out, because that is what will be reflected inside the Labour Party. Labour’s right wing, aided by the Tory press and TV, are a part of the political representation of British capitalism. The best activists of Labour’s and the trades unions’ rank and file represent the interests of working people. They will inevitably clash.
For our part, Left Horizons and its supporters will not panic. We will not be fazed by this setback. We have to see the election in perspective and keep a sense of proportion. There will be other setbacks; it is inevitable. But we will draw encouragement from the fact that Rebecca Long-Bailey received a solid 135,000 vote and Richard Burgon over 92,000. We do not write off even those party members who mistakenly, in our opinion, voted for other candidates.
We will continue to argue patiently and democratically, for socialist ideas and a socialist programme as Labour Party members. The Labour manifestos of 2017 and 2019 had policies that were popular, according to opinion polls. Socialist ideas are gaining currency and relevance, whereas the ideas of Labour’s right wing are increasingly irrelevant to the lives of ordinary people.
In the coming months and years we believe that socialist ideas will gain a wider basis of support than ever. Looking at the top of the party, it might appear that the tide is moving against us. But in the working class as a whole and in a large part of the Labour Party and trade union membership, the tide will be moving with us.
April 5, 2020
