This Once Great Movement Of Ours

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Corbyn's statement is a bit more tone deaf than I thought it would be. The extract at the end was a bit yikes...

'the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media. That combination hurt Jewish people and must never be repeated.

My sincere hope is that relations with Jewish communities can be rebuilt and those fears overcome. While I do not accept all of its findings, I trust its recommendations will be swiftly implemented to help move on from this period''

https://www.facebook.com/JeremyCorbynMP/posts/10158939532253872

Tone deaf to the ears of the mob braying for his head, I suppose, but it's an honest and valid assessment of the way antisemitism was dealt with. Saying otherwise is myopic spin. Especially as the rest of the statement is lockstep in line with the approach adopted by Starmer.

The questions at Starmers press conference does show that the media enjoy treating this as another 'does Keir Starmer want to punish Jeremy Corbyn' when frankly there's much bigger issues at stake when one of the biggest parties in the country is found in breach of the Equality Act.

Case in point.

I caught the end of the Q&A and thought Starmer acquitted himself well. He's got a thankless task on this file (at best; Kobiashi Maru is closer to the truth) but he avoided saying anything that would seem like dissembling on the one hand or capitulating to hysteria on the other.

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A lot that is not good in the report, but not much that wasn't already at least suspected.

Agree that Starmer has acquitted himself well.

It's upsetting reading, without a doubt. Even worse is the spin from the unreconstructed Corbynites harping on the finding that there was no institutional antisemitism. I get that it was a painful epithet to get hurled at you, but there's no way to draw attention to that finding without seeming like you're bragging about reaching the lowest possible bar.

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This seems like a massive overreaction, though I'll admit I'm not an expert on antisemitism in the UK or the UK in general. With that being said, can someone explain to me why the EHRC has elected not to investigate Islamophobia within the Conservatives? It seems to me that that's objectively at least a large problem, if not larger than the antisemitism within Labour, and it seems that there's a vastly different standard being applied to the parties here.

Between Jewish and Mulisms, only one of the two have an influence over institutions.
Between Corbyn and Johnson, only one of the two doesn't adhere to the "liberal" "consensus".

That's a touch too conspiratorial/cranky of an explanation for my taste. There's certainly an element of politics in how the EHRC decides on what to investigate, which results in a risible myopia toward the sins of the party in power. Also, there's undeniably a palpable discrepancy in the level of sensitivity to racism evinced by those in positions of power (the casual racism and xenophobia expressed toward immigrants is the best example of that).

However, the EHRC case against Labour was the result of a sincere and genuine grassroots campaign to attend to the issue which reached a critical mass. The (undeniable) case against the Tories for Islamophobia hasn't come close to generating that kind of concerted activism. I'm not saying that's because Islamophobia is less egregious, just that the EHRC will investigate where the smoke seems to come from.

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The EHCR are a neutral non-governmental organisation who are required to follow the law. They have to follow equality legislation & due process when making these decisions; if they hadn't then lawyers for the Labour Party, including when it was managed by Jeremy Corbyn would have challenged the decision. The Party has rightly never called into question the credibility of the EHRC & I don't think anybody on the left called it into question when they investigated the BNP in 2009.

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It should be mentioned again & again that this was started because Jewish Labour Party members felt unsafe in their own party & felt it was a hostile body.

Yes to the latter attribute. To believe the former is a view of politics that is childish in the extreme.

It should also be mentioned that the JLP is hardly an impartial arbiter of Corbyn's leadership. Indeed, many Jewish Labour members came to precisely the opposite conclusion and said so openly. However, that is not the story that won out.

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The EHCR are a neutral non-governmental organisation who are required to follow the law. They have to follow equality legislation & due process when making these decisions; if they hadn't then lawyers for the Labour Party, including when it was managed by Jeremy Corbyn would have challenged the decision. The Party has rightly never called into question the credibility of the EHRC & I don't think anybody on the left called it into question when they investigated the BNP in 2009.

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It should be mentioned again & again that this was started because Jewish Labour Party members felt unsafe in their own party & felt it was a hostile body.

Yes to the latter attribute. To believe the former is a view of politics that is childish in the extreme.

It should also be mentioned that the JLP is hardly an impartial arbiter of Corbyn's leadership. Indeed, many Jewish Labour members came to precisely the opposite conclusion and said so openly. However, that is not the story that won out.

Well thank you. I don't think I have a childish view of politics but I am only 23 so what do I know?

If it's anything like what I knew about politics at 23, you've got a hell of a lot to learn

Edit: Something that opened my eyes on this front is the work by Bachrach and Baratz. If you have access to JSTOR or other academic sources they are quite articulate about how settling the agenda for debate can be more determinative of political outcomes than ideas, events, or personalities

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With respect to the EHRC, you are correct, I was wrong to imply that it was subject to that much political pressure; I should have researched more thoroughly before posting. Thanks for the information!

With respect to the "nefarious Blairites," that was in part an (admittedly poor) attempt at humor, so sorry about that. For the record, I do think that antisemitism is a problem within Labour, regardless of how much it was played up by the Tories; in the words of Corbyn, "one antisemite is one too many." Jewish people in Labour, and indeed anyone at all, should absolutely highlight any discrimination in the party. I also don't want to turn it into some sort of racism Olympics where one party or another gets a pass. I guess, then, my point is twofold:

1. Why are Labour and the Conservatives (and left vs right parties in general) held to such drastically different standards when it comes to discrimination? I think the issue here is basically two things. Firstly it's often sort of assumed that the Conservatives will be at least a little racist, where that same assumption is not made for Labour. This assumption, if it is as widespread as I suspect, is particularly galling to me for obvious reasons. Secondly, as you stated, I think in the West there's a general tolerance for Islamophobia which urgently needs to be stamped out. To your point about the EHRC's statement, it seems that many Muslims still express reservations about that internal investigation; Harun Khan, the secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, called it "a facade to hide the hundreds of incidences of Islamophobic bigotry we have identified in its ranks." I'm not 100% sure Khan is correct here (though I'll admit that I distrust the party of Boris Johnson on this immensely), but it reflects the general attitude that Islamophobia appears to be of secondary concern to these bodies and the public in general.

2. Why was Corbyn suspended? This seems dumb to be both from an electoral and moral perspective. Electorally, Corbyn has a sizeable base, and I guarantee that such a public scorning of him is certain to alienate that base. Morally, this is a horrible way to close the book on bigotry within the party. Labour, like any organization, will need to continue grappling with these issues for the foreseeable future; one needs look no farther than Rosie Duffield to see evidence of this. This move sends the exact wrong message, which is that purging Corbyn and people like him will heal the party moving forward, negating any continuing responsibility or vigilance Labour needs to have. This is obviously unprovable, but I would be shocked if ideological concerns from Labour's centrist wing did not at least inform Corbyn's suspension.

EDIT: I also forgot to mention that, from what I was able to read of the report, it doesn't even seem like Corbyn himself was personally culpable, so it also seems that his suspension was unwarranted from that perspective.

On point 1, I suppose we could get into a deep political philosophy/sociology debate about how group dynamics effect public perception, but in a way it's kind of irrelevant. As far a political praxis goes, it makes no difference why there is a double standard. A cynic might observe that it is those with the greatest social/economic capital - i.e. Tories - who have their biases deferred to, whereas those with less power in society have to struggle just to have their views/biases accepted as legitimate at all.

To point 2, I agree Corbyn's suspension is unwise, reactionary, factional, and sneering. That said, it's also quite clearly in keeping with the line established by Starmer and his team. I think that line is hypocritical, self-serving, intellectually cowardly, and politically weak, but it has the virtue of being consistent.

On the edit, much as I'm loathe to endorse any of the Corbyn bashing that is so de rigeur, the fact that he wasn't personally implicated is more a function of the circumspect way the EHRC operates, its limited remit, and the plausible deniability that every sophisticated hierarchy operates by. Corbyn was in charge and could have done more. Today he knew what he was doing and could have couched his (eminently reasonable) objections.

P.S. Re: Rosie Duffied. F*** TERFS.

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1.) I think there's two different issues here. Firstly there's how the EHRC & other public bodies hold organisations to account when they're presented with evidence of their actions (or lack of) . A lot of people expected the EHCR to call the party institionally anti-semeitic or to name names but they didn't do so because as others have said that's not within their remit or aim as an organisation.

I assume that they've not been presented with evidence or a legal case which they judge to meet the threshold that was met with AS. But there's a whole other story for how this case was built up & presented to the EHCR. I'm a bit tired to go through tonight but this was a very long & detailed effort by people within the party who did a lot of the legwork both in providing the legal & material aspect but also ensuring it was being reguarly covered (both in the traditional Jewish community newspapers and other newspapers)

If you'are asking about the public; the general assumption I have is that what hurt Labour was the ongoing nature of it & the fact that it created a cloud over the leadership; whether that was people thinking Corbyn was incompetent or antisemitic it was probably more so the former. I did see some evidence that people who would be classed as more middle class & politically engaged where likely to bring it up as a factor for not voting Labour then people who weren't.

I feel it's too complex an issue (british anti-semitism v British islamophobia) to discuss the differences in public attitudes & how it shapes politics in the UK but if I said that you'd be more likely to win a general election on an outwardly hostile islamophobic platform than an outwardly anti-semitic one I think that would broadly sum up how I see the publics attitudes.

I think this is why so many observers who are not prejudicially hostile to Corbyn or socialism in general find the AS issue generated around him to be somewhat contrived. If you mount a sustained effort to unearth prejudice in an organization that is within a country wherein that prejudice is endemic, *of course* you're going to find evidence of it. If you then coordinate a sustained campaign to ensure said evidence is disseminated widely and consistently to a population that is preternaturally more receptive to denouncing that strain of prejudice - even while equally deep and widespread strains of bigotry are also endemic, and would be just as well documented if one cared to look closely enough - then *of course* you're going to manufacture the impression of indifference, incompetence, or tone deafness on the part of the putative culprits.

To be clear, I'm not trying to say the criticisms of Labour's disciplinary procedures surrounding antisemitism were spurious or unjustified, or that dismissing the cases that were raised as factionally motivated was defensible (even if that might have been true in a few cases). But anyone arguing the sustained effort of promulgating the view of Labour as 'institutionally antisemitic' was devoid of ideological considerations doesn't have a leg to stand on.

I did say this morning that his post was tone deaf; it was. He didn't have to say it & even if he believed it he should have moved on. But frankly it reveals that he does honestly believe it; it's actually quite hard to get a politician to lie/give up on an issue of what they see as morals (it's similar to how Tim Farrons advisors could never get him to say that Gay sex wasn't a sin; he honestly believed it was)

I don't think this isn't the best comparison for you to make. Farron is very much correct about gay sex being a sin*. That should have absolutely no impact upon public policy, to be sure, and it's not politically apt, but if you're trying to compare apples to apples, the logical conclusion would be that you also contend Corbyn is correct in believing AS was overblown.

*Edit: An *awesome* sin, to be clear

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This seems like a massive overreaction, though I'll admit I'm not an expert on antisemitism in the UK or the UK in general. With that being said, can someone explain to me why the EHRC has elected not to investigate Islamophobia within the Conservatives? It seems to me that that's objectively at least a large problem, if not larger than the antisemitism within Labour, and it seems that there's a vastly different standard being applied to the parties here.

Between Jewish and Mulisms, only one of the two have an influence over institutions.
Between Corbyn and Johnson, only one of the two doesn't adhere to the "liberal" "consensus".

The insinuation here leads you down a very dark path....

And what does the second claim mean - our soft-Orbanist PM is actually a "liberal"??

Replace 'liberal' with 'neoliberal' and the comparison works fine.

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Honestly at a certain point I wonder if Corbyn has anything to gain from having the whip returned to him. This Labour party have clearly decided to revert back to the old attitude of "no room in the inn" for any genuine socialist, much less anyone even moderately critical of Israel. If I were him I'd think long and hard about apologising for the mildest of comments to get back into a party that would never dare to suggest suspending the likes of Tony Blair for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Doesn't seem to be a whole lot inside Labour worth fighting for anyway.

This isn't true.

I'd reccomend watching the recent House of Commons debate where a large number of Labour MPs were extremely critical of Israel & specifically settlement building. I can list at least 10 Starmer friendly MPs off the top of my head who are extremely critical of Israel & have played a large role in Parliamentary debates on this issue.

The Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy use to be the Chair of Labour friends of Palestine & I saw her open a meeting at Labour conference with the Palestinian Ambassador. One of her junior ministers Stephen Kinnock is even more pro-Palestine (and is the outgoing chair of the Parliamentary Lobby Group on the issue)

There's certainly a degree of difference within the party & as with all these issues different opinions. Kinnock even got briefed against it recently but it's a complete myth that the PLP is at all as anti-Palestinian as people think it is (or as it was say 15 years ago)

If what was said in the HoC debate qualifies as 'extremely critical' of Israel then the term has lost all meaning. Anodyne admonishments of pervasive state coordinated human rights abuses do not an 'extreme' criticism make. Agonizingly contorted, surgically precise, deliberately tentative proposals for the mildest of push backs against the state orchestrating said abuses qualifies as 'pro-Palestine' in little more than name. The Overton window on Israel/Palestine has moved so decisively away from the Palestinian cause in the past 20 years it makes it hard to take seriously those who try to frame the current terms of debate as in any way balanced.

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The NEC election results are due out today at 5pm. Was meant to be at noon but there have been delays, apparently as the votes are checked for eligibility.

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That's a good 2 or 3 seats fewer than LtW expected to gain. Signs of hope for the left of the party.

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Of course some are hypocritical in castigating the likes of Abbott whilst giving Blair a free pass, but the fact remains that DA happily appeared on a platform with people who are basically genocide deniers. Apologising was the least she could do.

And this sort of thing keeps happening because of the extremely reductive and simplistic "anti-imperialism" that so many on the Labour left subscribe to. At its crudest this seems to boil down to a genuine belief that the US, UK and (of course) Israel are literally the only bad countries in the world.

Well, by the same logic you could argue the reason this sort of thing keeps happening is because so many on the Labour right refuse to denounce clearly bad behaviour by the US, UK, Israel, or others despite loudly proclaiming their support for human rights, international law, and their own ideological faction's ethical superiority.

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Saw some stuff on the leftwing UK twitter accounts I follow about some dumb movement to call Starmer "Keith Starmer" because he has apparently betrayed Labour ideals so greatly that he has no right to use the same name as Keir Hardie.

Not going to lie I thought it was a parody at first. Some of these people have go so far into Inside Baseball (to use an American term) on these intra-party fights

Keith is a weird nickname. I'm more sickened by people like Ash Sarkar (former Corbyn media outrider) taking the "racism against Jews isn't that bad" line:

https://twitter.com/ayocaesar/status/1329557930773983234?s=21

Must have been something you ate, then, because Sarkar's article doesn't take that line in any way.

The gist of piece is that the contention 'no other minority would have been treated this way' - meaning antisemitism being ignored by Labour/lefties - is false, and Sarkar offers clear and substantial evidence to corroborate that point. She also argues that the focus on antisemitism (which she never says is inappropriate, for the record) has sucked up a lot of oxygen in the political debate about racism, which is as undeniable as it is depressing.

The tweet quotation of John Morgan (not a reliable commentator in this) is from the article's preamble, laying out why many on the left found it difficult to muster the same outrage against antisemitism as they did other forms of racism. Indeed, Sarkar evinces a nuanced and deft understand of racism/antisemitism throughout the piece. I was particularly impressed with her observation that Islamophobia in the Labour Party is always portrayed as isolated cases - 'a few bad tweets' - and never connected to structural and policy issues that clearly fed such prejudices, namely the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

And yes, Keith Starmer is a silly way to insult him, though I suppose it evokes the dweeby middle manager aesthetic that Starmer gives off.

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It's pretty grossly inappropriate given that Jewish people in the United Kingdom (and even more so in certain other European countries!) are disproportionately likely to be the victims of racist violence. I'm not sure if having a higher than average income and being more likely to own ones own business - hardly distinctively Jewish characteristics amongst British minorities I must note - necessarily makes up for the very real fear that being aware of that fact inevitably brings. Let alone being unfortunate enough for it to happen to you. Different minorities face different forms of prejudice, and the old Marxist argument that severity can only truly be understood in terms of the material impact (that nasty old line of Luxemburg's and so on) would be bad enough in any context - few arguments have been more thoroughly discredited by subsequent events - but is particularly grotesque in this context, where the lazy recourse to that argument can be shown to be one of the motive factors in furthering the whole damned problem. And that is the other issue: the reason why there has been so much focus on antisemitism recently is because of a public scandal involving antisemitism in a certain large national institution...

Which was precisely the point of Shakar's piece: Muslim and Black Britons experience severe economic discrimination, excessive state/police oppression, and exhibit health outcomes far worse than Jewish Britons do. (Muslims are also *far* more likely to be the victims of hate crimes than Jewish people are. I'm not aware of evidence regarding violence specifically). Yet, those problems have been habitually ignored by the British media, political parties of all stripes. To argue that only Jewish people have had discrimination against them dismissed is patently false.

Tendentiously arguing that Shakar was merely spouting simplistic Marxist ideology doesn't help anything. Her argument is much more sophisticated than that.

Lisa Nandy got herself in a bit of trouble (but phrased it differently & has a lot more goodwill among the Jewish Labour movement) for saying something slighty like that; I don't understand the need for people to continue trying to debate the semantics of this; we saw it in 2018 and we saw it in 2019 & it doesn't serve any purpose.

But yes Sarkar doesn't exactly have a great record on this subject.

It's not a semantic argument and it serves a vital purpose. To allow misapprehension, disinformation, and nonsense arguments about racism to go unchallenged just perpetuates the same ignorance that racism itself feeds on. Shakar (and Nandy for that matter) are correct, even if their observations are unfashionable at the moment.

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Corbyn's leadership not only ignored the media, it was handing them ammunition with unforced errors and gaffes.

Well yeah, though that was partly a consequence of not being bothered by them.

Yes, it led to a certain arrogance and then to sloppiness. But Labour's press management has been very poor since - we might as well be honest about this - Campbell left his post. Corbyn era an absolute nadir, but not something that came out of nowhere.

No doubt about the Corbyn era media strategy and its ultimately fatal shortcomings, but I think the process is a two-way street. Pretty much every major media outlet became a shade more hostile to Labour after 2007: The Telegraph/DM/Times went from unsupportive to vituperative; the BBC went from ambivalent to skeptical; the Guardian went from supportive to ambivalent. No matter how well or badly Labour's leadership ran the party, or how un/popular the party's leader/positions were with the public, or how savvy its media team was, the overall reception was tepid at best.

Also, again not letting Corbyn off the hook, but I think his arrival pushed each media outlet another step or two further toward knee-jerk anti-Labour hostility.

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Yes, but it was the Cooper campaign that was responsible for the galaxy-brain move of ensuring that a certain somebody made the ballot, and it was the Cooper campaign that was responsible for a certain whipped stance on a certain parliamentary vote; both moves designed to wreck Burnham's campaign. Which, I suppose, they did. However...

Oh god I forgot that- probably the most stupid decision ever taken by a Labour leader. Although I do take an even more revisionist view that Harriet was by far the least qualified to win the 2007 deputy leadership race.

I still know people who try and defend that decision- it was an absolutely heartless and god awful policy that hurt Labour voters & the idea that abstaining actually won anybody who buys into those myths is bonkers.

It was the classic case in Labour of over-steering as irrc (?) Harriet partly thought she was trying to stop a repeat of her previous spell as Acting Leader where people thought Labour failed to tackle 'Labour ran up the credit card claim'.(I've never bought that it was actually that summer that doomed us but I digress)

It was at that moment that I first appreciated Sadiq Khan's skill as a politician; he'd already quit as a member of the Frontbench & was free to break the whip- and then easily won the London Selection for Mayor.

I'm not 100% sure Andy would have won if he'd quit; the Corbyn surge had already begun to take off but there's certainly a strong argument that it would have allowled him to re-shape the whole race- after that vote it was purely a case of 'three soulless New Labour SPADs v this harmless backbencher'.

On reflection I can't work out if it was Andys genuine loyality to the party and process (his stubborn refusal to resign in 2016 supports this) or whether he was having his ear bended by those on the right who were running his campaign- the PLP really was a nest of vipers in this era.

Kendall never thought she could win IIRC? She was just running a factional campaign to keep the right in the conversation.

I always assumed it was an effort by the ultras on the right to stop Chukka- who was seen as the moderniser in the race but funnily enough was seen as too left wing by some due to his connection with Ed M and the fact that he actually beat the right to win the streatham selection (he beat noted leftist Steve Reed- isn't Labour politics brilliant at times?)

It also just seemed like a general profile boosting run; Andy Burnham did one in 2010 (he was the most right wing in 2010!) and Lisa Nandy was in a way doing the same this year.

It's ashame as Kendall is actually a very talented MP and member of the Frontbench- she seems like a completely different person to the one who said that cutting corporation tax was inspirational & told an audience of young BAME activists that we need to actually talk about white boys in school.

I mean, there was Iraq ...

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An interesting view; as always it was interesting to read Stephen Bush's responses to his article where he said was unsure how much of this was boredom (journos can't write Labour splits story or Keir cleans house anymore & need something to do), people in the party egging it on (who believe they should be in the shadow cabinet) or just general weakness in Keir's team.

It's interesting that this appears to have been briefed by people in the Shadow Cabinet.

My only mild annoyance is towards people from all wings of the party who seem to be convinced that there's some sort of alternative in the wings...

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2021/02/consensus-forming-among-commentariat-keir-starmer-not-job-does-it-matter

The part about politicians getting absurdly restless and desperate to talk about anything/give their opinions on how things *ought to be done* to anyone strikes me as pretty accurate.

Personally I feel the line about Starmer "stalling" given elections and campaigns right now are, much like the rest of our lives, stalled. Seems like these takes can wait until the May elections, can't they?

The campaign period is only 7 weeks away now. If there's a problem with the leader, his team, or their strategy, now would be the time to air it.

There's definitely some truth to the perception of politics being in limbo until the pandemic has abated*. But the problems Starmer's having with his image and party/policy management go deeper than this. In the eyes of most voters (or, at any rate, the most relevant voters) he's still basically just the empty suit that Labour put in charge after the election disaster. He doesn't have much to define him otherwise - personal charisma, an ideological bent, a compelling backstory, etc. For the membership and activists trying to sell him and his 'vision' to the public, his foot dragging on policy has made this unenviable task even harder.

Of course, he's sort of in a catch-22 on that last point. The policies the new leadership are keen to enact are the regressive sorts they think will play in the 'red wall' seats, but are loathed by most of the membership, while the policies popular with the membership are Corbyn-style big gestures that Starmer is desperately trying to distance himself from.



*I suspect there will be a notable change in polling and attitudes once the vaccinations are all done and that that will become the new status quo until the election, barring something major happening

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Though a more optimistic alternative reading might be "Starmer wants to offer at least some of the big stuff that Corbyn did, but believes that will only be feasible once a sufficient number of people have been persuaded that the party he leads isn't a bunch of weirdos who hate this country".

Btw those saying Labour want to win over "Red Wall pensioners" aren't quite right - it is recognised that many in this group are lost to the left for good. Its actually the middle aged (ie 40s and 50s) who are the demographically crucial grouping. Quite a few of these actually voted Labour in 2017, only to recoil from their offering two years later.

So long as Starmer and the rest of Labour's current leadership keep accepting - or do nothing to refute/transcend - the underlying premise of the framing that Corbyn and his supporters were 'weirdos who hate this country', Labour will not return to government, and deservedly so.

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Though a more optimistic alternative reading might be "Starmer wants to offer at least some of the big stuff that Corbyn did, but believes that will only be feasible once a sufficient number of people have been persuaded that the party he leads isn't a bunch of weirdos who hate this country".

Btw those saying Labour want to win over "Red Wall pensioners" aren't quite right - it is recognised that many in this group are lost to the left for good. Its actually the middle aged (ie 40s and 50s) who are the demographically crucial grouping. Quite a few of these actually voted Labour in 2017, only to recoil from their offering two years later.

So long as Starmer and the rest of Labour's current leadership keep accepting - or do nothing to refute/transcend - the underlying premise of the framing that Corbyn and his supporters were 'weirdos who hate this country', Labour will not return to government, and deservedly so.

Yes, the only way for Labour to return to government is argue with the public that Corbynism Was Good. Really?

Differentiating the party from the most unpopular opposition leader since records began is what any new leadership would be doing in their first year. Including RLB's team, if she had won.  

I'm not saying the new leadership shouldn't try to differentiate itself. I'm saying it needs to be willing to challenge conventional wisdom and their own (mis)conceptions - about Corbyn and much else about British politics - if it wants to succeed.  

From the moment Corbyn took over the party, the old guard of Blair/Brownites - the people who are in charge again under Starmer - insisted Corbyn's policies and style of leadership would be a disaster and rejected by the public. They operated off the underlying premise that Corbynism, in the sense of a non-neoliberal/New Labour style of left wing policy proposals, was the pipe dream of a 'bunch of weirdos who hate this country'. But then in 2017 Labour gained votes, seats, and percentage of the electorate at a rate not seen since 2001. Like it or not, and to the immense chagrin of the old guard, it turned out the only style of politics that had Labour make *any* meaningful gains against the Tories in the past 15 years was Corbynism.

Obviously, the 2019 election belies this narrative, not least because Corbyn as a political personality/caricature got completed monstered in the ensuing two years (thank you, British media*). But I'd argue that disaster had at least as much to do with the recalcitrant Labour centre's refusal to grant Corbyn or his policy/ideological perspective the endorsement and symbolic capital that his electoral success in 2017 ought to have earned him. Had the old guard had the humility to admit *their* style of politics was the one that was out of step - and that Corbyn's supporters/policies were not something aberrant or traitorous - events would have turned out quite differently.

That, of course, is history. But my point is a key lesson of the recent past is that Labour's not going to get back into government until it gets its factions - all of them - to sing from the same song sheet. Uncomfortable though it may be for Starmer and his team, he won't be able to do that without challenging the received wisdom about Corbyn and the nature of his appeal.


*And Corbyn and his team, to be clear. They could and should have done better.

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So is Starmer ultimately going to have to sack a certain somebody just like Corbyn did?

I wish I was smart enough to get this reference!

*Edit: does it rhyme with Fat McPadden?

I might be a bit of a wet wipe but I've never understood people in the Labour party who seem to enjoy briefing on background against the leader who they're serving on the front-bench?

I understand why you'd do it to win a certain policy dispute or to defend yourself but it always just felt like these people should actually be doing something. (I had the same view of those briefing against Corbyn in 2015- it was time that could have been spent actually helping organise the opposition to him rather than just talking to a journalist imo)

Or, y'know, trying to get Labour back into government ...

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So is Starmer ultimately going to have to sack a certain somebody just like Corbyn did?

I wish I was smart enough to get this reference!

*Edit: does it rhyme with Fat McPadden?

I might be a bit of a wet wipe but I've never understood people in the Labour party who seem to enjoy briefing on background against the leader who they're serving on the front-bench?

I understand why you'd do it to win a certain policy dispute or to defend yourself but it always just felt like these people should actually be doing something. (I had the same view of those briefing against Corbyn in 2015- it was time that could have been spent actually helping organise the opposition to him rather than just talking to a journalist imo)

Or, y'know, trying to get Labour back into government ...

But they were never going to do that were they?

A lot of the Labour Left have actually seemed to get that message & have tried to organise- in the same way that LOTO in 2015 didn't want or expect Michael Dugher to be on the airwaves defending Corbyn, I doubt that LOTO wants or expects Jon Trickett to be doing it this time around.

I mean, they're part of the same party and they're aligned in their interest in wanting to return to government. It really shouldn't be too much to ask that they can be expected to sing from the same song sheet to the press, especially when, like Dugher, your putative opponent puts you in the shadow cabinet.

But maybe you're right. Imagine being a Labour MP and actually trying to get a Labour government elected!

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An interesting article; the only part I agree with is about people briefing.

I'm not sure of the relevance of 'sack them if they've got a low profile'... when the reason they've got a low profile is because they've been in office for 10 months during a time when it's impossible to make news & LOTO has generally restricted them from making flashy policies.

I'm also not really sure who the alternative is; the people on the backbenches who could serve are either hated by the public or are frankly junior & mid-level officals from the dying days of the Brown era.


https://labourlist.org/2021/02/starmer-has-the-right-strategy-now-he-needs-a-bold-and-ruthless-reshuffle/

Yeah, someone needs to explain to McNicholas that, no matter how hard he tries, it's never going to be 1997 again.

I'm not even sure the premise of his analysis is correct. Starmer's strategy (to the extent he's got one) hasn't been about persuasion over mobilization so much as it's been about style over substance. He's not trying to persuade anyone of anything. He's just trying to make a big show of how Labour isn't incompetent or scary.

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Starmer's big speech on the economy today. Some of the uber-online left doing their best to get very upset about it, but arguably the continuities with the previous regime clearly outweigh the departures.

Seems like they had good reason to be derisive. Even the Guardian is struggling to put a happy face on it.

"... he was careful to promise that good government must be the partner of good business, not its enemy."

Could have been written by the Daily Mail.

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https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1362377275380015108?ref_src=twsrc%5Etf...

And the crowd goes wild ...

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https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1362377275380015108?ref_src=twsrc%5Etf...

And the crowd goes wild ...

What did you make of Corbyn's minus 60 leadership ratings, then?

Alternatively, cherry picking poll stats is an inherently bad faith way of arguing and to be avoided.

Well, since you asked, I'd say they're the sort of straw one grasps at when trying to distract attention away from information one finds difficult to swallow ...

At some point, Labour has to realise that it cannot change society to fit itself. This pandemic has exposed a rotten core in much of Western society and it will need a lot of work to fix.

This really is the crux of the matter. Starmer's team and the Labour right more generally have little to unite them besides a pathological loathing of Corbyn and the politics he represented*. They have no agenda for reform, indeed no intellectual justification for reform at all; they want a restoration, not a change.

Unfortunately for them, the kind of politics they wish to restore has been unviable since the GFC and has a dwindling constituency of support among voters. For those voters, anything's preferable to going back to neoliberal centrism, even the much more radical proposals emanating from the far right, despicable though they may be. The only counterproposal along those lines to show any glimmer of wider popularity recently was Corbyn in 2015-2017. If Starmer and his confederates want to do better, they'd do well to bear that in mind.

*Hence the bewildered hand-wringing over Starmer's anemic poll numbers. I think for a lot of this set, they figured being 'not-Corbyn' would be enough to get them 30 points ahead.