This Once Great Movement Of Ours

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People have been doing the same ad nauseam with Boris Johnson and he isn't as universally reviled as Corbyn. I think it's because has some redeeming features - humourous, intelligent, annoys the right people - which Corbyn didn't have.

Yeah, you're kind of proving my point. The chorus about Johnson has always included those 'redeeming features' - again, irrespective of whether or not they are 'true' - and for that reason he has prospered well beyond what his many shortcomings would have foretold. By contrast, it's not that Corbyn lacked 'redeeming' features. In private, journalists and voters alike invariably commented on how mild-mannered, charming, and empathetic he came off. It's that those aspects of his personality were never accentuated, nevermind repeated ad nauseum, by the people/institutions necessary to effect a public image that was more redeemable.

I sort of agree. For one thing, though, those attacks wouldn't have struck a chord if they didn't have some basis in reality - Corbyn, to many, was a revulsive character regardless of what the Daily Mail said. I do think that most people who like Boris are aware of his flaws but don't particularly care about them - who cares if he lies a bit, disrupts norms, isn't very competent: he's a politician and people have come to expect this (obviously I disagree). People did go on about how nice "Jeremy" was; this grandfatherly figure, but his perceived flaws where ones which the general public strongly disliked (seen as anti-Britain for example), whereas Boris' flaws people have stopped caring about; indeed managing to annoy the "pundits" and the Guardian is a strength.

If that's the relevant criterion for excusable flaws, Corbyn would have been the *most* popular politician! Also, saying that Corbyn was 'repulsive' (lol) regardless of what the DM wrote conveniently ignores the fact that virtually no one outside of Labour had heard of Corbyn until the DM and the rest of the print/broadcast media began coverage of his ascent to the Labour leadership, which was characterized from the outset by demonization.

Point being, neither Corbyn's, Johnson's, nor any other national politician's alleged 'flaws' need to be rooted in 'truth' to be repeated ad nauseum. What ends up catching on - and retroactively (mis)remembered as 'striking a chord' - depends more on the depth of conformity to a given line taken by major media outlets and culturally/socially connected hangers on. Johnson's clubbable bigot shtick is more compatible with that narrow elite's priorities and mindset than Corbyn's radicalism is, so Johnson was able to get a favourable portrayal of his 'flaws' (and supposed virtues) compared to Corbyn. Case in point: recall way the media completely glossed over Johnson's long history of using antisemitic tropes in his books and speeches.

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People have been doing the same ad nauseam with Boris Johnson and he isn't as universally reviled as Corbyn. I think it's because has some redeeming features - humourous, intelligent, annoys the right people - which Corbyn didn't have.

Cynically, his main "redeeming feature" compared to Corbyn is that he has lots of the media on side.

Agreed, though I think it's uncharitable to say that's a cynical read. It's undeniably true. What it points to, depressingly, is how difficult it is in the UK at the moment to distinguish between having the media on side by dint of good politicking and merely being the beneficiary of incestuous affection from likeminded powerful toffs.

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What about Starmers treatment by the media compared to Corbyn's?

Less overt hostility and sneering condescension from supposedly liberal outlets like the Guardian. Lots of fluff pieces about "cleaning up" Labour (read: expelling the left, sucking up to the City, 'dealing' with supposed antisemitism) all around. Aside from that, the usual Tory rags are all basically as slanted as they've been since 2007.

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Centrists are actually much keener on a major purge of the left from Labour's ranks (this would mean actual mass expulsions btw, not the largely tokenistic even if symbolic measures just announced by the party) than the right, on the whole. Which maybe tells its own story.

I guess they figure if they expel enough of them the party will finally choose the right brother.

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This was always inevitable

The 2015-20 period (particularly the last half) will be a nasty lightening rod as far as Labour Party discussions go for quite a while, yes.

But my point was about the perception of plausibility. Attacks that work best are the ones that people think sound as if they must be true, that chime with existing preconceptions, biases and prejudices. Attempts to claim or imply links to the KGB or other Warsaw Pact agencies never flew and were never going to, but 'he supported the IRA!'... ah.

Though the latter reminds us of a further caveat: a poorly chosen tone can wreck (temporarily) an attack that, in theory, should be effective. Attempts by the Conservatives to bring up Corbyn's Northern Irish baggage in 2017 failed as they made the completely insane decision to argue them from a Unionist perspective, a huge mistake given the unpopularity of Irish Unionism in Great Britain.

Isn't this entirely circular logic? The attacks that land are only deemed plausible - that's to say, in accord with people's prejudices - after they've landed, no matter how hyperbolic or disingenuous the accusations were to begin with. A better indicator of which smears against Corbyn cut through is how well coordinated the guilty parties generating the smears happened to be.  

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A rather impressive analysis, this.

I think he places the value of constitutional reform a bit too far down, but he's rightly put his finger on how vapid the progressive alliance/PR proposals are in the absence of a comprehensive and transformative political programme for when (if?) Labour takes power again.

I also appreciate the tonic antidote this provides to the insipid 'Labour owes more to Methodism than Marx' interpretation of history that's so popular among the more shallow thinkers of the party/media.

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Maybe it's just an aesthetic preference, but I thought the 'Top Ten List' format was gimmicky and made it hard to take anything in the article seriously. Like James Mills said, it seemed more like the kind of thing you cobble together from floor scraps to meet a deadline before a long weekend.

To the extent it should be taken seriously, the article betrayed the perennial flaw of just not wanting to look seriously at Corbyn or the movement/politics he inspired. That cuts both ways. There were all kinds of missteps Corbyn made, but the article's only criticisms of him are the platitudes about being too radical or not dealing with antisemitism that betray a rather skewed/factional perspective of his tenure.

Conversely, the article only pays lip service to the critique that New Labour, and especially its economic policies, was built on a flawed foundation that wasn't sustainable past 2007. Perhaps an 11th decision point should have been the day the PLP decided to challenge Corbyn's leadership after the referendum instead of cluing in to the fact that, after two 'surprise' results, they clearly didn't understand nearly as much about winning elections in the UK as they thought they did.

There also isn't any mention of the international parallels to Labour's trajectory over the past 20 (40?) years, repetition of the 'they chose the wrong brother' grift at least twice, and ignorance of (as user:Blair points out) extra-parliamentary political developments on the left.

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The hypothesis fits the information that we have and nothing else does.

I might be missing something, but isn't it a fallacy to base an argument about turnout off of the number of dead voters?

I don't mean to be rude, but I think you've not thought this argument through. Turnout drops in the UK in the 90s occurred across age cohorts; even the *living* 65+ y/o voters showed up less after 1992. Also, declines in turnout occurred during the 90s and 00s almost everywhere: in the US, UK, Canada, NZ, France (started in the 80s, actually), and even Australia (it was, like, 1 point, but still). If your theory of generational replacement were true - and we're talking about voter age cohort proportions and not turnout because, again, dead people don't vote no matter what the GOP says - then you'd see proportional drops in each country depending on life expectancy and age/population distribution.*

For the hell of it, as an alternative theory based on a modicum of statistical data, perhaps it's the *other* side of the generational span that's the culprit? Starting after the Cold War young people didn't become first time voters the way preceding generations did. That's born out by age-bracketed turnout data in the UK and Canada, but admittedly a lot more analysis would be needed to offer a serious argument.

As for Corbyn, he was clearly closer to the 'right answer' (whatever that's supposed to mean) to the question posed by the collapse of late 20th/early 21st century neoliberalism than the Labour right or the Lib Dems or the Greens or even the pre-UKIP-absorption Tories were able to offer - he did get 40% of the vote, after all. If the pearl clutching centrists of 2015-2017 had had the humility to stop looking down their noses at him, they might have had a chance to use Corbyn to preserve the world they built - and have subsequently lost.

*Also, your subsequent attribution of the pre-baby boom generation's high turnout to formative experiences instilling hostility to 'populism' seems more like wishful thinking (or is it projection?)

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The hypothesis fits the information that we have and nothing else does.

I might be missing something, but isn't it a fallacy to base an argument about turnout off of the number of dead voters?

I don't mean to be rude, but I think you've not thought this argument through. Turnout drops in the UK in the 90s occurred across age cohorts; even the *living* 65+ y/o voters showed up less after 1992. Also, declines in turnout occurred during the 90s and 00s almost everywhere: in the US, UK, Canada, NZ, France (started in the 80s, actually), and even Australia (it was, like, 1 point, but still). If your theory of generational replacement were true - and we're talking about voter age cohort proportions and not turnout because, again, dead people don't vote no matter what the GOP says - then you'd see proportional drops in each country depending on life expectancy and age/population distribution.*

For the hell of it, as an alternative theory based on a modicum of statistical data, perhaps it's the *other* side of the generational span that's the culprit? Starting after the Cold War young people didn't become first time voters the way preceding generations did. That's born out by age-bracketed turnout data in the UK and Canada, but admittedly a lot more analysis would be needed to offer a serious argument.

As for Corbyn, he was clearly closer to the 'right answer' (whatever that's supposed to mean) to the question posed by the collapse of late 20th/early 21st century neoliberalism than the Labour right or the Lib Dems or the Greens or even the pre-UKIP-absorption Tories were able to offer - he did get 40% of the vote, after all. If the pearl clutching centrists of 2015-2017 had had the humility to stop looking down their noses at him, they might have had a chance to use Corbyn to preserve the world they built - and have subsequently lost.

*Also, your subsequent attribution of the pre-baby boom generation's high turnout to formative experiences instilling hostility to 'populism' seems more like wishful thinking (or is it projection?)

This is a certified Labour Left moment. "the collapse of neoliberalism!" as Britons enjoy prosperity and wealth, "Corbyn got 40%," ignoring his 33% 2 years later. 

I do think this is a missing factor out of a lot of analaysis. Who were these 7% of voters who backed Corbyn in 2017 but left in 2020. In terms of seat Labour primarly shed working-class red wall seats but in popular conception it seems like most voters who left were pro-EU or middle-class voters disastifed with the parties ambigious brexit poistion.

From what I recall, Labour lost about equal parts of its 2017 vote to the Lib Dems and the Tories, but the biggest fall came from non-voters, i.e. 2017 Labour voters who just didn't turn up at all.

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Why would Starmer turn up and start shouting about the closed shop? It’s a policy that has never been seriously proposed in my lifetime!

https://mobile.twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1437815484162920448

Well, it ought to be. It's precisely the kind of labour legislation that needs to get considered if working people are ever going to get a real stake in governing again.

In any case, no matter how much of a vicious toad he may be, Harris kind of has a point. Everything Starmer's done to change his 'image' is just a warmed over version of the Kinnock playbook (no surprise considering who advising him). He's not doing anything to throw the Tories off their game or change the overriding dynamic of political discourse. He's playing it cautious, methodical, sensible, lawyerly and will do no better than Kinnock ever did because of it.

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Even for the Labour Party, this argument is stupid. How anyone could support such a democratically indefensible idea in the first place, never mind while simultaneously arguing for PR, more local control, and upgraded equality legislation, is baffling. The only people more witless than the supporters of these reforms are the ones who assert, apparently with sincerity, that it's something other than a factional power grab.

It does have the virtue of distracting attention away from the just released Starmer's missive, which is certainly to his benefit. I read "The Road Ahead" and, well, it's certainly well-meaning. Lots of pleasant sounding fluff and a distinct effort to avoid saying anything contentious. Mentions of Brexit/EU relations, foreign policy generally, racism/Islamaphobia/antisemitism, trans rights, or economic inequality at the upper end of society could be counted together on one hand. (He does find time to engage in culture war style fearmongering about crime and spends paragraphs condescending about nationalism, especially in Scotland; not a peep about Northern Ireland, of course).

The really telling part, to me, was the sycophantic passages about business and the concomitant patronizing about working class people 'unlocking opportunities'. If this is a real reflection of Starmer's views (I doubt it is; 'Sermon on the Mount by focus group' seems right on the nose), he seems to not understand where economic inequality is most obscenely skewed - at the top - or have any sense of why that is the case. He explicitly avoids discussing the dismantling of the postwar consensus by Thatcher and, less surprisingly, the complicity of (New) Labour in cementing that revolution. Consequently, nothing in the document portends a real reformist program. It's just more tinkering around the edges. A distinct lack of ambition - it could almost read as cowardice - about what a Labour party in power could or should do.

One last thing: twice Starmer talks about getting Britain ready for the '2030s'. I know it's meant to sound like sagacious long-term planning, but it comes off like he's resigned to the fact that Labour won't be back in power until then.

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Labour is embarassing-this conference looks like a mess without Starmer making a strong positive impression, just showing a divided and inward focused party. They are not showing the discipline that they should be in order to win. McDonald's sabotage is appalling behavior, but nobody has clean hands. Starmer better deliver a great speech and somehow set it right in those few minutes, but it's looking grim for him, Labour and the UK.

I do think you are being a bit over-dramatic.

And to the extent it *is* a bad conference, a lot of that is down to Starmer not being a good leader - though it does pain me to say it. The odds of him not being there come the next GE must be rather higher now than they were just a week or two ago.

Hate to say I told ya so

Bratty trolling aside, I actually thought this conference went about as well as Starmer could have hoped for. I'm still convinced he's too much of a cipher to effect any lasting change, not least the transformation of Labour from an opposition party to a governing one, but he's done a decent job of avoiding the worst possible scenario.

I also can't help but notice that the tradition of the triumphant faction changing the leadership rules has been maintained. If history serves as any guide, this will backfire spectacularly in a few years.

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Why would you follow Owen Jones? Regardless of how you feel about his politics, his Twitter timeline is just deeply tedious and self-regarding.

Because he's an erudite voice for the left in Britain and, self-evidently, an important one. Otherwise minor moments like this wouldn't be talked about so much.

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He didn’t happen to mention that the largest number come from Iran.

https://mobile.twitter.com/PressTV/status/1473211328986767366

Your point being?

I must say, it was refreshing to hear a Labour politician speak so unambiguously in defense of the rights of migrants. Shame we don't have a leader like that.

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Trans issues have become as much of a dividing line as the EU/anti-semitism were 16-19, perhaps more so as those issues have become less prominent. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were GC corbynites who backed Duffield, or indeed people to the right of her (since Duffield isn’t seen as on the right by the right) for the same reason. Whilst there will be plenty in the 65 who voted to trigger her who also backed Keir.

Agreed, not least because all three issues are cases where the British media (and chattering class more generally) have become utterly unhinged, bordering on disinformation, when reporting on the matter.

Why does the ‘foreign secretary’ of the left think the African Union or the League of Arab states is in any fit state to be a peace broker between Ukraine and Russia?

I have generally avoided relighting forever war mk.2 but stuff like this and his comments on A/S is why I have serious qualms about his suitability to be allowed in the PLP.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/02/jeremy-corbyn-urges-west-to-stop-arming-ukraine?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Serious qualms are often a result of harsh truths.

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NEC results out.

In the CLP section 4 to LTW, 3 to Momentum, 1 for CLPD and 1 Anne Black.

Previously suspended member of Jewish Voice for Labour, Momentum withdraw her from their slate earlier this year. Even by the standards of the Labour NEC, she’s pretty bad.

She’ll be out by the time the next elections role around, there’s no way she won’t back Corbyn as an independent in Islington.

Whether or not she does, the reaction from the usual dismal suspects points to the likelihood of Keir suspending/expelling her before she can even take her place on the NEC.