The Left has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity — we need the best candidate
There is a widespread assumption among commentators of all political stripes that Corbyn’s leadership constitutes a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the left.
Should he be deposed, the narrative goes, Labour would return to the Blairite comfort zone of the PLP, complete with all the associated spin, technocratic managerialism, and unquestioned neoliberal assumptions about how the world works and what the electorate wants.
Consequently, the Labour left—including the vast majority of its grassroots membership—is expected to emphatically re-elect the leader that Labour MPs overwhelmingly want to remove.
But there is also a danger for the left here: if Corbyn is the wrong candidate, if he is simply not up to the job, then we are about to squander this once-in-a-generation opportunity.
Should Corbyn lose the next election, the defeat will discredit us and our ideas, and embolden the careerists and architects of despair within the Labour Party to install another Blair.
The post-Brexit landscape presents possibilities for left-wing politics that are unrivalled in recent British political history.
The Leave campaign inspired vast swathes of disillusioned voters with a message of social justice, albeit it directed their righteous indignation towards the European Union, rather than the Westminster politicians who bear much of the blame for decades of underinvestment in public services and damaging social inequality.
The shock of the referendum result has detonated the case for austerity, as well as the career of its chief architect George Osborne.
We on the left need to ask ourselves: in Corbyn, do we have a leader ready to seize this opportunity? Or are we about to pass up on the best chance of radical change many of us have seen in our lifetimes?
This, then, is the left-wing case against Corbyn.
Corbyn and his team alienate their natural allies
True, some of the PLP have never accepted Corbyn’s victory. But looking at the list of MPs who resigned from the shadow cabinet, what is striking is that they came from all parts of the Party, both the New Labour right and the new generation left.
While all Blairites oppose Corbyn, this does not mean that all of Corbyn’s opponents are Blairite. Many Labour MPs genuinely wanted to give Corbyn a chance; many of those genuinely wanted him to succeed. Once these individuals start to say he is not up to the job, it is time for a rethink.
The same pattern of disillusionment can be found outside the PLP. The journalist Owen Jones and the tax activist Richard Murphy, both of whom shared a platform with Corbyn during his leadership campaign, have voiced serious doubts about his leadership – and been trolled for their troubles.
Two of Corbyn’s Economic Advisory Committee have resigned, and all its remaining members criticised the leadership’s performance during the EU referendum.
Corbyn is unable to reach out to a wider audience.
There is a broad constituency for Corbyn’s rejection of austerity, his resistance to cruel cuts to tax credits and disability benefits, his refusal to countenance the pointless academisation of state schools.
By contrast, his support for unilateral nuclear disarmament, unrestricted immigration from EU member states, and withdrawal from NATO is anathema to many voters. Corbyn is all too willing to allow his more controversial views the same amount of air-time as ideas that have genuinely wide-ranging appeal.
He refuses to downplay some of his long-held beliefs, even when doing so would make the achievement of other more important objectives more likely. To admirers, this is evidence of the seriousness of his convictions, and a refreshing lack of spin.
To the wider electorate, it shows a staggering inability to prioritise. A left-wing leader that was able to decide which parts of her platform were vital and which were dispensable, or who simply had fewer controversial commitments in the first place, would stand a much better chance at winning over a sceptical population in the face of a hostile media.
Corbyn has shown minimal interest in revamping left-wing solutions to deal with 21st-century problems
One of many depressing consequences of the New Labour era is that the idea of modernisation itself has become discredited, synonymous with selling out to the right.
However, Corbyn’s statist solutions, in which the nationalisation of industry features heavily, run a risk of centralisation and bureaucratisation that will frustrate rather than fulfil the hopes and aspirations of the working class.
There are ways that the left could empower workers: look at the ideas of stakeholder capitalism and workplace democracy that did the rounds in the 1990s, before Blair decided they sounded too much like socialism.
There are ways that the left could liberate working people from the necessity of work: for example, through the introduction of a Universal Basic Income. But these ideas remain underdeveloped by Corbyn and his team, to the extent that they are being considered at all.
A year ago, I was Corbyn-curious. But because of his inability to win over his natural allies, his inability to speak to the priorities of the wider public, and his inability to face up to the challenges of a post-industrial era, I no longer believe that he can win a general election.
This does not mean that the left is doomed: it just means that we need to find a different candidate.
Principle and competence are not mutually exclusive. Anyone who believes that they are has unwittingly bought in to the foundational assumption of Blairism.
We on the left should know better than that
Neil James writes about British politics and international affairs
17 Responses to “Corbyn is not the Labour left’s only hope”
Michael WALKER
The Tories hope Corbyn will remain as Leader of the PLP.
Bad for our democracy as he’s a rubbish Opposition Leader – but good for them..
Alex Wilson
When we have the first true Keynesian socialist leader since Attlee, you attack him. You are no friend of workers or the left.
David Lindsay
Owen Pfizer is obviously a decoy to make even Angela Hawk appear at least relatively left-wing. But we are now living in an age when the private health industry, openly and without artifice, fields its own candidate for the office of Leader of the Labour Party. And no one in the official media considers that worth raising with him. It is just par for the course. As is the fact that NHS privatisation could never happen in Owen Smith’s own constituency, which is in Wales. Meanwhile, the man who is already privatising the English NHS in the interests of his and Smith’s past, present and future employers survives as Secretary of State for Health. Even while so many of his Cabinet colleagues are sacked that those now comprise the Government’s majority in the House of Commons. What a time to be alive.
Hospital consultants do not grow on trees. Every one of them in this country has earned that eminence while also owing it to vast expenditure on the part of the National Health Service. For all its many faults, private education is not the kind of complete parasite on the State that private healthcare is. Moreover, it has produced many of the best of the Labour Party, of the wider Labour Movement, and of the wider Left. A left-wing politician or “commentator” (I dislike that word in this context), as distinct from a common or garden Labour machine politician or attendant journalist, is vastly more likely to be invited to address a private Sixth Form than to address a state one. Indeed, the best-known such figures are invited to address private Sixth Forms on a very regular basis, and they do so.
It is Labour’s greatest achievement that if any one of us were hit by a car, or had a heart attack in the street, then someone, even a perfect stranger, would dial 999 without a second thought, and an NHS ambulance would take us to an NHS hospital. Even if we had all the private health insurance in the world. And doesn’t the private health industry know it? Therefore, at this very moment, in the persons of Owen Smith and Reg Race, that industry is mounting an aggressive attempt to take over the Leadership of the Labour Party. It intends to turn that party into the vehicle for the privatisation of the NHS in England, which is the only part of the United Kingdom where that could ever be attempted.
Initially, that would be by non-resistance to the schemes and activities of Jeremy Hunt. But the intention is to return to the days of Tony Blair’s and Alan Milburn’s “radicalism”, and then to surpass even that. We must be anything but non-resistant. Defending Jeremy Corbyn is the only healthy option.
Ishmael
You headlined the Corbyn is not the labour left’s only hope, yet you backed away from suggesting an alternative. Is it because you can’t think of one?
Susan Thomas
Jeremy may have made mistakes, but I have watched him speak in parliament and he is getting better. He has challenged and defeated the chancellor on working tax credits, child benefit, disability benefit. The only thing I could criticize is he does not follow through when Cameron failed to answer the question, he did not challenge him enough, but that could change with time. The article states that there are other left candidates who have resigned from the shadow cabinet, but who are they. Angela eagle says she is left , but voted for the Iraq war, Tuition fees, abstained on Austerity policies when Harriet Harman was temporary leader of the party. Owen Smith claims to be leftist , but when questioned on disability benefit by a member he was not sympathetic. So who else can stand. The Labour party needs to reform or it is dead in the water.I am old Labour and I can relate to this man. There has been talk of a Universal Basic Income of 100.00 per week by John Mcdonnel. I have not heard Jeremy discuss NATO and has recently reached out to socialists within the European Union . He has even reached out to the coup MP`s and is willing to talk to them.