Labour Party members could be forgiven for thinking there is an election coming. After all, that’s usually the time when Labour’s right-wing MPs start to make more efforts to undermine the leadership. Off they all go, crowding into TV studios, to get the maximum number of interviews. And as ever, the issue is the alleged tsunami of “anti-Semitism” in the Labour Party.
The latest trick is for the Parliamentary Labour Party, attended by the general secretary Jennie Formby, to discuss a resolution tabled by MP Catherine McKinnell, demanding to know “specific details about how many people were being investigated, how many letters had been written to those accused telling to them to desist and what punishments had been given.” (BBC website). As intended, there is then a “stormy” PLP meeting, followed by a queue of right-wing MPs expressing their faux “outrage” and giving their all to anyone who will listen, especially the BBC and the anti-Labour press. Cue Margaret Hodge: “The general secretary of the Labour Party wasn’t prepared to give us the information that was required in the resolution.” Cue Luciana Berger: “no answers were given”. Cue Wes Streeting: the meeting was “far from acceptable”. And so on, and so on.
Whatever the Labour NEC and Jeremy Corbyn does is never enough for the right-wing of the Parliamentary Labour Party, and it will never be enough. It is a simple trick: pose an impossible demand and when it isn’t granted, complain loud and long. As we have argued, anti-Semitism has only ever been a pretext for undermining the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and attempting to roll back the radicalisation of the Labour membership. These MPs have never been reconciled and will never be reconciled to a mass-membership and leftward-moving Labour Party. Given the appalling history of the Jewish people, they believe that in the “anti-Semitism” charge they have hit on a gold-plated moral club with which to beat the leadership.
Some political opinions are deemed unacceptable
For these MPs, it is enough that an accusation is made for any targeted Party member to be deemed guilty and then to face suspension or expulsion. As a result, all kinds of spurious accusations have been and are being levelled at Party members whose only ‘crime’ is to be critical of the policies of the state of Israel. There is always a blizzard of spurious accusations of anti-Semitism whenever there is a wave of criticism directed at the state of Israel over its policies towards Palestinians.
The outcome to which Labour’s right-wing are working is a wholesale suspension of left activists from Party membership. To deny that there is a special anti-Semitism problem in the Party is even equated with Holocaust-denial, when there is no connection or similarity between the two. Thus, to have a certain point of view is deemed unacceptable. To argue, as we have done, that there is no special anti-Semitism problem in the Labour Party and that it is a pretext to undermine Corbyn would in itself be grounds for suspension, if the right-wing had their way.
The Parliamentary Labour Party is still dominated by its Blairite wing – and even that epithet, although accurate (given that most right-wing MPs were first selected in the Blair years) is grounds for suspension in some eyes. These MPs really believe that their opinions and wishes should outweigh those of more than half a million Party members and more than the annual conference. Their meeting this week had the brass neck to demand confidential information about accusations and internal party inquiries that is not even given to the Labour Party membership or its national conference and then they pretend to be outraged when Jennie Formby refuses to give it.
Leadership and Momentum opposed open selection
In the longer run, many of these Labour MPs will split from the Party, once they see that they cannot roll it back to the Blair years. If the Labour leadership around Jeremy Corbyn has made a mistake, it is in trying to appease them. They will not be appeased and weakness towards them only invites further aggression. When the Labour Party conference discussed ‘open selection’ last year in Liverpool, conference had an opportunity to change the constitution so that all sitting Labour MPs would face an open selection process in their CLPs and there would therefore no longer be any candidates-for-life. Unfortunately, the Labour leadership rejected that option and the conference went along with their choice.
The Momentum leadership also refused to support open selection, although two thirds of constituency delegates (many of them Momentum members) voted for it. As it has learned to do with consummate skill, the national leadership of Momentum has managed to straddle the fence and avoid taking a principled view on this new row in the parliamentary party. Their statement yesterday referred to the “numerous cases of anti-Semitism” in the Party and alleged that the Party had failed to deal with them in a “sufficiently decisive, swift and transparent manner.” But it also grudgingly admitted that some of Jeremy Corbyn’s political opponents were “opportunistically using this issue as a way to undermine his leadership.” This is a masterful understatement.
The row in the Parliamentary Labour Party has to be seen in context. Around the whole issue of Brexit, there is an air of gloom and doom within the Tory Government, as it totters aimlessly towards crisis. The Tory Party will split on the issue in the coming months and one of the possible safe ‘exit doors’ that the Government are looking at is the one pointing towards the right wing of the PLP.
Break-away Blairite Party
Theresa May might attempt to cobble together a majority for her deal – or any deal – by peeling away some Labour MPs from the Parliamentary Labour Party. Former Labour MP (now ‘independent’ member for Barrow) John Woodcock, openly admits to having discussions about the formation of a break-away Blairite party, along with right-wing Labour MPs. There are rumours of secret discussions going on between Tory MPs and Labour MPs about ‘cross-party’ agreements.
The row this week in the PLP over “anti-Semitism” has to be seen in this light, therefore, because many of those shouting loudest about in the closed meeting of the PLP and afterwards are the same MPs who will the first to jump ship. There will be no stampede of Party members following them and, hopefully, there will then follow an opportunity for other Labour candidates to be selected in their seats. Candidates who are more in keeping with the aspirations of the Party membership and working class people as a whole.
February 5, 2019
