By Joe Langabeer, Lincoln Labour Member
Last Thursday, the review of the 2019 election defeat by Labour Together was published. This report was promised back in December; as to why it took this long to publish the report is a mystery, but it is now headed up by the tabloids. There is nothing new or controversial about the report. It does not offer any solutions in policy either.
Labour is being told “that there is a mountain to climb” and that is being echoed by some sections of the left as well. Whilst it may be true that Labour needs to work out some of its institutional systems, it is not as pessimistic as everyone points out. The pandemic has started to shift politics in a way that we have not seen in a long time. Neo-liberal economic handbooks are being thrown out the window.
With all this in question, why has this review not asked the fundamental questions about economic policy and resorted to catchphrases like “economic transformation”? A possible shift away from the policies of before? Perhaps, although that has only been evidenced by the rhetoric of Starmer’s less radical approach in his politics. This article is examining the Labour Review, discussing its flaws, and looking towards an actual economic solution that real socialism can offer.
Very little offered to take party forward
The foreword makes the bold statement that “Labour has a mountain to climb”. It also proposes that the Brexit debate, cultural divides and a negative view of the Labour Leadership helped the defeat of the party in 2019. It is all quite pessimistic and offers very little initiative into how this will all be achieved at this point.
Though it is discussed later, in the third section, the review suggests that a changing mood swing of Labour to Conservative was happening before Corbyn. The report also highlights the problems with losing many seats in Scotland, which is not a decline that can be laid at Corbyn’s door. One flaw that has already contradicted Starmer’s recent actions is the suggest need of building of “a culture of inclusion and diversity, generosity and teamwork”.
‘Culture’ is brought up a lot in this report and whilst it might be a good word to understand different movements, it has been used to the detriment of Starmer’s recent vilification of the Black Lives Matter movement and the tearing down of the statue of Edward Colston. One reporter from Novara Media, a left-leaning news broadcaster, reported on Friday during their bi-daily podcast that he was happy to see that The Labour Party was not engaging in “the culture war” for the way forward in the review.
Socialist must defend minorities
The ‘culture war’ is a mythic element devised by the right-wing. The Labour Party should not forget that we are supporters of all minorities and if the right-wing belittle these communities, socialists must stand up and defend them or risk losing those communities as well. It was a positive to see at least that the membership is weighed as a positive in this report. If there were to be any breaking away, then I do not think that value of the membership would be so highly commended by the PLP factions.
The commissioners this report ranged from the soft-left to the right wing faction of the PLP. It isn’t a surprise, considering that the report is not intended to have a broad discussion but merely a repetition to what people already knew about the loss of the general election. Surveys were considered and data analysis shown, but again this could all be very different in a new wave of economic failures and they only reflects times before the hit of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Part One of the report, An Historic Defeat,measures out what we already knew about the election loss: the loss of older votes, Brexit voters and voters mainly residing in the Northern heartlands of Labour. However, this constant use of the phrase “mountain climb” or “substantial challenge” is rather false. When you look at the number of votes in many of the seats. Most lost seats are extremely marginal and could easily be won back in another general election. Most people would say Brexit was the key factor to their voting intention but once Brexit is done and there is no more discussion about it then there would be no reason for them to vote for the Tories again.
Catastrophic no-deal Brexit
Of course, we know that Brexit is not done and that the economic damage from a no-deal Brexit could be catastrophic. This would only help Labour’s cause. Therefore, the argument about the ‘cultural divide’ and the shifting of voter’s intentions is very transient and will eventually fade away. The loss of older voters is important, but the other side of the coin is the consistent support for Labour among younger voters.
An article written by the London School of Economics entitled Young cosmopolitans and the deepening of the intergenerational divide following the 2019 general election suggested that if the vote was controlled by this age demographic, Labour would hold every seat in the country including the majority in Scotland. This is a factor that should not be forgotten. The Labour Party needs to start promoting the values of socialism for this younger generation.
The worry is that the current leadership will follow a policy of Tory-lite and this will not enthuse younger voters. That is why socialists should play a part in galvanising and educating the youth to stop them from becoming disillusioned with politics. But that also means not alienating or patronising young Labour members – a personal experience I have had in the past.
Social media use
Part Two of the reportdiscusses the election strategies it failed to hit. Lots of flaws start to show in this part. The report claims that the use of social media played into the hands of the Tories and not Labour. That may be true, but the reason for that is that the Tories had poured almost three times more into their online social media outlets than Labour did.
Social media wars are a dangerous route to enter with politics. It corrupts the views of people and distorts facts from fiction. We know from the leaked anti-Semitism report that Labour Party HQ were not sending adequate resources to the right areas and there were low turn-outs for members in the Northern areas. This was constantly told to me during the 2019 general election and is a factor that has not made it onto the report.
Local councils and councillors need to be more involved and radical within the community. Most Labour councillors have not been opposed to cuts, nor do they have an activist stance when it comes to political organisation. Many of them are careerists, looking only for opportunity and advancement through the Labour Party.
A solution to this would be the radical undertaking of socialist youth to become councillors to clear out the old guard and become more active within general election campaigns. By doing that, we will have a much more coherent Labour Party vision that also galvanises communities to come out and impose measures like the communities before. One voter told me during my time canvassing that “I remember the days when the local Labour councillor would go on a demonstration and then pop to the chippy for lunch; those days don’t happen anymore”. A lot of councillors do not care about the communities, so it is time to start clearing out the careerists and bring in a real socialist change.
Building strong economic policy
Part Three of The Way Ahead offers rhetoric, but no substance. It talks about listening to voters, understanding their ideas, and appeasing to them. A conversational opinion? The electorate can get it wrong. That does not mean to say that they are stupid, or we should be patronising them. But we should be highlighting the values of socialism and by building strong economy policies centred around socialist values we can win the argument.
I agree with the statements made in this part about local organising. It should come from councillors and members, but it needs to be grounded in protest and demand for economic change. That leads to the final point about this part of the review. It does not offer any policies. It does not suggest having mandatory reselection which could have stronger candidates who believe in their community become a stronger voice. It does not embed itself in economic theory in how to advance from the perils of de-industrialisation set by Thatcherism. It can only offer rhetoric. If rhetoric is only what Starmer can offer, then we become no better than the Tories and to the electorate we will only be the elite.
The political situation is also changed by events, and nothing can last forever. With economic recovery post-pandemic looking bleaker, it is more important than ever to offer socialist hope in these current times.
Pandemic crisis
Overall, the report is a piece of rhetoric that offers shallow solutions. I have not been able to comment on everything in this article because it would turn into a 70,000-word thesis.
The crisis of the pandemic and the ever-changing consciousness of the working-class will determine the state of events. This report is paradoxical, as it does not offer the position of hope and yet tries to claim that it does. As socialists, we must always offer the ideas of hope and humanity. The real solution lies in true economic grounding and for Starmer to be really challenging to the current government’s handling of the economic recovery; he will have to offer better solutions than this report. The ten pledges he gave in his leadership election bid are not a bad start (and some are stolen from Corbyn), but any down-grading of these or shifts in response to the Labour Together report will result in a backlash among party members. As a movement must start to combat the ideas of the Tories, of endless and unchanging austerity, with the promise of real socialist economic change.
June 22, 2020
