Labour’s right wing have shot themselves in the foot once again, by barring the popular North of Tyne mayor, Jamie Driscoll, from being a candidate for the new and much wider post of North East Mayor. It came as no surprise, therefore, that the only metro mayor in the North East has resigned from the Labour Party and announced that he is standing as an independent.
Jamie explained his decision in an interview in the Guardian (July 18) and in a resignation statement, in which he made it clear that he had taken this step very reluctantly. “There are thousands of brilliant, dedicated activists, numerous councillors, MPs and mayors who put public service above factional positioning…they do incredible work in their communities, and I pay tribute to every one of them”.
He takes a justified swipe at the rightward swing of the Labour leadership, who seem to imagine that the more they dilute their policies, the better their chances are of being elected. “You’ve u-turned on so many promises” the statement says, “£28bn to tackle the climate emergency, free school meals, ending university fees, reversing NHS privatisation; in fact, a list of broken promises too long to repeat in this letter…”
Because of the timing of the resignation statement, Jamie omitted perhaps the worst and most controversial policy U-turn – the decision not to reverse the Tories’ disgraceful ban on benefits beyond the second child. Reversing that policy alone would lift a quarter of a million children out of poverty.
It does not take a genius to see the dire situation faced by working class people in terms of living standards and the collapse of important services. “It is not grown-up politics” Jamie Driscoll wrote, “to say Britain is broken, and then claim things are now so difficult we will abandon any plan to fix it. That is mental gymnastics worthy of Olympic gold.”
We would echo the call by Jamie Driscoll for ‘change’. As he points out, the Labour leadership, far from being the champions of real change, are dragging their feet at the very idea. “Worst of all,” he says of the leadership, “you’ve said you’re not interested in hope and change. Well, I am – Britain needs hope and change. Instead of London HQ barring me from running, you could have used my work as a showcase of economic competence…I think I’ve shown that hope and change is not only possible – but that it’s a pragmatic, common sense response to the challenges of our time. This is not a time for faint hearts. it’s a time for bravery…”
We must organise to fight the right wing
Jamie Driscoll is correct in his criticisms of Labour’s right wing. We do not agree with all of Jamie Driscoll’s policies or his approach to issues and it is disappointing that up to now he has not been as vociferous as he might have been against the ongoing witch-hunt of the left. Nevertheless, this is a fundamental issue of Labour Party democracy.
We have argued many times in our articles that there is no justification for staying in the Labour Party today, except to organise and fight against the right wing. Today’s right wing are more ruthless and ‘Stalinist’ in their methods than any right-wing faction has been in the past.
They have suspended members, including left MPs, for the most spurious reasons, suspended Constituency Labour Parties and ensured that the factional interests of the right wing – and not local party members – decide candidates for local and parliamentary elections. The Labour apparatus have blatantly lied and disregarded the rules and norms of democracy in the interests of the faction they support.
So many members of the Party have been repelled by the antics of the right that they have walked away and a proportion of them have already stood as independents or as members of the Green Party in council elections, sometimes successfully. The blatant manoeuvring to ban Jamie Driscoll from the selection short-list for North East Mayor is only the latest of a long line of disgraceful stunts by the Labour apparatus.
How many Labour members even voted?
Whereas the North East was previously a solid base for Labour’s right wing, the manoeuvres emanating from Labour HQ in London have repelled even many working-class, formerly right-wing party members. Half of the Constituency Labour Parties in the North East refused to make a nomination in protest at Jamie’s exclusion. Some of them refused to meet even to discuss it. Trade unions have expressed their alarm at the machinations. It will be interesting to see how many Labour members actually voted in the farcical process that, predictably, selected McGuiness; we would guess not many.
Jamie Driscoll has launched an on-line funding campaign and within two days it reached over £90,000 (and counting) well over half of the target originally suggested. We have it on good authority that many Labour members in the North have themselves made donations, anonymously, of course. It is highly likely that he will be able to afford a good campaign, not to mention the free publicity the Labour Party have given him by barring him.
What will not work to his advantage is that at this stage, unfortunately, the justified outrage among thousands of Labour Party members over the machinations of the right wing are not necessarily on the radar of the mass of workers. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of Labour Party members and former members may work for the Driscoll campaign for North East mayor, but it is not a foregone conclusion that he will win.
A growing feeling that Starmer is too much Tory-lite
Campaigning and teams of workers will make a difference in the North East Mayoral election next May, but the decisive influence will be the prevailing temper of the electorate, in relation to jobs, homes, living standards and other issues that voters feel affect them. Jamie Driscoll, nonetheless, will be able to appeal to a wider layer of workers because of his work as mayor of North of Tyne and there is, besides, a growing feeling among many workers that Starmer is too Tory-lite for their tastes.
Kim McGuinness, parachuted into the position of Police and Crime Commissioner for Northumberland and from the start given the nod by the right wing for the North East Mayoral position, will have nothing to offer workers, except the same bland, empty rhetoric that comes out of the Keir Starmer press office. Just as Ken Livingstone won as an independent when standing for London Mayor in 2000, therefore, Driscoll has every chance of winning next May.
Last October, we published an article asking the question, With the right wing in control, is the Labour Party ‘dead’? andwe answered with a resounding ‘No’. Our rationale was as follows.
“When that [general] election campaign takes place, despite the leadership of Starmer and all the caveats he has used to hedge around Labour’s promised ‘reforms’, Left Horizons will call for and we will campaign for a Labour victory. With this difference: that we will call for Labour to win and to introduce policies that genuinely challenge the interests of capitalism”.
“If workers have the illusion that all they need to do is put an ‘X’ on a piece of paper and then leave it all to Keir Starmer, then they will have to be disabused of that illusion. And the only way that can happen is to go through the experience of a Starmer Labour government”.
Left Horizons still believes that the fight that we need to wage is not simply around the political career of one person in the North East. It is about winning back the heart and soul of the Labour Party and defeating the Tory infiltrators who have commandeered the leadership and the Labour apparatus.
We utterly reject the idea touted by the ultra-lefts and within social media bubbles that it is time to from a ‘new’ workers’ party to the left of Labour. That is not going to happen in the foreseeable future. The overwhelming vote of the rules conference of Unite, to maintain its affiliation to Labour, is evidence of that and it vindicates the view of Left Horizons onthe issue.
Use the campaign as a platform to re-build Labour’s left
In this resignation statement, Jamie Driscoll said, “I am not encouraging anyone to leave the Labour Party.”. Left Horizons believes that is sound advice, but it has to be said that many, perhaps hundreds of Labour members will be risking their membership by backing him financially and on the doorsteps.
We would therefore pose a question to Jamie: “What will you do to return the favour, when you are given support by Labour members?” We know what our answer would be – using the campaign for North East Mayor as a platform to rebuild support for the left inside the Labour Party – especially in the North East trade union movement – and beginning a serious fightback against the Tory infiltrators in the Labour Party as a whole. That question is a hundred times more relevant if he wins, and it would also provide a route back into the Labour Party as a leading figure on the left.
Left Horizons will continue in broad terms to support the Labour Party and most of our readers and supporters are still members. It will remain the most important party for the mass of the working class in terms of their aspirations and hopes and it still commands the affiliation of millions of trade unionists. Barring some unlikely seismic political shift, it is on course to get anything up to twelve million votes next election.
Besides the area for which Jamie Driscoll is currently Mayor (North of Tyne), the new role of North East Mayor will include oversight of strategic policy in four additional local authorities, including Durham, where former mining towns and steel towns are still industrial deserts. Workers in these areas do not know Jamie Driscoll, or at least may not know him well. To win votes, he will need to advance policies that will inspire workers in these areas to turn out.
We haven’t yet seen what Jamie Driscoll’s campaign manifesto will look like and this is important. It raises another question worth asking of him, “what kind of socialist policies will you be advancing?” He talks, correctly, about the importance of public ownership of utilities and policies in the interests of working-class people.
But policies in the interests of workers raise the issue of socialist measures nationally. Socialism cannot be built in one country, much less in one region. It is all the more important, therefore, to hear what Jamie puts forward in terms of winning Labour to genuine socialist policies that would make a real difference to the lives of working class people.
Given the circumstances of his being barred from the short-list and his support among thousands of Labour Party members, it is clear that to them Jamie Driscoll is seen as the ‘real’ Labour candidate. That is completely understandable, and moreover, he has a good chance of winning and pushing the chosen candidate of the right wing, like the Labour candidate in London in 2000, Frank Dobson, into a poor third.
