Corbyn’s project claims another victim, Macron’s clarion call and Daily Mail hypocrisy – Progress director Richard Angell has this week’s Last Word
Congratulations to Gareth Snell on holding Stoke-on-Trent Central for Labour. Commiserations to Gill Troughton who ran a brilliant campaign in Copeland. They both did us proud and Labour activists from all wings of the party went above and beyond on the ground.
In normal times, Labour would be winning midterm byelections in Labour heartlands with increased majorities. Seats held in wipeout years like 2010 and 2015 should be stacking up huge majorities, especially seven years into a Tory government.
Yet both sustained swings against Labour that would decimate the parliamentary party at the next election and see the Tories with an increased majority.
The Tory gain in Copeland makes the message clear. A hard-left Momentum-led Labour party is more repugnant to the voters than a Tory government closing a local maternity unit and urgent care centre. It is a disaster and should make John McDonnell and Seumas Milne – who are keeping Jeremy Corbyn in office – rethink. They risk bringing the whole party down with this failed hard-left project.
Macron’s clarion call
In 2006, Tony Blair stood up at Labour party conference and spoke beyond the hall. Not just to the voters of Britain, but scientists and tech investors across the globe. Reflecting on George Bush’s anti-stem cell research position, he offered up the United Kingdom as a global leader on embryology and human fertilisation and home for researchers on the subject. Within two years, a bill found its way through to royal assent. Labour peer Robert Winston led the House of Lords through its various stages and personified why Britain was deserving of this new status.
Emmanuel Macron, the progressive centrists leading the polls in the French presidential elections, did a very similar thing at one of his rallies last week. Within days, and in English, he fronted a video for ‘American researchers, entrepreneurs [and] engineers working on climate change’ who are about to be the next victims of Donald Trump’s neo-conservative agenda. This week he used to front of No 10 to offer France as a home for their work and a launch pad for their findings.
His whole campaign, which came to London this week, is impressive and contagious for progressive centrists. In conversation with a Labour member of parliament this week, they remarked, ‘Labour needs a British Macron – someone inspiring and credible’. Reflecting on this, and having watching a considerable number of the presidential hopeful’s videos, I could not help but think: it is how credible he was that was so inspiring. Unlike British centrists, who in recent years have offered the process for coming up with credible policy, Macron offers credible policies that could be implemented – or at least start being implemented – within 100 days.
Like the best of the third-way progressives that have come before him, the French presidential hopeful is not triangulating or splitting the difference with the voters but providing progressive leadership that answers big questions facing France. Crucially, he is beholden to no vested interests. His party En Marché is patriotic – they wave French flags, not party emblems – and offers to be the political arm of the French people. He does not pander, or belittle, their concerns. Instead he offers hope and application of values.
His proximity to power and the relatively short presidential election process makes this all the more potent. He does not need introducing to the electorate, having been in Hollande’s cabinet. How he left the government, means he has distance from the Parti Socialist and their disastrous time in government.
If Labour are looking for lessons, this run-in time is worth considering. The only two leader’s of the opposition to win a majority for Labour – Harold Wilson and Blair – did so after the death of their predecessor. Hugh Gaitskell died in January 1963, giving Wilson a 15 month run at No 10. John Smith’s untimely departure meant his successor had just three years. They therefore had relatively short run-ins. One of the few sympathies I had for Ed Miliband’s leadership of the Labour party was how tough it is to maintain momentum for five years.
Both Gaitskell and Smith would have been first class Labour prime ministers. But it might be worth consider two year interim leaders following defeats and then a contest for the candidate for prime minister happening later in the parliament. A similar system in German sees Martin Schulz doing very well in the polls and reviving the SPD’s prospects.
The day irony died
Paul Dacre attacking Blair’s government for listening to his Daily Mail front page campaigns to return not just all Britons in Guantanamo Bay, but Jamal al-Harith in particular, is more than ironic. How the government was dragged kicking and screaming is testament to how seriously they took the threat. To falsely claim that it was Blair’s administration that awarded the compensation is even worse. It was the government of his successor but one. And who was home secretary at the time? One Theresa May. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition attacked its predecessor over civil liberties. This week highlights how irresponsible those attacks were.
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Richard Angell is director of Progress. He tweets at @RichardAngell
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The extreme right-wing MPs who resigned in order to cause these by-elections have both been succeeded by MPs well to their Left, even though one of them is an abusively anti-Corbyn Labourite, while the other is a Tory. Still, though, they are both well to the left of Tristram Hunt and Jamie Reed.
A political party died in the early hours of this morning. But it was not the Labour Party. Stoke Central was supposed to have been the main event. Until Labour had the impertinence to hold it.
Richard, perhaps a bit of sociological analysis is needed of the changing composition of the Copeland electorate over the last couple of decades. We might then see that the special interest of the nuclear workers is now not outweighed by the coal miners and steel workers who used to be employed in the area.
And at some point I hope your bottle of vitriol will empty – ‘hard left momentum led Labour party is more repugnant . . ‘ Steady boy you are losing your sense of perspective or listening to Mr Trump too much.
As difficult as it seems getting into office is only part of the story. Having something worthwhile as a consequence is pretty important to most people. Does the writer really think Macron, the same old, same old will offer anything worth having after the first month in office, thereby alienating everyone for another two decades
Maybe the time has come to stop weaponising the NHS.
Copeland electors did not respond to a simplistic pro NHS message.
I also canvassed at Copeland for “the lady in the big house” as she was described by one voter.
Please can we get together a raft of policies that will unite the party.
The only people who will suffer are those we are in politics to support
There was no suggestion that Ed Miliband resign as Leader of the Labour Party after it had lost Bradford West to Respect, and after it had very nearly lost Heywood and Middleton to UKIP. There should no suggestion that Jeremy Corbyn resign as Leader of the Labour Party after it has seen Copeland turn from one of its own marginal seats to one of the Conservatives’. Still less after it has defeated UKIP at Stoke Central, such as to have destroyed that party as even the limited political force that it ever truly was.
Here we go again, when are we going to learn from our mistake, tearing Labour Party apart will not make us win election. Labour suffered when there is disunity within the party and the seat hold for many years lost to Tory at the time Tory doing badly. Jeremy Corbyn is not the problem or loser here. We are loser, The question we should be asking ourselves is. How are we marketing our Leader?
We set-up platform to pull our Leader down. Is Theresa May and angel, is she stronger than Corbyn? Tory unite around their Leader with all their differences after Brexit. What are Parliamentry Labour Member doing tearing themselves blaming Corbyn for Brexit. WHAT!!!!!
Labour should be winning seats not losing seats. We are failing the people we represent.
Sad that we are not learning. Copeland should be lessen for us. The Party Member work hard, Labour activists from all wings of the party went out in masses, it is a shame while they are out working hard campaign with all the hardship weather, some are planning to topple their Leader. They want the party to loss both seats, a reason to trigger another leadership battle.
It is time for those who love Labour party to win next election to sick another forum to discuss the party problem, not the one we have at the moment.
Corbin may not be all the problem with Labour at the moment but he is most certainly eighty per cent of it. No matter if you are to the left or a moderate he is not bringing these together. It is his style of leadership – very uninspiring. A great leader has qualities people aspire to emulate. Macron appears to have these qualities.
Great debat in the House of Commons – far more inspiring than that in the House of Commons.
Jamie Reed resigned precisely because his constituency was one of the last to be massively dependent on a single employer, making it wildly untypical, and especially difficult for Jeremy Corbyn to hold. So the result at Copeland, the result that Reed wanted and even contrived, cannot be said to mean anything much beyond itself. The real story is the extinction of UKIP at Stoke Central and, by extension, at large. UKIP’s voters have gone home to the Conservatives, such as to give the latter their majority at Copeland. That majority has come, not from Labour, but from UKIP.