The ‘McDonnell amendment’ is the ultimate rejection of Clause One socialism, writes Conor Pope
‘Let’s be clear, we don’t believe in leaders,’ John McDonnell told Vice in a joint interview with Jeremy Corbyn ahead of the 2015 general election. In the same interview, McDonnell also said that ‘you can’t change the world through the parliamentary system’.
The shadow chancellor seems slightly more keen on the idea of leaders now, although his scepticism of the parliamentary system does seem to endure. For the hard-left, parliament is not important – it remains an institution embedded in the framework of the capitalist bourgeoisie. The structures of the Labour party, as a constituent part of the wider labour movement, on the other hand, are very important indeed.
That is why, when 172 Labour members of parliament passed a vote of no confidence in Corbyn’s leadership, it failed to deter those now at the top. Had it not been obvious beforehand, that moment would have made clear that the Labour party will not be able to perform its parliamentary functions while Corbyn is leader. But that is of little consequence when you do not believe the world can be changed through the parliamentary system.
For him to stay in place from that moment was not about preserving Corbyn’s Labour, but ensuring that he could be in place long enough to seize control of the party for the hard-left. Many of his supporters may be attracted to him as a political personality, but those closer to leader are working towards a project that will outlast him. What they want is for a Labour party that, like them, has no distracting and fundamental attachment to parliament. The new battleground is not Clause Four, but Clause One of Labour’s constitution, which commits the party to the parliamentary road.
What the hard-left learned from last summer’s leadership contest is that, despite the victory, they have too little control of the process, and a great degree of power is kept by the parliamentary Labour party, should it choose to use it.
What moderates learned from the 2015 contest is that leadership elections are not for us, as a party, to test our breadth of debate. MPs should not consider whether or not the debates during the hustings will be interesting enough when deciding how to cast their nominations. It was a mistake some made two years ago – under organised pressure from supporters of hard-left organisations – but it is not one many will make again.
That is why the ‘McDonnell amendment’ is so important to the Corbyn project; it would reduce the number of nominations a candidate needs from 15 per cent of the PLP and Labour members of the European parliament to just five per cent.
Currently, the rules mean you would need nominations from 38 MPs and MEPs to get on the ballot. The McDonnell amendment, that the hard-left hopes to bring through at conference this year, would reduce that to just 13. Given how many MPs Labour could return on its current polling, and with British MEPs abolished post-Brexit, a candidate in 2020 would need fewer than 10 nominations.
The McDonnell amendment is not about moving power away from Westminster, devolution-style. It is about reducing the Labour party’s historic ties to parliament. It is about the rejection of Clause One socialism.
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Conor Pope is deputy editor of Progress. He tweets at @Conorpope
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