John Woodcock yesterday rightly identified the ‘politburo politics’ that threatens to soon be at the top of the Labour. Jeremy Corbyn, as the chair of Progress highlights, has thrown the gauntlet down to his parliamentary colleagues. In the would-be leader’s comment lies a real insight into what is to come.
Calls for unity, from a man who has never shown any, soon become threats. While the leader is busy ‘encourag[ing] the parliamentary Labour party to be part of that process and not to stand in the way of democratising the party’ what is really envisaged is a political operation that will use the mandate of 600,000 people to try and bulldoze the will of those elected by 9.3 million people. Forget the views of the Labour-voting public, let alone the potential supporters in the marginal seats, the party comes first, apparently.
When Jim Hacker, the fictional cabinet minister in the hit 1980s television series ‘Yes, Minister’, is asked about the choices between party or the country, he is clear: ‘The voters have to wait five years, the party can vote against me tonight.’ Short-term party tactics, however, only store up long-term electoral problems; just ask the eight Labour MPs who lost their seats in May to David Cameron’s Conservative party. The ‘real democracy’ that Corbyn speaks of could have the members issued plebiscite ballots of key issues, bloc votes at conference reimpose dictates on the parliamentary party, and the shadow cabinet reduced to a mere subcommittee with the chief whip as a messenger. All of these totally forget that it is the public that will decide our fate.
I welcome the swelled membership ranks and wish to involve them more. It is right and proper that party members select our leader, but not to dictate the agenda of all 232 MPs and what is best for their constituents. Worse still is the threat – explicit or implicit – from the leadership frontrunner that those who do not comply will be entered into a re-education programme or deselected.
While the ‘Gang of Four’ and the creation of the Social Democratic party clearly played its party in Labour’s 1983 drumming, those who point the finger ignore the role the far-left played in bringing about a split. It should not be forgotten how Militant and the supporters of Tony Benn hounded Labour MPs in their seats. The way in which the atmosphere in the party has changed in a matter of weeks is a small window into what hostilities might have been like in the late 1979s and early 1980s. Labour is fast becoming an unpleasant place to be a lifelong member.
In contrast, the Labour party that has tolerated Corbyn voting against the Labour whip 400 times in 13 years should allow parliamentarians to put their ‘country first’ in the coming years. As Woodcock says, the ideas ‘some [MPs] take a ‘principled stand on issues’, others are Tory-lite’ is appalling. The party, like an eagle, needs two wing to fly. Both should be respected.
Without this respect, MPs may feel little choice but to bow to the will of the politburo – only to receive a chilling reminder in 2020 that it is the public that are ultimately in charge.
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Richard Angell is director of Progress. He tweets @RichardAngell
How old were you, Richard, in the 1980s? This is just tosh.
The creation of the SDP did more than “play a part” in the 1983 defeat although the Falklands War and the triumphslism that followed was also a factor. The SDP (and the FW) corroded support for Labour sufficiently to give Thatcher a quite undeserved victory given her appalling track record in more thsn doubling the inherited unemployment. That’s why I so deplore the separatism talk being encouraged in Progress and the Tory media – because a divided party loses votes, and Progress and a good many who should know better are talking down one who might – it is not done and dusted – be elected leader.
Militant was certainly an utter nuisance in the 1980s until Neil Kinnock saw them and the Derek Hatton crew off, but in no sense did it have power in the Labour Party of the mid-1980s. Not even remotely. Nor did they speak for any appreciable part of Labour’s membership. And it is just plain wrong to sat that Bennites hounded MPs. They and others certsinly wanted shot of MPs who were lazy, of whom there were a few, or so right-wing as to be ready to cross the floor to the SDP as many did (though enthusiasm for doing so cooled down once it dawned that the SDP was going nowhere and would do so probably even if it allied with the Liberal Party). Indeed the realignment of the centre only got going in the last decade when the lacklustre lack of ambition of Labour in power let even Clegg – only by comparison – look exciting. I was a Labour councillor between 1982 and 1994 and at no time did Bennites or their like hound us locally; but a radical strain in the Party did it no harm in challenging the orthodoxies of the 1970s.
How dare 600000 people have a say! It should be left to the PLP and patronage of a Progress backed leader to tell us plebs what to do.
Just look how successful this has been!
The hard left are not open to reason. The only course is to let this madness continue. It will mean that Labour will be out of office for one or more generations.
I’m more worried about the mad right myself, you know those who are looking to see Blair return, bit like the Tories hoping Thatcher might make it back.
The only reason Jeremy Corbyn is “popular” is because the media have found “a story” in the leadership campaign and are determined to undermine the already shaky foundations of the ridiculous £3.00 vote. If Jeremy Corbyn is elected, it won’t be by party members but by members of other parties!
Wasn’t registered supporters originally a Progress policy? Certainly Stephen Twigg and Tessa Jowell were both prominent members supporting the idea, emphasising extending Labour’s reach beyond members, which makes the ‘purge’ particularly unfortunate.
Without having access to other parties’ membership lists, how does anyone know if a new Labour member is a member of another party? It’s one thing to be suspicious, but that’s a long way from proof.
We’ll soon see but be careful making such grand pronouncements, the recent yougov poll showed that Corbyn was on course to win by full members alone.
After weeks of increasingly hysterical anti-Corbyn vitriol I am starting to actually enjoy the absurdity of articles like this.
“It is right and proper that party members select our leader, but not to dictate the agenda of all 232 MPs and what is best for their constituents.”
My God, can you imagine the horror of it? A party in which the members see the MPs as serving them and not the ither way round. Whatever next? They might even start to demand that the Party takes its sel-description as “democratic” and “socialist”. This would, of course, lead to the end of civilisation as we know it. Or, what is clearky in the eyes of some people almost the same thing, it would lead to the end of the domination of the Party by its Westminster expression.
The irony of all this is really delightful. The registered members scheme was advocated principally by the right e.g. by Progress supporters. They thought it would dilute the membership in the manner of US political parties and make the party even more manipulable by its professional politicians, SPADs and apparatchiks. In UK conditions it hasn’t worked out like that and could even result in a re-assertion of membership control. Oh delicious irony!