Corbyn

by Richard Seymour

  The agenda on which Corbyn was elected is not, however, the stuff of which revolutions are made. He has pledged to end austerity, and in its stead implement a People’s Quantitative Easing programme with money invested in infrastructural development, job-creation and high-technology industries. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won office on an agenda like this. Even the OECD is anti-austerity these days.16 He promises to address the housing crisis through extensive home-building, to fully nationalise the railways, and to bring all academies back under local democratic control. These objectives are to be funded, not so much by squeezing the rich like a sponge to water the gardens of the poor, as by closing tax loopholes, stimulating growth, and spending less on controversial programmes such as Trident.

  This is in most ways a classic social-democratic remedy, which could easily have come with some Wilsonian vocables about ‘the white heat of technological revolution’. The problem for the establishment is not necessarily Corbyn’s agenda. It may be too radical for today’s Labour Party, today’s media and today’s parliamentary spectrum, but business could live with it, and the consensus would shift if Corbyn gained popular support. The problem is the type of politician that he is. The political tendency represented by Corbyn was supposed to be finished, the very idea of an alternative to capitalism interred since 1989 and all that. Now, it is not terribly shocking to read of surveys that show British people to be slightly ‘keener on socialism than on capitalism’.17 It is not the case that the Left is suddenly vibrant and full of beans and power. It is the case that, in circumstances which defy analogy, there is a chance for radical politics to make an utterly unexpected rebirth.

  How did he do it? In this book, I argue that Corbyn intelligently exploited an opening which has come about from the decay of the old parties. This isn’t just Labour’s problem, despite the obvious complacency and enervation of the party’s traditional elites. As of writing, the Tories are undergoing the latest spasm of a chronic crisis pivoted on Europe, but affecting a far wider range of issues. Corbyn, despite the weakness of his position and the extraordinary belligerence of his back benchers, has succeeded in exploiting these divisions to force policy retreats on a series of issues, from tax credits, to the Saudi prisons contract, to disability benefits cuts. But his own party is in no better shape. The logic working itself out in all the major parliamentary parties tends toward splits and realignment. This malaise goes deeper than policy and leadership.

  The story of Corbyn’s victory is one in which parliamentary democracy, and the traditionally dominant parties, have been slowly sliding into a crisis of legitimacy for some time – and that crisis suddenly became acute with the onset of economic stagnation and austerity. The representative link, between the people and the government, has been breaking down for decades. Now it is throwing up new forms of political volatility. The SNP’s surge in Scotland, and UKIP’s surge in England, are recent manifestations of this breakdown and realignment of political loyalties. If Corbyn’s surge was far more rapid and less anticipated, he and his team were just the latest group of radical Leftists to punch well above their weight because they saw where the establishment was failing and articulated the right ideas. Whether it is Syriza in Greece, or Podemos in Spain, or even Sanders in the United States, the sudden surges in support for individuals and groups who were previously marginalised arises from the same type of crisis.

  These examples, of course, also contain certain warnings to Corbyn and his supporters. Podemos, despite having led in the polls, was ultimately unable to secure an election victory. Syriza, having won, was unable to change policy despite forming a government. Sanders may yet win, but is already warning his supporters that even as president the scale of resistance he would face from ‘the billionaire class’ could make it all but impossible for him to implement his goals. Corbyn, of course, is some way from being in a position to tangle with ‘the billionaire class’. He has first to face down the bile of his own parliamentary colleagues such as David Blunkett, Tristram Hunt, Simon Danczuk, Sadiq Khan, Caroline Flint, John Mann, Michael Dugher and Ben Bradshaw. He also has to keep a shadow cabinet together against a steady drumbeat of more subtly undermining behaviour on the part of Hilary Benn, Maria Eagle and deputy leader Tom Watson. And he has to weather the attacks from the Conservatives and the media, whose criticisms invariably seem to resonate with those of Corbyn’s Labour critics.

  In the coming chapters, I will explain how Corbyn faced down ‘Project Fear’ and won, before delving into the broader context and history of British politics and Labour’s role in it. In asking whether Corbyn has any chance of success as a Labour leader, let alone as a prime minister, the answers I give won’t leave anyone entirely comfortable. Those awaiting a return to ‘politics as usual’ will find a lot to be worried about. The Blairites and Labour’s ‘moderates’ will find the analysis hugely disagreeable. Corbynistas, meanwhile, won’t find a tone of cheerleading optimism here. Above all, although this book is written in sympathy with Corbyn, it is not written with any loyalty to the Labour Party, of which I am not a member. That fact allows me to put my finger on what might be the raw nerve of any Labour loyalist, left or right: that the party may simply be untenable in its current form. Because the most difficult challenges that Corbyn faces have to do with the question he was elected to answer: whither Labour? Labour’s decline is what Corbyn was elected to address. Labour’s decline is what gave him the space to lead. And Labour’s decline will now constitute the major obstacle to his success.

  1

  How ‘Project Fear’ Failed

  Let us remind ourselves of the extraordinary facts of this leadership election. When the race began, Corbyn was considered a no-hope candidate. As an anti-austerity, anti-war campaigner, he was far too remote from the conventional idea of a successful politician to win. Channel 4 journalist Michael Crick summed up this logic when he wrote to his Twitter followers: ‘Under my law of leadership elections – that the freshest and/or youngest contender usually wins – you should bet on Liz Kendall.’1 Corbyn was initially estimated by bookkeepers to be a rank outsider, with 100–1 odds of winning, behind the favourite Andy Burnham, and the runners-up Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper.2

  However, under the seemingly calm political surface, something was already stirring. There had been, in the wake of the Conservative victory, an angry reaction by Labour supporters, and a large anti-austerity march through central London attended by Corbyn. The Labour establishment from which Burnham, Kendall and Cooper were drawn had responded to the defeat by blaming Miliband for being too left-wing. The ‘Blue Labour’ guru Jon Cruddas fed mangled and misleading research to the Guardian newspaper claiming to support this idea.3 Such claims were rejected by the British Election Study, which pointed out that the major factor dogging Labour was the 2008 economic crash, Labour’s version of the 1992 ERM crisis.4 But more importantly, they were rejected by a growing number of Labour supporters. Labour’s defeats in the 1980s might have been blamed on the Left, but this one was blamed firmly on the Right. As a result, Corbyn’s ‘dark horse’ challenge had a certain momentum from the beginning. Corbyn’s early meetings were extremely well attended, even if this fact was largely ignored by the media.

  As the media belatedly began to pick up on ‘Jeremy Corbyn mania’, with some bewilderment and alarm, high-profile Labour figures including Tony Blair began to make public statements, using their presumed moral authority to warn against a gamble on Corbyn. The unease among senior Labour figures was exacerbated by the decision of major unions, such as Unite and Unison, to support Corbyn – chiefly on the grounds that he was the only candidate to offer more than lukewarm opposition to the Tories’ planned anti-union legislation. The release of the first poll for the leadership showing Corbyn with a serious lead over all rivals prompted a slew of panicky and counterproductive interventions from Gordon Brown, Jack Straw, Alistair Campbell and others.

  What Blair, Brown, Straw, Campbell and the rest could not understand was
that for Corbyn’s supporters, they were the very epitome of the problem, the right-wing establishment that they were rebelling against. Labour-supporting celebrities who rallied behind the mainstream candidates – for example, Steve Coogan’s boasting about Andy Burnham’s ‘radical leftwing plan’ for Britain5 – also had little impact. Yet another poll was released, this one giving Corbyn a lead in the first round, with at least twenty points over his nearest rival. The panic from the Labour machine, as it sought to purge potential pro-Corbyn ‘infiltrators’, was matched by a public fear campaign from the likes of Labour MPs John Mann and Simon Danczuk, who demanded that the election be stopped, or that Corbyn be overthrown during his first days in office. Once again, this was counterproductive, since those who were likely to vote Corbyn were already convinced that the old leadership was undemocratic and didn’t take members seriously.

  With little support from any of the traditional media, Corbyn’s campaign team turned to social media. Just as the UK Independence Party (UKIP) had exploited Twitter and Facebook to their advantage during the general election, even showing up the mainstream media to their supporters, Corbyn and his team were able to do the same. Through these means he built his mass meetings without recourse to the old media that were denying him due publicity, while the other candidates’ meetings struggled to attract a dozen or so stragglers despite ample coverage. In the end, despite (and in part because of) the purges and fearmongering, Corbyn’s victory was a first-round landslide, as he emerged with just under 60 per cent of the vote.

  From Out of Nowhere

  The story of Corbyn’s challenge begins shortly after the 2015 general election. While the dominant narrative coming out of Labour’s right-wing was that Labour had lurched to the unelectable left, a core of activists on the Left were drawing very different conclusions. Few, when Corbyn first stood as a Labour leadership candidate, expected him to get on the ballot, much less stand a chance of winning. This was as much true of his close supporters and advisers as it was of his rivals. But there was a need to counter the Blairite narrative and create a space for an alternative point of view. The campaign’s social media organiser and London regional organiser Marsha-Jane Thompson explains:

  We didn’t think he had a chance of getting on the ballot paper. We had a strategy of holding regional meetings with figures like Owen Jones and Jon Trickett MP, publicising an alternative manifesto, explaining what we would say if Jeremy Corbyn did get on the ballot … It was part of a wider anti-austerity initiative. There had been some good stuff in Ed Miliband’s election manifesto which was downplayed by the right-wing, so our idea was to highlight the aspects of it that called for social justice and to highlight that there was a shift to the left there. We also wanted to challenge the Blairite narrative, which was that Labour lost because we had moved too far to the left. In fact, we lost because we didn’t present a coherent alternative.6

  Nevertheless, there was a sense quite early on that the situation was very different from that five years before, when the most left-wing candidate, John McDonnell MP, didn’t even get on the ballot paper. Ben Sellers, a long-standing Labour activist and founder of Red Labour, recalls that while there was no guarantee that Corbyn would get on the ballot, there was a palpable current of discontent among party members:

  The grass roots was not particularly left-wing, but at the same time they were not happy with the cards they had been dealt by New Labour, or the exclusion of members from the decision-making process. They felt they were just there to do door-knocking, leaf-leting and so on. And even then, there was a controversy when the party started collecting data from door-knocking and gave people scripts, as if they couldn’t cope with having conversations with people on the door-step. So there was a kickback against the lack of trust in the party membership. Then there were a hell of a lot of people keeping quiet, who you would see at People’s Assembly events, but would never say they were in Labour, and for that reason weren’t seen as the voice of the party. People thought the party was just full of Blairites, but the truth is, the Blairites were always a small minority in the party – they just happened to be the ones in positions of power in constituencies, or regional officials, or councillors. So, the left was silenced: they kept their paper membership, but they stopped going to meetings.7

  For this discontent to be channelled into a leadership election process, however, there were some hoops to jump through. For all the talk of one-member-one-vote, the parliamentary party still has a veto on who gets to stand for leader. Prior to 2014, a candidate had to have the support of at least 12.5 per cent of Labour MPs. After the implementation of reforms recommended in the Collins Review, the required level of support was increased to 15 per cent. This meant that Corbyn needed at least thirty-five nominations to even stand. Given that the dominant explanation in the party for its electoral defeat seemed to be that Ed Miliband was a recalcitrant socialist who dragged the party to the left, it was not obvious that MPs would give Corbyn the nominations he needed.

  However, it was also glaringly apparent that without Corbyn the debate would be deathly dull and narrower than ever before. And there was a core group of activists with a degree of social media savvy, who were able to leverage the existing discontent in the party to put pressure on MPs to at least allow the debate to happen. Using Twitter, Facebook and email campaigns, they were able to build a momentum behind Corbyn’s campaign that would not otherwise have existed. As Thompson put it:

  We sensed that this time it was different and they wouldn’t be able to ignore us and sideline us as they historically had. The parliamentary party were under a lot of pressure from people who supported Jeremy’s candidacy on social media … One MP explained that she’d had a hundred constituents email her in one day demanding that Jeremy be admitted to the ballot.8

  Newcastle MP Chi Onwurah explained on her website that she was nominating Corbyn not because she agreed with his policies but because ‘I asked members and supporters in my constituency who I should nominate and the overwhelming feedback … was that Jeremy Corbyn should be on the ballot.’9 Some of those who welcomed Corbyn’s candidacy did so the better to see his ideas clearly defeated. Labour activist Luke Akehurst explained, ‘I want their ideas taken on democratically and defeated in an open contest of ideas.’10 There was, in short, no expectation among his nominees or seasoned activists that Corbyn could win. But the mere fact that they were talking about him, in a way that they hadn’t talked about previous campaigns mounted by John McDonnell, already suggested that something novel was happening. Corbyn squeezed past the nominations barrier at the last minute with just thirty-six nominees.

  Some of the energies that would appear in the campaign began to make themselves visible in a significant public protest that summer. In June 2015, for the first time in several years, an anti-austerity protest drew tens of thousands of people to the streets. This would not have been the largest such protest if it had happened in 2011, the year of the Arab Uprisings, the Occupy movement and a series of mass demonstrations, public sector strikes and even riots in the UK. But on this occasion, it followed years of demoralisation and defeat, in which every crisis seemed to favour the Right. Labour’s long retreat from its brief experiment with anti-austerity politics, its welfare-bashing and its feeble attempt to triangulate UKIP on immigration, had resulted in yet another election defeat. Labour’s biggest problem, it had turned out, was motivating the younger electorate, who largely either did not turn out, or gave their votes to the Greens. Many of them now took to the streets and, as a major speaker at the concluding rally, Jeremy Corbyn set the direct and morally straightforward tone that would characterise his whole campaign. It was not a polished, rehearsed performance, and the candidate was not naturally charismatic. And far from sticking to the relatively easy critique of austerity, he made a point of defending the immigrants and ‘welfare scroungers’11 reviled both by Tories and previous Labour governments. From anyone else, a call for a ‘kinder politics’ would come across as a
greasy, hypocritical shibboleth. In Corbyn’s case, it was the core of his politics reduced to its simplest expression. He appealed for a new type of society where, ‘we each care for all, everybody caring for everybody else: I think it’s called socialism’.

  This was only one crowd and far from the last of a series of large public events that Corbyn addressed. Soon, his meetings, held in cities across the country from Exeter to Newcastle, were as packed as those of his rivals were threadbare. But this one crowd in mid-June alone would have suggested that, if Corbyn could channel the discontent of Labour activists, he had the basis for a serious leadership challenge. As Stephen Bush wrote in the New Statesman, the size of the crowd in London – however exaggerated by organisers – pointed to the existence of a large enough activist base to win the Labour leadership:

  Let’s say that just 10,000 of them can be convinced that the Labour Party, even one led by Corbyn, is worth the candle. Then they each need to recruit five friends. If just one of those five friends recruits another friend, Corbyn could be Labour’s next leader.12

  So it turned out. On one Saturday in August, Corbyn addressed 1,800 people in Manchester; 1,000 people in Derby; 1,700 in Sheffield’s Crucible and a further 800 outside.13 The patterns were repeated in Coventry, Plymouth, Liverpool, Birmingham and in London, where the Camden Centre was filled to bursting point with 2,000 people inside, and a crowd of several hundred outside. By the end of that month, it was announced that a total of 13,000 people had signed up to volunteer for his campaign. The daily growing list of celebrities supporting Corbyn in writing or in public events seemed to extend well beyond the list of ‘usual suspects’ who might be spotted at People’s Assemblies – a motley cohort ranging from Emma Thompson and Daniel Radcliffe to Mary Beard and Lord Skidelsky. Labour membership soared wherever Corbyn touched down. In Colchester, following a meeting of over a thousand people, the biggest local political meeting for decades, the Labour Party membership quadrupled. The spectacle of thousands upon thousands of enthusiastic participants signing up to have anything to do with the Labour Party would have been unthinkable a few months before. The fact that there was a ‘registered supporters’ category also helped the Corbyn campaign team, since it gave them a chance to make a unique and compelling offer to those Leftists who were wary, on account of bitter experience, of joining Labour. As a senior advisor put it, ‘the offer was, pay three quid and help smash Blairism for good. Many people would pay a lot more than that for such a privilege’. But while 100,000 people did sign up as registered supporters, almost twice that number, 183,658, signed up as full members. The number of new members alone was more than twice the membership of the Conservative Party.14