YES, CORBYN MUST CARRY THE CAN FOR THE SECOND DEFEAT UNDER HIS LEADERSHIP, BUT THAT SHOULD NOT BLIND US TO WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON: IT WASN'T JUST LABOUR THAT LOST ON THURSDAY, IT WAS LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
The election of a Conservative government with a sizeable majority has come as a terrible blow to supporters of Jeremy Corbyn like myself. We had hoped, somewhat against hope, that, as in two of the previous three elections, we might have been able to prevent Boris Johnson from getting a majority. But that was not to be.
Although the Tories only increased their vote share by 1.2%, Labour’s dropped catastrophically by 7.9%. Many of those who supported the party in 2017 stayed away this time. Commentators have been quick to blame Corbyn for this disaster and there is evidence that his unpopularity with voters played a part in the result. But was it the decisive factor?
Corbyn was never going to be the kind of shiny salesman that Tony Blair was. While Blair personified the managerial style of New Labour, Corbyn was the eternal outsider, drafted in from the backbenches by party members no longer willing to put up with top-down policy making.
His willingness to take up unfashionable causes was an attraction to those looking for a radical departure, but the leader of the Labour Party will always be a target for the right wing press and past associations came back to haunt him.
As a result, his personal ratings were worse than any Labour leader, yet he was able to win more votes than Blair did when he won the 2005 election. In fact, the 10.2m who voted for Corbyn’s Labour Party on Thursday was only a fraction down on the 10.7m who gave Blair his second term in 2001.
The people lining up to blame Corbyn should ask themselves if any Labour leader could have won this time? Alone among the Westminster parties, Labour’s vote is split between Leavers and Remainers, the former concentrated in the north of England, the latter in the south. Those who wish Yvette Cooper had led the party have to explain how her refusal to support a second referendum would have gone down in London, while fans of Kier Starmer need to tell us how northern voters would have reacted to his support for Remain?
Corbyn’s position of a guaranteed second referendum with remain on the ballot, and his refusal to take sides, was a pragmatic response to the reality of a Labour electorate divided on this issue. It ultimately failed to gain traction, but it’s hard to see how any Labour leader could have squared the Leave/Remain circle without losing a significant number of voters to either the pro-Leave Tories or the pro-Remain Liberal Democrats.
The narrative that this defeat is down to Corbyn rather than Brexit is further undermined by the fortunes of the LibDems on Thursday. Staking their whole electoral strategy on being the party of Remain didn’t help them make a break-through. The argument that Labour would have prospered if led by a centrist is undermined by the fact the most centrist party in UK politics was becalmed by Brexit
All evidence suggests the traditional centre ground of British politics has disappeared. Thursday wasn’t just a defeat for Labour; it was a defeat for Remain, for unionism, for liberal democracy itself. The idea that policy is based on principle, that facts are sacred, that our political opponents are not our enemies, that they are people who love our country but have a different vision of how is should be run, was trashed in this election.
‘Get Brexit Done’, like the slogan ‘Take Back Control’, has swept all before it. The complex details of how to govern a diverse society have been reduced to three simple words. The tragedy of this is that Brexit is all about nuance: the nuance of the Irish border; the nuance of the lives of the 3.1m EU nationals and their families who live and work in the UK; the nuance of our trade relationship with 27 EU nations. These issues have been banished from the debate by Johnson, but they will be the crux of the negotiations of our new trading deal with the EU.
Thursday’s election was just the latest in a string of volatile polls that have been telling us for over a decade that the old two party system and the centre ground they battled to secure no longer correlates to the landscape that elections are fought on.
Since the crash of 2008, voters have looked for something different. The hung parliaments of 2010 and 2017 are clear signs that people were not happy with what was on offer from all parties. Labour sought to address this changing landscape by electing Jeremy Corbyn, but Brexit has warped everything. Voters did not abandon Labour for the political comfort zone of the centre ground on Thursday; they plumped decisively for nationalism – a progressive form in Scotland and an isolationist form in England - and liberal democracy has little stomach for identity politics.
The press have heralded Johnson’s victory as a return to the Tory hegemony of the 1980s, but Boris isn’t The Iron Lady.Thatcher was popular with voters when she won her big majorities. Johnson isn’t loved in the same way – far from it. Most view him as a liar and a buffoon. Just as voters lent Corbyn their votes to thwart Theresa May, so they have now lent Johnson their votes to ‘get Brexit done’.
If he fails to do so in a manner that swiftly delivers the changes that floating voters want to see, his majority may well disappear.
It would of course be foolish for Labour to just wait for that to happen. They have a lot to do to win back the trust of the electorate.
The first step is to elect a new leader, someone from the post-Blair period, someone with the vision to create a left wing party capable of dealing with the world as it is now, not as it was in 1945 or 1997.
Labour also need to identify the working class if they hope to represent them – and they are not defined by gender, age, ethnicity or region. In 2020, the working class is everybody who relies on a wage, who pays rent, who has a mortgage, whose children go to state schools and whose parents need social care. Offering a vision of a better future for such people - and a strong narrative about how it can be achieved - it is key to winning the post-Brexit arguments.
There have been complaints that the Labour manifesto was too detailed (often coming from the same people who ridiculed Ed Miliband for having just five policy pledges in 2005, carved onto a stone to show how serious the party was about implementing them).
Despite this charge, there were good policies in the 2019 manifesto that are worth salvaging for the future, such as The New Green Deal, regional development banks and a commitment to build 100,000 affordable houses a year.
Though it has shown little inclination in the past, Labour must address the matter of England, not least because the independence movement in Scotland and the customs border in the Irish Sea are going to make national identity a continual flashpoint. Labour needs to reconnect with its tradition of devolving power and make the case for regional assemblies in England, decentralising power away from Westminster to be exercised closer to where voters live.
Constitutional issues are also likely to feature in this parliament, given Johnson’s manifesto commitment to clip the wings of the Supreme Court and rewrite the Human Rights Act. Labour should convene a constitutional convention to address the issue, not just of rights, but also the relationship between the citizen parliament.
Labour have long resisted the introduction of proportional representation for Westminster, but recent elections have shown us that the current First Past The Post system is no longer fit for purpose. Under PR, a coalition of pro-remain parties would have won the election on Thursday. More importantly, a system in which everyone’s vote counts is a crucial factor in restoring public trust in politics.
Because the turbulence of the past few years isn’t going to end any time soon.
Conservative commentators have assured us that, now Johnson has a mandate, he will drop the divisive Little Englander act that won him the leadership and the election and govern as a healing One Nation Tory. I remember people saying much the same about how Trump would moderate his behaviour once he became president.
Like Trump, Johnson is a proven liar who has acted with impunity his whole life. The fact that he was able to win an election without the public knowing how many children he has fathered is a chilling indication of what is to come. Imagine it was Corbyn who had an unacknowledged love child – the mother would have had press camped on her doorstep for the whole election and the child would have been dragged across the front pages of the right wing press.
That Johnson was able to waltz into Number 10 without that even being an issue suggests that accountability is not going to be a priority for the mainstream media in the coming parliament.
Being able to hold those in power to account is the fundamental principle of democracy, the crucial facet of a free society. However, it relies on the willingness of the powerful to be held to account. As we’ve seen in America, when someone takes office without taking responsibility, liberal democracy can seem a flimsy construct.
From it’s roots in the trade union movement, the Labour Party has always been about holding the powerful to account – in the workplace, in the financial markets, on the environment. The principle of accountability needs to be applied rigorously to the Tories in the coming parliament and must also provide the foundation for the polices that the party develops and the narrative that it deploys to win back the trust of the electorate.
It starts with holding ourselves to account for what happened on Thursday by asking all wings of the Labour Party to reflect on whether their behaviour over the past four years was a contributory factor to Johnson’s victory.
Being honest about that and finding a way to work together to build a consensus about the issues that a progressive party should address in the 21st century is the first step on our long journey back to power.
