If only he hadn’t died a few years back, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the late Soviet general Gennady Yanayev had been acting as strategy consultant to Hilary Benn and his mates since last weekend.
In case you’ve forgotten the name, or perhaps weren’t even born 25 years ago, this is famously the guy who tried and failed to oust Gorbachev in an incompetently executed military coup way back in August 1991.
The attempt lacked any popular support, and fell flat within a matter of days. But that wasn’t the end of the matter. In the longer term, the ramifications of these events succeeded in bringing down a structure within which contradictions had been accumulating for decades. And as any good Marxist will tell you, today’s Labour Party is exactly that.
You can analyse this process within any one of several frameworks. You may want to depict what is unfolding before us as a straightforward ideological struggle between quasi-Marxist Corbynistas and Blairite neoliberals.
Or perhaps you’d rather contextualise it all as an inevitable a clash between croissant eating north London meterosexuals and white working class northerners, or a manifestation of the irreconcilable interests of the beneficiaries of globalisation and the losers. But the deep cleavages have been visible for years, and have now patently come to a head.
At the time of writing, the Eighteenth Brumaire of Hilary Benn was being met with stronger resistance than the assailants can have been anticipating, with the resistance on Monday night taking its stand at a gathering outside parliament.
As a Liberal Democrat friend of mine ruefully observed, the number of resignations from the Labour frontbench had already reached five times the total number of Lib Dem MPs. But Corbyn remained in office.
What is being done is ethically questionable, in that many of his fiercest critics have been unceasing in their efforts to destabilise him since the day he was elected, contributing to the very poll standings that form the ostensible justification for their onslaught.
This is precisely what the left didn’t do during the long decades of rightist ascendency, even in the period in which it still had the forces at Westminster to facilitate obstruction tactics,
It is also hypocritical, in that the Remain defeat in the EU referendum has been ruthlessly seized upon as a pretext. Corbyn’s support for Remain was always a conditional bargain, and he delivered his side of the deal. Look at his reward. Thanks a bunch, people.
The right would like to think that it can force him out in the next few days, thereby circumventing anything as ungainly as an actual electoral contest.
But two-bit constitutional chicanery based on an unfeasible reading of the rules isn’t going to work. Potential challengers need nominations, incumbents don’t. Corbyn has a legal right to be on any coming ballot paper.
But, as Yanayev analogy indicates, things are unlikely to settle down after a convincing left victory in September. Labour is never going to be the same again.
With the situation changing hour by hour, it is foolish even to attempt firm predictions on how things might pan out. But it is difficult to conceive how Labour’s explicitly socialist and social democratic left can stay within a formation numerically dominated by open advocates of austerity economics, imperialist foreign policy, and increasingly explicit nativist racism.
The Labour right’s feeble protestations of party loyalty – or even of respect for democratic decisions – are clearly meaningless. After their coming defeat, one rather suspects they won’t want to stay and play nicely.
Even if they do attempt to stay put, they will find themselves at increased risk of deselection, as the organisations of the Labour left regrettably find it impossible to hold back hotheaded young activists who are unconstrained by the settlement that has hitherto prevailed.
What the right does next is up to them, of course. It has long been speculated that financial backing for a new party, to be known as the Progressive Democrats or something of that ilk, has already been lined up.
Other commentators have raised the possibility of the emergence of a new pro-EU centrist party, regrouping the Lib Dems and the Cameroons. Whether or not that project gains any traction presumably depends on the outcome of internal battles in the Conservative Party, on which I am in no position to comment.
But meanwhile, best ignore the crocodile tears on World at One, the hastily typed ‘with a heavy heart’ template-based resignation letters, and the insincere protestations of Jeremy’s ‘basic decency’ by the very people who have avidly branded him an anti-Semite for month upon month. It may now fall to today’s left to rebuild the Labour Party, as it did in 1931. So be it.
The right cannot let go of the party as they would be wiped out with the Lib Dems by Corbyn’s Labour if they did. They will launch leadership challenge after leadership challenge until the trade union leaders call a halt and tell Jeremy to go because the Party leader `must have the support of the PLP’ after all. But it won’t work because if Jeremy is forced out Labour will collapse electorally as it did in Scotland. In fact if Corbyn doesn’t deal with the plotters after he beats Eagle by withdrawing the whip, suspenions and organising de-selection then Labour will be wiped out in any case whether Corbyn stays or goes because nobody is going to vote Labour knowing that 172 of its MPs would rather bloc with the Tories and Lib Dems than form a Labour Government.
I had forgotten Yanayev, thanks for reminding us of him. As we await the NEC, there is only one certainty. Whatever the decision, it was face a legal challenge.
It would have been far more sensible to clarify the rules than exploit a dubious reading of a loophole, but that would have meant thinking through what should happen when a leader loses support. And that thinking should involve the whole of the party, but never got off the ground.
Up here she is being called Angela Treacle as she gums up the works. But it is no laughing matter how incompetent the political class is today.
Trevor Fisher
I think it is time for Corbyn to come out forcefully against the misery of mass economic migration within Europe. It is only New Labour and the SWP that think it is some kind of socialist policy. It would also put an end to the coup plotters, the neo-liberal fundamentalists who want nothing more than to return to the EU fold, saying that Jeremy’s metorpolitan London elitism is losing the North to UKIP when it is their Bremain hissy fit that is doing that.
“In Teesside, less than 3,000 immigrants moved to Middlesbrough, Stockton and Redcar and Cleveland from abroad in the year leading up to the census.
It means that there were just 5.5 immigrants for every 1,000 people in the area – less than half the English average of 11.3.
In Tyneside and Northumberland, immigration was also far below the national average – coming in at just 6.9 immigrants for every 1,000 residents.”
http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/immigrants-your-area-really-come-8197510
Yet, according to some, the reason for Ukip’s relative success in Teesside is “uncontrolled mass immigration”. Uncontrolled as in 5.5 immigrants out of 1000 people.
But, hey, who needs facts when you’ve got a nice scapegoat?
Do you have a point other than that people don’t like unfettered immigration?
Yes.
My point, dear Robert, is: you can’t argue with facts – and thus you cannot blame “unfettered immigration” (whichever way you decide to define it) for the ills of the North when plainly there aren’t enough immigrants to blame.
” I think it is time for Corbyn to come out forcefully against the misery of mass economic migration within Europe.”
I think the last thing this country needs is for its Socialists to turn into the Nazional variety.
I’m guessing SWP. We need a socialist Europe not this Norma Tebbit neo-liberal reactionary EU shit hole.
I’d love to know how you think that the democratic control of immigration is a form of Nazism. I know you don’t care if your ultra-left open borders hyperbolic bullshit ends in the death of the Labour Party and the rise of the far right but some of us do. Leave the withering away of the state to the communist future because as a policy based on today’s neo-liberal capitalist reality it is a recipe for the death of the labour movement.
The “democratic control of immigration” (whatever that is or however that may be achieved) does not make one a Socialist of the National variety.
But promising the working class a better future at the expense of ethnic minorities does. Apologies if the cap fits.
fear is the key. Some commentators have suggested that the number of immigrants is in inverse proportion to the size of the Brexit vote. London is the most cosmopolitan city in the UK, and voted Remain.
Which is not to say the politics of immigration mean accepting neo liberal open borders. The dockers marched for Enoch Powell in 1969, Wilson legislated for immigration regulations and Powell was marginalized. There is nothing in a left prescription that favours unplanned migration.
Trevor FIsher.
“Which is not to say the politics of immigration mean accepting neo liberal open borders.”
It is disappointing that Brexiters on the left of the political spectrum have not seized the opportunity to overtly call into question the other 3 freedoms of movement: freedom of movement of goods, services and capital.
There is a case to be made for the return of, say, capital controls and tariff barriers to trade to allow for member sates to protect their own industries – if you’re going to qualify one freedom of movement, surely the others should follow?
I assumed that support for capital and trade controls was taken for granted among left activists such as ourselves. However, we do need to be realistic about the fact that, at present, there is no plan which would make such actions viable. That is not an argument against reinstating capital controls etc. but it means we need to get to come up with an economic plan which would make them work.
“London is the most cosmopolitan city in the UK, and voted Remain.”
Rermarkable, whatever could have produced that result? Could it be the fact that in the 2011 census only 45% of Londoners were Native Brits? Lord knows what the figures are now, but I bet they’ve not gone up.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21511904
“increasingly explicit nativist racism”
Well they can’t be that racist, as 30% of English primary schoolkids are now “minority”, according to the January 2015 stats. Or have the natives realised that their rulers have decided to dissolve the people and import another?
We desperately need to educate our supporters that money is not an economic problem for this country and unlike Europe we have our own currency. That is not to say that Europe couldn’t change its rules like they did to bail out their Banking system which would work for people instead of the financial sector.
We need to explain that poverty is a policy decision, not a fact of life, in short people are deliberately kept in poverty as workers that save do not need to borrow, hence the Banks would lose customers and pay out interest at the cost of receiving it.
Once people understand that we have all the money we need to fund our public services, they will understand how they have been deceived all their lives, and we can start building a future, rather than waiting for the next billionaire to decide that they could profit from exploiting our talents.
That cartoon is very good. Follow it up with a lecture from Stephanie Kelton, Bernie Sanders economist. She has good evidence – speeches from chairman of the Federal reserve included.
Thank you for that video, It is one that I have not seen but do know of Stephanie Kelton, along with all her other colleagues at the University of Missouri.
I use the Cartoon because it is so relative to the situation at present, even after all this time we are still in a depression and being told the same old lies, and people can see that they are being duped by the absolute logic as presented, notably Stephanie Kelton is present in the credits thereby being a signatory to the content. It really gets to the heart of the con story that has been perpetrated over us for decades.
I know you understand this but I like to re-enforce the fact that economics is not rocket science and anyone can understand the fundamentals without having to go to Oxford or Cambridge.
People in the party need to grasp what Stephanie said in her closing comments, that even high flying executives don’t know this sort of thing, and when they do they daren’t go against convention for fear of being ostracised or worse.
We are deliberately held back by the system that feeds the financial assets of the few against the interests of the many.
Capitalism itself holds back development, which of course we are told is the reverse, that public spending inhibits private sector growth. The holes in our roads is the perfect analogy of that fallacy and our NHS which was a world leader is being crushed by private sector involvement. Most NHS CCGS are now in debt and failing.
We do not need to revive the Weimar Corpse. Printing money is a foolish idea. The way out of austerity is to dispropriate the property and monopoly super profits of the out of control corporations and the super rich. We need socialism. The pound is already revealed to be a worthless and debased currency not worth the lump of what ever the crap is they make them out of nowadays.
The NEC has decided to keep Jeremy Corbyn the ballot paper. It couldn’t have otherwise. Any other result would have been a travesty of democracy inside the party. The problem is now how to deselect the MPs who will continue to undermine Jeremy in parliament, making it impossible to have a real opposition, because of their belligerent attitude and behaviour towards the leader of their own party. As you rightly say, the left never attacked the policies of Blair and Brown when they were in government; they did vote against their policies in parliament but they were never vicious and their criticism was serious and based on arguments that had to do with policies, not with the way people dress or did their hair. By the way, I can spot a Blairite by their cosmetic appearance, which for them is more important that policies.
so does this make you stalinists