Labour's Strategy #3: Left In
Exploring why and how Starmer and the Labour left should unite
Catch up on the previous piece in this series here
The recent months have seen yet more evidence of a Conservative Party that is very close to ungovernable.
From the Brexit debate under Cameron and May, both of whom saw their premiership end as a result of inner-party civil war, to a fractious and scandalous Johnson-led government, and finally to the past few weeks. The absence of all thought and reason under Truss and her prompt capitulation, the farce of a Johnson comeback and a Sunak coronation which has led the country back 12 years to austerity once more. A circular litany of failures from a party that is in need of a long period in opposition.
The explanation for this, beyond Brexit divisions, is a culture of government that sees one faction gain power and immediately prioritise loyalists and sycophants, as Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook have argued. Starting with Johnson and reaching its peak under Truss, the Tories seem to believe internal party politics is more important than running the country, akin to the Labour politics of the early 1980s and late 2010s. A significant change in the supposed party of responsibility, and a symptom of a more ideological, more personally resentful, party that has been growing ever more divided over the past 6 years.
In the Labour Party, we can see this in a similar space of time – especially from 2015 to 2021. First the cold civil war between Southside moderates (Labour HQ, the party’s ‘establishment’ if you like) and the hard-left shadow cabinet under Corbyn, and now a Starmer-led purge of hard left MPs in the shadow cabinet. Buoyed by excellent polling, these divisions are less obvious at the moment (late 2022), but they are certainly still there. Just last year serious divisions sprang up once again after the poor 2021 local elections were blamed on Angela Rayner as Starmer used the opportunity to promote Blairites like Rachel Reeves, and the whole saga was repeated just six months later. A symptom of a party under too much influence from one wing. These divisions may not become obvious again for a long time. All going to plan, Labour is headed for government and, with the current state of the Tories, this should be for a long time. Assuming a multi-term government, these divisions will come out again, as they always do with the Labour Party. The country cannot afford another critically divided government.
The answer, as Harold Wilson and other ‘Old Labour’ figures knew, is to have a cabinet and a strategy defined by all the party’s different factions.
Labour have started in this direction at conference. Policy commitments included the ideas of scale to change the country that only really come from the left – the half of the party concerned with shifting the economic foundations of the country, with changing the tide. We saw this in the plans to create a national renewable energy company, or a new deal for workers – democratic socialist ideas with the scale to make a difference, but tempered by centrist practicality. The party has shown willingness to move further left than one would have thought a year ago, then. However, with recent attacks on Starmer at PMQs revolving around his participation in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, the head of purging the left has been reared once again – ‘shadow cabinet sources’ briefed to the Guardian that the party should permanently expel Jeremy Corbyn (he’s been suspended since November 2021). This would be a mistake. Starmer has already done enough to detoxify the Labour brand without rehashing the same arguments and presenting the party as divided once more. Corbyn has already been suspended, and will likely not be an MP in two or three years’ time. If Sunak’s attacks, just like Johnson’s whom he is copying, won’t work – who cares anymore? Much has been made of a potential Corbyn London mayorship, but it seems to this author that amplifying his voice by expelling him would not help prevent this - if anything it would have the opposite effect, drawing media attention away from the Conservatives and onto their favourite red meat: Labour psychodrama.
The defining strategy for Labour now must revolve around unity, seriousness, and clarity, as has been detailed in LS#2. Labour should use its current popularity (a 17-point lead in the polls, despite the Conservatives’ change in leadership) to bring some of the left in from the cold. This would help with party unity and the leadership’s position, hopefully avoiding the kind of infighting we saw in 2021. Flying from the middle, with both wings propelling the party will keep figures on the left, right and middle reasonably happy (or at least so focused on their hatred of each other that they stick behind the leader).
Starmer has spoken before about his willingness to look to pre-Blair figures like Wilson and Attlee, both of whom used this technique. Wilson in particular managed to keep an extraordinarily divided party together, one that would implode into two separate parties just 5 years after his resignation as leader. The party survived devaluation, an EU referendum (ask David Cameron how difficult that is), 20% inflation and hugely combative unions. If nothing else vindicates his strategy of party management, it is this. And he did it by having Michael Foot, Tony Benn, and all of the SDP ‘gang of four’ in the same cabinet, to name but a few. One might argue that he failed to bring the party together in a meaningful way, which is fair - but name me something Blairites and Marxists fundamentally agree on. Labour will always go through periods of civil war as long as it is so broad a coalition. Attlee operated in a similar way, entrusting the Foreign Office to Ernest Bevin at the tail-end of WWII, on the trade-union right of the party, while handing the creation of the NHS to the left of the party in the shape of Aneurin Bevan. In so doing, he held a typically divided Labour Party together to form the single most significant administration in the modern political life of the United Kingdom.
Unity will grow incredibly important if Labour are in government for the long haul from 2024 (assuming victory in this election). One would hope for at least two terms, as tends to happen in Britain as electoral cycles bring fairly long periods in both government and opposition for both the two major parties (see more in PE#1). In the 2020s, with global crises a constant threat, who knows. But, assuming a sustained period of government, these divisions will come out again, and a governing party and the country can ill afford a civil war – as we have seen in the last year, and especially the past few months. In addition, this will help reach out to the young, who are painfully uninspired by the current leadership. One might ask why this is an issue, as fewer than half of 18–24-year-olds vote, but a bit of long-term critical thinking sets this to rights. These people are also the voters the party will rely on in future years, they are a defining factor in keeping seats in university towns like Coventry and Canterbury, and will define a potential Labour governments legacy as they become more active in politics. There is one problem, however. The left must choose to engage
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Now one might reasonably ask why the left would do this. They have shown no signs as of yet, and why would they engage in a project they are so opposed to? Well, they gain nothing from confining themselves to the ignominy of self-pity and exclusion. Realistic left-wing MPs must look to the future, as the party will not be turning to them any time soon. It took 32 years for the Labour Party to go back to the kind of politics that defined their 1983 manifesto under Michael Foot (the so-called ‘longest suicide note in history’) and, after the second one in 2019, it would not be surprising if the wait is just as long this time. For this reason, the left of the party must take a leaf out of Tony Benn’s book, particularly young MPs like Nadia Whittome and Zarah Sultana who must be the ones to lead the left now, and actually contribute to the running of the party and, maybe soon, the running of the country. Experience in the leadership team with a view to an active role in a future Labour government, as Benn did under Wilson as the Minister for Technology from 1966-1970, would give the left genuine governing experience and influence for the first time in decades, and introduce a seriousness to their politics that has been sorely lacking at times.
To get back in the room, younger left-wing MPs may have to dump the ‘old guard’: figures like Corbyn, McDonnell and Abbott. Each of these has their own problems. These problems do not need to be repeated here as the veracity of any criticism is not important – TPI recommends Left Out (Maguire and Pogrund, 2020) for more on their failures. The fact is, support for these MPs is anathema to the Leader of the Opposition’s Office, particularly with Sunak’s ‘new’ PMQs tactics, and dropping public support for them is worth it for the wider, younger left to gain (shadow) governmental experience. Participation in a Labour cabinet (shadow or otherwise) will require further sacrifices. Collective responsibility will mean they have to toe the line, as Whittome and Sultana found out in 2020, when they resigned so they could vote against a government bill, rather than abstain. This may be unpalatable but, as previous generations have found, it is worth being realistic. Serious politics is not about resigning in protest to an abstention on a government bill while in opposition. That will achieve nothing. Serious left wing politics, as Aneurin Bevan knew, as Anthony Benn knew, as Clement Atlee knew, is about achieving change in government. It was no small thing for the left of the party to shape the NHS’ creation. In Wilson and Callaghan’s 1970s governments, Benn and Foot would be Secretary of State for Industry and Employment respectively, key areas of a socialist agenda. These are senior positions in government through which the left-wing can achieve genuine change. What socialist wouldn’t want that?
The Labour leadership and the Labour left must, therefore, be willing to cooperate. For their own sakes, each other’s sakes, and the sake of the country, they should put aside their differences and work together to achieve a Labour government which not only holds the reins of power, but uses them. The Labour Party cannot fly on one wing alone for very long.