CHAPTER EIGHT
‘We didn’t lose – we threw it away! Four years after gifting power to Margaret Thatcher, that’s how I summed up the 1983 general election for Labour. What we in the Labour Party have to ensure is that we never throw it away again. And to do that we have to make certain that the Party never again comes under control of the left.’
John Golding, MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme.
When Blair’s resignation eventually came in 2007, the left fought to get the nominations to put up a candidate. John McDonnell had been campaigning for almost a year to stand, earning support from the broad left of the affiliated Labour unions. After a brief period in which Michael Meacher attempted to launch a rival left candidacy, McDonnell was the only left MP seriously trying to get onto the ballot.
McDonnell’s approach represented a clear break from Blairism: investment in public services not predicated on private sector finance – a new form of public ownership which would ‘involve the workers who deliver those services, the people who receive them and elected representatives of the local community’. These would not be state-owned industries in the classic corporatist sense. McDonnell explained his strategic vision: ‘some people will remember the pre-GLC discussions about being in and against the state. That’s what government should be about in terms of socialist practice – you go into the state to transform the state.’1 The union leaders and soft-left groupings like Compass backed Brown instead of McDonnell, depriving the membership of a contest. By the deadline McDonnell was 16 nominations short, and Gordon Brown, as the only other candidate, was crowned leader despite the Blairite wing having mixed feelings about his loyalty to the New Labour project. The deputy leadership contest went ahead with six candidates. The unions and the left backed Jon Cruddas from Compass, but despite the £140,000 spent on his campaign – money mostly from the unions – he came third, losing out to right-winger Alan Johnson and the eventual winner Harriet Harman.
The attempt to get a left candidate onto the ballot had the effect of boosting LRC membership with people critical of the state of the party. The 2007 LRC conference declared that ‘we do not have a Party of Labour, the task is to build one’. They still saw Labour as the main vehicle to achieve socialism but were increasingly pessimistic about their chances of ‘reclaiming Labour’. Since so many socialists and left-wing activists were now outside Labour – disillusioned with the stranglehold of Blairism – the LRC amended its constitution to allow non-Labour members to join, as long as they weren’t in organisations that stood against Labour in elections. PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka addressed the LRC conference in no uncertain terms: ‘I haven’t come here to tell you to leave the Labour Party – we need the Labour left to fight. But if you think that calling for people to join or re-join the party to reclaim it is a strategy then I’m afraid we have a disagreement.’2 Though reclaiming Labour seemed like a distant prospect, efforts to build a credible party of the left outside Labour also floundered. Attempts to launch new workers’ parties with the RMT produced only electoral coalitions, not democratic parties. Both George Galloway’s Respect Party and the Scottish Socialist Party had suffered catastrophic splits by 2007. Labour was a cold place for socialists but it looked colder still outside. In 2011 Compass followed suit, becoming a broader coalition which included Scottish Nationalists and Greens – stepping back from involvement in internal Labour elections.
Brown’s rule was an unhappy one. The man who claimed to have ended boom and bust was hit with the 2007–8 economic crisis, one many feared would be as severe as Ramsay Mac-Donald’s in 1929. Brown’s attempt to forge a new centre ground politics was fatally undermined by the global financial meltdown. Faced with the possible collapse of the western banking system, he resorted to nationalising the debts of the major banks, while leaving their profit-making activities in the private sector. Mainstream commentators and politicians approved and similar policies were adopted across the world. The Tories supported bailing out the banks at enormous public expense and then in the 2010 general election blamed the resultant levels of debt on Labour’s profligate spending.
For the Labour left the crisis exposed the fundamental problems of neoliberalism. Compass proposed social democratic reforms, banking regulation and rebalancing the economy away from the free market. The LRC went further, calling for the nationalisation of the banking sector both as a response to the crisis and as part of a wider anti-capitalist strategy. However, McDonnell, the leading light of the LRC, articulated a different approach. In a Guardian column in 2008 he suggested that the part-nationalised banks be forced to adopt a ‘new lending strategy [which] must prioritise tackling the worst effects of the recession. We need to promote employment through investment in major public works schemes to meet the UK’s needs.’3 This proposal later became a central plank of ‘Corbynomics’. So hegemonic was neoliberalism that even McDonnell’s mild social democratic alternatives were considered transformative threats to the integration of Labour into the neoliberal world order.
By 2009, David Cameron’s resurgent Tories were eating away at Labour’s vote, winning the argument in the minds of the electorate that the global banking crisis was caused by Labour’s over-spending. It was a testament to the lack of economic conviction from Labour that they were unable to defeat this pernicious myth. Labour was defeated at the 2010 general election – and a hard-faced austerity programme became the order of the day. But the Tories didn’t have a majority, so they looked to the Liberal Democrats for support. Their Liberal allies abandoned their previous left orientation and facilitated a right-wing Tory-led coalition government. The coalition cut away at the welfare state and public spending, slashing, burning and selling off everything they could get away with as they ferociously tore down the remains of post-war social democracy.
To return to power, Labour’s key task was to both explain the crisis and offer an alternative to austerity while mounting opposition to the cuts alongside the wider movement. While New Labour was ideologically incapable of performing this task, the left was organisationally incapable. The Socialist Campaign Group of MPs had been reduced in number to just 13. Both John McDonnell and Diane Abbot (the chair and the secretary of the SCG) put themselves forward to stand for leader in 2010 after Brown stepped down. With such small forces, splitting the left vote undermined both candidates. Some Campaign Group members even backed Ed Miliband and Ed Balls. There was little momentum or unity in the parliamentary left and in the wider membership the LRC was shrinking. The union weight was behind Ed Miliband, Ralph Miliband’s son, who they saw as the only candidate with a chance of ending Blairite rule, especially as his Progress backed brother David Miliband seemed most likely to win.
Ed’s Not Red
Ed Miliband’s leadership election victory represented a shift to the centre for the party. But to what end was not clear. Putting centre-left intellectuals like Cruddas in the core policy team seemed an explicit attempt to forge a social democratic renewal. But although ‘Red Ed’ had narrowly won the leadership (thanks to the trade union votes) he was still a prisoner of the party right. They controlled the party apparatus and had the political capital of three electoral wins behind them. Unwilling to build a movement among the membership and desperate to avoid the perception of being in an alliance with the unions, Miliband walked a tightrope between left and right.4 The result was ‘One Nation Labour’, a stillborn project that failed to inspire the public imagination. It was billed as ‘radical and conservative’5 by Tristram Hunt MP, but neither radicals nor conservatives were convinced.
Initially, Labour opposed the austerity agenda of the coalition government and expressed some sympathy with the protesting students in 2010 and the trade union demonstrations against austerity. The integrationist wing retained control, however; they used polling data showing that Labour wasn’t trusted on the economy to force Miliband away from any socialistic policies. In the tradition of previous Labour leaders, Miliband emphatically came out against strike action by public sector trade unionists fighting to save local services. Not that there was much strike action to speak of. The unions opposed austerity but industrial action against public sector cuts was pitifully low. Local authority budgets were slashed to the bone, but Labour councils across the country agreed to impose the cuts – albeit with heavy hearts. The history of local government resistance to cuts seen in the 1980s was either forgotten or actively denounced by sitting Labour councillors.
In January 2012 Miliband and Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls declared a dramatic policy U-turn and announced that Labour supported austerity economics. It led to howls of protest from left figures like Owen Jones, who rightly pointed out that there was not much political space for an austerity-lite Labour Party and even if there was, was it right to adopt austerity measures which impacted on the poorest the hardest?6 Prominent Keynesian economists argued that austerity economics were primarily ideologically driven, but the Labour leaders was so desperate to prove themselves ‘serious’ on economic issues they fell in line behind Tory arguments. Disaffection spread among the membership as the familiar triangulation took place, destroying any hope of Labour carving out a specific space for itself on the electoral map. Instead, the Green Party seized the opportunity to present themselves as the ‘anti-austerity party’ and enjoyed a ‘Green Surge’ in membership.
In 2013 a public row with Unite – the biggest financial contributor to Labour – caused a significant rift with the unions. A Unite member who had been elected chair of Falkirk CLP began recruiting local union members with a view to getting a Unite member as the parliamentary candidate. The outgoing MP accused Unite of ‘flooding’ the party by signing members up en bloc and paying their subs – an accusation that caused outrage among the unions. Labour was after all the party they had established and if Blairites could ‘flood’ it with middle-class professionals then why couldn’t the unions bring in their own people? The Labour right urged Miliband to ‘deal’ with the union link once and for all.7 With unintended irony Mandelson warned Miliband at the 2013 Progress conference that the unions were trying to take over the Labour Party. Labour passed a dossier of evidence to the police to carry out an investigation into Unite. Although the union was exonerated, the Falkirk episode propelled Labour’s biggest funder onto a collision trajectory with the Labour right.
As a result of the Falkirk affair, Labour initiated a review by Lord Collins into the unions, party funding and elections. In future there would be clearer rules around union involvement in internal elections and union money entering the party. Collins proposed abolishing the Electoral College entirely in favour of one member one vote for the Labour leadership. It was this change that opened the door to the unexpected events of 2015 – a textbook example of the law of unintended consequences.
Despite these internal schisms, the Labour Party looked set to do well at the general election in 2015, perhaps well enough to force a hung parliament. But the election ended in disaster. The Tories gained seats while the Liberal Democrats were reduced to only nine MPs – a punishment for their compromises to gain power – meanwhile the SNP dominated in Scotland. Labour won back a million votes from 2010 but lost MPs. While the defeat was the product of a number of factors, it is clear that Labour’s muddled message and lack of strategic thinking led to the loss of votes across Britain (including from a large number of people on the receiving end of austerity politics).8 The right immediately tried to establish the narrative that the party lost because it was not ‘aspirational’ enough for the demands of the neoliberalised middle classes. The left pointed to the lack of clear economic alternatives and the adoption of Tory-lite policies. The stage was set for a battle for the future of the party.
Demand the Impossible
No one predicted Corbyn’s leadership victory in 2015, least of all the left themselves. At a diminished meeting of the parliamentary Labour left a week after the election it was clear they were short of candidates. Eventually Corbyn offered to stand to give the left a voice, suspecting he would not get the nominations to get on the ballot. His candidature – secured at the last minute by a deal with some on the right in the PLP to nominate him as a token candidate for the left – was greeted with derision. Erstwhile SDP candidate Polly Toynbee labelled him ‘a 1983 man, a relic of the election that brought him to Parliament when Labour was destroyed by its out-of-Nato, anti-EU, renationalise-everything suicide note’.9 Journalist Dan Hodges went further, prophesying that ‘Jeremy Corbyn will have no role to play in that contest. He can’t win. For all the grandiose rhetoric, he’s a political pygmy. He’ll be crushed. Marmalised. Utterly humiliated.’10
The right was clearly confident. The organised Labour left was small and Corbyn was considered ‘hard left’ and out of touch with the electorate – he would not even appeal to the unions as Miliband had done. Only a brave few put money on the 100–1 odds for Corbyn to become leader. Winning the leadership in September 2015 was historic, around 250,000 members voted for someone from the left of the party. So why did he win where Abbott and McDonnell had failed previously?
For many young people Corbynism was a cry of rage against the bleak future offered to them. For others Corbyn represented a reflex desire for a return to an older form of Labourism, of social democracy against social liberalism. The movement behind Corbyn represented a decisive rejection of 40 years of neoliberalism and six years of austerity, the continued decline of communities, the lack of decent jobs, low wages, sky-high rents and unaffordable homes, racism, imperialism and the corruption of the political class exposed by a series of parliamentary expenses scandals. The increasingly desperate calls by the old guard to reject Corbyn and his politics, to adhere to the integrative strategy of appeasement and triangulation, fell on deaf ears. The left’s success was largely a product of the way in which the right’s politics had failed working people. Bending the knee to the status quo earned some Labour MPs fat expenses accounts, lucrative after-dinner speaking tours or seats on the boards of companies, but surrendering the principled opposition to food banks and tax cuts left Labour MPs without an alternative vision and bereft of a clear argument. Many people felt that they had been sacrificed at the expense of the continued privileges of the 1%. Corbyn built an alliance of both contemporary and traditional Labour values: a ‘libertarian socialist – critical of the top-down model of nationalisation advocated by old Labour … sounded fresh to a new generation’.11 Corbynism represented a mixed economy, some wealth redistribution, undoing the most egregious policies of Thatcher and Blair (the anti-union laws, student fees) and a willingness to explore new economic models away from the obsession with the free market. McDonnell in particular advocated a far greater expansion of cooperatives as an alternative to the private sector. Anti-neoliberal without being anti-capitalist. Corbyn himself described his election manifesto as ‘depressingly moderate’. Nevertheless it was considered dangerous radicalism by the establishment.12
This also has to be seen in an international context. Corbyn was not the only left politician to surprise the commentariat. Across Europe, austerity was being challenged by new social movements and political parties that were outside the mainstream. Social democratic parties committed to neoliberalism had implemented austerity leading to disastrous electoral results. The crushing of Pasok and the rise of Syriza in Greece was an example of what could happen. Some expected to see Labour’s own ‘Pasokification’. Instead, because of the first-past-the-post system in Britain, the reinvigoration of the left happened through Labour – though in opposition to the Labour establishment. Alternative left parties simply could not get any credible electoral traction. But Syriza was also a warning to left governments of how entrenched power and capital can undermine and destroy your ideals – just as they had done with Syriza’s attempt to end austerity in Greece.
Corbyn, the scrappy outsider, had to utilise every tool available to build support. His campaign launched Jeremy for Leader and combined traditional labour movement rallies and ring rounds with a social media operation that eclipsed the other candidates. Corbyn came across as principled, modest and human during the TV debates, in contrast to the focus-group robots with their carefully chosen buzz words. This challenge was possible because Ed beating David Miliband had knocked the wind out of Progress and their allies in the party machine. Although Miliband’s era was ultimately a failure, it showed that different avenues were possible after years of neoliberal hegemony. David Miliband’s defeat disillusioned many Blairites, who began drifting away from the party, as David was to do himself. This damaged the party management apparatus of the Blairites, and as a result the internal regime was no longer so stifling. The increasingly desperate opposition to Corbyn only served to highlight his break with the old regime. Now themselves outsiders, Blair and Mandelson repeatedly intervened in the media to denounce Corbyn and even called for a unity candidate to stand against him – every time only boosting his popularity.
The Labour establishment had failed to notice the growing discontent with its rightward drift. They had assumed their voters were right-wing, that UKIP was the direction of travel. In fact the mugs emblazoned with ‘Control Immigration’, leaders pandering to The Sun, and the years of serving entrenched wealth and power, especially during a time of devastating austerity, had left many Labour supporters angry. There was a hunger for a more principled leader. What was perhaps the single event that most tipped the balance was itself a product of the integrationists’ drive to appear ‘sensible’ on the economy. When the Welfare Bill came before the Commons – a bill that proposed slashing benefits to vulnerable, poor people – the acting leader Harriet Harman instructed the Labour front bench, which included Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham, to abstain. The Progress candidate Liz Kendall needed no instruction to attack welfare. This left them to be pilloried among the rank and file and by anti-austerity activists. Corbyn naturally voted against, establishing himself as the only principled candidate who would stick to his guns to fight Tory policies. Harman probably did more for Corbyn’s victory than any other Labour MP.
Corbyn’s stand against the Welfare Bill and the rising tide of support for him in the rank and file of the labour movement meant that it was increasingly difficult for the union leaders not to back him. This was the other decisive shift in the left realignment – in 2015 Corbyn was backed by serious union muscle – Unite, UNISON, TSSA, BAFWU and the CWU all endorsed him, the latter doing so explicitly to ‘oust the Blairites’. This shift in the union’s allegiance from the right or the centre ground had a profound impact – for the first time a candidate from the left of the party was backed by the unions. After years of the unions being treated as unwelcome friends (often labelled as dinosaurs or wreckers during the Blair era) and fleeced for money in return for nothing, there was a mood for a pro-trade-union leader. Moreover, the union leaders themselves were in a weak position as they had delivered little for their members since 2010. Failure and collapse on every campaign from public sector wages to pensions meant that the union bureaucracies were not in a strong position to sell to their own members support for someone like Burnham who was willing to abstain on issues like welfare reform. While the unions were arguably moving left in their rhetoric,13 when it came to successful industrial campaigns they had little to show. Just as after the defeat of the 1926 general strike, the failure of industrial action led to a renewed interest in politics. But the support of the unions was not automatic – struggles had to be fought for their endorsement. Key figures in UNISON preferred Yvette Cooper, and Unite’s leadership originally favoured Andy Burnham. It took left networks in the unions and Labour-link forums to pressure them to back Corbyn.
Finally, reminiscent of Benn’s deputy leadership campaign, it was a change in the constitution which allowed the left to take advantage after the Collins Review. Ironically it was the introduction of one member one vote, originally a proposal from David Owen and the right of the party in the early 1980s, which opened the door to a new transformative era. Many on the left had opposed the Collins Review reforms, seeking to defend the constitutional trade union link on principle, even though historically it had been an essential component in the power of the right. The inclusion of supporter status was seen by the right as a chance to undermine the members. What most on the left did not see at the time was that this was an opportunity for the thousands of disaffected, alienated members (the ‘cranks and extremists’), frustrated at the undemocratic nature of the party, to regain their voice. When people outside of Labour saw a chance to crack apart the neoliberal pro-austerity consensus, they joined with Labour members and the unions to use the right’s democratic reforms against them.
Corbyn was their revenge.
Under Fire From Day One
Corbyn won the leadership election with nearly 60 per cent of the vote. The Progress candidate Liz Kendall came last with less than 5 per cent. The left’s victory was historic and decisive. But Corbyn’s Labour was an unstable entity – a transformative leadership wrestling with the powerful integrative tendencies of the PLP and the wider political establishment. While Corbyn was inevitably mocked, derided and attacked in the press, the worst blows came from his own side. Corbyn did not quake in the face of the Tories but he was constantly under fire from his own backbenches.14 Many of the hardened Blairites refused to serve in his Shadow Cabinet, but Corbyn was able to stitch together a compromise Cabinet between the left and the right (though he did place his key ally McDonnell in the Shadow Chancellor role). Despite this attempt at a broad church Shadow Cabinet, the constant talk of his lack of ‘electability’ by the Labour right was designed to make it a fact on the ground. The media mocked the left while lavishing praise on their opponents who conformed to the kind of Labour the rich proprietors of the newspapers want to see: business friendly, pliant and loyal to the diktats of the powerful. When Corbyn won the election, some staffers in HQ wore funeral attire.15
The campaigners who came together to secure his election went on to launch Momentum, a tool to organise support for Corbyn’s policies. Launched by Clive Lewis MP and headed up by Jon Lansman (CLPD), it aimed to be both a platform inside Labour and an organisation for building social movements outside. Writing in the New Statesman, Lewis outlined the ambitions of the newly revived left: ‘a social movement to work for a more democratic, equal and decent society inside and outside the Labour Party ... It will work with Labour members to transform our Party into a democratic institution ... [and] strive to bring together progressives campaigning for social, economic and environmental justice across the country.’16
Corbynism
The PLP were in no mood to give Corbyn time to establish himself, because they feared that he and the forces behind him were uncontrollable. Through public division, the right hoped to make a left-led Labour unelectable. They were willing for the party to take the hit of another five years in opposition to prove that Corbynism was a doomed experiment never to be repeated – to revive the myth of 1983. Such an outcome would largely be the responsibility of the right of course, as it was in 1983, but they believed they could seize control of the narrative just as they had done before.
Their line was, in the words of Dan Hodges: ‘He may be a nice man. He may be a principled man. But he is not a leader, and he never will be.’17 Of course, the best way to show up Corbyn’s lack of credentials was to be ungovernable as a PLP. In order to destroy his credibility, the right sought key set-piece battles to deliver blows against him. Initially they focused on Trident renewal, and then most notably on military intervention into Syria, where Hilary Benn gave a well-received pro-war speech and was subsequently touted in the media as a potential alternative leader in the PLP. They were, however, faced with the problem that Corbyn had more than doubled the party’s membership to over 500,000 and clearly retained a lot of support among the rank and file. Thus the battle lines were drawn: most of the MPs versus most of the membership.
The febrile atmosphere caused by the strained balance of power was finally broken by the EU referendum. Despite the opportunities arising from the Tories being in chaos after David Cameron resigned, the narrow vote to leave the EU was immediately seized upon by the Labour right to accuse Corbyn of weak leadership. The near invisibility of the Labour Remain campaign, headed up by Alan Johnson, was skated over. All the underhand tactics of the Blair years were dusted off and deployed for action. The whispering campaign in the press against Corbyn became a guttural shout as Hilary Benn and others organised a planned mass resignation of as many ministers as they could.18 Front bench Labour MPs resigned throughout the day, spaced out equally on the hour to ensure constant rolling news coverage and create maximum pressure on the leadership. Even Cameron yelled it at him across the Commons as the calls for Corbyn to resign became cacophonous. But their plan hit a disastrous obstacle: Corbyn simply refused to resign. He argued that he had a clear mandate from the membership and that that was the basis for his continued position. The coup ran aground as the opposition tried to force a leadership election only to struggle to find a serious candidate. Although Angela Eagle initially put herself forward, she was ditched in favour of Owen Smith. The Labour rebels hoped Smith would be their champion against the man they considered ‘a critical threat to the future of the Labour Party’.19 Smith’s campaign revealed the peculiar twist of the Labour right – imitation as the most insincere form of flattery. His left policies were designed to echo many of Corbyn’s (though he differed on key issues like Trident and tuition fees), but he was pitched as ‘electable’. It was a clear attempt to win over the soft left and split them from the Corbynista wing.
Corbyn now faced a second election in the space of a year, the first Labour leader to suffer that ignominy. His supporters considered it a profoundly undemocratic coup attempt by the PLP in alliance with the party bureaucracy.20 The sight of establishment figures ganging up on Corbyn only riled party members even more. This was exacerbated when it became clear that this leadership campaign was not to be fought on fair grounds – certainly there were apparently arbitrary changes made from the 2015 election that looked biased against the incumbent’s support base. First the NEC, under the control of the right, agreed to set the date for eligible voting membership as June 2016, disenfranchising thousands of members who had joined after the leadership election was announced. They also increased the fee for supporter status from £3 to £25 to dissuade people from registering to vote. In addition there was a new round of purges by the compliance unit: thousands of members were expelled or suspended on spurious grounds (sharing a tweet, allegedly posting negative comments on Facebook, etc). In addition, Wallasey CLP was suspended on charges of homophobia – strenuously denied by the local officers and later found to be false.
The left decried these actions as blatant gerrymandering. In that context the CLGA slate swept the board on the NEC for the CLP sections; all six candidates were elected. There were growing calls for party secretary Ian McNichol to resign. Despite the machinations of the right, Corbyn was re-elected with an increased majority; 61.8 per cent backed him (313,000 votes). The rebels fell silent again. The plotters retreated, licking their wounds, but planning future attempts to seize back power once again. The left had delivered another victory and Corbyn was secure for another year at least.
While Corbyn looked like he couldn’t be beaten electorally by the right, this didn’t stop contradictions opening up within his own support base. Concerns over a softening of positions on immigration and Brexit left some supporters feeling uneasy. Momentum itself ran into problems as a deep division opened up between those who aimed to restrict it to being a tool for mobilising the vote and others who saw it as a lobbying body to put left pressure on the party more generally. Refusing to endorse substantial democratic reforms, Momentum preferred to promote the CLGA slate on the NEC, even though centre-left NEC members voted to suspend entire CLPs (for instance in Brighton) that had been won by the left. Instead Momentum’s leadership around Lansman launched a red scare against the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (the descendent of Socialist Organiser) and imposed a constitution on the organisation that consolidated the control of a small office faction. Amid the wrangling, the organisation saw widespread disaffection with the process. Interventions in the media from left celebrities calling on prominent left-wing activists ‘from a Trotskyist background’ to be expelled from Labour also started a process of splitting the soft left from the hard left – a repetition of the same divide and rule strategy from the 1980s. Momentum’s leadership was clearly terrified of being associated with ‘wild’ elements and wanted the protection of respectability. The unity of the left in the early ’80s in the face of a party machine intent on expulsions no longer existed.
Amid these controversies, very little direction was coming from Corbyn’s office – the apparent energy of the leadership campaigns had dissipated, replaced by a grim political paralysis. And behind the scenes the right were still chipping away. In February 2017 Mandelson felt confident enough to reveal that ‘however small it may be – an email, a phone call or a meeting I convene – every day I try to do something to save the Labour party from [Corbyn’s] leadership’.21 By March 2017 the contradictions at the heart of the party were beginning to take their toll.
Oh Jeremy Corbyn!
Despite arguing for a year that she would not do so, in April 2017 David Cameron’s replacement Theresa May called a snap general election. Her volte face decision was motivated by both hubris and opportunism. With Labour 24 points behind the Tories in the polls and Corbyn’s personal approval rating at historic lows, the Tories hoped to deliver a swift and decisive victory, increase their own majority by a hundred, and crush the Labour Party and its left in one fell swoop. May also faced opposition from her own backbenchers over plans for Brexit and needed to command a stronger majority to ensure her hard Brexit plan could be implemented.
Still dominated by the right and sure that the election would be an annihilation, the Labour machine fought an entirely defensive strategy around MPs in marginal seats. All sitting MPs were automatically re-selected and the NEC and regional committees imposed candidates in the other seats. A number of prospective left candidates were blocked in favour of people more amenable to the right. Some MPs standing for re-election began by issuing public statements damning Corbyn’s electoral liability. Ex-Progress Chair John Woodcock even declared he would ‘not countenance ever voting for Corbyn as Prime Minister’. Other MPs ran campaigns entirely on their local record, acting almost as independents, distancing themselves from Corbyn and issuing instructions to canvassers not to mention the party leader on the doorsteps. In addition, news leaked out in late April that the staffers at HQ would ‘strike’ if Corbyn refused to step down following a heavy election defeat. They felt vindicated when Labour suffered bad results at local government elections just before the general election, losing 382 councillors.
For their part, the left was energised and highly determined, driven partly out of desperation that this might be their one shot at going to the electorate with a left Labour leader. Relying on new, younger voters to turn out, voter registration drives were organised nationally in the initial stages of the election. Left activists, partly coordinated by Momentum, partly motivated by their own enthusiasm, started pouring into Tory marginals, fighting to win despite the terrible polling. Corbyn himself visited the key Tory marginal of Croydon Central to deliver his first speech of the campaign, a clear sign that the leadership and membership were ambitious to make gains.
The tricky issue of the manifesto remained. Although very few people read election manifestos, they can set the tone of the media reporting of the campaign and decent policies are often pushed on the doorstep. A week before its formal adoption a draft was leaked to the press in a move that proved to be a master stroke. The popularity of the draft among the party membership closed down space for the right to undermine the more transformative proposals. When For the Many Not the Few was officially launched, it was a fully costed, tax-and-spend manifesto depicting a return to a mixed economy and a more equitable form of capitalism – in short, Keynesianism. In many ways it picked up some of the tone of Miliband’s One Nation era, arguing for a fairer society and regulating the markets to deliver social justice. However, unlike 2015, the manifesto also contained enough popular issues that mobilised real energy: a living wage, nationalisation of the railways, free university education, progressive taxation, opposition to austerity, 100,000 council homes to be built, and the promise of government intervention in the economy via a National Infrastructure Bank.
The manifesto was a clear compromise between the left and right. It was agreed unanimously between the Shadow Cabinet and the NEC, a sign that enough was in there to placate the right as well as give the left a platform to campaign on. Ideologically it was a pretty thin document – limiting itself to a criticism of inequality and with no mention of socialism, it was reminiscent of Wilsonian era Labour, advocating a technocratic vision of improving technology to develop the economy. The concessions were clear though – it accepted that there would be no free movement after Brexit, even stating that immigrants would not be able to access public funds while living in Britain. Previous talk of massive expansions of workers’ cooperatives was abandoned. In line with conference policy, it committed Labour to keeping Trident, instead pledging that a Labour Prime Minister would only be ‘extremely cautious’ in deploying nuclear bombs. This put Corbyn in some tricky positions in debates as his stance against nuclear weapons was widely known. Nevertheless it was Teflon proof for any ‘suicide note’ labels that the right might wish to attach.
While some on the right remained perplexed about Corbynism’s popularity they couldn’t grasp the essential nature of what was at stake. Despite its mild social democratic objectives, the general line of the Labour campaign captured a public mood. It chimed with people exhausted by a socioeconomic order based on debt, insecurity, cuts and the absence of a public service ethos. It captured the long-repressed desire for a transformative agenda. Corbynism was seen as a rebellion against a socio-economic system that was actually lowering standards of living for so many people. As the campaign gathered pace, the polls continued to shift further and further towards Labour. Nevertheless, the Labour right was absolutely set on the view that the election would be a crushing defeat for the party, no doubt hoping it would allow them to finally end the nightmare of Corbyn. His position would look untenable if Labour lost too many MPs. Rumours circulated that several MPs planned to launch leadership challenges within days of a derisory election result.
Labour’s campaign was helped by Theresa May’s spectacularly bad performance. Appearing cold and inhuman, she failed to connect with voters. The Tory manifesto offered nothing positive, only more austerity, while disastrously targeting the Conservative voting elderly with cuts to pensions and forcing people with dementia to sell their homes to pay for social care. The Tory campaign was in disarray within weeks, reduced to negative attack ads on Corbyn and Diane Abbott. Rod Liddle thundered in The Spectator that ‘this is the worst Tory election campaign ever’. In contrast, Corbyn was in his element, campaigning across the country, speaking to huge crowds and performing well even in hostile interviews. His past ‘support’ for the IRA was a regular question topic from interviewers, as were concerns that he was not brave enough to ‘push the button’ in the event of a nuclear attack. In the face of regular criticisms about his ethics and his past associations he won considerable support from voters by appearing principled and honest. Another crucial factor was the mobilisation of younger voters. Corbyn – a man in his late sixties – effortlessly appealed to their existential fear that the country, perhaps even the world, was going from bad to worse in the face of Brexit and Trump. Perhaps it was time to take a leap of faith. He was publicly and vocally backed by grime artists like Stormzy which helped cement a massive youth following. Middle-aged voters also swung behind Labour – only the elderly largely remained stubbornly pro-Tory. As Labour members spent day after day getting out the vote and convincing wavering electors, the polls began to move even more dramatically, closing the gap with the Tories.
The election result defied expectations. Labour gained 30 seats while the Tories lost their majority. The result cemented Corbyn’s position as Labour leader while throwing the Conservatives into chaos. Labour regained seats in Scotland and even won in ‘true blue’ seats like Kensington and Canterbury. Despite a modest recovery for the Liberal Democrats most of the vote went to the two main parties. The election results were greeted in cities across the country with young revellers pouring out from bars and pubs, chanting the name of the Labour leader. A man who had been considered an electoral liability had inspired a further 3.5 million people to vote Labour, the fifth largest vote Labour had ever achieved and the biggest vote share since 1966. It felt like Labour had won the election even though they lost it.
The result provoked something of a crisis in the professional commentariat. The paid professionals in the media had all predicted a Labour wipe-out but now had to rush into the TV studios or into print to explain why that had not happened. The pundits overnight started to praise Corbyn’s ‘radical campaign’, his ‘youth movement’ and the manifesto, anything they could find to explain why Labour had gained seats in the face of such intense hostility and a supposedly incompetent leadership. Labour MPs on the right, many of whom had feared they might lose their seats, publicly admitted that the leader had delivered a good campaign and they had misjudged him. Progress member Woodcock, who had started his campaign calling for Corbyn’s head, issued an apology days after the election, saying that Corbyn had ‘a right to lead’ and that ‘the pitched battles and bad blood that have marred the last two years are over’.22 He also revealed what was in the minds of many other Progress members that night when he admitted ‘I don’t know what’s going on in British politics!’23 Other leading lights of the PLP right, such as Chuka Umunna and Wes Streeting, either grudgingly applauded the left-led campaign or at least publicly announced that no leadership challenge would ensue as a result of the election. Only Chris Leslie and Yvette Cooper remained committed to the fight: Cooper was tepid in her praise of Labour’s campaign and Leslie toured TV studios attacking the result as not good enough in the context of such a weak Tory campaign.
While there was no appetite for a leadership challenge to Corbyn, it was clear that the fundamental contradictions in Labour had not gone away. Some critics were quietened by the possibility of winning power under a left leadership as the ‘unelectable’ label was peeled off. But backbench rebellions over Brexit were followed in the media by reports of moves by the right to consolidate their hold on the NEC. Unable to remove Corbyn, the fight was still on to isolate him internally. This constant factionalism has a purpose – to some the prospect of a left government is in itself a disastrous outcome – they wanted Corbyn unelectable because they were worried he might win and undo the social-liberalist project they were committed to. As Tony Blair bluntly stated at the Progress Conference in 2015: ‘I wouldn’t want to win on an old-fashioned leftist platform. Even if I thought it was the route to victory, I wouldn’t take it.’24 Better dead than red.
Outside of the machinations of Whitehall, a few weeks after the election Corbyn spoke to a mass audience at Glastonbury festival. Facing the largest crowd ever at the festival, Corbyn was greeted with cheers, the kind of reaction a rock star might get, not a politician. He delivered a familiar speech, challenging inequality, calling for a fairer economy, preaching unity against division. He concluded with lines from Percy Shelley’s revolutionary poem ‘The Masque of Anarchy’:
Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many – they are few!
The old struggle to transform the Labour Party – to transform the world – has started a new chapter.