I seem to have taken a lot of criticism for my suggestion that Labour may need a new leader if it is to form a effective Opposition. I will comment in more detail shortly.
What I wanted to do now was to draw attention to an article by Owen Jones that summarises his own anguish in reaching the same difficult decision.
Maybe Owen has also always been a closet neoliberal Blairite member of the Establishment alongside me (as some on Twitter are describing me).
Or maybe, as I have done, he has realised that if we have an election soon then Labour needs to win it, probably in coalition with others (as I gave argued) and that if Jeremy Corbyn does not help that cause he has to go, and should realise it is his job to do so.
I admire Owen's courage for saying that. And I do not think, for one minute, that he has sold out, become less committed, or compromised himself by saying it. What he has shown is his willingness to take a difficult decision in the interests, as he sees it, of others.
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I’m not sure Owen is on quite the same page as you, Richard, although it overlaps. His tone is much more unsure of whether there is anyone there ( I, personally, don’t think there is) to ‘deliver’ as you put it. You have mentioned names on this blog, including, in my view one that should not be touched with a barge-pole (Kier Tory-myths-about-money-propagator Starmer). Owen, if I remember rightly, did not mention any.
My view is clear: Labour needs to face it’s own irrelevance and failure and disintegrate and rebuild. Yes, it might mean things get worse before they get better. But that has already happened and Labour has allowed that to happen.
If the crisis is papered over (which is what I took your article to UNINTENTIONALLY imply) then we’ll have a water torture repetition of what we had before.
Labour has let the Tories off the hook again by fighting itself at precisely the wrong time when all the open goals were there. Like England last night, they have the opposition on the rocks but can’t score. It’s the eternal repetition of the same-we’ve had this since the 80’s. Face the crisis head on otherwise it will reiterate add nauseam.
I very much agree with your post Simon. Sometimes I am afraid people have to learn the hard way, and at the moment the right wing of the LP is doing just that. Your last paragraph just about sums it up.
I can’t read Jones in the same way as you’re doing. In particular, I don’t see a clear indication that he has reached the same decision (i.e. time for a new leader). Whereabouts in the article is the call for Corbyn’s replacement?
This excerpt seems to best summarise Jones’s concerns:
“I can’t see a viable alternative left candidate. I fear the break up of the Labour party under an electoral system that does not allow two left-of-centre parties. I fear a vicious divide opening up on the left that will never heal. I fear the possibility of the hard right of the party taking over (however seemingly unlikely given the current composition of the membership), implementing Blairism Redux and waging a war of vengeance against the left, all while presiding over a Labour defeat. I fear the assumption of power by a lacklustre technocratic leader who will themselves take Labour to a crashing defeat. I fear the destruction of the enthusiasm, particularly among young people, that the Corbyn leadership has helped unleash.”
The problem seems to be with the parliamentary Labour party, rather than with Corbyn. If the PLP were backing and reinforcing Corbyn’s direction, then Labour might get through to the public. Instead, the PLP have sabotaged Corbyn. Their public presentation is muddled, and the muddle is amplified by an unsympathetic media.
Elsewhere, Jones implies that the plan had been to use the boundary changes in 2018 for deselection, and for one of the new intake to take over from Corbyn as Labour leader. This could well have worked. The referendum result makes this unlikely (unless, that is, Theresa May takes over and doesn’t hold a general election).
If the coup against Corbyn works, the Labour party is unlikely to be any more electable. For example, I can see nothing in the portfolio of the PLP rebels which suggests they will connect with the 51.9% of the electorate who just voted Leave. Corbyn at least understood the problem — and was able to reflect it in his referendum campaigning, for which he has been much criticised.
I have had discussion with Owen
My interpretation is fair and he said it now for the same reason as me
The Labour Party is rotten at it’s careerist core following two decades of offering itself to neo-liberalism.
Measures of popularity are filtered through a hostile media and public relations machine, whilst the labour movement has become too cowed and unconfident to ask the important questions.
So 53% of labour supporters want Corbyn to resign. We don’t know how the question was put or how his staying on would affect that individuals voting intentions.
I would be interested to hear what percentage of Tory voters would like to see the railways re-nationalised and PFI contracts bought out. We dare not even raise the question whilst living in fear of “public opinion”.
Let us hope lessons have been learned
Why not hope so?
And members do have vote, I would remind you
‘Let us hope lessons have been learned’
We can hope Richard, but I’m afraid that is not evidence based hope-there is barely a homeopathic amount of worthwhile self-analysis coming from Labour M.P.s
Well I’m a Labour supporter and no-one’s asked me. When did this happen and who did the asking?
The thing is, Labour hasn’t got the Tories on the rocks – they’ve done it to themselves. To be electable, the party has to say and do things that count outside its membership. Simply expanding the membership (however grand) won’t do, unless we get tens of millions joining.
Jeremy Corbyn barely leaves a shadow in bright sunshine, though I love him dearly. Not working.
You see the issue
mantra-by making Corbyn the focus of this issue you are not seeing the issue: what you say could have been said about the entirety of the Milliband years.
Yet, it is also somewhat wrong. Corbyn did achieve something quite vast but so outside the standard model that we fail to notice it: he revealed the press as a foaming ideological monster that ranted about him day after day for months. he helped significantly in the fight around Tax credits and the hypocritical links with Saudia Arabia.( see: http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2016/01/04/corbyn-s-honourable-record-on-saudi-arabia-puts-cameron-to-s)
To say he has barely leaves a shadow in broad sunlight is grossly unfair and a high handed comment, why Richard has assented to this I can barely understand.
I now see the press and the BBC in an entirely different light. I do not trust them one bit and have ceased watching BBC news. To get a more balanced view I watch European and world news channels and independent outlets on the web.
The establishment drive against Corbyn has been so blatant even a blind man could see it.
I do not want my government or national policy set by the likes of Rupert Murdoch, but it seems that is what we are getting.
If the Labour Party think they will ever get the mainly right wing press on their side(if they do the right thing or choose the ‘right leader’) they are badly mistaken.
Personally, Corbyn’s inability to make any capital out of the Tory party driving the country into disaster is pretty pathetic.
Ok, he has got his own problems, but there is no question that even without everybody rebelling against him, his reponse to the biggest crisis the country faces is simply unbelievably inadequate.
How any of the Corbyn supporters cannot see that I have no idea.
Well yes. I think ultimately you have to assess performance on the evidence in front of you. Accepting that he has had to contend with a hostile media and elements within the party that have been unsupportive, we see little to no sign of Jeremy having the wherewithal to make the kind of mark required.
Pity. I supported him but cannot remain blind to his failings any longer.
A neat summary of the feelings of many
Of course we cannot be privy to your personal discussions with Owen Jones, but reading his published words, carefully and repeatedly, I have to say that Simon and mg-a above are clearly right. He is not saying quite the same thing as you; he is much more pessimistic than you and he doesn’t see a clear path ahead for anyone with his views to follow within the Labour party. He ends by saying he will work for a broader movement outside.
Nor do I think your own posts (I may not have read the absolute latest but I refer mainly to the one you wrote after your Guardian piece) are completely clear about practicalities. Are you appealing for Corbyn to resign and put himself outside any future leadership election? Given where we are now (and how Benn et al have set off this thing) such a move will clearly drive away large numbers of labour supporters and members (though it may well please others) and possibly even split the party (if it is not already). If yours is just a call for all the talents to join Corbyn in a new challenge for the leadership, then it seems quite likely Corbyn will win again and the break-up of the party will set off in a different way. You say repeatedly that there is no shortage of talented progressive (i.e. non ‘Blairite) candidates. Not all are so convinced (including, it seems from his published words, Owen Jones). In any case one really needs one truly outstanding candidate, with a talent and a demonstrated achievement way beyond anything we have observed, to pull this trick off – i.e. a Labour party that can win an imminent election.
I recommend Roy Greenslade’s today’s Guardian article as an accurate description of where the Labour party is now, hopelessly split three ways, with the staying or leaving of Jeremy Corbyn largely irrelevant to its fate.
The Conservative party is increasingly playing a short game for tactical advantage (where have we seen that before?), bringing forward the selection of a new leader and a general election with the obvious intention of going to the country whilst it opponents’ trousers are well and truly round their ankles. Labour has little choice but to play a longer game (they might, technically, contrive to deny the Conservatives a general election if such a move were not in the longer term itself suicidal) and it is now manifest how utterly irresponsible it was for Labour MPs not to work through (in either possible sense) Corbyn and his supporters from the very beginning.
In my view:
We shall have a new Conservative government in a few months and it will be worse than anything we have seen so far – in more or less every way. (In terms of social consequences it might even outweigh Cameron’s legacy of gay marriage.)
There will be a lot of new and old unpleasantness manifest in the country for months and years to come as a result of what Cameron has set in train with his referendum.
To make one’s present efforts focus on any attempt to put the Labour party in a position to win an imminent election is not only a waste of time but likely to be itself damaging in the short and long term.
Whatever one thinks of Corbyn (and I tend to think that although he has good points he is far from unalloyed gold), it would have been far better for party and country if the ineffable Hilary Benn had just kept quiet.
And I tell you, I have it right
I bothered to check
It was a private exchange though so I will not publish it
Know your (real) opposition: Worth reflecting that the Tories have only 150,000 or so members with an average age of 59 (https://www.psa.ac.uk/insight-plus/members-only-views-conservative-party%E2%80%99s-rank-and-file). Their attitudes are well to the right of their ex-leader and his MPs. That has not stopped the Tories winning the last 2 elections by convincing a lot more people to vote for them. (And yes I do recognise the malignant role of the press). Membership is nice to have but it is not the be-all and end-all
So I’d also ask people to think a lot, lot wider than the Labour party membership, who are a tiny section of the voting population and who with respect, would probably count as political geeks, as indeed would many of us on this blog! They might just have something in common with Tory party members in where their attitudes are positioned.
I’d also ask (again) for people to listen what MPs have to say – contrary to popular opinion (and we have seen where that has got us…) they might just have a better sense of what the public as a whole might be thinking and hence what and who would gain their votes. Dismissing attempts to appeal to a wider electorate that might actually vote in a left or left of centre government, as ‘neo-liberalism’ and ‘Blairism’ does not really suggest the open-mindedness and fresh thinking that we desperately need now.
When people like Owen Jones and Richard of this parish are dismissed as neo-liberals and Blairites, the labels really have lost any useful meaning. I’ll be harsher – its playground stuff and we can and need to do better
Thanks, as ever
Jeremy Corbyn must re-consider his future if he cares about what is at stake. The Labour party must have a leader that can put it into power if it is to prevent catastrophe for Britain. We should be in no doubt what the Tories now have in mind if they are not stopped. Their vision of Britain outside Europe is of a deregulated, low wage, immigration fueled economy that can compete in a Global market with China and India, while the City of London becomes a tax haven.
I read the following article today in the Telegraph and felt physically sick. I cannot believe they would even print this – particularly as it contradicts everything that the British public think they have just voted for. The EU was the only thing stopping them from doing this, and now it is gone.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/06/28/now-the-vote-is-over-lets-move-on-with-six-steps-to-a-bright-fut/
If we want a better future for Britain we need a leader of the Labour party who can stop the Tories, before it is too late.
Interesting article from a staunch Remain campaigner on the left of politics. Is Corbyn not “passionate” enough as a leader or just not willing to lie and instead tells people how it really is?
Personally I am sick and tired of political liars, and would suffer an honest leader any day of the week.
http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/what-do-people-mean-when-they-say.html
Keith, I really dont think its about passion, or lack of it.
This ultimately boils down to whether you believe Jeremy has the qualities required of a leader of a major political party. Can you realistically see him as PM, or perhaps more to the point, conceive that sufficient numbers of the electorate will?
He cannot bring even half the PLP with him, so what are the odds that he will be able to convince voters of his suitability for office?
I’ve sadly come to the same conclusion. Jeremy is very good on the platitudinous generalities and even some good policies although they are not fleshed- out. But where is the Janis Varoufakis de nos jours? We desperately need someone with the power of communication skills and willingness to confront and expound the issues on the various media platforms. Possibly the rather paranoid and closed approach of Seumas Milne has not helped in this respect.
If there is any truth to the claim of Jeremy and his office having sabotaged the remain campaign then he is not fit for office on that basis alone. I’d argue that the problems are far more elaborate than even that shocking allegation: where is his ability to formulate a policy platform that coheres and that he can put to the electorate in general? He seems to be enjoying preaching to the converted too much, and I wonder if he hasn’t succumbed to a vanity that has paralysed his willingness to accept the truth of his ineffectual leadership and need to make way for someone more inspiring and openly communicative…
Steve H and Susan Galea – it sounds like you would prefer a military general to rule this country, a hard man who gets what he wants and will destroy everyone in his way. I have no desire for the UK to return to the rule of powerful monarchs and dictators.
I thought back to the Labour leadership campaign last year and wondered why he gained 60% of the vote, if his leadership qualities were clearly so poor? Was that because his vision for Britain and his policy messages were what the Labour party members wanted to hear and they forgave him for his lack of leadership skills or experience. Or did they see both the vision and fire that would help take the party in the direction they wanted?
I don’t know, I wasn’t there and am not a member. But there is one thing I am certain of. From the first day he was elected leader he has suffered a sustained and aggressive attack by those in the Labour party who disagree with one thing and one thing only – his policy direction.
And so I think the Labour party members will have a very difficult choice in the next leadership election, whoever stands against him, because there is unlikely to be anyone else getting sufficient support from the PLP to promote the same or even similar policies (who actually means to deliver them!).
I see a Syriza and Podemos moment arising in the left wing parties of the UK. Because quite frankly for anyone who really understands the difference between “left” and “right” in economics and politics, the current PLP is certainly not a left of centre party and has not been for a very long time in my opinion.
That is why they really despise Corbyn, and everything he stands for in my view.
Keith, Criticism of Corbyn makes me want to install a dictator? Mmm…yes I can see how you would make that link.
Winning a leadership election – when he was hands down the best available candidate – is not proof of his leadership qualities. The sad fact is that the last 9 months has demonstrated to my satisfaction that he is incapable of doing the job. Policy, vision, setting a direction, reaching out to the electorate, challenging the government and creating workable alliances with the PLP have been absent.
I note you don’t directly address my question as to whether you think he can win an election and become PM. I think its plain he can’t and, judging by a number of comments I’ve seen from people with a stake in Labour doing well who have been supportive and sympathetic, so do many others.
And yes the membership will probably have to vote. That would include me. I rejoined the party when Jeremy was elected. My hope was that he would shake the party out of its torpor and help move its centre of gravity leftwards. His legacy may be that he has actually done that. I fervently hope so, as a move back to Torylite timidity is not something I want to see.
“Winning a leadership election — when he was hands down the best available candidate — is not proof of his leadership qualities.”
So how on earth is a better leader going to be selected, if leadership elections are a waste of time?
“I note you don’t directly address my question as to whether you think he can win an election and become PM.”
Yes he could, easily, but not if a large percentage of the PLP have only one intention to destroy him beforehand (or any other leader that they choose to alienate for policy reasons).
“And yes the membership will probably have to vote.”
We agree on that, but it should not be probably but definitely. That is what the PLP are trying to avoid, any chance that he gets re-elected by the members.
Richard, my last comment today to avoid trolling accusations 🙂
But fundamentally the situation is that Corbyn is being urged to stand down because of the worry that people will vote for him. If that is not the case, why bother? let him be shown to lack support. I cannot believe that people do not see the folly of it, after all that has happened.
Why not think about the need to be an Opposition?
Of course I do think about it (like you, I have children – and grandchildren). There needs to be an opposition. And of course there will be one come what may – of some sort. Like you I very much want an effective opposition. I am not, in the short term, at all optimistic about that (for similar reasons as Roy Greenslade)and one can have differing views as to who or what is responsible for the present crisis predicament. But I do think that trying to build an effective opposition by forcing out a leader of the Labour party who has the strong support of the non-parliamentary membership, and who has attracted substantial new public support to the party, even if he has proved not to be as effective as leader of the opposition as was hoped, even if the party would not win a general election under him, is not only democratically dubious but is building on sand and ignoring the lessons of recent political experience. The forcing-out manoeuvre appears to have failed (i.e Corbyn will not be ‘dismissed’ or resign) and the PLP will, it seems, unite around whomever it considers its best candidate – which is what it should have done at the very beginning instead of going through this ‘no-confidence’ procedural charade. Its notion of the best candidate seems at present likely to be Angela Eagle, who just a few weeks back was publicly praising Corbyn for what she saw as the vigour of his ‘Remain’ campaigning (and who failed to vote against the Conservative benefit cuts during the Labour leadership inter-regnum). Whether she will prevail and whether she is the leader needed at this hour remains to be seen.
Meanwhile it seems increasingly likely that the Conservatives (despite what Cameron has said) will try to scrape through under their new leader without a general election. One is tempted to protest that such would be essentially (if not formally) undemocratic, but, especially given what is happening with Labour, would it be better to hold that fire until later when, one hopes the opposition might have sorted itself out a little and the Conservative got themselves (and unfortunately us) into even more of a mess? It is as real a question as any.
In my opinion for what its worth. We currently have two anti worker parties, one of them has a handful of basically decent but woolly MPs. Your suggestion, I think, given the sort of self serving right leaning career politicians who form the majority of the PLP would give us two anti worker parties both shifting to the right.
Many people who elected Labour governments over the years have become extremely disillusioned with the shifts right of those governments post election. The attitude of those who had expectations of a Labour government now tend to say there is no difference between the parties (ie Labour is not a opposition in any useful way) so I won’t bother voting. The hope was that Corbyn could bring a breath of fresh air to the Labour party, this has been only partly successful so far…. I have just heard this minute that Angela Eagle has been proposed by the right to be a candidate for leader so that project will end if she is successful oh dear oh dear oh dear.
Might I ask you to consider the possibility of change?
I rather think that is what his MPs ought to be considering.
I’m sure there are a few in Labour that are capable of navigating the ship, I just do not think there are any that are capable of docking it. Ed Miliband was a capable type of guy, but his face was a disaster and led to many pictures of the [capable/intelligent/hard-working] guy being lampooned across the media. Sorry, if you do not have an acceptable face, you are not going to be elected; that’s the medi[a]ocracy we live in. Jeremy is a nice guy, but many women regard him as “scruffy” and “not really clean”.
And those views are NOT from me….I do the school run most mornings Richard, they are from other “mothers” standing around chatting (then they are off to their jobs)
So, who isn’t “Blairish” and “too right” and is “clean” and “acceptable” in Labour?
OH, and acceptable to the press, bearing in mind that none of them can be reliably “socialist” anymore?
Maybe others fail to see that “social democracy” (lefties) is finished in the disunited kingdom?
Another aspect attached to my “mums” job is that I get to chat about the referendum with people a mile away from politics (real people, real lives, real jobs, real worries)…and I have not talked to anyone who understood the realities of leaving the EU, still having trade free of tariffs, free movement across borders….a woeful lack of information that should have been available from both sides.
Anyway, my facebook friend list is several names shorter now, the restricted list has two more entries (don’t want to lose them, so wait for intelligent thought to try to work)…twitter has started to get really fun….some really good intelligently grossly insulting replies…
I recognise all that
Oh, and:
Phil Hammond (Foreign Secretary) at the weekend –
“Here’s the rub: the fundamental dilemma at the heart of the Brexit position is that we will have to now make a decision about how much access to that single market we want and need to protect our economy and how much freedom of movement we are going to accept in order to buy it. Those who say, ‘No, they need us more than we need them. Don’t worry. They’ll allow us to have control of migration from the European Union while maintaining access to the single market’ are simply mistaken about the balance of power and the level of commitment to this agenda in Europe.
“We will not be able to negotiate control of migration from the European Union and at the same time full access to the single market. There will have to be a trade-off, and that is essentially why the Prime Minister has made the decision he has because only a new Prime Minister can make the decision about what that trade-off will look like.”
These are the guys running the country….they didn’t think first?
A referendum won on a platform of racism. Dis-Un-United Kindom of Fools.
“The tragic irony is that this self harm was actually begun by the most idealistic champions of keeping Europe whole and free. Bloodworth puts it better than I can: “Labour politicians who saw the English working class as a superfluous force who had nowhere else electorally to go. They pushed and pushed and pushed them and today, finally, the great unwanted have pushed back. The salt of the earth were treated as the scum of the earth and, unsurprisingly, they wouldn’t stand for it.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/24/how-britain-tricked-itself-into-leaving-europe.html
Seems about right.
Too late worrying now. The die has been cast.
Or, as some of our immigrant population put it: “Sh#t ‘appens maann”
I’m from Wales. Regards the developments of recent days we’re in the privileged position of having to tolerate junk neoliberal ideology. If Scotland goes the Northern Ireland might well follow. Welsh people will not tolerate permanent Tory English rule. if you’re English you will have to now contemplate permanent Tory rule. The Tories along with UKIP poll 50% of the popular vote.
Corbyn’s Faustian Pact with the Blairites has backfired. They were always going to stab him in the back. What’s at stake is democracy. Will ordinary people in ever Britain have a choice? As Robert Mugabe once joked “Britain is a one party state but with three parties” and how very true. The establishment decides who’s going to run the country and that’s the City of London. Either you buck up your ideas and start supporting Corbyn or you’re finished. Scotland. Northern Ireland and then Wales. England will be a Tory rump state just like Serbia, isolated and marginalized.
It really is quite bizarre how the fact that everything ash changed is factored into none of these analyses
As has been stated elsewhere, looking for another ‘better’ leader of a collapsing irrelevant party that has no clear idea of its identity or future is futile.
Corbyn was ruthlessly attacked across the entire political spectrum from day one because the Labour machine is neoliberal and elite.
Who does Labour actually represent?
The media, including the ‘left’ Guardian has failed ordinary people and we will all now reap the whirlwind.
Harold Pinter talked about how we were surrounded by a tapestry of lies, of how the US was the greatest show on the road in the sense that it was permanent constructed lie machine hiding a vicious core.
I’d put it to you that Britain is equally part of that show, and that the only politician in Britain in the last 30 years to get close to exposing that all changing that is Jeremy Corbin.
By saying that he is ineffective because the entire establishment undermines him, you are saying let’s continue with the show as a solution to the crisis of the show.
I am not saying any such thing and it is nonsense to claim I have changed my mind on anything
I am saying that from what I have seen and observed Jeremy cannot lead the party. He does not have the skills to do so
I am sorry about that. I hoped he might
I think John McDonnell may have them
But Jeremy has not been able to lead within the PLP and that is a condition for success of a Labour leader
I know there are those who say the PLP plotted against him. All leaders are plotted against. Always. That is life in politics. But this would not have happened unless he had lost the support of those who had taken the risk of working with him and found that they could not, because he was not willing to work with them, which is the core of this problem as I see it
I will write more in due course