Against the New Corbyn Coup
If the peers decide to proceed, they'll probably pass their motion but what will it achieve? I ask, because in the lead up to trigger ballots they serve to remind the membership that the party needs MPs who will actually deliver for our people instead of their bank balances, social standing, and self-importance. Of course, our lords are not spontaneously reacting to the sacking of a popular peer: it has to be placed in the context of long-term plotting and destabilisation, at the heart of which is Tom Watson. And as it happens, Isabel Hardman has an interesting piece in the latest Spectator looking at the Labour right's strategy in more depth.
I've expended many words on their plight over the last few years, and especially their strategies and stunts. Driving a wedge between Corbyn and Corbyn supporters on the issue of a second referendum was and is one such ploy. Talking up and amplifying anti-semitism as a means of damaging the leadership instead of working to resolve the issue is another. And while this probably won a few people here and there away from the left, the real direction of travel has been the dissolution of the right. Before the first coup after the EU referendum, the parliamentary party majority behaved like such entitled, spoiled brats that it turned a layer of Corbyn sceptics against them. I was one of them. And since, their efforts at making out Labour is "confused" about Brexit and is uniquely anti-semitic has had the consequence of demobilising their own support. You win faction fights by gaining numbers, not shedding them all over the place. The resignations from Labour of sundry MPs - the CHUKists, Iain Austin, John Woodcock - were also self-inflicted wounds. How then to wrestle the party back from the membership, cause as much disruption as possible, but actually grow your support? This is the right's strategic dilemma.
According to the Speccie piece, Tom Watson and friends scent an opportunity. Corbynism, apparently, is in crisis and a symptom of this are divisions over Brexit and anti-semitism and, if you spend five minutes peering at left Twitter, ostensible comrades are denouncing ostensible comrades and falling out over these and other issues. And after months of difficulties (not least, those awful results) there is a sense of siege and paranoia at the top of the party. In this context Watson's criticisms and denunciations should be taken as calculated interventions. This ratcheting up of tensions amount to a cold coup, of attempts "to surround and destabilise Corbyn and his lieutenants, until they resign of their own accord". Meanwhile, Watson tries cutting a shop steward-style figure among his colleagues, someone armed with tea and a sympathetic ear who channels discontent and tries keeping disaffected MPs on board. The piece credits him with preventing six or so from jumping ship, but it must rankle that former close ally Ian Austin was among the departures.
Helping keep the right wing show together at Westminster is one thing, but out in the wilds of the party membership? We are told that Future Britain, the supposedly innocuous ideas factory launched by Watson back in March, is going to expand and become a centrist Momentum with the clear object of removing Corbyn. And one way it will go about its business is "that this voice will become so deafening and destabilising, with a blizzard of angry letters and protests against the leadership, that it makes it impossible for Corbyn to continue." Please, try not to laugh. Angry letters. Unfortunately for Watson and friends, time is not on the plotters' side. As Hardman notes, an election is very likely in the Autumn and the worst outcome could happen: not a Boris Johnson-led government, but Jeremy in Number 10. Their Herculean task is not only to manoeuvre Corbyn into resignation, but ensure there is a soft left replacement - albeit one Watson can control - in place to take over. Angel Rayner and Rebecca Long-Bailey are touted as possible replacements, though you get the sense no one's asked them if they fancy themselves the pawns of absurdist right wing fantasies.
Because we are talking absurdism here. The moment for a centrist Momentum with any chance of getting a hearing was during the second leadership election. Look how Labour First and Progress have thrived these last three years, despite relaunches and a rebrand. How might another bland, say-nothing group succeed where they have miserably failed? And as for the tactics, good grief, a letter writing campaign? Is this the best Watson's celebrated tactical genius can come up with? And how do they think they're going to unseat Corbyn when the left are incomparably stronger than in 2016? This is truly desperate stuff, and what Isabel Hardman has produced here is a feel good piece for the Labour right, a rosy picture of their dire situation. Because for all their clever-clever politics, they assume no one to their left can see what they're doing. Indeed, what kind of factional operator telegraphs their intentions to a mass market politics publication? Some facts. As much a load of MPs would like to see Corbyn gone, few are in the mood to pick a fight. The summer is here and their energy and morale has already been sapped by the exhaustion of the Brexit process - they haven't got the will or time to mount the sort of energetic challenge any serious attempt at toppling Corbyn requires. Why do you think the peers are flying the kite instead of PLP dissidents? And, yes, there is the small matter of MPs attending to their own constituency organisations in advance of the coming trigger ballots. A move against Corbyn in the summer months would galvanise members as we have seen before, recruit new activists, and create a more challenging environment for anyone part of a putative coup hoping to be reselected. In all, it's a dose of wishful thinking.
The truth of the matter is in four years the Labour right do not understand, or seemingly want to even comprehend what has happened to the party and what Jeremy Corbyn is. People don't support him because he's a kindly chap who's done a bit of activism, but because of the politics he represents. Corbyn is the lightning rod for a current of opinion fed up with dog-eat-dog nothing will ever get better, the grey miserablism of the rich getting richer while basic services fall apart, hate crime is on the up, wages and jobs are crap, housing is in short supply, the climate emergency is virtually ignored, and the future is filled with uncertainty and despair. They cannot grasp that the electorate has changed and new groups are moving into politics in large numbers - and want their needs and concerns addressed. Corbynism isn't a thing because new arms are getting twisted by old hands, as Watson once put it, but because its politics are the most appropriate form of working class politics at the moment. The gruel the Labour right offer in contrast is straight up anti-Corbynism and nothing else. There is no strategy for keeping the party's coalition together, no diagnosis of the challenges we face, and no clue how to take the Tories on and win. Like old school Trots of decades past for whom matters like sexual equality and racism were to be addressed after the revolution, so one's eyes cannot be lifted to the political horizon until Corbyn is pushed into retirement.
When you read about this stuff, when your social media feeds are cluttered with whingeing, stupidity and dishonesty about the Labour Party, it can be dispiriting. You can understand why some people throw their hands up and find other things to do. But the situation we're in, and why the Labour right are reduced to having untouchable proxies do their work for them is because they're pitifully weak - perhaps the weakest they've ever been. And their failure to realistically consider their capacity vs the rest of the party merely underlines this point. Whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad, and as they shrivel and decompose their collective imagination is befogged by delusion and make believe. And even better if you are, like me, exasperated by their antics and want to see something done you don't have to wait it out. You can take action. The best way to put a stop to this nonsense is by getting involved and recruiting people. Make sure you attend your CLP and branch meetings. And make sure you vote to open reselections when the trigger ballot is held.
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