#KeepCorbyn: Corbynism in its crisis
I don’t think anyone can really suggest Corbyn is doing a brilliant job in parliament. That matters more to politicians and political commentators than it impinges on general popular perception, but that’s not to say it’s unimportant. The apparatus of the party shares a lot of responsibility for how dysfunctional it has become; it was stupid and irresponsible for the right to launch a civil war in the wake of the vote, and now that Corbyn hasn’t blinked it’s difficult to see a way out of it. It will nevertheless be very hard for Team Corbyn to function in parliament, especially if the whips go. Corbynites new to parliamentary process shouldn’t underestimate the impact of that.
It would be wonderful to have a media-friendly Corbynalike who shares (at least) his domestic policy positions, possesses political-process competence, and is perhaps unencumbered by the bunkerish mentality of Milne et al. (I’d also like a unicorn and several million dollars in cash.) Had she not lost her seat to the SNP in 2015, Katy Clark would have been the natural choice here. For now, that’s just not possible. The golpisti make a lot of electability, but that’s not the only calculus at work here, as is obvious in the selection of Angela Eagle as the replacement candidate. Electability arguments proceed on two vectors: one, charisma and telegenic power - Eagle, while perfectly competent, doesn’t possess these. Two, the ability to ‘reach’ voters beyond Labour’s core, or to those disaffected Labour voters dropping off left and right or simply to abstention. It’s unclear anyone in the party can do this.
This conflict is also about whether socialism of Corbyn’s (or indeed, any) kind has a place in mainstream politics and within the Labour Party. That there is no young, competent left candidate is partly an artefact of British political life, and partly because of the left’s atrophy within Labour for decades, but it is hard to imagine that even if there were they would be allowed anywhere near the ballot. If Corbyn, for all his frustrating qualities, is removed from office now, it is hard to see how the party doesn’t take a sharp rightward turn on migration, economic policy and internal democracy. (The assumption is that Corbyn leaving decapitates Momentum, but that is also questionable.)
Two broader issues working here: anxiety about Labour’s fragmenting base and declining vote share in its traditional heartlands; a changing relationship between the party’s elected politicians and its membership. The instinct of many of Labour’s politicians is a kind of neo-corporatism, where government balances the interests of capital, labour and the state, a political strategy which requires a certain insulation from their electoral base and degree of political autonomy. This is why MPs often trot out their Burke when they decide to ignore their constituents (they rarely mention Burke was not long after tossed out of his seat by Bristol’s electors). Disquiet about distance and lack of accountability, a sense that the PLP do not reflect the desires and political direction of the membership, and a departure from the ‘common sense’ of the functioning of representative democracy, means the trust that undergirds that relationship is very heavily eroded. On that, either the base changes or the PLP does.
Many Corbynites talk about deselection/reselection as if it’s an easy option. Not only is it (at the moment) a very complex and obstructed process, it seems obvious to me that at least some deselected MPs would not leave quietly. A number would fight their seat independently or as some SDP mk.ii candidate, either formally or informally a split from Labour. Who wins those seats in that eventuality is an open question, but it will probably be neither. That probably spells the end for the party as it currently exists – and it is, in fact, unclear which way the major unions go in that case.
In the meantime, we are in the midst of an enormous constitutional crisis, heading into a very deep recession and Boris is on his way to the Tory leadership. In the view from 30,000 feet, it is hard not to see the travails of the Labour Party and the deadlock over the implications of the plebiscite as reflecting some of the same problems of the relationship between people, democracy and state.
The naturalistic reading of party rules is that Corbyn is on the ballot in a leadership election unless he resigns. If he is, it still looks like the membership will return him to the leadership. What then?
