Where is the left, now? | TheArticle

In the wake of Labour’s disastrous election result, a broad consensus is forming on the Corbynite left. The party’s Brexit triangulation was always a risk. Ideally, we would unite Leavers

and Remainers by presenting them with two benign options: a “jobs first” deal that would protect workers’ rights and environmental standards, or a pledge to remain that would supplement the

status quo ante with transformative economic policies.

Failing that, we would alienate Labour Leavers wary of a second referendum, but win a sufficient number of them back with our social democratic programme, while recouping any losses with

disaffected Conservative and tactical Lib Dem votes in southern marginals. That was the hope.

In reality, this strategy relied on effecting an impossible separation between Labour’s Brexit stance and its social policies. We wanted the manifesto pledges on welfare, wages, public

ownership and green investment to cut through the Brexit culture war and convince the so-called “Workington Man” that these material issues are more urgent than Britain’s overhyped

relationship with a trading bloc.

Yet this message failed to wash, because leaving the EU was the first political project in decades to galvanise working-class voters in the deindustrialised north. It was their only victory

in living memory: a decisive kick against the establishment which — amidst the tenacity of the Thatcherite doctrine that “There Is No Alternative” — asserted the possibility of a different

future; one that was theirs to shape (hence “take back control”).

When Labour abandoned its core voters on this issue, it undermined its ability to integrate its manifesto commitments into a convincing narrative of class solidarity. Without this narrative,

the party’s economic policies sounded hollow and concessionary. Instead of leading a collective struggle against the elites, Labour sided with the elites on Brexit and immolated its own

credibility, then forged a radical social programme that appeared as a series of disingenuous hand-outs. This strategic error lost us the north.

In a sense, then, Brexit was the main reason for our defeat (polling that cites “the leadership” as our primary problem doesn’t say what was so unappealing about the leadership — namely its

weakness, its aloofness, its equivocation and indecision: all of which flowed from its half-baked Brexit policy).

But Labour’s pivot towards Remain symptomised a fundamental disconnection from its former heartlands that preceded the referendum debacle. This disconnection began when Thatcher dismantled

the vehicle through which the party embedded itself in working-class communities: trade unions. The rift between Labour and its historic base then widened under Blair, who completed

Thatcher’s project by centralising power in the party and prosperity in the country — away from one-time manufacturing towns on the peripheries, towards a self-serving clique located in the

capital.

That material and geographical shift was accompanied by an ideological one — from socialism to liberalism — which has been only partially reversed under Corbyn, and which will doom the

party’s electoral prospects even further if it is consolidated by the next leader. From this standpoint, Starmer, Thornberry and Phillips represent the worst possible options.

The inevitable conclusion which many have drawn from this analysis is that Labour must re-engage with local issues: it must play an active role in campaigns against the closure of libraries,

schools and childcare centres; support community-building projects; combat the housing crisis by blocking forced evictions and corrosive developments; provide citizens’ advice services; and

coordinate resistance to the coming assault on unions. It must also turn local councils into bastions of opposition to Tory policy, rather than submissive enforcers of it. Only this model

of steady, long-term, grassroots engagement will rescue the party from the neoliberal legacy.

But if a bottom-up strategy is essential to win power, it is also necessary to use power. A left government would run up against countless institutional barriers, from capital flight and

civil service recalcitrance to media smears and judicial obstruction. If there is any silver lining in Labour’s defeat, it’s the fact that a fragile minority government without a strong

ground movement — beholden to the SNP (or, worse, the Lib Dems) — would have found it nearly impossible to implement its legislative agenda given these stumbling blocks.

An even more decisive failure than the one we just witnessed would have been a Labour electoral victory followed by a paralysed and ineffectual Corbyn administration. Since we’ve avoided

that, the British left now has an opportunity to regroup, empower its foot soldiers, bring masses of disengaged people into the political fold, and resign the New Labour qua People’s Vote

camp to history.

That may be a daunting task — and the extent to which it can be executed under a Johnson government determined to gerrymander constituency boundaries, criminalise strike action and

intimidate the media into compliance (while at the same time accelerating environmental catastrophe), is questionable. Nonetheless, if we want to resist the Scylla of juvenile anarchistic

extraparliamentary activism, and the Charybdis of accommodation with ecocidal capitalism, then it’s the only hope we’ve got.

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