There’s one response from people feeling ‘cheated’ after Labour Leaks that should really worry Starmer & co

I am not in Labour, nor do I ever want to be. I have voted Labour twice, in 1997 (I know …) and last year – campaigning in Shipley (Philip Davies is one of the most vile Tory MPs and the fact he has been MP there for years speaks for itself) with a lovely group of mostly Labour members, but which was painful in its last-minuteness and ‘parliamentary naivety’.
Surely this scandal teaches us one thing: neoliberal ideas are hegemonic (dominant and considered common sense) even in large parts of Labour. A social democratic party, even one as mildly inoffensive as Corbyn’s Labour, will face an external onslaught, but also an internal battle.
This should come as no surprise, seriously – what do you expect? The really surprising thing is that people who so obviously did not agree with Corbyn – MPs and ‘staffers’, especially the latter – were allowed to continue in post after Corbyn won the leadership and particularly after the second time, attempted coup etc. The senior staff all should have gone in 3-6 months, the MPs should have been mandatorily reselected over the next 6 months. There would have been internal and external furors about this, but is that worse than what happened?
The next choice for those on the left is: do you want the Tories to win the next election and maybe the one after? If the answer is no, then you should do exactly what John Lansman says and unit behind Keir Starmer, but go further and do what Paul Mason is saying and build alliances with the centre, as that is the only way – in England – to defeat the Tories under first past the post – but also keep the pressure on from the left to make Labour and any formal or informal alliance, or coalition, as progressive as possible, before and in government.
If you don’t see keeping the Tories from power as top priority, as you see a longer term struggle as more viable to bring about left objectives, then don’t put your efforts into Labour – there are many other struggles to be in and lots of very boring meetings to avoid. And arguably, Labour will be one of the European social democratic parties that will eclipse itself (as many others have and the German SPD are doing at present) and spaces will open for a Podemos or Syriza kind of formation in England (the UK is over and needs to be: see Tom Nairn).
However, the English left – apart from the former Communist Party – do not have a history of great works outside the context of the Labour Party. Even if you count every one of the 10 million people who voted Labour last time, all of them are not committed to left ideas, let alone politics outside Labour. Things can change quickly, but there are enormous breaks on that in England and do we have time? As Aaron Bastani and many others have pointed out elsewhere, even before Covid-19, environmental catastrophe is knocking at our door.
And remember how bad it was/is with the Tories in power. Even with New Labour there was a difference, but would the Tories have gone to war in Iraq? Hard to say. One thing is certain, the left in England was hardly anywhere between 1987 and 2014 – and capitalism nearly collapsed in 2007! Those of you who were around then, think about how hard it was to do things outside the frustratingly ubiquitous context of Labour. Left Unity tried it in 2012-14, but as soon as Corbyn was elected, most of them – Ken Loach et al – rushed into Labour. As for the People’s Ass(embly Against Austerity) God help us.
The World Transformed was a silver lining on an otherwise pretty boring cloud and Novara Media helped to lively up that in great ways. TWT should be one of the things that becomes an open source franchise happening throughout England, physically and virtually, including Labour and non-members and people in other parties. I live in County Durham and could imagine holding an event in my village hall, or on the riverbank, or online – dealing with local and national issues. This would tie local stuggles into national debates and link us marginal town-country peasants with you ‘middle class’ (sic) urban types. This is not a panacea, but part of a new platform of creative ideas that should include an international peoples’ alternative to Facebook.
Labour should say Covid-19 would be radically better in the UK if you were in power; but the left really don’t know what to do, apart from faint protests at the lack of PPE, even wishing F*cko the Clown (Chunky Mark) well, instead of a lingering death that most scousers (like me) have no hesitation in voicing. Yes of course if the NHS had not been criminally degraded and creepingly privatised; but if Labour had won in 2019, would Jonathan ‘I’m sorry’ Ashworth (continuity cringe) be doing significantly better than Matt Handjob? There would be less lying, there would not have been the turd immunity plan, there might be basic income – there would be more timidity and a hurricane of Bolshevism accusations. There would still be grand corporate bailouts (Unite and GMB would insist on that to protect jobs – like they do with nuclear power and HS2, for example) but more actual nationalisation. The Tories, Liberals, the media and the same former Labour people (allegedly) caught with their collective ‘Executive’ kex down in this report, would be ‘politicising the crisis’ in any way they could, actively trying to make things worse, to remove Labour from power asap. People dying are a price worth paying to them, to protect the nation from dangerous radicals like Corbyn and his cronies.