NHS should make better
use of its billions
Iain Martin
Page 31
would have been more appropriate.
Finally there is the ideology of
permanent activism. Most of us can
see that there are brief periods when
demonstrative behaviour can catalyse
a need for change or for a redress of
injustice. Toppling one statue, for
example, can sometimes create a bit
of thought. But such movements
always run the danger of exhausting
most of their supporters and for the
activism to become an end in itself.
Fairly quickly they, too, can become
counterproductive or alienating.
The real work is done over months
and years of organising, discussingand — above all — persuading. And,
having persuaded, getting elected. In
Britain now it is possible to see a
need for a new social democracy, an
alternative centre-left government
with an alternative vision. British
conservatism is mired in cronyism
and bluster, staggering from crisis to
crisis under a PM who believes only
in himself, the Union threatened and
a damaging departure from our
arrangement with the EU imminent.
The left as represented by the
NEC 13 can’t or won’t help with that.
Ironically, the more they damn the
Starmer leadership to hell, the more
ordinary Corbynistas in the party
follow the logic of the denunciation
and resign their membership.
The reader may think that they’re
doing Sir Keir a favour. Contrary to
their own belief, he doesn’t need
them. One thing they have now
proved to every political scientist’s
satisfaction is that when it comes to
members, size doesn’t matter. It’s
what you do with it that counts.The left is determined to show it’s irrelevant
Infantile obsession with walkouts and martyrdom proves Labour’s left wing isn’t interested in real business of politics
nature of biological sex. In other
words, almost everyone. And
damning them.
Jeremy Corbyn is a third fixation
— an embodied Palestine, with Tony
Blair as his Israel. The second NEC
member to make a short statement
and then fade to black on Tuesday
was Laura Pidcock. Last December
Ms Pidcock lost the North West
Durham seat she’d inherited and
which had been Labour since its
creation in 1950. She blamed Tony
Blair. “Blair’s legacy still hangs
around this party like a millstone,”
she said, “especially in the northeast.
I heard it time and time again.”
Given this perverse ascription
of responsibility it is sobering to
read that in 2012 Ms Pidcock
completed an MSc in disaster
management. Disaster creationJeremy Corbyn’s baleful leadership
casts a shadow over the Labour Partyproblems and the party’s reaction to
it. This battle began with the leaking
by Corbynistas of an internal report
designed to absolve them of
responsibility, Rebecca Long Bailey’s
refusal to delete a retweet of a piece
linking Israel to the death of George
Floyd, and ended up with Jeremy
Corbyn effectively rejecting the
party’s apology for the antisemitism
problem. Starmer had given notice
that this was his hill to die upon.
Arguably the left had no need to
challenge him on it.
So why do it? Because, for too
many of them, it’s in their nature. In
the first place they are trapped by
their own inclinations and history.
When they sing The Red Flag (a dirge
that makes God Save the Queen
sound like hip-hop) they really
emphasise the line, “though cowards
flinch and traitors sneer”. Listening
and learning is not part of the
project; all rectitude is located in the
person of the activist.
Second (like the far right) they are
addicted to symbols. Certain people,
situations and policies take on an
almost religious significance, out of
any proportion to their actual
importance. They become political
fetishes. Overwhelmingly this is
attached to a martyrology, whose
acceptance is a sign of affiliation.
The cause of Palestine is one. You
can ignore or forget the Uighurs, the
students of Hong Kong, victims of
the Taliban or human rights abuses
in Iran, but if you put the Palestinian
flag on your Facebook page you are
one of the team. And Israel becomes
the reverse symbol.
Transphobia is another. Not trans
rights, because most people across
the left and centre of the political
spectrum can agree on those. No,
this is about identifying
“transphobia” among people who
insist on arguing about issues like theO
n Tuesday the left on the
Labour Party’s national
executive committee —
13 of them — staged a
walkout. The drama of
the moment was somewhat
dissipated by the fact that it was a
Zoom meeting. So when the de facto
leader of the rebel group, the deputy
general secretary of the Unite union,
Howard Beckett, had delivered a
denunciation of Sir Keir Starmer to
the non-celebrity squares on his
screen and announced he was
quitting “this farce”, the other NEC
members just saw him lean forward a
little and disappear. There were then
simultaneous rumblings and
disappearances as Beckett’s
comrades switched themselves off.
And then they were gone.
Reading this story on social media
took me back. When I was an official
at the National Union of Students
there was a constant debate about
what could be done to try to get the
authorities to accede to whatever
demands we had. And every year
someone would champion the same
idea: a lecture boycott. The
moderates would suggest a one-day
boycott and the radicals would call
that a pusillanimous notion and
argue for an indefinite boycott.
Eventually the horrible truth
would have to be pointed out: no one
would notice if students boycotted
lectures. In fact no one, apart from
the students, would be affected in
any way by them boycotting lectures.
Including most lecturers. There
would therefore be no pressure on
the authorities to accede to our
demands. As a tactic it was a dud.
The NEC walkout might have had
some purpose if it had meant that
the rump meeting was inquorate and
therefore unable to proceed with the
business that so offended the
walker-outers. But it didn’t. The
walkout meant that the meeting
proceeded rather amiably, I’m told,
and did more speedily what Mr
Beckett didn’t want it to do, which
was to elect Margaret Beckett (no
relation) as a Starmerite chairwoman
of the NEC.
And now the logger-outers faced a
problem. Having written a letter to
the party’s general secretary, David
Evans, beginning, “As proud
members of the NEC we find
ourselves unable to stay in today’s
meeting.. .” they had to explain that
“we will be returning to future NEC
meetings to be the legitimate voice of
the membership”. Thus creating twogenuine confusions: (a) which was
supposed to be the threat — the
going or the coming? And (b) why
did they deprive the membership of
their legitimate voice in the first
place?
So we have a tactical ineptitude in
pursuit of what any reasonable
observer must describe as a strategic
ineptitude, which is that since
Sir Keir was elected Labour leader
the left have chosen to fight him on
the one ground that he simply
cannot surrender: antisemitism, the
Equality and Human Rights
Commission’s report into its recentListening and learning
have no part in the
Corbynista project
Contrary to their own
belief, Keir Starmer
doesn’t need them
Comment
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David
Aaronovitchthe times | Thursday November 26 2020 1GM 29