The Times - UK (2022-01-13)

Johnson has put the Tories

in toxic territory

Iain Martin

Page 29

A new Corbyn party is just what Starmer needs

The Labour leader has the prime minister cornered but still has to see off troublesome leftwingers in his own ranks

Comment

speaking? And even if the ill-fated

centrists of Reform UK all lost their

seats in 2019, wasn’t their existence

an electoral problem for Labour?

The logic of such a perception is that

it might be best for Starmer to find a

way to palliate the left and keep

them (even if grumpily) onside.

And here we encounter an

unpleasant truth. There was

something off to the right of the

Conservative Party that some voters

wanted. There isn’t anything off to

the left of Labour that voters find

attractive. Labour is green enough,

diverse enough, sufficiently in favour

of public spending. Voters don’t want

to be in endless solidarity with Latin

American socialists, strikers and

highly selective antiwar movements.

Looked at in the plainest light of

day there is no reason why a

pragmatic Labour left would leave

the party to test out its popularity on

voters. They know what will happen.

Yet such is their loathing for Starmer

and the vituperative character of

their rejection of him as evidenced

by their leading commentators that

leaving will soon make the only

sense they have.

So far the Labour leader has had a

good couple of months. A new Peace

and Justice Party led by Jeremy

Corbyn would ice that very solid cake.

and the 98 candidates from Loach’s

party managed 57,000 votes. The

Alliance folded; Loach switched to

the Respect Party. In 2010 that

received 33,000 votes. Then it was

on to the Left Unity party. That,

according to Loach, was the new best

hope for true socialism. In 2015 its

three candidates managed 455 votes.

The only far-left organisation that

enjoyed any electoral success was the

Trotskyist Militant tendency of the

1980s, which it achieved by infiltrating

Labour, denying its own existence and

getting its members selected under

false pretences. Once expelled from

Labour its various electoral guises

failed with Loach-like totality.

So why could not a new left party

act like Ukip, as a vote-splitting

threat, even if not one that would

actually win seats? And in that way

ginger Labour up a bit, socialistically

Sir Keir Starmer withdrew the whip

from Jeremy Corbyn over antisemitism

Labour MP for Lincoln, Dick

Taverne, was deselected, forced a

by-election and was returned as the

“Democratic Labour” candidate. He

won again at the next election.

My favourite, though, was the

veteran SO Davies, who was

deselected for the seat of Merthyr

Tydfil just before the 1970 general

election. Furious that his 36 years in

parliament should be ended in this

way, he stood as an independent. He

had no campaign machine and put

out just one leaflet bearing the

legend “You Know Me, I’ve Never

Let You Down”. Defying the

deselector’s claim that he was too old

to be the MP he won handsomely —

and not long after died of old age.

Labour won the by-election.

My instinct is that Corbyn could do

that. Win his seat, that is. But what

about a breakaway party? There, an

inspection of the chicken gizzards is

less hopeful. No party to the left of

Labour has prospered in British

history. I know this because I spent

much of my youth in a party that

tried. In 1966 the Communist Party

of Great Britain, then very strong in

the trade union movement and with

50,000 members, put up more than

50 candidates and earned a radio

broadcast by its leader, John Gollan.

The idea was to get one or two

communists elected who would work

with Labour left-wingers to bring

about a leftward shift in the party. It

was all very exciting. On election day

Labour won with a landslide and the

CP lost all its deposits. The comrades

between them garnered 62,092 votes.

For more recent examples follow

the recent political career of the

film-maker Ken Loach — also, as it

happens, a patron of Peace and

Justice. In 2001 he directed the

election broadcast for the Socialist

Alliance, the “socialist alternative” to

Labour. Labour won with a landslide

A

s Sir Keir Starmer used
his prosecutorial skills on
Boris Johnson in
parliament yesterday, did
you not find yourself
asking, “Yes, but how would Jeremy
Corbyn have handled this?” No, of
course you didn’t.
That doesn’t mean, though, that the
man who led the opposition into the
last two elections has gone away and
ceased to exercise any influence.
Shortly after departing office Corbyn
set up a charity, a surprising
proportion of whose patrons are
former presidents of Latin American
countries, laced with far-left
celebrities such as Noam Chomsky,
the former Greek finance minister
Yanis Varoufakis and the now-retired
Unite leader Len McCluskey.
As far as one can tell from its
well-designed website, the Peace and
Justice Project exists largely to send
Corbyn round the world making
speeches to people who agree with
him. From the inevitable videos it
seems he is enjoying himself and this
enthusiasm may be what has led to
reports that some of his close
comrades are urging him to pupate
and emerge from the charitable
cocoon as a party butterfly.
Corbyn is at present in the
anomalous position of being a Labour
Party member, but not a Labour
Party MP. His comments back in
2020 that allegations of antisemitism
in Labour under his leadership had
been “dramatically overstated for
political reasons” led Starmer to

withdraw the Labour whip. It will not

be returned until Corbyn apologises

for these words and, 15 months on,

this seems unlikely — the prime

minister having cornered the galactic

market in insincere apologies.

Even if the Peace and Justice

Project has a distinctly contemporary

east European ring to it, it is often

better, as Milton put it, to reign in hell

than serve in heaven. At least you can

get stuff done. At present Corbyn is a

prophet reduced to a project; a party

would mean more speeches in front

of more people. More airtime.

Thinking about this I wondered

how such an enterprise might fare.

Different people I talked to had very

different ideas, ranging from the

utterly dismissive to the feeling that

a Corbyn breakaway might damage

Labour by siphoning off votes in

critical seats and depriving the party

of necessary activists. I was

reminded that not so long ago

Corbyn was being serenaded at

Glastonbury. Could he not become a

Farage of the left, exercising the

same kind of gravitational pull on

Labour policy that Ukip and the

Brexit Party managed for the Tories?

So let’s think this through, not

least by appealing to precedent. First,

could Corbyn hold his own seat of

Islington North in an election

standing against his old party? He

got more than 60 per cent of the vote

in 2019 and there can’t be a sentient

adult Islingtonian who hasn’t heard

of him. And there is plenty of

precedent for maverick Labour MPs

retaining their seats having departed

their party. In 1972, for example, the

Comrades are urging

him to emerge from

the charitable cocoon

There’s nothing off to

the left of Labour that

voters find attractive

David

Aaronovitch

red box

For the best analysis

and commentary on

the political landscape

thetimes.co.uk/redbox

@daaronovitch

the times | Thursday January 13 2022 V2 27