They Made It Possible

Before speaking at a Camden rally that had to be held four times, having filled a large hall and two overspill rooms before Corbyn and the others had to address the crowds outside from a fire engine, so that in all at least 2500 people heard them, Owen Jones wrote:

How have the Labour left, from arguably its lowest ebb in the party’s history, apparently ended up on the brink of taking the leadership on a wave of support?

If you listen to many self-described “centre-left” voices, it’s because the Labour party has gone quite, quite mad.

Cod psychology now abounds to describe the rise of Corbynism: narcissism, people wanting to show off how right-on they are on Facebook, mass delusion, an emotional spasm, and so on.

Corbyn supporters are having a temper tantrum against the electorate, so this patronising narrative goes, they think voters have “false consciousness” on a grand scale.

Some sort of mass psychological disorder has gripped one of the great parties of the left in the western world, and the only real debate is how it must be cured or eradicated. 

And the tragedy is this: the great “centre-left” condescenders are able to identify any factor for Corbyn’s spectacular rise other than the culprit: their own political cause, or rather its implosion.

Some of these commentators huddle together on social media, competing over how snarky and belittling they can be towards those oh-so-childish/unhinged/ridiculous (delete as applicable) Corbynites, unable to understand that rare thing, the birth of a genuinely grassroots political movement.

And that’s the problem: this snarkiness is all some seem to have left.

Much of the self-described “centre-left” – I’d say Blairism, but some embrace the label more than others – now lack a clear vision, or a set of policies, or even a coherent distinct set of values. 

They increasingly define themselves against what they regard as a deluded, childish left. They have created a vacuum and it has now been filled by the Corbyn left.

Their plight is quite straightforward.

The battered remnants of the left in the 1990s – cowed by the global onward march of free-marketeers – often critiqued New Labour as being indistinguishable from Toryism. “Tory Blair” and all that.

They were wrong, despite the terrible failures and even disasters of New Labour, from the Iraq war to deregulation of the City.

New Labour delivered large-scale public investment, in contrast to the underinvestment that characterised Thatcherism.

That would mean not only more money for health and education, but also transformative projects like SureStart.

The public sector would be expanded. The state would set a floor in workers’ paypackets, in the form of the minimum wage.

Tthe gap between low pay and the reality of life would be subsidised through tax credits; child poverty would be confronted. LGBT people would be emancipated from legal harassment and discrimination.

New Labour may have accepted many of the underlying assumptions of Thatcherism, but it clearly had a vision that was distinct from that of the Tories.

But then the struggle of LGBT people compelled even the Tory leadership to accept their equality before the law.

George Osborne may have legislated to make the working poor poorer, but his pledge of a £9 minimum wage by 2020outbid Ed Miliband’s paltry offer by a pound.

The Labour leadership supported a scaling back of tax credits and a benefit cap that will achieve nothing but an increase in child poverty.

Austerity has been embraced, and Labour’s past spending record renounced.

What is left for the New Labourites to call for that is distinctive? As things stand, very little.

If you are a budding New Labourite, there are plenty of prominent media commentators to look to for inspiration.

But while you may find an abundance of negativity, sneer, and pseudo-Freudian psychoanalysis, you’ll struggle to find any coherent vision.

The thoughtful Blairite blogger Stephen Bush was asked on Twitter: “Have we reached a point where the purposes for which the Labour party was created have largely been achieved?”

His response – and not to damn him, because he implicitly challenges New Labourites to come up with a reason to exist – summed up why his fellow travellers have rendered themselves politically superfluous: “Arguably.”

We may have experienced the longest period of falling real pay since the 19th century, hundreds of thousands of the citizens of one of the world’s richest economies driven to food banks, a housing crisis that increasingly consumes the ambitions of the next generation, growing insecurity marking the work lives of middle-income and low-income Britons alike.

But no, the very founding basis of Labour is “arguably” redundant, according to this prominent Blairite writer.

And so here is the irony.

The radical left has often been critiqued – including by me – for offering little but slogans, normally about stopping something bad like cuts or privatisation.

And yet Corbyn’s campaign has been unique in the Labour leadership campaign in actually offering coherent policies and a fleshed-out economic strategy: a radical housing programme; tax justice; democratic public ownership of utilities and services; a public investment bank to transform the economy; quantitative easing to invest in desperately needed infrastructure; a £10 minimum wage; a National Education Service; a costed abolition of tuition fees; women’s rights; and so on.

His campaign is making astounding headway – against the odds – because it offers a coherent, inspiring and, crucially, a hopeful vision.

His rivals offer little of any substance. What’s left for them?

Social democracy across Europe has accepted the underlying principles of austerity and it is crumbling in multiple directions: towards civic nationalism, like the SNP; anti-immigration parties, like Ukip, the National Front in France and the True Finns in Finland; and leftwing populism, like Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece.

Unlike, say, Spain, France and Greece, Britain has no tradition of a mass political force to the left of the main social-democratic party, so it is not surprising our anti-austerity left movement is emerging within Labour itself.

Yes, profound societal changes are also at work here but that “social democracy” or the “centre-left” or whatever you want to call it has lost its purpose and is disintegrating in favour of other political forces seems pretty indisputable.

If those in the self-described “centre-left” offered a coherent, inspiring vision, the Corbyn phenomenon would never have happened. They have failed to develop one.

If they want to regain momentum within their own party – let alone win over the country – they should sideline the voices of negativity and learn how to inspire people.

And however much they resort to cod psychology or sneering about the Corbyn phenomenon, the truth remains: they made it possible.