Zombie Labour

By Jake Wilde

Ian Dunt’s swift analysis of the 5 May elections is excellent. His description of the Labour Party as “the walking dead, aimlessly trundling on, a parody of political life” is as accurate as it is brutal. Like all good writing, it got me thinking. Firstly about the counterfactual: what if it had been a wipeout, a disaster, a game-changer? And secondly where does this zombie Labour Party stagger off to next.

(How counterfactual the counterfactual is does depend where you live. If that happens to be Scotland then, as a Labour Party member or supporter, you may now aspire to be the undead as opposed to being the actual dead. Third place. In Scotland. I am not going to attempt an in depth analysis here but the most obvious conclusion is that there’s only one question that matters in Scotland – the SNP answer it unequivocally one way, the Tories unequivocally the other way and Labour, well Labour don’t.)

To return to the unfulfilled worst case scenario Ian Dunt suggests that:

“A catastrophic result might – just might – have got some Corbyn supporters to think again. Maybe not enough for a leadership challenge in which he’d lose the internal vote, but enough to precipitate that happening the next time there was evidence of how badly he was doing. It could have been the beginning of the end.”

Could Labour under these circumstances, as Ian suggests, have been brought back from the dead? The people behind Corbyn, the hard-core activist layer who may or may not do very much work for the actual Labour Party, would be untroubled by an apocalyptic outcome. They would find “reasons” to explain it as they have with every opinion poll that tells them what the rest of the population already know. Eventually the finger of blame would be firmly pointed to others in the Party – as it was being ahead of and even on polling day – and in the direction of the media.

The so-called “ordinary” members of the Labour Party who some think abandoned reason and decided to vote for Corbyn last year do not, I think, exist. But if they ever did exist then their numbers are insufficient, at least now, to change the outcome of a fresh leadership election. The people keeping Corbyn in the leadership position are those who would view any attempt to move towards the electorate as a betrayal. They firmly believe that it is for the electorate to realise that the policies, the slogans and the general attitude and positioning they are being offered by Corbyn’s Labour Party are objectively correct. This is why there has been no attempt to gauge the views of the electorate during the run-up to 5 May. Indeed the only polling that has been undertaken is blowing the whole £300,000 budget on asking questions of non-voters.

Peter Mandelson and others were right when they talked of tens of thousands of members having left; they have and have simply not been counted yet because of the six month grace period. The party profile changed under Ed Miliband, as Conor Pope identified in his analysis of the 2014 NEC elections. Conor pointed to the fact that 40% of the membership was from London and that this figure was rising, and the effect this was having on distorting the perceived priorities of the party, not least over the threat of UKIP.

Labour’s new members have arrived at the expense of the Greens and the assorted Judean People’s Front parties of the far left. Those new members are still fighting their #1 enemy, the “Blairites”, some of whom have decided, for various reasons, that enough is enough and have left. But a catastrophic defeat for Corbyn might have tempted them back, even only as £3ers, if a leadership contest was being talked of with sufficient conviction. Corbyn’s dereliction of duty over the EU referendum might even have proved decisive.

There is a far bigger pool of potential £3 voters in the centre ground than there ever was or will be on the far left. The momentum that could have been generated by a heavy defeat for Corbyn on 5 May might then have translated into a crippling blow to his leadership, if not outright defeat. (It would certainly be ironic if the very measure – a vote for the leader of the party in exchange for a paltry £3 – that most moderates feared would hand the party to Corbyn then proved to be his undoing.)

But no heavy defeat occurred, simply the worst performance of any opposition party for three decades. Once the far left have control of something there is only one outcome – that thing dies. Whether it is a country or a city council, a newspaper or a political party, death is inevitable. It’s not always the put-it-in-a-box-and-bury-it-in-the-ground kind of dead though; sometimes it is Ian Dunt’s walking dead. So even before 5 May the Labour Party was already dead but, like so many zombies, it doesn’t know it yet.

So the zombie awkwardly stumbles along the road towards 2020, unblinking in the face of three main problems that will befall it on this grim journey.

First of all there will certainly be further antisemitism revelations. Guido Fawkes has invested in research that seems beyond either local or national Labour parties and this has proved successful in altering perceptions of the party. It is clear that the Naz Shah revelation was timed to coincide with the election, with small fry councillors and activists being used as a mechanism for keeping up the drip-drip effect. Ken’s interventions have simply been a bonus, depending upon your perspective.

The reason there will be more revelations is because the existing  ones have been about those who joined the party before Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader. One might think that it could not get any worse than discovering an MP has made antisemitic comments but Shah had no direct link to the leader. Very few of the culprits so far have. But in the case of Labour Party members who have joined or re-joined since Corbyn’s election then the link is clearer and there will be antisemites amongst them. Some may even have been elected on 5 May.

Next up is the small matter of the actual policies the Labour Party is proposing. Thus far, and this has escaped most people’s attention, Labour has still been largely espousing the same policies as it did in the General Election last year, with the exception of those economic policies within the gift of John McDonnell. Labour still has, for example, the debate over Trident and wider foreign policy to come, the latter review of course having been being conducted by Ken Livingstone prior to his suspension.

And third is the game of musical chairs that will be played as a result of the boundary changes in 2018. This, as much as any other event, has the potential to lay bare the binary split in the party and members in CLPs will be forced into making correspondingly binary choices. How genuinely democratic that process will be will depend entirely on how genuinely democratic the Labour Party is by that stage. The verdicts on Ken Livingstone, Trident, antisemitism in the party and the persistent failure to get close to the Tories in the polls will have decided that long before then.

Jeremy Corbyn said of 5 May, “We hung on”. Most thought he meant the Labour Party. He probably thought he meant the Labour Party. But the results on 5 May mean that the Corbynistas were the ones who hung on and the Labour Party is now past the point of resurrection.

 

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Let’s stay together

By Citizen Sane

I recognise I’m not the best-qualified person to talk about this. I’ve probably been to Scotland five, maybe six, times in my life. All visits but one were for work rather than pleasure. On every occasion I’ve only stayed in Edinburgh, apart from some fleeting visits to Glasgow and Dundee for meetings. There is, I think, some Scottish blood on my mum’s side of the family. Or maybe my dad’s. I forget. But really I’m about as English as you can get, by lineage and by character. Not just English, but southern English. Not just southern English, but from the London area.

I am, to quote from an episode of Blackadder, about as Scottish as the Queen of England’s tits. But I’m still extremely fond of Scotland, the Scottish people and value their place within the United Kingdom.

I was once rather keen on the idea of wholesale constitutional change. My wish list would have specified a codified constitution, a bill of rights, the establishment of a republic, proportional representation, an elected House of Lords and substantial devolution. Some of these, I am still in favour of. Others, not so much. These are not things to be meddled with lightly, on the basis that – despite its faults – our political system is one of the best in the world. We have a stable, peaceful, prosperous union of countries and a robust democratic polity rivalled only by a small number of other liberal democracies. Sometimes you need to remind yourself, bogged down as we all get by gripes and complaints with The System, that we are extraordinarily fortunate to live in the United Kingdom. To anyone who disputes this, I say: there are approximately 190 countries in the world – name more than, say, ten where you could enjoy similar personal, artistic or religious freedom, or a higher standard or living, or a lower level of corruption in public life, or greater opportunities or political stability or…. the list goes on.

Of course, somebody will point out A, B, or C as evidence that the UK is a declining state, or a corrupt tin pot country but they’re fooling nobody. Tell that to the billions of people who would no doubt swap their country for one like ours, or the tens of thousands who make it to our shores every year, for various reasons, all in search of a better life.

As it is no doubt apparent by now, I fervently hope that the No vote prevails in the Scottish independence referendum. The United Kingdom has, by and large, been an extraordinary success for centuries. I’m no flag waving ultra patriot, but it seems self-evident that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are far greater than the sum of their parts and it would be an egregious act of vandalism to breakup that successful union for what seems very narrow reasons – mostly predicated on a nationalism that is no less ugly or pointless or boring than any other. I don’t describe myself as an English national; I describe myself as British and other than stoking the coals of vestigial Scottish national pride, cannot see a single valid reason for voting for independence. It will not benefit the Scottish people, it will not benefit the rest of the UK.

Given the lack of a coherent economic plan, the ‘independence’ would be fatally compromised anyway: the proposal is for a currency union with rUK, which, even if this were to be agreed – and all the major parties and the Bank of England have rejected the idea – would immediately cede control of monetary policy and interest rates to what would now be a ‘foreign’ country. Longer term membership of the EU would have to be renegotiated and, in the event that Scotland decides to join the euro, independence would be watered down further still as economic policy transfers to Brussels and Frankfurt.

Scotland – with its population of just over five million people, representing just 8% of UK GDP, dependent on a highly variable income from oil, exposed to any future banking crisis due to its substantial financial sector – would become a third tier backwater nation in a much larger European union. So I have to ask: by what definition is this ‘independence’ and who benefits?

Vote NO, Scotland. For everyone’s sake, but especially yours.

The Scottish independence referendum has not been “great for democracy”

By Stuart Ritchie (@StuartJRitchie)

“Whatever happens on September 18”, goes the current saying, “this has been a great time for democracy”. The Scottish independence referendum has, we are told, galvanised thousands of previously apathetic voters, leading to a ‘renaissance’ of political discussion and engagement. The problem with this feel-good argument is not just that it is a cliché, regularly and boringly repeated in newspaper columns and on social media. The problem is that it is wrong.

It is certainly true that an unexpectedly high percentage of the Scottish electorate—97%, in fact—are registered to vote. In itself, this would indeed be encouraging. The referendum is the talk of every town, every office, and every pub; discussion is by no means restricted to journalists and other politics obsessives. But it is the quality of much of the discussion that is cause for concern. These newly-energized voters are not, as the ‘democratic renaissance’ crowd would like to believe, engaging in-depth with the economic, political, and philosophical questions that surround such a momentous decision. Unfortunately, the ‘Yes’ side of the argument is afflicted by three ailments, none of which lend themselves to the improvement of democratic debate. They are glibness, self-pity, and conspiracy-theory thinking, and I shall discuss them in turn.

First, glibness. An all-purpose political tactic has been seized upon by the Yes campaign. It is the following: any objection to your beliefs, however earnest, well-researched, or authoritative, can be dismissed as ‘scaremongering’ (see also: ‘bullying’, ‘bluffing’, and ‘blustering’). This indolent refrain is regularly deployed as a way to close down debate and ‘monster’ one’s opponent: after all, if the First Minister of Scotland can use this approach repeatedly in debates and interviews, why shouldn’t the average Yes activist? It hardly needs be said that this is not conducive to well-informed discussion. If newly-engaged voters have been taught by Yes activists that this is how political arguments should be conducted—assume the worst intentions of your opponents and on that basis dismiss their arguments—they have been sold a pup.

Second, self-pity. Many pro-independence campaigners believe themselves the victims of a biased, pro-establishment media. Undoubtedly the media has made missteps during the campaign (missteps which have favoured both sides and are completely to be expected). However, the main target of the Yes activists’ ire has been, perhaps surprisingly, the BBC. Yes campaigners have repeatedly held protest rallies against perceived ‘BBC bias’ outside the headquarters of BBC Scotland in Glasgow, complaining petulantly that the rallies are not immediately made front-page news afterwards. They point to an analysis by a Media Politics academic at the University of the West of Scotland who purports to show that the BBC “has not been fair or balanced”. Many of the assumptions of this report are questionable at best, and most importantly, the analysis did not appear in a peer-reviewed academic journal, instead being published as a column on a politics website.

Even if it were shown convincingly that the BBC (or any other media outlet) asked more questions of the Yes campaign than it did of the No, it would not necessarily be evidence of bias. The burden of proof is on those arguing to make such a major change to the status quo, and they should thus be able to defend it against robust questioning. However, for many pro-independence supporters, journalists are not simply questioning them in order to shed light on the many questions that arise about possible independence. Instead, they are part of an organised ‘anti-Scottish’ cabal. Impugning the motives of journalists is an ugly business, and is a conspicuous feature of demagogic, anti-democratic countries from Russia to Venezuela. The current situation in Scotland is, of course, far from that in those countries, but the fact that the comparison is even possible, and that the Yes campaign is encouraging new voters to be not just sceptical, but utterly cynical about the media, should worry those who care about the vital role journalism plays in democratic debate.

If the media has been organised to do Scotland down, does this mean that there exists a larger conspiracy? For many Yes activists, the answer is, well, ‘yes’. This is the third weakness of the Yes campaign: conspiracy theory thinking. Of course, the main three UK political parties are unionist, so we can expect them to support the No camp. But many think they are going further. Take, for instance, the story that has feverishly been passed around social media, that the ‘world’s largest oil field’ has been discovered off the Shetland Islands and hushed up by David Cameron (who secretly visited it during his recent trip to Scotland). A recent YouGov poll showed that, unbelievably, 42% of Scottish voters believe this theory is correct. The poll also showed that 26% think that MI5 is involved in trying to stop an independence vote (a theory not ruled out by the First Minister), and no less than 19% think that the referendum itself ‘will probably be rigged’ (a message spread around Yes Facebook groups that voters must bring a pen to the voting booth, lest the shadowy powers-that-be rub out their pencilled cross with an eraser).

That YouGov poll—and it is just one poll, though one carried out by an authoritative and respected polling company—paints a grim picture of the outcome of the referendum campaign, suggesting that baseless, tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories are rife among the Scottish electorate. These theories are not the foundation either of a new progressive state (after a Yes vote) or a process of healing within the UK (after a No vote). Incidentally, such beliefs are also regularly found in conjunction with the kind of default anti-West mindset that will be familiar to readers of the Gerasite blog.

I should stress that I am not arguing all Yes campaigners engage in these closed-minded tactics and mindsets. Far from it. But those who are arguing that the referendum has revitalised Scottish democracy would do well to consider the glibness, self-pity, and conspiracy theories of the Yes campaign, and reflect on whether these are indicative of a positive, valuable debate.

Outside the poky little world of Scottish nationalists, clouds are gathering. It is difficult to argue that the optimal response to an ascendant China, a revanchist Russia, and an eruption of vicious terrorism in the Levant is the breaking of the back of one of the world’s most powerful, liberal democracies. Foreign policy has largely been off the table in discussion of Scottish independence, with both sides content to discuss mainly domestic issues. This is perhaps a good thing; there is no conspiracy theory, after all, like a foreign-policy conspiracy theory. But, as with many of the other big issues in the campaign, we have had precisely no answers to how an independent Scotland would deal with these critical geopolitical issues. Given the First Minister’s previous statements, and given the tendencies of the Yes campaign described above, we can only hope we won’t have to find out.