Britain Says “I’m with Gary”: Cruel Politics No Match for Moral Clarity


The climbdown by BBC management over Gary Lineker’s now-famous tweet laid bare the political weakness of Rishi Sunak’s government – how far it is removed from popular opinion. It hopes to whip up a xenophobic backlash against asylum seekers in order to rescue its electoral chances. But the affair has also exposed the no less appalling and morally atrophied response from Starmer’s Labour. 

The Tory party has discovered that creating a moral panic over immigration has not gained as much traction within mainstream public opinion as it would like. Lineker criticized directly the rhetoric of the Tory right wing: “There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?” The language Lineker had in mind was that of Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who claimed in parliament that “illegal and uncontrolled migration” of asylum seekers coming across the Channel in small boats was an “invasion”. 

Sunak was at great pains to dissociate himself from the BBC’s decision to suspend Lineker from presenting Match of the Day. Sunak said he hoped “that the current situation between Gary Lineker and the BBC can be resolved in a timely manner, but it is rightly a matter for them, not the government”. While the government does not directly dictate the BBC’s actions, it is the case that the BBC’s board is packed with Tory sympathisers who are particularly responsive to the demands of hardcore rightwing MPs and the tabloid press. 

The solid support for Lineker from his fellow sports presenters and commentators – many of them former professional athletes who value team solidarity – has fragmented the response of the political class. Co-presenter Ian Wright immediately announced he would not appear on the programme without Lineker, closely followed by Alan Shearer and all other potential presenters on the BBC’s list. 

Football fans – who in the past have been targeted by the extreme right – have sided with Lineker over the political elite. About a dozen people held up a banner outside the BBC’s Salford office saying “Reinstate Gary Lineker” and other signs saying “Refugees welcome here”. At Saturday’s match between Leicester and Chelsea, which Lineker attended as a spectator, fans could be seen holding up signs supportive of the presenter, with one reading: “I’m with Gary. Migrants welcome.” At one point in the game, both sets of supporters chanted Lineker’s name. 

The Guardian reported: “Gary Lineker is our guy,” said Leicester City fan Shafiq Khalifa. “He is  standing up for people who don’t have a voice to speak.” The council worker and photographer feared Lineker’s punishment for speaking against government policies was a worrying sign for society. “We’re coming to that point in the world where we’re not allowed to say the truth,” he said. “The BBC know what they’re doing.” Lifelong Leicester City fan James Sankar, 75, who was attending the game with his Chelsea-supporting wife, Prem, 66, said the BBC’s reaction to Lineker’s tweets made him worried that people’s freedom was being reduced. “He has a right to do that, it’s a free country. That’s one of the things that we’re proud of, being able to say what we want.”

According to the Independent: “A Manchester City fan held up a sign saying “Gary Lineker for Prime Minister” at a match at Selhurst Park, London. Meanwhile, Swansea City fans were also pictured waving a banner which said “Gary, Gary, Gary Lineker” and “stand up to racism” at the Swansea.com Stadium.”

Braverman’s racist rhetoric has emboldened extreme rightists to whip up local residents to attack asylum seekers who the government has deliberately placed in hotels in largely white small towns where they stand out and become victims of harassment, rather than London where they would blend in. However, Lineker’s moral clarity about the government’s plans has succeeded in changing the narrative. 

The Observer commented: “Amid signs that the row may be changing public perception of the government’s asylum policy, the furore has also exposed deep Tory splits and unease over its hardline nature, under which refugees arriving on small boats in the UK will be detained and deported ‘within weeks’ – either to their own country if it is safe or a third nation if it is not. … Tobias Ellwood, Tory chair of the Commons defence select committee, said he needed reassurance that there would be workable routes by which genuine asylum seekers could reach the UK ‘so this is seen as a genuine attempt to save lives … not just the bombastic rhetoric that riled people like Gary Lineker.”

Although attacking his tweets was expected to divert attention away from the policy itself, it has instead only focused political discourse on the cruelty of the legislation, also exposing the moral atrophy of the Labour right. Veteran journalist Will Hutton commented: “The furore has transformed the terms of the debate. Labour had confined itself to criticising the policy only in terms of its workability. Now it cannot allow only Gary Lineker to speak out about the rotten values that have driven it, as the numbers declaring their support for him grow. This is transmuting into a popular progressive moment as the integrity of public service broadcasting is defended alongside Lineker’s stance on asylum seeking. Britain is not the rightwing country the right imagines. It is a fairer, much more decent place. Congratulations to the Match of the Day presentation team who showed us who we are – the best game any of them have played.”

Lineker was closer to the public mood than the Labour leadership, which carried out an embarrassing u-turn after first disavowing Lineker’s language to then supporting him against the BBC management. Skwawkbox commented: “What drove the u-turn? Well, in the interim, fellow presenters had shown exemplary solidarity with Lineker, informing the BBC that they would not be participating in the show.” By contrast, Jeremy Corbyn had no hesitation in congratulating Gary Lineker and Ian Wright, calling for a mobilization “to defeat this inhumane, illegal and immoral legislation.”

Starmer’s Labour has carefully avoided the central issue of the treatment of asylum seekers, focusing instead on the technical workability of the government’s plans. Phil Burton-Cartledge took Starmer to task over his refusal to make any moral criticism of the legislation. “Taking on the arguments politically instead of as a manager and a bureaucrat means telling people with unfounded prejudices and racist attitudes that they’re wrong. Which is something the Labour right are never willing to do, unless the public are opposed to a war or, as per more recently, want the nationalisation of water and energy. Offering political leadership is hard. It’s much easier to surf the wave of reactionary public opinion than challenge it, because the press are on side.”

After thanking his colleagues for their support, Lineker tweeted: “A final thought: however difficult the last few days have been, it simply doesn’t compare to having to flee your home from persecution or war to seek refuge in a land far away. It’s heartwarming to have seen the empathy towards their plight from so many of you. We remain a country of predominantly tolerant, welcoming and generous people. Thank you.”

This would seem to present an opportunity for Labour members to raise the lack of any principled opposition from the parliamentary party to the legislation, but their voices have been muzzled by rightwing control of the apparatus. How long can this continue?

“We will fight in the fields and in the streets”: Ordinary people lead the struggle against the Tory neoliberals


Nurses are preparing an unparalleled escalation of strike action for the beginning of March. For the first time, members working in emergency departments, intensive care units and cancer care services will be joining the strike. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has announced the first continuous 48-hour strikes running through two days and two nights, rather than limiting walkouts to the 12 hours from 8am to 8pm, as they have done up until now. It is also considering increasing strike pay, to make clear it is serious.

“It is with a heavy heart that I have today asked even more nursing staff to join this dispute,” said RCN general secretary Pat Cullen. “By refusing to negotiate with nurses, the prime minister is pushing even more people into the strike. He must listen to NHS leaders and not let this go ahead.” A union insider said: “NHS leaders … were expecting an escalation but had not prepared for the removal of the committees and derogation process that too many had manipulated at local level. We saw a minority of hospital management bullying nurses to break the last strike.”

The nurses are being joined by ambulance workers organised by Unison, after a re-ballot of 12,000 members, which the union describes as a “significant escalation” of industrial action. The action aims to force government ministers to meet union officials and negotiate seriously about pay. The outrage at Energy Secretary Grant Shapps’ claim that ambulance staff had refused to provide information about where they were striking, “a blatant lie” according to GMB official Rachel Harrison, has only hardened strikers’ determination.

The government’s intransigence on their wage claims has only solidified the militancy of the strikers. But the significance of the strikes is that, like those of the railway workers, postal workers, and teachers, they are fueled by the need to preserve social institutions which are currently being allowed to fail. These ideals and goals are common to all the strikers: nurses are fighting for the future existence of the NHS, university lecturers for the future of higher education as institutions for learning, postal workers to keep the Royal Mail as a means of community cohesion, the railway workers for passenger safety as well as the very right to strike.

Postal workers voted by an overwhelming 95.9 per cent to continue their strike action. Communication Workers union general secretary Dave Ward said the vote is “proof that postal workers will not accept their livelihoods being destroyed so that a few at the top can generate serious profits at their expense.” He said: “It is proof that workers loyal to a historic institution like Royal Mail will not accept it being turned into an Uber-style, bog-standard gig economy employer.

Deborah Eggleston, a members of the teachers’ union NASUWT, was interviewed in a Guardian video titled, “Strikes are all we have.” She explained that by closing the local Community College in Shildon, where she lives, “they’re taking away the collegiate spirit of the town.” Schools are important community hubs, she pointed out. Talking about her volunteer work for the Shildon Alive community food centre, she said that she felt her role in society “is more than just teaching children: it’s about helping the community I live in.”  She has found that “for the first time, ordinary people cannot go on like this.”

The need to rebuild society after the impact of the pandemic is being shouldered by the unions, while the Tory government is abstaining from any kind of effective intervention. The Sunak government is paralysed because concessions on wage claims to match inflation would break apart the Tory coalition. It includes hardliners aiming to destroy unions and to allow the NHS to collapse, together with those fearing a social catastrophe and pleading with the Treasury to release funds to support the lowest-paid.

It is possible that the government will be brought down by the strike wave. In that case, it would likely be replaced by a Starmer-led Labour government. But rather than addressing the pressing problems of poverty, healthcare, education, refugees and rapidly rising energy costs, Starmer is so out of tune with the unions and their members he has relaunched the internal culture war against Jeremy Corbyn so as to isolate and neutralize the left in the party. 

If the government falls as a result of strike action, a Labour government would be facing an energized and militant working class. It would have a pressing need to head off grassroots militancy and restore faith in the system. They can’t do this without increasing low-paid workers’ wages.  Paying for a substantial increase for public employees means taxing the rich. Is Starmer up to it?  I don’t think so either.

A government of any complexion couldn’t even begin to tackle the problems facing society without dealing with the issue of the accumulation of enormous wealth at the top of the social structure while at the bottom people’s living standards have been destroyed. As Deborah Eggleston put it: “ordinary people cannot go on like this.”

Fighting the Anti-Worker Stance of Neoliberal Tories and Right-wing Labour


Image: Unite Community

February has begun with the largest mass strikes in Britain since the 1970s, bringing half a million workers out on strike. Marches and rallies in all major cities and provincial towns were spearheaded by thousands of teachers, joined by civil servants, university staff, rail and bus workers. The marches were notable for their enthusiasm and popularity with the general public. 

Sections of the working class are uniting and pushing back together against the government’s refusal to negotiate pay settlements that would compensate for inflation. This movement is regenerating the basic class consciousness that was dormant for much of the recent past. As railway union leader Mick Lynch told a rallyfor the National Education Union in Westminster on Wednesday, “we are the working class, and we are back.”

The one-day strike coincides with the TUC’s national “protect the right to strike” day, called in response to new government legislation that will tighten the current restrictive laws by imposing minimum service levels on trade unions. The Guardian reported that the leaders of the National Education Union (NEU), Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, describe the strike as “a huge statement from a determined membership who smashed through the government’s thresholds that were only ever designed to prevent strike action happening at all”. Civil servants’ union leader Mark Serwotka commented that striking members were “very young, very vibrant, very diverse. Lots of first-time strikers, and a real sense from many of them that they felt quite empowered.”

The union campaign of resistance to below-inflation pay offers reflects a movement of popular democracy coming into collision with an authoritarian government. Public support for the strikers shows that it is generally understood that they are not just fighting for sectional wage claims but are also standing up to the government on issues that affect everybody. Moreover, it has become clear that it is the government which is directly responsible for the stalemate on wages. It is significant that both teachers’ and nurses’ unions have announced they will not take part in next year’s pay review bodies, created only in order to insulate the government from political pressures and involvement in collective bargaining. The outsourcing of responsibility for public sector wages to these pay review bodies is a strategy of the neoliberal state – similar to the creation of “independent” bodies to regulate energy, water, and transport costs – that has been broken apart by the overwhelming resistance of unions to below-inflation pay deals.

Many members of the Labour party see this upsurge of resistance as a harbinger of a future Labour government. Even though reluctantly supporting a Starmer-led Labour at the ballot box, they consider that a Labour government must be better than the current corrupt and incompetent Tories. In fact, writing for LabourHub, Mark Perryman says it is “ill-informed ultraleftism” to suggest anything else. But although a more professional and less corrupt government would certainly appear to be better for everybody, what would it offer the strikers?

Keir Starmer has argued that the pay rise being demanded by nurses is “probably more than can be afforded,” and according to a briefing from shadow health minister Wes Streeting’s office, Labour would support using the army to break NHS strikes. Stephen Kinnock, the shadow minister for immigration, claimed that England had been “left with no choice” but to draft in army personnel to cover for striking ambulance drivers, border staff and civil servants.

A further confirmation of this anti-worker attitude is given by the London Labour conference, where a resolution affirming support for the strikers and condemning the government’s move to outlaw strikes was narrowly voted down by the Labour right with the support of Unison representatives, even though Unison members in the ambulance service will be joining the strikes next week. This is evidence of how a Labour government may act when in office.

Starmer also defended greater use of the private sector to drive down NHS waiting lists. A Momentum spokesperson said it “beggars belief that the Labour leadership is choosing to embrace the role of the private sector in the NHS” and to undermine the principle of universal healthcare. The spokesperson added: “For Keir Starmer to go back on his leadership pledge to end NHS outsourcing is morally wrong and politically self-defeating.”

How can Momentum remain relevant when it can only offer moral criticism of the Labour leadership in the midst of the growing strike wave? Momentum has been most successful when it doesn’t depend on its position in the Labour party – such as The World Transformed festival. Delegates and other attendees at the Liverpool party conference appeared shell-shocked when they wandered into TWT – perhaps recovering from singing the national anthem. By way of contrast, Tribune magazine’s Enough is Enough campaign has mobilized many hundreds of people independent of official Labour, simply by bringing together union activists with campaigners on rents, food banks, and other social issues.

The economic historian Adam Tooze has adopted the term “polycrisis” to characterize the instability of the world economy. He uses it to indicate the way simultaneous crises are interacting with and amplifying each other, and that there is no unitary cause of the crisis. It has to be recognized, he argues, that this is a novel situation in which the interrelation of the crises is not clear, and that making comparisons with past inflationary crises is misleading. 

British society might well be a prime example of a polycrisis. The shock of the Brexit vote in 2016 cannot by itself explain the “astonishing stagnation in productivity and real incomes” that has eclipsed anything in the last 250 years. For a significant part of the population real incomes actually fell, making the descriptors of decline and stagnation a literal reality. Coupled with that is a social breakdown at many levels: economic contraction, parliamentary governance, national constitution, state healthcare provision, energy, water and travel regulation, as well as unaffordable housing.

The official Labour line is that a change of government can fix all these problems: their current slogan is “only Labour can save the NHS.” But the Labour leaders’ statements on nurses’ strike actions and their absence of support for Wednesday’s strike show that a Labour government would continue with authoritarian neoliberal governance and inevitably come into conflict with public sector workers.

The continuing wave of strikes is forcing a renewal of open class lines in social life and fragmenting neoliberal state institutions. This development offers the possibility of creating new political forms that will dislodge the grip of the Labour right and enable left activists to participate in social struggles that can build new relationships between different sectors and with international movements.

My book, The Socialist Ideal in the Labour Party: from Attlee to Corbyn, is available from Merlin Press at merlinpress.co.uk

Book Review: “Don’t Stop Thinking about Tomorrow,” by Mike Phipps


Mike Phipps has been around for a while. A founding member of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) from 2004, a long-standing member of the editorial board of Labour Briefing, he was founder and editor of Iraq Occupation Focus for several years. Now he is a member of the Executive Committee of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD), and writes for the website Labour Hub.

Phipps assesses the current state of the Labour party in his new book: Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022). And his verdict is not pretty. As well as losing members, expelling activists, ignoring its own constitution and conference-decided policies, Labour is “headed by a leader with so little personal following in the broader Party that he is to a large extent the prisoner of its most factional right wing elements.”

It only gets worse. In the middle of the pandemic and climate crises, the party’s 2021 conference turned inwards to conflicts over rule changes. Phipps attributes the right-wing’s push for changes to the leadership election rules to the prospect of an alternative leader without the baggage of Starmer’s pledges to the membership: “It looked like Starmer’s ultimate problem was that he had lost the support of the left, and the right of the Party didn’t really want him.”

Phipps rightly identifies the December 2019 election result as a “life-changing” calamity for many activists who had spent hours door-knocking in the dark. But was the party really up to a “new politics” in any case? Transforming Labour into a movement that could sustain a radical Corbyn government in power “was always going to be a daunting task for an essentially electoralist Party notorious for its routinism and institutional conservatism.”

Phipps warned presciently (in his essay collection For the Many) in 2017 that the party needed “root and branch reform,” wholesale democratization of its structures so that the influx of new members could play an effective part in deciding policy and selecting candidates. That didn’t happen, and after initially electing left branch leaderships, control reverted to the hands of the right. Starmer’s election to the party leadership was a consequence of the overwhelming disappointment of many members after the 2019 election – and also the dashing of the left’s hopes of the possibility of electing a radical government to Westminster despite the ferocious Tory and deep state assault on Labour. 

However, Phipps is still convinced of the possibilities of socialist activism within Labour. The left “needs to move beyond a fixation with the leadership,” he argues, “and focus on what was achievable: intellectually, in terms of organisation, among the membership and the affiliated organisations, in policy terms and among voters.”

Local government is an arena where citizen involvement offers a chance for consciousness-raising around economic and political issues, he points out. Locally-based politicians such as Andy Burnham demonstrate alternative regional visions, and the effective responses of regional and local authorities to Covid demonstrated their commitment to public health compared to the abysmal record of central government. Where councils have been active at grassroots community organizing (such as in Worthing), they won electoral support against the national trend.

The prospects opened up at local level, contends Phipps, militate against activists leaving the party in protest. He says: “the input that radical Labour ideas can have within the Party’s empire of local government depends hugely on the extent to which activists of the Corbyn era stay in the Party and make their ideas felt.” He considers the outlook for the left “is not as unremittingly negative as might at first appear.” Despite organizational exclusion and internal division, the left is far more powerful now than in 2015. 

He contrasts Momentum’s ability to consolidate the left within the party with the fragmentation of a decade earlier, when there was little coordination between the LRC and the CLPD. Taking the long term view, he cites writers who argue for rebuilding the party on the ground in working-class communities, offering practical solidarity and real solutions, in Christine Berry’s words. He privileges community organizing coming from people taking ownership of the party themselves, but “organizing should be the central priority of the left in the party.” 

Because of his long-term approach, Phipps discusses the role of the unions mainly in terms of their effects on the structural workings of the party, although he allows for the rapid growth of mass movements having a direct impact on Labour and its representatives. This is evident from the current upsurge of militant strike struggles that has placed the unions at the centre of mass opposition to the government, despite the lukewarm response of the Labour front bench to the escalating cost of living and energy rates. 

While criticizing Starmer’s authoritarian clampdown on party discussion, Phipps is also critical of the left, which he charges with responsibility for the party’s grassroots organisation and policy development. “If many of the leadership’s woes since 2019 have been self-inflicted, this might equally be said of the left: demoralization, infighting and a failure to look outwards all undermined its effectiveness at a time when it was needed more than ever.” Demoralization and infighting signal the weakness rather than the strength of the left. However, potential divisions within the PLP could be deepened by the grassroots response to Momentum’s demands that MPs attend picket lines in their constituencies and that Starmer drop his ban on MPs joining the pickets. 

The creation of a special category of members who have been suspended or expelled from the Labour party and do not have voting rights within Momentum has only exacerbated the contradictions between Momentum’s efforts to move Labour to the left and the unprecedented ruthlessness of the right in expelling and suspending activists. Although Momentum members have joined picket lines and are enthused by the upsurge of strike struggles, this hasn’t gone much further than activism with a distinct lack of strategy. Local branches have adopted measures such as working with trades councils and Tribune supporters clubs to get around the membership restrictions. 

Perhaps the left should not be held solely responsible for the state of Labour’s grassroots organisation: its role might better be one of unlocking the practical imagination of the broader labour movement on how to build a movement of counter-power and fulfil earlier promises of a movement-based party. Phipps is right, however, to point to the upsurge of creative socialist thinking in the party under Corbyn’s leadership, and the need to defend and continue this legacy embodied in new conceptions of socialism and the policies in the 2017 and 2019 party manifestos. 

Mike Phipps, Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn, OR Books 2022

My own book, The Socialist Ideal in the Labour Party: from Attlee to Corbyn, is available from Merlin Press at merlinpress.co.uk

Forde report slams party officials, validates Corbyn election strategy


Martin Forde, QC

The Forde report has been finally published, after a long delay. It was commissioned by Keir Starmer in 2020 as a way of defusing the devastating revelations of the Leaked Report on Labour’s handling of antisemitism. As well as demonstrating that the Corbyn leadership did not attempt to suppress or delay disciplinary action over complaints of antisemitism, the Leaked Report brought together WhatsApp chats between senior Labour party officials that contained racist and sexist diatribes against elected representatives as well as extremely right-wing political attitudes. 

One example is an extract from a chat by senior Labour staffer Jo Greening at the time of the Manchester bombings, when Corbyn made a speech pointing out how British foreign policy had opened up the public to terrorist  retribution. She expressed her displeasure at Corbyn’s stance by messaging: “in the face of a terror attack normal people do not blame foreign intervention they blame immigration.”  

The Forde report confirms the accuracy of the WhatsApp messages cited in the leaked report that displayed the tolerance of senior party officials for racist and sexist commentary and their extremely hostile attitude to the Corbyn leadership. It also confirms that the bureaucratic campaign to “validate” members and applicants for membership in 2016 was intended to reduce the vote for Corbyn in the rerun leadership election.

As part of its lawyerly investigation of racism within party institutions, the report called for evidence from members – and certainly got it in spades.  Forde’s most damning conclusion is that the party set up a “hierarchy” of discrimination, where alleged anti-semitism and sexism were prioritized over complaints of anti-Black and anti-Islamic prejudice. To quote from statements from ethnic minority staff cited by the report, “The Party also has created a clear hierarchy of racism and prioritized the viewpoint of certain groups over others … It did not go unnoticed that the [Community Organising Unit] was treated like an enemy within and bullied by the rest of the staff as well as well known MPs and also just happened to be the most diverse.”

There has been plenty of commentary on the Forde report that criticises its attempt to place equal blame on left and right for “weaponizing” accusations of anti-semitism. But the report’s fundamental weakness is that it neglects the role of ideology at the core of the factional antagonism.

The right in the party had developed over many years a “monoculture”, the report states, where officials were hired on the basis of their similarity in outlook to existing personnel – resulting in a hyper-Blairite privilege that was increasingly divorced from both the party membership and public norms. The Blairite/neoliberal ideology of the Labour right ruled out social-democratic approaches to social problems and adapted to the existing structures of wealth and power by elevating the market as the ultimate means of distribution of resources. Policies that sought to restore collectivist solutions to problems were perceived as an existential threat to this ideological outlook.

Corbyn’s supporters who were brought into the Leader’s office clashed with these cultural attitudes since as well as policy differences they wanted to upset the traditional relations between party apparatus and membership – empowering members to democratically decide policy, which threatened the prevailing hierarchy of power. According to Forde, initial tolerant attitudes between the groups became confrontational after the PLP’s attempt to oust Corbyn in the 2016 chicken coup. 

The most concrete examples of ideological difference cited by Forde came over election strategy in 2017. Whereas the party officials wanted to “play it safe” and shore up the majorities of sitting anti-Corbyn MPs, the Corbyn leadership wanted to challenge the Tory parliamentary majority and turn out to previous non-voters, expanding the electorate by appealing especially to young people. At the root of this was a different attitude to the electorate: the right assumed that the number of votes was fixed, but that UKIP voters would switch to the Tories. The left under Corbyn turned outwards through campaigning among voters who had never been contacted before by Labour with transformative policies aimed at ending neoliberal austerity and restoring opportunities for jobs, housing and education. 

The experience of the campaign in the weeks before the election was an enthusiastic reception for Labour’s policies and spontaneous support from people in the streets. The problem was that feedback from canvassing on the ground either did not reach party HQ strategists, or was discounted. In fact there was no mechanism for reporting campaigners’ assessments of voters’ responses to the central office. The party apparatus was wedded to very traditional methods of canvassing through checking off previous Labour voters on electoral rolls, which did not allow for mass campaigning aimed at new voters. This form of practice itself perpetuated a conservative attitude to the electorate. 

The Forde report considers it “reasonable” for the central office to have pursued a defensive strategy, given the fact that opinion polls shifted only in the final two weeks of the campaign, but canvassers on the ground had much more accurate information on the outcome. The eventual result was that Labour gained 3.5 million more votes than in the previous election, but the party had no idea who these voters were.

My own experience canvassing in Luton South bears this out. The Labour candidate Gavin Shuker was convinced that his 5,000 majority would be wiped out by the UKIP vote which in the previous election had also come to 5,000. Half an hour before the polls closed, Shuker was still fearful of losing his seat and insisted on going out to win as many last-minute votes as possible. I assured him that he had nothing to worry about – and in the event his majority was tripled thanks to the public response to Corbyn and the party manifesto. Shuker eventually defected from Labour to join Change UK, and was trounced in 2019 when he stood as an independent.

Despite the fact that Shuker and the party bureaucracy were genuinely convinced that they had to shore up their existing seats, they were actively working to undermine the strategy of the democratically elected leadership. The slush fund set up in Ergon House that diverted campaign funds to the preferred candidates of the apparatus was an overt example of this, but a more subtle undermining of the leadership’s strategy was in selecting some constituencies as winnable, allocating them the necessary resources, and identifying marginal constituencies as not winnable, starving them of campaign material and funds.

The Forde report’s assertion that it was “unlikely” the diversion of funds and personnel into the Ergon House operation cost the party the election – while admitting there is no evidence either way – underestimates the importance of central office support for enthusiastic campaigners in even unlikely constituencies. When candidates found themselves unable to get literature or canvassers because of a focus on a nearby safe seat, this contributed to demoralization of the membership. The relative success of Labour in 2017 where marginal seats Kensington and Canterbury were taken from the Tories was achieved despite the efforts of the party HQ, not because of them, and contributed to the shock felt by the establishment at the loss of the Tory majority in parliament.

The Socialist Ideal in the Labour Party: from Attlee to Corbyn


By Martin R. Beveridge

NHS in Crisis – Fix it now protest organised by the Peoples Assembly and Health Campaigns Together, Central London. NEU and Brent and Isleworth Labour Party banner

In The Socialist Ideal in the Labour Party: from Attlee to Corbyn,
Martin R. Beveridge gives a compelling and accessible history of the sometimes ferocious battles within the Labour Party over achieving a fairer society based on collective solidarity, respect, and equality. Drawing on interviews with Labour members and supporters, as well as primary and secondary sources, Beveridge uncovers the persistence of what he terms the socialist ideal in the Labour Party: the conviction that society should be organised for the benefit of the many, not the few.

As Beveridge writes, this ideal has evolved through several stages since 1945, when the election of a Labour government ended the drastic poverty and mass unemployment of the 1930s. The Labour movement’s idea of socialism changed to that of statist nationalisation, social welfare, and full employment; yet, as he argues, the Labour left has continuously struggled since against those within the party who would suppress the ethical socialist legacies of Clement Attlee, Tony Benn, and most recently, Jeremy Corbyn.

Corbyn’s leadership created a political space for imagining a turn away from top-down government reform towards decentralising economic power so as to rebuild and stabilise regions and localities and to create a truly participatory democracy. The Socialist Ideal in the Labour Party offers strategies for survival against those who would banish these ideals from political discourse and collective memory.

Hilary Wainwright, co-editor of Red Pepper, writes: ‘Based on original historical study and in depth contemporary interviews while Jeremy Corbyn was leader, it is a resource for hope in grim times.’  

Martin R. Beveridge got his start in political activism at the age of 14. Since then, he worked as a printer for a socialist newspaper, became a socialist writer, and is active in the Labour Party, Momentum, Unite the Union, and various US citizens’ groups. His experiences inspired him to write an interpretation of Labour Party history that foregrounds the role of its members, and to examine how social and political change has shaped discourse on the left. His work has appeared in Jacobin magazine, and he regularly blogs on current events at coloneldespard.wordpress.com. He currently divides his time between the UK and the US.

The Socialist Ideal in the Labour Party: from Attlee to Corbyn is available now 

from merlinpress.co.uk at £14.99

ISBN 9780850367768

Defending Labour’s Past


Rethinking Labour’s Past (Bloomsbury), is a collection of essays with an introduction by Rachel Reeves. Mike Phipps has written an excellent review of the collection, in which he points out that the Labour right are trying to reclaim Labour’s past achievements in a way that marginalizes the left. My own book, The Socialist Ideal in the Labour Party (Merlin Press), examines the relation between the party rank and file and the leadership in Labour’s history, and the left’s continued renewal despite current challenges.

One of the most striking examples of how the battle over Labour history is playing out comes from historian Steven Fielding. He rubbishes Ken Loach’s film “The Spirit of ’45,” dismissing Loach’s reconstruction of 1945 as “seen through the prism of visceral far-left sentiment,” and accusing it of artificially connecting the Attlee government’s achievements with the popular policies of the Corbyn project. 

Some of Fielding’s arguments deserve close attention, since they are likely to be recycled over and over. He bases his assessment of Attlee on a single historian, Paul Addison, who “claimed that many of the reforms with which the 1945 government was associated were the product of members of the ‘upper middle class of socially concerned professional people’ who entered Whitehall during Winston Churchill’s coalition government.” 

Now, while it is indeed true that much of what Attlee’s government legislated was mapped out in plans that liberal reformers had advocated in the 1930s and 1940s, these plans were never implemented. As I argue in my book, “The difference was that Labour actually realised these plans, which the Tories would have diluted and hedged around with multiple concessions to private interests, and was ready to commit the huge sums of public spending required. In its historical context, Attlee’s government was in fact extremely partisan; while the Tories later adapted to the welfare state, continuing this rate of spending was the most challenging decision their party had to make.”

Fielding continues to rely on Addison’s interpretation of the Attlee government, claiming that “most historians” accept the gist of it, and specifically “his claim that Attlee fostered a ‘politics of the Centre’ in which the two front benches agreed to a historically remarkable degree on policy means, even whilst they continued to disagree about ideological ends.” Fielding does not refer to the interpretations of other historians – such as that of Harriet Jones and Michael Kandiah, who argue that the Tories were by no means reconciled to the egalitarianism implied by the welfare state, instead mounting a propaganda offensive championing individual property ownership and the demand to end wartime economic controls. The very distinguished Labour historian Lewis Minkin also questions the idea of political consensus, arguing that “The post-war ‘settlement’ was more an acceptance of a new balance of power forged during the Labour Government than a conscious all-party agreement which predated it.”

But Fielding’s real intention is to minimise the influence of the Labour left. “Addison is clear,” he states ,“the left – both in and outside the Labour Party – played a minor part [in the consensus], remaining at loggerheads with Attlee notably over his reluctance to nationalize more industries.” Fielding conveniently forgets the role of Aneurin Bevan in establishing the National Health Service, nationalizing the hospitals and negotiating against the hostility of doctors organised in the British Medical Association. As I explain in my book, “No Tory government would have nationalised municipal and voluntary hospitals, and even within the Labour party opinion was closer to those who, like Morrison, favoured keeping hospitals under local authority control.” Bevan overcame stiff opposition from both inside the Labour cabinet and from Parliament – let’s not forget that the Tories voted 22 times against the legislation that set up the NHS. My judgement is that Bevan’s socialism “clearly guided his practices in driving through the compromises necessary to get the NHS established.”

Although Fielding concedes that the complexity of 1945 admits different interpretations, he savages any attempt by the left to interpret it, whether by John McDonnell or Tony Benn. And when it comes to Loach’s film, he dismisses some of its commentary because it was given by individuals from left groups. Instead of engaging with the ideas expressed, he simply writes them off as “the prism of far-left sentiment,” rather than querying why the Attlee government had such a symbolic significance for the left. Fielding’s own research shows that the public in 1945 was not generally motivated by socialist idealism, instead continuing to be politically sceptical and disengaged. But while motivated by bread-and-butter issues rather than politics (not surprising after the privations of wartime), that doesn’t mean that there was not a general radical collectivism and the hope for a better future.

It’s that hope that Loach’s film attempts to recapture. And although it does romanticize the collectivism of the postwar era, as I have previously written, was there truly a “Spirit of ‘45”? There was certainly a rejection of the Tories until they moved to a centre-left position following their election defeat. As Fielding himself states in his major publication: “Labour’s 1945 victory owed much to the way the Second World War led many voters to regard the Conservatives in a new and critical light. … Labour’s supporters were not for the most part enthusiastic about the cause of ‘socialism’ – as some in the Party considered. They were not even particularly sympathetic to Labour’s nationalisation programme – as various political commentators supposed. However, they did hope – manual working class and middle class alike – that Labour’s support for welfare reform was genuine. By implementing Beveridge and building houses they trusted that Labour would stand a good chance of preventing Britain returning to pre-war poverty and misery.” [Steven Fielding, Peter Thompson and Nick Tiratsoo, ‘England arise!’: The Labour Party and popular politics in 1940s Britain (Manchester UP, 1995)]

Although the public is portrayed here as exerting its influence passively, efforts by Labour leaders like Bevan to improve health and housing to the best possible standards reflected a long struggle for the betterment of workers’ cultural opportunities, carried out by more skilled or militant sections, but with the tacit support of the rest. The government’s efforts were premised on a general and pervasive radicalization of social attitudes, rather than a concerted campaign to change social structures. Labour’s success in preventing Britain returning to pre-war poverty and misery earned the government a deep loyalty from the working class at the time. 

As Labour ponders its future, the history of the left’s role in the party has become a hot button issue. I am honoured that  Momentum has invited me to present my book at a Zoom meeting on Tuesday June 21 at 7pm. Registration link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYvce-tqjksGtBM5ce6V0atyBiNxysinOyU

The meeting is free but pre-registration is required. 

If you are in the Hertfordshire/Bedfordshire area, I will have an in-person book launch at “The Angels Share” in Hitchin on Sunday, June 26 at 7pm. 

Looking forward to seeing you

Keir Starmer: An anti-left Frankenstein’s monster


Oliver Eagleton’s new book, The Starmer Project: A Journey to the Right, published by Verso, is an eye-opener. I try to resist conspiracy theories of history as a rule, so when Keir Starmer rapidly and efficiently began to install an apparatus for disciplining Labour’s membership through its own elected bodies, I tended to the view that Starmer was leaning on the Labour right to consolidate his position. But the book documents a real right-wing conspiracy to install Starmer as leader and take control of the party.

There are a number of reviews of Eagleton’s book that pay close attention to its first chapter, which discusses Starmer’s legal career before he entered parliamentary politics: a very good one is by Tom Blackburn in Jacobin, and there is a great interview with the author by Aaron Bastani of Novara Media. However, I am going to focus more on the later sections that deal with the way he got himself elected leader.

The first chapter describes Starmer’s legal history as Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). It is particularly revealing because Starmer was sold as a principled human rights lawyer to the Labour membership, when in fact he had taken some extremely reactionary positions, such as collaborating with Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, in an attempt to extradite an autistic individual accused of hacking the Pentagon and facing years of jail time. Starmer then reacted furiously when Theresa May blocked the extradition in October 2012 on compassionate grounds. He was also in direct contact with Holder when Julian Assange had his extradition appeal rejected.

Starmer was also involved in the cover-up of the SpyCops scandal. He commissioned a supposedly independent investigation by Sir Christopher Rose into the CPS deployment of undercover police surveillance of left political groups, in which serving officers duped women activists into sexual relations while spying on them. However, Rose’s job had included approving the deployment of undercover officers, so in effect this meant he was investigating himself. It didn’t prevent Starmer from touring TV news studios to stress that the report had not uncovered any systemic failings at the CPS – but the report had been set up in such a way that it could not have uncovered any such thing.

The book goes on to describe the bad faith with which Starmer, as Shadow Minister for Brexit, manoeuvred the party into support for a second referendum while building his own profile among the membership. He gravitated towards the People’s Vote campaign that had been set up by Peter Mandelson and others primarily to drive a wedge between Jeremy Corbyn and the generally anti-Brexit membership, rather than an honest attempt to campaign for remaining in the EU’s single market. 

After the 2019 election result, Starmer carefully skated over his own role in contributing to the defeat. In the leadership election campaign he presented himself as an “electable” leader with a professional image who avoided political controversy, prioritizing his administrative expertise in a series of expensive and slickly-produced videos that highlighted his earlier legal support for the printers’ unions during their 1986 blockade of Murdoch’s Wapping plant, and the campaign of the Lawrence family after Stephen Lawrence’s murder in 1993.

But although the party membership was persuaded by its consummate desire to end the factionalism that had derailed Labour’s election prospects, a conspiracy to install a right-wing leader had long been in the works. A confluence of ideologists and political operators had successfully devised a plan to manipulate the Labour membership into support for Starmer’s leadership campaign.

Eagleton describes in detail how Starmer was courted by a secret cabal of Labour right-wingers and groomed for the leadership. “After Owen Smith’s leadership challenge collapsed in 2016, Morgan McSweeney – the New Labourite official who ran Liz Kendall’s campaign in 2015 – began to put together a plan. His allies would not waste their energy on plotting another coup. Instead, they would aim to bring all of Labour’s anti-Corbyn elements into an alliance that could reclaim the party once the leader had stepped down. The vehicle for this project would be McSweeney’s quasi–think tank Labour Together, co-run by Lisa Nandy, Jon Cruddas and Steve Reed.”

“After commissioning reams of private polling during 2016 and 2017, McSweeney developed a theory that approximately 60 per cent of Labour members were committed ‘ideologues’ – 30 per cent aligned with the Left, 30 per cent with the Right. The remaining 40 per cent were ‘idealists’, driven by vague moral principles as opposed to concrete policy positions. This cohort had voted for Corbyn out of a spontaneous revulsion at austerity, rather than any firm political commitments. The Blairites, McSweeney determined, could reclaim the party by appealing to the ethical instincts of the 40 per cent. Its next candidate couldn’t be as openly reactionary as Kendall; he or she would have to be adaptable enough to win this swing constituency.”

Nobody was more adaptable than Starmer, whose carefully cultivated image as a human rights lawyer and his chameleon-like ability to adapt his politics made him the ideal candidate. The campaign to insert him as party leader was highly orchestrated and well-funded. Even before the 2019 election defeat, throughout September and October of that year, McSweeney and Nandy hosted a series of discussions in west London where Starmer joined his affluent backer Trevor Chinn, Wes Streeting, and Bridget Phillipson as well as Blue Labour thinkers and a group of journalists. “Out of these discussions came the core tenets of Starmer’s leadership campaign: an anti-austerity bottom line to win the membership (articulated in his ‘Ten Pledges’, based on the 2017 manifesto policies), along with a clear emphasis on Labour unity.”

“Labour Together quietly built support for Starmer among MPs, trade unions and Constituency Labour Parties. Seven sub-groups were established to cover fundraising and nominations. Starmer attended biweekly meetings with Tom Kibasi, a former McKinsey management consultant turned director of the IPPR, who helped to develop his communications strategy. Kibasi made a grid on which he compiled data on the key Labour constituencies Starmer needed to target, and began to craft a message that could capture them. Job offers were made to some of Corbyn’s former staffers, with the policy adviser Mark Simpson and the former chief of staff Simon Fletcher agreeing to defect to Starmer’s team. On the day of the 2019 [general] election, McSweeney told journalists privately that ‘we’ve already got this sewn up’.”

Do these revelations mean that Starmer was a politically-vacuous individual adopted as a front man by the right-wing? Or can we extrapolate from his history of authoritarianism and duplicity at the DPP, as Eagleton suggests, to explain his subsequent political trajectory? It seems to me that Starmer’s leadership campaign achieved a fusion of his unscrupulous approach to power with the right-wing’s equally unscrupulous preparations for seizing the party’s leading bodies, creating an anti-left Frankenstein’s monster at Labour’s helm. But what holds the alliance together is their extreme hostility to the Corbyn supporters in the party membership, not an overwhelming priority to get Labour elected to government. That is behind not only their refusal to reinstate Corbyn to the PLP, but also their self-sabotaging rejection of local candidates in by-elections, their centralization of campaigning through regional officers, and their continuing alienation of  constituency memberships.

Corbyn’s legacy: democratic control of the local economy


According to the Independent, the biggest political influence on voters in May’s council elections will be the Tory “Partygate” scandal, not Ukraine or refugee policy. Polling studies from England and Wales estimate that Boris Johnson’s electoral liability means that Labour could gain over 800 seats, and even win control of London councils like Barnet and Wandsworth – although it’s not clear if they took into account a possible switch of voters to the LibDems or Greens.

This shift is entirely because of Tory voters’ revulsion at Johnson’s behaviour, and nothing to do with any increase of popularity for Starmer’s Labour, which seems to be doing everything in its power to lose council seats. The party has increasingly centralized its campaigning strategy for the elections, emphasizing national issues like law and order over local concerns. Constituency parties have been placed in special measures for an indeterminate time which prevents them from participating in selecting candidates, selection meetings have been rigged or candidates imposed by regional officials, and the Labour bureaucracy has expelled so many activists that there is little enthusiasm for campaigning. Canvassing teams that put photographs on Facebook appear to consist mainly of local councillors and party officials.

Right-wing apologist Luke Akehurst has attempted to downplay expectations for Labour, preemptively placing blame for a poor result on Jeremy Corbyn. But the areas where enthusiasm for canvassing is running high are those that have been most influenced by socialist ideas developed under Corbyn’s leadership, in particular where local councils have aligned themselves closely with the needs of their communities. Katie Neame reports in LabourLIst that “Labour’s sudden surge on Worthing council – from zero seats in 2016 to level pegging with the Tories on 17 in 2022 – is attributed to various factors by the councillors, candidates and party activists I speak to. According to campaign coordinator for East Worthing and Shoreham Labour Hilary Schan, the ‘major factor’ was the increase in membership under Jeremy Corbyn. ‘The Labour vote has always been here,’ she explains. ‘But there was just no one there to get it out’.”

In August 2017 Beccy Cooper became Worthing’s first Labour councillor in more than 40 years, and now is the Labour group leader. She told Neame: “We’ve very much based ourselves in the communities and very much based ourselves on listening to the communities and really trying to reflect what it is the communities need.”  Labour’s community work has built the party’s profile in the area, including setting up a Food Foundation that delivers to 100 families a week.  The party has its own manifesto that, according to local activist (and Hilary’s mother) Pat Schan, focuses on “really simple stuff”: “No political speak, no huge promises. Just what the community want.” 

The manifesto proposes to move council meetings out of the town hall and into community venues; empower community groups to change things in their area; and improve seafront, parks and open spaces in the town. Ambitious plans to tackle homelessness with sustainable programmes of social housing are combined with a determination to invest the council’s money and resources in Worthing and its communities, working with local businesses and employers to provide the jobs and training opportunities young people need for the challenges of the next ten years. 

Worthing Labour’s plan has clear echoes of the Preston Community Wealth Building model, that uses the spending power of the city’s ‘anchor’ institutions, such as local government, hospitals and universities, to favour local supply chains, local businesses and cooperatives and so retain wealth in the community. Preston Labour has also produced its own manifesto. It  emphasises city centre regeneration through the investment of £60 million in a new publicly-owned cinema, bowling alley, restaurants and Youth Zone, as well as  a refurbished museum and art gallery. The council will use local suppliers and labour exclusively so as to create new jobs for residents. Public purchasing is a powerful tool for influencing the behaviour of contractors, the manifesto says, allowing the council to insist on a real living wage, union recognition and access apprenticeships.

During the pandemic, the council increased support for community food provision and aims to reach forty outlets incorporating holiday markets, food pantries, hot meal providers and foodbanks. Preston Labour will look at implementing a new school breakfast initiative including provision of free fruit in local schools. £450,000 was secured to help 893 households live in warmer, more efficient homes with insulation and central heating systems. A growing cooperative sector has seen the launch of new employee-owned businesses, as well as the delivery of new models of council owned and cooperative housing.

Council leader Matt Brown told LabourHub: “A big part of it is looking at how we recover from Covid. We are looking at how we can do really practical things like working with our NHS to recruit people in the highest areas of deprivation. And we need to tackle the structural inequalities you get around race and disability and other things.

“Then we’ve got ideas around how to generate energy in local public ownership. We’re looking to collaborate with some of our Anchors – to generate energy not only for their own estates but potentially local businesses and residents. We’re looking at using land and assets for Community Wealth Building measures. We also have a plan for Preston being a Real Living Wage City.”

Preston is not the only council to adopt this approach. North Ayrshire in Scotland has been run since 2017 by a minority Labour administration. The election it faces will be a contest between their achievements in office and the failures of the SNP’s national policies. North Ayrshire Labour’s manifesto emphasises its ambition: a promise to build three solar farms; a programme to build 1,625 new council houses; retrofitting council houses with solar panels; a community bank; and becoming the first council to introduce free period products and mental health counsellors in schools. The council’s Community Wealth Building strategy runs through everything it does, from developing local supply chains, to increasing flows of investment within the local economy.

 “We have challenged the misconception that local government can’t deliver change by replacing timid managerialism with a radical and bold transformative political programme,” says council leader Joe Cullinane. Existing council estates will be improved with a £10 million regeneration programme. Every year Ayrshire spends £1 billion on procuring goods and services, and more of this will be spent with local businesses. Town centres will be regenerated by tackling vacant and derelict buildings with a “High Street buyout fund” so as to recreate thriving high streets. The income generated from council-owned solar farms and wind turbines will be used to tackle fuel poverty. Urging constituents to vote Labouron May 5, Cullinane said: “If people read our manifesto they will see the next steps will be transformative. Our policies are bold and innovative. Look at what we’ve done over the last five years.”

If Labour wins control in Barnet or Wandsworth, hitherto London Tory strongholds, it is not at all clear what they would do differently. But in Worthing, Preston, and North Ayrshire, there is no doubt that Labour councils will use all the powers available to them to transform the existing arrangements of economic power so as to improve the future of their communities. 

‘A resource for hope in grim times’ – Hilary Wainwright


If you enjoy the political and social analysis in Colonel Despard’s Radical Comment, my new book The Socialist Ideal in the Labour Party: from Attlee to Corbyn will also interest you. It is available now from Merlin Press. It’s reviewed in the Morning Star here.

The Socialist Ideal in the Labour Party investigates how ideas of collective solidarity, respect and equality have evolved from the time of Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists to the present day. I show how the expectation that poverty and mass unemployment would be ended brought about the election of the 1945 Labour government, and how nationalisation was understood as a ‘first step’ towards socialism. The book analyses the way the idea of socialism has been redefined since then, while remaining vital to the challenge of building a fairer and more equal society and a better world.

My book argues that despite the capture of the Labour Party’s leading bodies by its right wing under Keir Starmer, most Labour members and supporters share ethical socialist values of collective solidarity, respect, and equality. Although not often stated overtly, these values form an underlying unity among party members without any need for further political discussion. They show how a socialist ideal persists despite the defeats and setbacks the labour movement has suffered over recent years. 

Between the two world wars, labour activists thought that socialism meant the state would own and control all land and industry, and would be the sole employer. It would organise production for people’s needs, and not for profit. When the Attlee government ended years of mass unemployment and absolute poverty with the establishment of the welfare state, the labour movement’s idea of socialism changed to that of state-centric nationalisation in a mixed economy, social welfare, and full employment. 

In the 1970s, Tony Benn advocated for the democratisation of industry, as well as for democracy within the Labour Party itself, in the midst of unprecedented strike struggles against anti-union laws, industrial rationalisation and factory closures. Benn’s recognition of the importance of extra-parliamentary movements was taken up by Jeremy Corbyn, who attracted anti-austerity social movements into the Labour Party. Corbyn’s leadership created a political space for envisaging a turn away from top-down government reform towards decentralising economic power in order to rebuild and stabilise regions and localities. This vision transforms  the centralised state into an overall framework for bottom-up participatory democracy. 

Readers and activists will recognise many parallels between the struggles within the Labour Party today and past tensions between the grassroots and the actions of the trade union and party bureaucracies. They will also discover the nearly-forgotten ruthlessness of the Labour right wing in suppressing the oppositional Bevanite movement in the 1950s. Moreover, a history of the beliefs that motivated earlier generations to fight for socialism throws into sharper relief the originality of the ‘new politics’ devised by socialist thinkers supporting the Corbyn left.

Hilary Wainwright, co-editor of Red Pepper and author of A New Politics from the Left, writes: ‘This is an important study of the strength of bedrock socialist values in the labour movement across the UK; but also of their vulnerability in the Labour Party to factional struggles for power. Based on original historical study and in depth contemporary interviews while Jeremy Corbyn was leader, it is a resource for hope in grim times. And for socialists outside the Labour Party as well as struggling against the odds within.’