Like many who have been critical of Corbyn, the
election result on Thursday has forced me to summon humility. Right up to the
exit poll, I thought any election we fought under him would be a bloodbath. I
described the likely outcome as “Dunkirk, not D-Day” when he was re-elected
last September, when in fact we have now established a real bridgehead for a future Labour government. Just
as moderates were planning to blame him for a bad night, it would be churlish
to deny that his leadership and the brand of politics him and his supporters
have espoused own these successes to a huge degree.
I am genuinely and hugely thankful for that, in
that on the bread-and-butter economics issues that unite the Labour church like
redistribution, investment and public services, I’ve always wanted to move the
‘Overton window’ much, much further to the left if possible. I’d happily give
my right arm to get to live in Scandinavia-on-Thames. But I’ve always been
sceptical about how fast that can be done in Britain or believed that it had to
be done through stealth, as the 1980s and 1990s had taught Labour in a
different economic era. On nationalisation, while I’m less certain than some on all
of the benefits, equally I always felt Tories and a few Labour rightists
painting it as dangerous extremism was daft — much of Europe has nationalised
utilities and their state companies often run parts of our own infrastructure,
as a TSSA advert earlier this year sought to argue.
This is only one result and we have not yet
won. The Tories beat us on both seats and votes, and the slight plurality of
Britons who voted for even that Tory campaign might still have
been buying into the old-school ‘Labour tax and spend’ attacks — that is still
a problem we have to conquer. But this is the first time I have genuinely been
able to believe there is something real in the left’s argument that the
financial crisis might have changed British politics and allowed us to be much
bolder. If that’s true, it also sets many of us on the Labour right free of
some of our own self-imposed restraints, and we should make the most of that
and learn to be happier in our own skins, just as the Labour left are in
theirs. As Ed
Miliband has now said, I wish we had fought 2015 on a clearer manifesto.
Since 2015, a few moderates like Johnny Reynolds, Liam Byrne and Chuka Umunna
had sought to reach out and embrace new economic ideas in response to Corbynism
sweeping the party, but they have been exceptions to the rule. They should now
be our model of how we engage with the rest of the party, in the spirit of
unity. Figures from the Labour right and centre should return to the shadow
cabinet — we can’t be firing on all cylinders with so much talent on the
backbenches.
As I did say at the time, post-referendum
Corbyn was also right about a second referendum and Article 50. It wasn’t
only him — much of the PLP, especially those in Leave seats, had reached the
same conclusion and the issue flummoxed the party enough that avowed
Corbynsceptic John Woodcock MP had to come
to Corbyn’s defence against the usually pro-Corbyn Canary. But there
was a vocal complement on all sides of Labour who demonstrated little
pragmatism and favoured aping the Lib Dem stance — this would have been a
profound mistake, as it would have made it harder for Labour to close down
Brexit as an issue and given weight to Theresa May’s central argument that only
she could be trusted to see through Brexit. Even in summer 2016 I was
campaigning for Owen Smith in spite of his ill-advised stance on Brexit and a
second referendum, but nonetheless I must reflect on what the implications of
him winning would’ve been if he had stuck with that stance. And while I had written about the need to build an alliance of
acceptant Remainers and soft Leavers, equally I had thought that Corbyn going
was a prerequisite for building that coalition, when in fact we saw it start
to become a reality on Thursday. That is a feat, and I was
wrong.
I had also not believed that young voters,
non-voters or social media could be central to an effective campaign. Again,
that is because history had taught me to be cynical: Cleggmania, 2015 and the
EU referendum were all damp squibs. But some rules are made to be broken. A
country in which young people assert their voice and vote will be a much more
equal and more democratic one. And the most extraordinary part of this is that
it was achieved even when much of Labour’s ground game was arrayed
defensively — Labour won Canterbury for the first time ever on the back of
student turnout when it was not even a target. I also did not think we could
make a recovery in Scotland or beyond urban England, but we have started to see
exactly that.
That said, the Labour right must also still be
confident in ourselves and who we are, even as we seek to learn these lessons.
As many have noted, this campaign was remarkable in that it genuinely changed
the game — events, polls and local election results had all reliably pointed to
the devastating result we had feared until very recently. We had lost Copeland,
we had 400 fewer councillors in our communities than in 2015 and only a month
ago we had lost the mayoralty in Tees Valley — we deal with the facts in front
of us at any given time, as we try to advocate what we think is best for the
party we love. Only an outstandingly well-organised and spirited campaign
turned it around, and while it was very much a Jeremy Corbyn campaign, we are
all one party and those of us on the right united behind it too. The final
polls still suggested almost all Tory voters in this election believed Theresa
May to be the best candidate for prime minister, while only around three-quarters
of Labour voters said the same of Corbyn — Corbynsceptic Labour voters sticking
with the party was essential to keeping our coalition together, and candidates
and activists with similar concerns played our part in helping to keep them
onside.
Security was also a key theme of this campaign,
not least because of the three horrific terrorist attacks Britain has suffered
this year, two of them during the campaign itself. Labour went into this
campaign committed to retaining Trident and NATO membership, to strengthening
the police, and to increasing spending on the armed forces and security
services — Corbyn had been vocally on the other side of all these issues for
his entire career. While he deserves credit for compromising, Labour moderates
had also consistently raised the alarm and fought to get him and the party to
re-examine these stances. And while Labour still lagged on these issues in this
campaign and must take them even more seriously if we are to reassure the Tory
voters we need to secure a majority Labour government, it seems likely that
this blunted the Tory attacks and helped the party to put forward a coherent
response to the outrages in Manchester and London.
On immigration and welfare — two bugbears that
contributed to the 2010 and 2015 defeats and which the party has been bitterly
divided on — this result also feels far from unambiguous. These issues
motivated many Tory voters before, and probably still contributed to our
defeat. And while in 2015 the welfare vote in parliament and the ‘immigration
mug’ were symbolic to many members of the capitulations that led them to vote
for Corbyn and his bolder brand of politics, it is worth noting that Labour did
not really fight this election on a programme that vocally challenged hostile
public sentiment on these issues. Our manifesto only promised to review those
same welfare cuts that Corbyn was elected to oppose, and on immigration,
ironically we are now further to the right of the substantive position that the
mug represented, with Corbyn committing Labour to the end freedom of movement
and a likely reduction in overall numbers. While I understand the case for
ending FOM, I remain wary that it prevents us from making a case for a clear soft Brexit model with the Norway option.
Resolution Foundation director and former Ed Miliband advisor Torsten
Bell criticised the manifesto from the left on benefit cuts. The
party’s current position on these issues is arguably a testament to the power
of trust and perception in politics — the mood music of a Corbyn Labour party
simply reassures those who felt Miliband Labour to be too compromising. But I’m
not sure where that leaves us on what we do next on these issues. It is still
not clear whether there is public appetite for us to be more vocal and the
lesson may be to de-emphasise them and focus on the more populist
bread-and-butter issues Corbyn clearly capitalised on, but that is still deeply
challenging for Labour.
Lastly, while the Labour party exists to win
elections and change this country for the better, and any leader who brings us
success is owed respect on those grounds, at the same time there has never been
any obligation for party members of any faction to silence ourselves on points
of genuine principle, solely in deference to party unity. Tony Blair winning
three elections outright and anchoring us in government for 13 transformative
years did not make Iraq or light-touch financial regulation okay, or stop
critics expressing understandable distaste for his partnerships with the likes
of Rupert Murdoch or tin-pot dictators. Corbyn himself served as an MP under
five leaders and never shrunk from challenging any of them. Those of us who
harbour objections to Corbyn’s various past associations, opposition to liberal
interventionism, performance at the time of the EU referendum and inadequacy on
anti-Semitism should neither be asked nor feel the need to drop our values
completely at the door. On anti-Semitism in particular, Thursday’s results did
include a reminder of the damage our party’s failings has done. While Sadiq Khan was right when he said securing Jewish
votes is the “sixth, seventh, eighth issue” behind the need for Labour to
simply ensure Jewish Britons feel safe with us at all as a mainstream party, on
a brilliant night in London when we even picked off Kensington, this issue
arguably left Labour just short of taking seats like Hendon, Finchley &
Golders Green and notably Chipping Barnet. All Labourites are always entitled
to want to keep our party’s conscience clear and to speak out whenever
necessary.
Corbyn will now lead Labour for as long as he
wishes. But while we should not agitate against that, I would also suggest that
after a time, a discussion about the handover to a fresher figure that even
some Corbynites had advocated might be neccesary for us to advance further,
before the next election comes. Corbyn hugely improved his leadership ratings
and Labour’s floor in this campaign, but not all of the past can ever be erased
and we can’t rule out the possibility that breaking through the ceiling that remains
might require a younger figure from the party’s left to pick up the torch and
appeal to voters who still could not back Corbyn as prime minister. And
ideally, the next leader should also break the party’s other ceiling - the
glass one holding back our many talented women.
This turned out to be a great election for
Labour. But what we all do next together will be crucial.
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