Labour Party Leadership Race - POLL

Long-Bailey, or it WILL be the death of the Labour party. Alas…

Labour are the party of Keir Hardie, of Clem Atlee, of Nye Bevan. It was founded upon basic Socialist principles.

In a two-party system, in which Labour stands for the Left against the Tories standing for the Right, there’s wiggle-room. As they did under Blair, they can move to the centre if that’s what the nation wants or need, as long as there’re still left-leaning.  In a two-party system, we just need strong leftism vs strong rightism.

I might be wrong, however, but I counted between 4 and 7 parties debating on the telly this election.

The Lib Dems are a centre-left party.

Why, then, are the Hardieists and Atleeists of the non-centre-left Labour looking for a centre-left leader?

Simple: half the party are in the wrong party.  That, and First Past the Post is the problem.

OBVIOUSLY it would be flat-out wrong to say First Past The Post is why Labour lost – whilst we’re diagnosing that disaster, to blame FPTP would be to miss the millions of other points, not least a confused hard-left/centre-left mishmash of a party competing with other mishmashed leftists. However, I believe FPTP is why the left lost.

The simple existence of tactical voting shows how fundamentally rotten our left’s identity has been. It should be flat-out inconceivable to vote for one party in lieu of another. My local Lib Dem was asking me to vote for him instead of a 4-day week and mass renationalisation, because apparently left-wing is left-wing – just as I shouldn’t vote for my local Green, despite the bloody obvious difference between the two party’s green policies. Left-wing parties shouldn’t be interchangeable. Up until 2015 and Corbyn, they somewhat were, and I was very happy to vote for lefter-than-Labour local Lib Dem David Rendell especially in lieu of the non-candidate Labour shunted into my constituency. Really, up until Corbyn, to some extent the Lib Dems and Labour WERE interchangeable.

Indeed, when the Lib Dems did so well in 2010, it was largely on the back of a principle that their party should never have contemplated – tax-payers pay tuition fees – yet Labour, if they stuck to their founding principles, should never have bloody implemented in the first place.  Under a two-party system, Blair had the ability to slide to the centre, as he somewhat DID embody all the left.  Therefore, Blair, um, made mistakes.  Clegg (it’s bizarrely thanks to him) slid into Labour’s further-left gap which, at the time, was more electable (amongst a certain demographic, at least – a demographic who wants and needs Hardieism).  He showed we can and should differentiate our leftist parties.

Corbyn proved so popular amongst new Labour voters as, for the first time in many of our lives, the identity Labour was founded on was back in the mainstream, back in the party. Owen Smith? An identity-less nonentity, with only the vaguest guiding principles. Corbyn? He harked back to Hardie.

If we have two left-wing parties (and, um, don’t we have several?), isn’t it important for each of them to have their own actual identity? And is the identity of Keir Hardie’s party REALLY Keir Starmer? Don’t his centrist, but nonetheless liberal and democratic, principles fit better somewhere else?

Whilst this has hurt the left, it’s positively poisoned the right. After the Lib Dems and the DUP, this is the fourth coalition the Tories have entered into in the last 9 years – albeit unofficially. A good hard-right party should be proud to stand strong against the centre-right Tories, state their case for their existence, and receive the votes they rightly (or wrongly) deserve – so why did Farage stand down his MPs in Tory seats? There are milquetoast centrist remainer Tories who won, because a hard-right nationalist stood his party down in their seats. Apparently, the entire spectrum of the right is interchangeable. And who can blame them when, in 2015, the Tories flat-out stole UKIP’s raison d’être just to win a majority, even though UKIP are a hard-right party who should win or lose votes on their own damn merit? The fact that we have no successful centre-right party – despite having plenty of successful centre-right politicians in the Tory party – is a product of our desperate clinging to FPTP, our anachronistic notion that we have one right-wing versus one left-wing. Who are the Tories anymore? And depending on the success of Farage’s new party, or potentially the emergence of grassroots environmental or pro-EU right-wingers, who will they be, come the next election?

In Labour, there is only one Hardieist running for Labour leader. Anyone but her might be a sticking plaster for the left, but will only damage the Labour party more long-term. Under Blair, Labour were the only viable left-wingers, and the centre-left was pushed more to the right; under Blair, the party’s origins got smudged.  If we are a two-party system, Labour should heed the way the wind is blowing and elect the most electable left-ish figure.  If we are more than a two-party system, our left should differentiate itself with confidence and clarity.

There is, I admit, a depressing possibility that Hardieism is dead, and therefore Labour is dead, or at least Long-Bailey’s Labour are a minority party. If so, so be it – progress happens in strange ways.  For the left, acknowledging this change will help in the long-term, even if it ends up electing the Lib Dems over Labour.  The existence of two near-identical left-wing parties zigzagging between centrism and hard-leftism depending on where the wind is blowing is genuinely hurting the left; the presence of so many centre-leftists, not in our centre-left Liberal Democrat party but our hard-left Labour party, is frankly baffling.  The left, however, is in total as strong as ever.

I realise that, in some ways, I’m actively advocating for the defeat of the Labour party. I feel, however, I’m actually advocating for the victory of the left – albeit not in the form we maybe expected. Swinson’s Lib Dems are left rudderless now we said bollocks to their “Bollocks to Brexit” campaign, yet centre-leftism is as strong as ever. Corbyn’s win over Owen Smith showed a desire to keep Labour traditionally Labour. If Labour give up on Hardieism, the left will never recover. If Labour elect Starmer and Starmer wins in 2024, the Lib Dems will have won – the centre-left will have won, at least. If the Lib Dems elect Starmer and Starmer wins in 2024, the Lib Dems will have won – the centre-left will have won, but with the hard left as allies and challengers. Hell, the likes of Starmer want a clear break from Corbyn. What could be a clearer break?

Therefore, the answer to me is simple. Long-Bailey simply HAS to lead the Labour Party; Keir Starmer should defect and run for the Lib Dems instead.

That, and our voting system needs to be reformed, to represent the diversity of the left, open up the diversity of the right, and represent the reality of our 7+ party system today. Anything less will destroy the Labour party, and potentially rot the left, as it’s already saved the Tory party, but rotted the right.

But congrats to Starmer on winning this election, and congrats to bloody Johnson for trouncing an identity-less Labour party and an inefficient holistic left in 2024...