This is a watershed moment, argues Liam Payne, and the left needs to give serious thought to a coordinated response

Yesterday morning, Keir Starmer used a press conference called in response to a new Equalities and Human Rights Commission report on antisemitism in the Labour Party to state:

“Let me be very clear… Jeremy Corbyn will not stand for Labour at the next general election, as a Labour party candidate.”

As The Guardian’s Deputy Political Editor pointed out later the same day, this has every chance of becoming an existential issue for the left in Labour. Senior Labour sources have made it clear that if left organisations such as Momentum show support for an independent Corbyn campaign in his safe Labour seat of Islington North, they will be proscribed by the Party bureaucracy. A similar fate would befall elected representatives and ordinary members who engaged in such support – they would join the long list of the expelled left. They will all be expected to back the Labour candidate that is forced on the local Party by headquarters.

Corbyn responded by correctly observing: “Any attempt to block my candidacy is a denial of due process, and should be opposed by anybody who believes in the value of democracy.” He is understood to favour still seeking the nomination of his local CLP to be the Labour Party candidate for the constituency, which would force the leadership into even more anti-democratic contortions. Corbyn allies went on to hint that he was indeed most likely to end up running as an independent candidate in Islington North. Research carried out by supporters suggests that he enjoys a ‘personal vote’ seven times greater than the average MP.

This is merely the latest and perhaps most egregious example in a long line of factional assaults on the left by the new leadership and its hired guns. Many other left candidates have been blacklisted and Constituency Labour Party’s denied the right to democratically decide their candidates for upcoming elections. But the fact that this is Corbyn makes it highly symbolic and very public. This should very definitively be a red line issue.

The Road to Perdition

This latest episode is a culmination of a political war waged since Corbyn and the left stumbled into the Labour leadership with a crushing election victory in September of 2015.

Perdition, in the religious sense, is ‘a state of eternal punishment and damnation into which a sinful and unrepentant person passes after death’.

The sin was to prove at the time that the left was far more democratically popular amongst the constituencies of progressive Britain and easily better equipped ideologically and politically to deal with the major issues of the era than the ‘modernists’ of the self-aggrandising, navel-gazing and ideologically perverse right.

The damnation has indeed been hysterical, libellous and interminable. From the highly promoted claim that the Labour Party under the control of the left was an ‘existential threat to Jews’ in Britain, or the pronouncement that Corbyn would ‘re-open Auschwitz’ – both part of concerted efforts to conflate anti-capitalism and strong support for Palestinian rights with antisemitism  – to the recent attempt to subvert a leaked report on the hideous machinations of Labour right apparatchiks – paid employees of the Party and its members – into an issue around the sanctity of the privacy of said perpetrators: the list is long and unforgiveable.

The punishment has been banishment with an iron fist – lacking in even a fleeting concern for democracy, Party rules, natural justice or political efficacy. The very real story of the popularity of Corbyn and the left’s message and policy platform has been all but airbrushed out of mainstream discourse – like one of those Stalin-era Soviet photographs where Trotsky was there one day and gone the next. On a personal level, Jeremy Corbyn has been treated in the most vile and inhuman manner in comparison to any political figure of such standing in modern British history – a naked and ugly attempt to consign him and the movement he leads to a very political death.

Since his suspension on spurious grounds in 2020, Corbyn has been unrepentant, and quite rightly so.

 Coordination of action

All the above begs the most important question: what is to be done?

Coordination of action is essential. There is time between now and the 2024 election for the left to come together and map an organised and coordinated response – not to mention various ‘flashpoints’ that have still to play out: a farcical ‘selection’ process for the Islington North constituency; Corbyn’s decision on whether to stand or not as an independent.

At the height of the Bennite new left advance in Labour in the late 70s/early 80s, the central organisations of this movement came together to form the Rank and File Mobilising Committee, with the aim of pushing the left-wing agenda within the labour movement. They achieved this with great success. The organisations of the current Labour left need to coalesce in a similar way to finally fight back against the depredations of the right. Any strategy and tactics that were to be adopted should evolve through such a democratic and representative vehicle to allow for maximum support and penetration.

A rough sketch

The following is a rough sketch of what any plan of action could look like. This is by no means definitive and will probably pose as many questions as it tries to answer.

To begin with, first principles must be adhered to. Corbyn cannot be left to face the consequences of today’s announcement alone. Solidarity, both emotional and constructive, is the least that can be offered to him.

Alongside this, it is for members of each Constituency Labour Party to pick their candidate to go forward in any election, not the shirts and ties in the party machine. These principles of solidarity and democracy should be the foundation of any campaign of resistance.

There is obvious scope for individual action in support of Corbyn if he chooses to stand as an independent in 2024. A fighting fund to help contribute to election costs could be established and activists who are able could be on the ground in the constituency to shore up support for Corbyn’s candidature.

In terms of an organisational response, statements of support for Corbyn and others on the left who have had similar treatment, alongside rank-and-file petitions, are useful in that they demonstrate the strength of feeling and act as a primer for any future action. However, these need to be merely the basis of more concerted and coordinated action.

Corbyn’s initial reaction to the announcement was good. He correctly identified the issue as being around respect for democracy and has pledged to highlight this by still seeking the nomination through his CLP, of which he is still a member. This will be a useful ‘flashpoint’ in this struggle. Research has clearly already been carried out around Corbyn’s support in the constituency and this is something the Labour left can engage with as well. Polling conducted amongst members and affiliates in Islington North can be a useful factual weapon, used to demonstrate the anti-democratic impulses behind this issue.

A conference of the Labour left organisations could act as a forum for furthering any campaign of resistance. This should have its focus solely on left power in the present juncture – policy programmes, whilst evidently important, are not much use if there is no strategy for achieving the power necessary to implement them. You can’t bring only a policy proposal to a political gun fight.

Any such heightened strategy will need to be broadened to encompass the whole labour movement if it is not to be picked off by the trigger-happy right – under the cover of the customary media silence. Trade unions are in the midst of protracted struggles in sectors across the UK economy. Those that are affiliated to the Labour Party are coughing up members’ money to the Party in the form of political donations.

A campaign of resistance orchestrated by a coordinated Labour left could result in pressure being applied to this link through the foundational arguments around solidarity and democracy. Utilising any links with left caucuses in affiliated unions, the case can be made on these grounds for a reduction in political donations, alongside a targeting of the donations that remain to elected representatives that at the very least support the current strike wave. Persuasive arguments can be made that union members, many of whom may also be members or affiliated members of the Labour Party, have an interest in seeing the principles of solidarity and democracy – not to mention that of the Labour Party representing the interests of labour – upheld and that they can use the direction of their financial backing of the Labour Party, through policies adopted at their conferences, as leverage to achieve this.

Finally, a serious and sober conversation needs to begin about where we go from here. The revanchist right hold all the power in the Labour Party currently and if they decide to wield it against the left, with the usual impunity, decisions about the left’s future prospects and the organisational structures needed may be forced on us whether we like it or not.

Conclusion

Whether the Labour Party as currently constituted can survive this latest factional assault by the ideologically perverse right is questionable. If this is potentially a watershed moment, it is incumbent upon the left to mount serious resistance and to do so in a calculated and coordinated manner. United we stand…

Liam Payne is a Labour Party member based in Edinburgh.

Image: Jeremy Corbyn launching 2019 manifesto. Source: Launching our manifesto in Birmingham Author: Jeremy Corbyn, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.