A new, well-led Labour party could make a difference

We are still Europeans, liar-in-chief Boris Johnson intoned after the event. Other Brexiteers joined the refrain: Britain should take time to work out exactly what deal and what relationship we now wanted with Europe before launching the article 50 process towards the exit.

No such caution was expressed by the leader of the Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn. There was no anger, sadness or disbelief, and no recognition of the profundity of the plight in which the country now finds itself. Rather, he said, Britain must trigger article 50 “immediately”. He did not say what relationship Britain might now have with Europe as a result. Sixteen million British had voted to remain. Nobody spoke for us that desolate morning – or offered a grain of hope.

It was the culmination of a wretched Labour campaign lacking coherence, passion and conviction: eloquent testimony to the marginalisation of the Labour party under Corbyn’s leadership. How could it be that Labour’s leader could say and think something so crass? One inadequate man has come to personify all the perennially unresolved contradictions in left politics that cripples it politically. Is the Labour party a social movement or a political party? Is its job to transform capitalism or reform it so it works better for ordinary people? What constitution should shape its own democracy or that of the country more widely? How is it to allay the fears and apprehensions of working-class Britain in era of mass immigration?

Corbyn has very particular answers. The Labour party’s role is to be the political expression of popular left social movements – like the ones that provoked his own 500 acts of rebellion against the Labour whip. Democracy is simply the expression of mass majorities built by social protest. Constitutions are bourgeois obstacles to such popular social movements. Indeed the notion of a public interest, created by a constitutional architecture of checks and balances to permit democratic representatives to develop and articulate such an interest, is anathema. In a capitalist society there can only be class interests. The object of a left party is not the creation of a capitalism that better serves the public interest and ordinary people: rather its aim must be the overthrow of capitalism.

Thus Corbyn could not campaign wholeheartedly for the EU as a noble idea that represents the best effort the world has seen to build international co-operation. Too many in the boss class were in favour for him to throw his weight unambiguously behind the EU. Nor could he share a platform with the class enemy, the leader of the Tory party, even in an existential fight for Britain’s place in the world. He focused more narrowly on the EU’s role in helping class gains – workers’ rights and freedom of movement of labour, even if the latter is actively hated by many working people.

When the result came, he interpreted it as the voice of a social movement to which a politician had to respond “immediately”. He could not say what needed to be said: that this was a devastating vote to which the whole of Europe had to respond if it was to hold together. Other countries were threatened by the same cocktail of squeezed wages, mass immigration and growth of left-behind communities who were disillusioned with both globalisation and the EU. And while the vote had to be respected in the short term, the country in its own best interests had to proceed cautiously. The triggering of article 50 could only happen when it was clear it would not be a leap in dark, shredding trade relationships, investment and jobs. He would work to refashion both European and British capitalism so that ordinary people could see it worked for them. Who knows? There could yet be an offer from the EU – say on free movement – that would allow Britain, one day, to take back its proper place as a leader of the EU.

Labour, as 172 Labour MPs concluded last week, along with a growing number of constituency associations, can never win a general election with such a leader. Yet despite the pressure – depicted by him and his coterie as from the Blairite establishment – he is refusing to resign. John McDonnell, shadow chancellor, says if there is a formal challenge from say Angela Eagle, the Corbynites will simply flood the electorate for a new leader with Momentum members – a process already under way. Anticipating a general election this October, McDonnell told private meetings this week that Labour will win. It is a world of fantasy.

If Corbyn stays as a leader, many Labour MPs are resigned to the party splitting. There will be a minority of MPs and constituency associations loyal to his vision, but the overwhelming majority are in politics to make a difference – not to go down in a sinking ship. They feel a particular obligation at this time, above any other, to keep the liberal social democratic tradition alive – and with it a conception of being part of Europe.

Who is to know whether the new Tory leader will even try to give Britain access to the single European market via the European Economic Area? If not, bending to Ukip and the Brexit-ultras – who are borne on the noxious rising tide of racism, and place immigration control as the overriding purpose of state policy – the amount of disinvestment, the disruption of trade flows and relocation of factories and offices to the EU will become overwhelming. The real charge against both the governor of the Bank of England and chancellor is not that they were scaremongering: rather it is they downplayed the economic costs and risks.

More than that hundreds of thousands – maybe millions – of people are discovering that politics matters. They want to fight for a liberal, tolerant, internationalist and fair Britain. They abhor Ukip, the Brexit Tory party and their ferocious propagandists in the rightwing media. They are founding citizens groups, pressure groups and signing petitions. They want hope and leadership. More support will be garnered as the extent of this self-inflicted catastrophe becomes evident in the months ahead.

A well-led Labour party with a crafted cluster of policies to secure a better capitalism, good jobs and careers, reinvent social housing, embrace new technologies, find new ways of representing workers and above all to stand by the best of British values could put itself at the centre of this emerging coalition. Its constitution would put the election of its leader in the hands of the parliamentary party, with a run-off of the two frontrunners elected through a reconstituted electoral college . Such a party would be a real threat to the Brexit Tories. It could win a general election by 2020 when the carnage will be there for all to see.

But this will never be done by Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour party must be reclaimed – for the sake of British values, for British democracy and for the very future of our country. Nothing less will do.