“The strategy was inadequate, the organisation was muddled and the execution was poor.”
This reads like a compromise conclusion, sidestepping the brutal truth, which is included in the meat of the Labour Together report, but not highlighted as the headline conclusion, that it was Brexit what lost it. This is not a secret. What did socialists hear on just about every doorstep in the northern and Midlands seats we lost? In Blackpool, Bolton and Crewe we were haunted by the refrain of ‘Get Brexit Done.’ The report admits it: “The Tories won the 2019 election primarily by consolidating the Leave vote.”
After the warning in the European elections when the Tories did even worse than Labour did, they sorted it with twenty-one expulsions and a simple slogan: “Get Brexit Done.” Labour dithered.
We lost a million remain voters, but we lost 1.7 million leave voters and they were decisive; they cost us 52 seats. Could it have been different? Well, if we had accepted Brexit in June 2016 as democrats and argued for the best departure for working people and migrants, maybe. In the event, shifting ever closer to a second referendum position under the pressure of People’s Vote zealotry killed us.
I am not just talking about the issue of Europe, all-eclipsing as it was. The strength of Brexit feeling we encountered reflected something the report does highlight. There was a long, painful run-in to this defeat: “Our report lays bare that our defeat had deep roots. This loss is the story of more than one election—indeed it is a story that stretches back two decades.”
And yet: “Labour’s vote share declined dramatically between 2001 and 2010, then recovered marginally in 2015 and increased again substantially in 2017, before collapsing in 2019.”
Let’s highlight that. The paragraph includes the words ‘increased again substantially in 2017.’ The only time in a near twenty-year period that Labour’s fortunes improved, and did so dramatically, was under the leadership of one Jeremy Corbyn, that’s right, the much-maligned scapegoat of media digests of this report.
Here it is again:
“In 2017, Jeremy Corbyn’s personal poll ratings dramatically improved over the campaign. Had these levels been maintained, Labour’s vote share in 2019 would have been 6 points higher. The very low poll ratings on leadership going into the 2019 election cannot easily be disentangled from the handling of issues like Brexit, party disunity and anti-Semitism.”
Another line worth repeating: “Brexit, party disunity and anti-Semitism.”
There you have it, in 2017 we had a party with recovering fortunes, one that surprised almost everyone, a 10% improvement that cost May her majority, an extra three and a half million votes. What destroyed that promise? What transformed a very strong performance that seemed to herald the possibility of a General Election victory in the near future into an 80-seat Tory majority?
It was Brexit. We were punished for ignoring the referendum result. We could be depicted at flouting democracy. Within that Brexit vote was the ghost of long-term decline, falling trade union membership and withered working-class roots. Where did Labour stay solid? In the big metropolitan areas? Where were we hammered? Smaller towns.
It was disunity, but hold on there. This wasn’t a two-way street. Jeremy Corbyn had the right to lead. He won two leadership contests by healthy margins. The disunity came from those who were never reconciled to his leadership. We now know that there are allegations in a leaked report that suggest there was something far worse than sulking, briefing and hourly resignations happening here. The allegations- and nobody has denied their substance- suggest a calculated attempt by sections of the party machine to sabotage our 2017 campaign. Imagine what could have been if the energy and resources of the whole party had supported the magnificent efforts of our rank and file.
It was accusations of anti-semitism, consuming the party for years.
The report reads like something written by committee and it was. I would come to a different conclusion. The party could have marched on after 2017. Sections of the party bureaucracy and Parliamentary Labour Party set their faces against left advance. If the members had been given the resources and the whole-hearted support of the party’s officers, we could have begun to reverse its long decline in many post-industrial areas. If the same people who opposed Corbyn at every turn had not forced us into a suicidal European position, we could have gone on the doorstep as a party that accepted a democratic decision.
The party and the Left have an uphill battle because of the anti-democratic blocking of the Corbyn project. The fightback starts with a rejuvenated, democratised Momentum, a united Left fighting to reverse the recent setbacks on the NEC, a turn to the communities which the best CLPs are already doing, supporting families through the pandemic crisis and a renewed push for Open Selection so we have MPs responsive to our members and our class, standing with renters, workers resisting pay cuts and redundancies, councils facing devastating cuts because they have not been given ‘whatever it takes.’ This will take one hell of a struggle, but as Frederick Douglass famously said: “Power concedes nothing without a demand.”
And as James Connolloy said: “Our demands most moderate are- we only want the earth.”
