Originally published on Nick Kelly’s Blog
It is said that there is a thin line between bravery and stupidity. Posting a link to my blog post which said that Jeremy Corbyn was not fit to be Prime Minister, to the ‘Labour London Left’ WhatsApp group. I will leave it to the reader to decide which one that was.
The full quote is below:
The 2017 election proved there was significant support for social democratic policies (eg national care service, public ownership of rail, electricity, water etc, and funding public services properly). But weak leadership on Brexit, failure to respond properly on antisemitism and now his appalling position on the Russian Invasion of Ukraine have shown Corbyn was not fit to be Prime Minister. But nor was Boris Johnson, as the Privileges Committee have confirmed. http://nickkelly.blog/2023/07/09/decoding-the-doorstep-insights-from-canvassing-uxbridge-and-south-ruislip/
Jeremy Corbyn was and still is not fit to be Prime Minister. I say that as someone who took time off work to actively campaign for Labour in 2019. I also say this as a Labour member who supported the 2017 and (with some criticisms) the 2019 Labour manifesto policies, many of which would not have been there had Corbyn not won the 2015 UK Labour leadership race.
My ‘Why Labour Lost’ series of posts published after UK Labour’s 2019 election defeat (see links below) outlined the many and varied reasons for this result. Not all of it was Corbyn’s fault, nor indeed his faction Momentum. But they made serious errors and at times simply stupid calls.
More recently, Corbyn’s position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the last 16 months has shown that he lacks political judgment.
Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I wrote the following of leftists who were opposed to giving military aid to help the Ukrainian resistance:
On the left, many are still influenced by the analysis of Lenin during the First World War and just before the 1917 Russian Revolution that in an inter-imperialist conflict socialists should be standing up to their own ruling class. During the First World War, there were strong arguments for working people not to align with the Tsar in Russia or other imperialist leaders in that conflict. It is dangerous to simply apply this idea to the current conflict without understanding that the context is different. There is a strong argument that people should be holding their own government or ‘ruling class’ to account during any situation like this. Ultimately, the decision to invade Ukraine was Russia’s, but there is still a question of what the governments and in particular NATO members could have done to help prevent this and what they can do now. Sadly, some on the left and drawn both bizarre and quite dangerous conclusions based on the premise that their role is to stick it to their own ruling class. Bizarrely, some socialists still mistake Russia to be some sort of socialist/anti-imperialist power, thinking that there is some residue influence of the 1917 revolution. http://nickkelly.blog/2022/05/03/the-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-an-act-of-aggression/
Corbyn’s position of opposing military intervention and instead trying to negotiate a peaceful settlement is at best naive and at worst giving tacit support to the Russian Government and Vladimir Putin.
Back in 2003 when I was active in opposing the invasion of Iraq, one of our key slogans in Peace Action Wellington was “peace with justice and self-determination”. Any “peace settlement” with Russia right now would involve at the very least, ceding territory taken by Russia in 2014 and probably some of the ground taken in 2022. This ‘peace’ would not involve any justice or self-determination.
What Jeremy Corbyn, the Stop the War coalition and others taking this position are doing is not progressive, left or indeed socialist. It is supporting imperialist expansion. Further, and this should be self-evident, if NATO and Western governments fail to stop the Russian invasion, this will not serve the interests of working people. That this distorted world political view still infects sections of the left is astounding. That Corbyn subscribes to it, frankly discredits him as a serious political operator.
But I can understand why people on the Labour left would not like this assessment. Even more so at a time when various left groups and individuals such as director Ken Loach have been kicked out of Labour.
And there are serious questions about Labour’s current direction. Labour, whilst winning the Selby and Ainsty by-election, narrowly lost the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection. Whilst most attribute this to the Labour Mayor of London extending the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to outer London, this was not the only reason. On the doorstep, Starmer’s Labour Party may not have been as polarising, but nor were people excited by it. In fact, many were unclear about what it stood for. Labour improved its percentage of the vote in Uxbridge and South Ruislip significantly, but it still failed to make it across the line. This should be a cautionary tale ahead of next year’s General Election.
In my blog post earlier this year on whether UK Labour can finally win, I argued that the left needs to accept that the 2019 election was a devastating loss, in no small part the result of poor decisions by Corbyn and his team. Equally, his opponents in the party have still failed to seriously reflect on why Corbyn was able to easily beat them both in 2015 and when they tried to remove him in 2016.
The 2017 Manifesto included policies such as renationalising rail and water companies. It opposed austerity and called for decent funding for the NHS, a national care service, a properly-funded national education service and stronger employment law that strengthens collective bargaining. These are mainstream social democratic policies in many other European countries.
Why did it take a member of the hard left Socialist Campaign Group becoming the leader of Labour for it to put forward a mainstream social democratic manifesto, rather than an over-triangulated, incoherent and frankly visionless positions it too often had prior to Corbyn? In a country where life expectancy is stalling, younger people are economically worse off than their parents, where over a million people are waiting for social housing and incomes have been falling for years, there is a real mood for change. Not just a change of government, but of policy. This does not mean a sudden lurch left, but a serious and costed programme that prioritises the needs of the many, not just the few.
In the UK Labour Party, people are divided into binary factional groupings of Corbynistas or Blairites. Loyalty to leaders and personalities over policy is not limited to Labour or UK politics. But it is frustrating nonetheless.
UK Labour is on course to win the next general election, whenever that may be. Its long-term success in government will, as I have argued previously, require the different factions of Labour to work together. The left need to accept that the Corbyn project failed, and move on. The right needs to accept that voices to the left of Third Way centrism have a legitimate and important place both in Labour and in political life.
Below are the links to my ‘Why UK Labour’ lost blog posts:
Why UK Labour Lost? Part 1: Historical Context
Why UK Labour lost? Part 2: UK Labour’s strange loyalty to First Past the Post
Why UK Labour lost? Part 3: Its Brexit Innit
Why UK Labour lost? Part 4: Oooo Jeremy Corbyn
Why UK Labour lost? Part 5: Antisemitism
Why UK Labour lost? Part 6: New Labour and Blairism
Why UK Labour lost? Part 7: Momentum and the Corbynistas
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress