I am of a certain age where there are some films that
absolutely define me. Most people could guess my age pretty accurately, given
that my favourite films include Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, Jerry Maguire, Top
Gun, Die Hard and The Usual Suspects. In the last of those there is a brilliant
line delivered by Kevin Spacey as Verbal Kint – “The greatest trick the devil
ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist” (If you are a young
person, I would suggest watching that movie straight away, along with Fight
Club).
As a
member of the Labour Party, at the moment I feel a great deal of sadness and
anger in terms of where my party is. I am at heart an unreconstructed
socialist, who has wound his way back here via a variety of other views being
tried on for size. The ongoing / stalling / necessary / evil / failed /
righteous* (delete as appropriate) coup has really shown the worst of our
politics on all sides. What is equally saddening has been that within the
Labour Party and the wider bit of society that sees itself as left-leaning we
have seen the worst of absolutist thinking and “othering” behaviour. You are
either a Corbynista or a Blairite. You are Progress or Momentum. It is black
and white, chalk and cheese. For god’s sake whatever you do, pick a side.
Certainly you must not see anything in between (don’t worry, I am not going to
use the phrase “a third way”). You are either for or against – and that view
will completely and entirely colour whether something is acceptable or not –
not the act itself.
It is
because of this thinking that I have separately heard a wide variety of
possibilities in terms of the underlying cause of the coup in the Labour Party.
It is either a right wing coup orchestrated by Portland (http://www.prweek.com/article/1401004/portland-forced-deny-involvement-plot-oust-jeremy-corbyn)
on behalf of the permanent political class who rely on voter apathy (http://www.thecanary.co/2016/07/02/the-real-reason-the-permanent-political-class-is-trying-to-topple-jeremy-corbyn/
). Or alternatively, it is evidence of the party fighting back against an
existential threat of Momentum Entryists trying to steal the party (http://uk.businessinsider.com/corbyn-could-split-labour-and-create-a-new-socialist-party-2016-6?r=US&IR=T).
When you look at either of these theories they BOTH have an awful lot of “if
and then” logic in them.
The
quote from The Usual Suspects comes from an original from Charles Baudelaire.
But given the above theories, if either of them prove true, it will certainly
need to be changed. So, depending on where you are on that perfect duality
where any behaviour is allowed as long as it justifies the ends, you can either
have: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was after failing to convince 3
MPs involved in the plot to stand aside so there was one candidate standing
against Corbyn to not fully engage in the EU referendum; stop the newspapers
reporting what Jeremy Corbyn was doing during the referendum campaign; stoke
hatred of Jeremy Corbyn by people he works with in the House of Commons;
convince almost all of his shadow cabinet to resign in a timed way one after
the other (and the press to report it in that order); convince other MPs in the
party that it was all his fault; pass a vote of no confidence; but be so
incompetent as to botch a leadership challenge by being unclear on what the
rules are; to avoid Tony Blair being impeached for war crimes”.
I am
going to go out on a limb here – if you could manage to make 90% of that happen
without problem then you would have been able to control the Blairite
candidates, and you would have known that you could push through the coup by
way of Leadership challenge. Was there anything as disappointing as seeing Neil
Kinnock brandishing a print out of the Labour Party rules on the Andrew Marr
show saying that Jeremy Corbyn definitely wouldn’t be on the ballot for leader
because the rules could stop it? A couple of things show how silly that is – if
you know you can get rid of someone through a leadership challenge you go down
that route rather than publicly humiliating someone on front of their
colleagues. Secondly, sane people do not walk around with a certificate to show
they are sane. If you are going on air with a copy of the rules in your pocket,
you are not sure the rules really support you. You are using them the same way
a drunk uses a lamp post – more for your own support than illumination.
Oh yes,
two possible changes to the quotation. For those of you who are Blairites (and
remember – you must be one or the other) “The greatest trick the devil ever
pulled was convincing MPs who didn’t support his views to nominate him to get
on to the paper; then to have hundreds of thousands of entryists prepared to
spring into action and join the Labour Party (myself included); then get them
all to vote for him; convince the other contenders to not drop out so their
vote was split; hang on to power through both local elections and an EU
referendum whilst seizing control of the Labour Party machinery; manufacture
outrage within the party to create a split in the party (by way of smearing a
PR company with links to Tony Blair) ; in order to get all of those people you
have convinced to join the party 12 months earlier to now leave the party and
join a newly set up Momentum party; convince the Union Leaders to come with you
and bring their members; and on the way get an establishment judge to find that
Tony Blair does have a case to answer over the Iraq War; call for and get an
impeachment against him; thus destroying the Blairite Labour Party and start
afresh with a clean left wing Momentum party”.
Again,
stretching this a bit but maybe there are easier ways to do that. Quite
frankly, the thought that a government inquiry into a decision to go to war
would ever (or would ever be allowed, take your pick) to find that a Prime
Minister of this country had performed in a way that could lead to criminal
charges against that PM seems a long way from the truth. If it was going to do
that it wouldn’t have been delayed so much. There are not enough people in
Politics, irrespective of parties who want to see that happen. I realise that I
am making myself a hostage to fortune by calling that before Wednesday. The
whole project would be based on the outcome of other things – not a successful
strategy usually.
There
is a well-worn approach when considering different theories called Ockham’s
razor (or maybe Occam’s Razor depending on your spelling) which isn’t proof of
logic of an argument, but is a good starting point – the theory is “Among
competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected”.
In other words – the idea with the fewest parts should be your starting point.
Looking at those competing viewpoints above anybody outside of the debate would
be forgiven for saying they both smell a bit fishy.
What is interesting is that both
sides of the argument are giving the appearance that any means is justified
because their ends are just. So Jeremy Corbyn allegedly refusing to take Tom
Watson’s calls (although clearly these calls must have come after the
Glastonbury weekend), the public defrocking of Jeremy Corbyn in parliament
which was only second to Cersei’s walk of shame in its gratuitousness, threats
for mandatory reselection and taking legal advice on whether MPs can keep the
Labour party name whilst splitting from the leadership are all acceptable
weapons. As well as that we have entered a lockdown phase where everything
Corbyn has done is right OR everything Corbyn has done is wrong. Whether this
is what you think or not, it is how it is playing out in the media. And both
sides are looking at their own constituencies as an example of them being
right, as if this is a binary decision “we have the members on our side so we
must be right – is democracy” versus “we have the voters as well as the party
members to think about so we must be right – is democracy”. Yeah, because voting
on things democratically has been working out so well for us in the last few
weeks.
What is
needed now is calm heads and moving away from that sort of thinking – and
pretty quickly. We need to save the Labour party and the ideals it stands for.
Unfortunately, that would mean both sides would have to learn and grow up a
bit. Let’s get rid of the conspiracy theories, and stick to things that we do
know or at least can agree on. There must be some of those mustn’t there? Or
are we so far down the rabbit hole we can’t find any common ground. I have tried to list these in order of
increasing contentiousness.
1.
Leaving the EU referendum provides immediate
short term risks that the Labour Party needs to be ready for
2.
As a party we are better off together, looking
outward rather than fighting ourselves
3.
Our enemies are those who oppose social justice,
fairness, workers rights, an end to poverty (look, I am trying to be cool but
quite obviously that is code for the Tories and UKIP)
4.
The PLP never wanted Jeremy Corbyn as their
leader, and some have openly attacked him, some have been half-hearted and some
have supported him
5.
The membership did want him – even without us
nasty Entryists, the full members of Labour voted overwhelmingly for Jeremy
Corbyn
6.
Having a vote of no confidence in him which
carries no constitutional weight whatsoever is a clear indication that you are
too nervous to run the gauntlet of a leadership election when that would have
been quicker and easier. Stop pretending we are dicks who don’t get that
7.
Jeremy has achieved some things – particularly government
u-turns around education cuts; benefit cuts; police funding etc.
8.
Jeremy Corbyn (or possibly the team around him)
has made mistakes and what is clear is that something does need to change. Anyone
willing to cling to their rationality could see that mentioning ISIS and the
state of Israel in the same sentence was going to be a bloody stupid idea
What isn’t clear is whether the aim of the PLP is to get rid of Jeremy
Corbyn (the person / the team) or whether it is to get rid a left wing agenda
of policies. This is going to be really crucial in winning many of the party
over to looking at a way ahead, potentially without Jeremy Cobryn as leader if
that is what it takes. For many people (ie me, and trying to claim the moral
high ground) we joined because we were attracted to the agenda rather than
necessarily for the person. For those on the Corbyn side it may be time to
accept that a new leader is needed – but one who can carry on his views and direction
of travel for the party (although let’s be honest, no-one thinks that is Angela
Eagle). How we handle this WILL define how we handle the upcoming months and
years of turmoil in the country and the next general election. This will
therefore help to decide how successful we can be in standing up for the values
of the Labour Party. Perhaps, in that we can take something positive from this.
It reminds me of my most favourite film quote from Fight Club, delivered by
Brad Pitt “How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a
fight”.
