Brexit, Corbyn and where next for Labour

I was stunned by last Thursday's EU referendum result.  And not in a good way.  Maybe spending most of the last few months working between Scotland and London gave me a biased view but I really did not sense the strength of leave outside of that particular bubble.

As events unfolded over Friday and the weekend I decided to take some time to work out what was happening and what I felt a Labour response should be.  Cameron resigning, Boris and Farage posturing and the realisation that the Brexiteers didn't have a Plan A never mind a Plan B.  Business colleagues seriously worried about where this would take us and the problems ahead for growth, investment and employment. 

Mixed with this though was a growing anger at the leadership of the Labour Party.  My party.  I've been hugely frustrated by the lack of a strong Labour message on the EU.  I didn’t really expect this to come from Jeremy Corbyn - I know his views on Europe: I don’t agree with them - but I expected leading shadow cabinet figures as well as media friendly comrades like Umuna, Cooper and Flint to come out fighting.  But they all just seemed to sit on their hands.  Maybe now we know why.

Whether a powerful and coordinated Labour campaign would have made a difference we shall never know.  We didn’t call this referendum.  It was never about what's best for the UK and Scotland.  It was an electoral device to keep Cameron in control of his party. A device that has badly backfired and shame on the Tories for landing us with this split society and looming economic maelstrom.  Its wasn't about our leadership - though its becoming so.

Which brings me to Jeremy Corbyn, his leadership of my party and the calculated campaign by Labour MPs to remove him.

After much thought last year, I voted for Corbyn.  Partly out of despair at what the others stood for.  Mainly because I believed in his view of a different kind of politics.  I saw the opportunity to bring the Labour Party back to its members and to develop a left of centre policy platform that resonated with ordinary people across the whole of the UK.  Bringing people back to Labour.

It hasn't happened. There has been no leadership, no plan, no starting to build a left of centre government in waiting.  I don’t for a minute underestimate the role of the media and the usual Blairite/Progress suspects in frustrating this. But Corbyn for me has demonstrated some basic failures of leadership. Recognise your own strengths and weaknesses, then put people on your team who fill the gaps.  Set a vision and make sure your team talk to it at every opportunity.  Never easy in politics, but Corbyn seems to have surrounded himself with an inward looking team of people, with their own agendas and limited political and media experience.  They are just not competent.

But whilst my jury was still out, I am just so frustrated at the behaviour of so many in the Parliamentary Labour Party.  Just when we had the opportunity to build political momentum on the back of Brexit and the personalised faction fighting in the Tory Party. The chance to highlight the looming economic disaster Boris will land us in ("the BREXIT Boris left us").  But no, it’s just  right time for a Labour leadership challenge.  On Sunday evening I could have cried out loud as news bulletin after news bulletin was all about Labour. 

I know all about factional coups in the Labour Party.  But we usually do it behind closed doors.  This highly organised and public leader-slaying is not the Labour Party I want to see. 

But now the lines are drawn.  A leader supported by the membership power of a few hundred thousand vs elected MPs speaking for millions.  Many of the same MPs mind you - not all - who supported policies that lost us the last two elections.  

But we are where we are.

Corbyn cannot function as a leader of the opposition whilst in a state of war with the majority of the PLP.  He is not going to back down and neither are they.

So we need a leadership election.  Our leader at Westminster has to command the support of both members and the PLP.

I won’t be voting for Jeremy Corbyn if he stands again.  But, please, no re-modelled Blairite redux candidate either.

We need a left leaning leader who can work with the support of our membership and trade unions, who can build alliances in the centre but kick ass with the Blairite/Progress rump in the PLP.  Someone who ordinary people in the midlands, north, south-west, Wales and Scotland can relate to, but who isnt seen as part of "the elite".    A party leader who can set a political agenda that members, unions and the PLP can believe in.  Someone with the personal style, team-building skills and political self-awareness to lead, but with the integrity and honesty of Corbyn.

Right now, I have no idea who that is. 

We shall see over the next few days, I expect.

Read more...