Don Corbote’s dodgy sally

Inspired by Spanish radicals, Labour’s leader is forsaking his MPs for his idealistic activists

BritainJan 16th 2016 edition

“WE NEED more Quixotes,” urged Pablo Iglesias, the mass before him hanging on his every word: “We are dreamers, but we take our dreams very seriously.” The rally in Madrid’s central square last January was a milestone in the transformation of Podemos from a gang of professors into the movement that it is today. Last month it polled 21% in Spain’s general election. Like their counterparts in Greece’s Syriza, Mr Iglesias and his comrades take inspiration from the late Ernesto Laclau, an Argentine sociologist at Essex University. He wrote that lefties should embrace populism; combining charismatic, top-down leadership with bottom-up assemblies, marches and occupations.

To know how much Podemos inspires Jeremy Corbyn is to understand the Labour Party today. Rare is the senior Corbynite who has not visited Madrid. Last summer Mr Iglesias endorsed his British admirer, who had hailed the Spaniard’s “new way of doing politics”. Seumas Milne, now Labour’s head of strategy (and, long ago, a trainee at this newspaper, where he learned of capitalism’s wickedness), wrote of the similarities between the two men. Momentum, the group that agitates for Mr Corbyn in local branches, is partly based on Podemos “circles”.

The intellectual fingerprints of Laclau and Mr Iglesias are all over the Labour leader’s bid to restructure his party. Founded to secure political representation for the working class, Labour has long been dominated by its MPs and—such is the British system of cabinet government—its front bench. In their efforts to make the party newly electable, Tony Blair and his predecessors prised decision-making powers away from its left-wing members; by creating a loyal National Policy Forum, for example. Mr Corbyn is reversing such reforms in favour of a new, Laclauian vision.

First, he is tightening his grip on the leadership. He has appointed allies to the most essential and sensitive roles: John McDonnell as shadow chancellor, Mr Milne as chief aide, Ken Livingstone, a former mayor of London, as defence adviser. In a reshuffle finalised on January 13th, Mr Corbyn swapped front-bench critics for loyalists; most notably appointing Emily Thornberry, a fellow opponent of Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent, as shadow defence secretary. Meanwhile he has nudged Labour’s executive committee further in his direction and is now trying to strengthen it with a review that may give it the final say on big party policies and thus sideline the shadow cabinet.

Second, and in true Podemos style, Mr Corbyn is shifting his party’s focus from its MPs to its grassroots. Momentum is already threatening heretical backbenchers with deselection. It may make good on the threat when impending constituency boundary changes put seats up for grabs. Meanwhile Labour’s leader is giving members much more say. In October he polled them before a vote on military action against Islamic State in Syria (75% were opposed, like him) and in an interview on January 11th near-confirmed that he would do the same ahead of any vote on the renewal of Trident, which he loathes. Mr Corbyn wants to use regular online consultations of members and registered supporters to set Labour’s policies.

Tilting at Basildon

All of which is jolly interesting—but electorally suicidal. Last month one in five voting Spaniards may have backed Podemos. But Britain has a more majoritarian electoral system, a less loathed establishment, a less fiery left-wing tradition and a youth unemployment rate of 14%, compared with 48% in Spain. Basildon is not Barcelona. Nor does Mr Corbyn possess Mr Iglesias’s flair and youthful appeal.

Moderate MPs are responding to their rolling marginalisation in three ways that broadly map onto their ideological stances. The old Labour right, centred on West Midlands MPs and the Labour First group, is the most active in countering the Corbynite takeover; partly as it has a tradition of machine politics (tough, tribal Brummies were a bastion against the extreme-left in the 1980s) and partly because in Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, it has someone ready to take over if Mr Corbyn falls.

The soft left, including those around Ed Miliband, Labour’s previous leader, has a gentler strategy: to temper Mr Corbyn, reason with the new members and ultimately guide the party towards some sort of compromise. Meanwhile the liberal, Blairite right is in internal exile; quietly building up its resources, fighting off deselection bids and concentrating on other causes like an In vote at the upcoming EU referendum. It has no obvious figurehead, so is the most reticent of the moderate groups. Here one is most likely to hear the argument that Mr Corbyn must fail on his own terms; that his defeat must be unequivocally his fault.

Labour’s problem is that none of these responses confronts the fact that its leader is getting stronger. More centrist members are leaving as lefties sign up (over half the party has joined since the election in May). The prospect of a candidate with the infrastructure to beat Mr Corbyn is more remote than ever. Swathes of centrist MPs could lose their seats—if not at deselections then when the party sallies into the next election opposing Trident.

Joe Haines, who was press secretary to Harold Wilson, the last-but-one Labour leader to win a majority, propounds a fourth, better option. He urges moderate MPs to declare independence from Mr Corbyn and sit as a separate group in the Commons (a “nuclear option” some moderates refuse to rule out). The new party would forfeit Labour’s infrastructure, but would not struggle to attract donations. Some members may defect with their MPs. If larger than Mr Corbyn’s parliamentary caucus, this new social democratic party would be designated the official opposition. The genius of this option is that it would turn Mr Corbyn’s Laclauian strategy against him. He loves to talk of mandates and movements. But together Labour MPs have a mandate of 9.3m to his 250,000 supporters. The masses have spoken.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Don Corbote’s dodgy sally"

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