04 Apr 2018

Coming Conflict. The Labour row over anti-Semitism is just the start of a new round of Civil War

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The Easter break might conceivably have provided the Labour Party with a respite over the issue of anti-Semitism amongst its membership. Jeremy Corbyn’s extraordinary decision to attend an event organised by Jewdas, an organisation as far as possible from the mainstream Jewish community as it is possible to get without leaving it altogether, ensured that the argument would last even longer.

In reality, it is unlikely to disappear as the array of sections within the party, even including his own fan club Momentum, who are willing to concede that this a subject of legitimate concern is too large for the matter either to be dismissed as a minor saga or to be viewed as simply a new line of attack on the Corbyn leadership.

The Leader of the Opposition is at the very heart of this controversy not only because of his defence in 2012 of a manifestly anti-Semitic work of ‘art’ but because of his lengthy association not merely with the conventional Palestinian cause but also Hamas and Hezbollah. That he had to delete his personal Facebook page for fear of embarrassing ‘likes’ from the time before he assumed the helm of his party suggests that he is well aware as to what a ticking time-bomb it is.

It has that status not merely because of the understandable sensitivity surrounding anti-Semitism. As appalling as the notion that Labour has been indifferent about the status of Jews in this country, the truth is that this row is also a proxy for a wider concern about entryism and extremism. Three years ago, there was no hint that Labour might contain significant numbers of anti-Semites within its membership. There were, of course, back then a small number of individuals in Britain for whom the distinctions between opposition to the Israeli Government, distaste for the existence of the State of Israel and outright hostility to Jewish people were at best blurred and at worst warped. But this was, nevertheless, a fringe of a fringe and essentially outside the normal structure of UK political life.

It was Mr Corbyn’s leadership bid in 2015 (and again in 2016) and the seizure of control of Labour by his allies that allowed and encouraged somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 adult citizens who had previously been functioning to the left of the Labour Party to come inside it. What they brought with them included a host of ultra-radical views of which anti-Semitism is probably the most unsavoury but not the only one to imply a contempt for social democracy and parliamentarianism. The notion that Mr Corbyn can oversee some sort of purge of zealots in this space is not credible. The best that his associates have come up with so far is the notion of anti-anti-Semitism training.

Although it will maintain a degree of unity between now and the May elections, all sides within the Labour Party are preparing for a Summer of Hate. Another bout of Civil War is all but inevitable. The deeply unease truce which has broadly held since Mr Corbyn’s unexpectedly strong performance in the general election campaign last June is about to break down. The following factors are at work.

The Corbynites have claimed control of the party machine and will now look to advance further

The (enforced) resignation of Iain McNichol as the Labour Party General Secretary and his replacement by Jennie Formby, the political protégé of Len McCluskey of Unite (and the mother of his child), is a landmark moment is the struggle for supremacy within Labour. Mr McNichol has been followed out of the door by a number of other career party officials who opted to jump before they were pushed. They, too, will be replaced by those whom the party leadership has confidence in. Mr Corbyn and his supporters have acquired a small but reliable majority on the ruling National Executive Committee that will probably be extended in elections later this year. They are now in a position where they can aspire to rewrite the rulebook to their advantage and then move on to wholesale changes in policy.

The next fight will thus occur about the Review of Labour Party Democracy, an exercise for which submissions closed last month. This is being overseen by Katy Clark, a former Scottish Labour MP and today the Political Secretary to the Labour Party leader. This is expected to make a series of recommendations to be debated at the party conference in Liverpool in September. These will probably include new authority for the membership in determining the Labour Party manifesto, further amendments to the process for electing future leaders and deputy leaders, and new terms for the selection of parliamentary candidates and the re-selection of incumbent Labour MPs.

It would be astonishing if the Corbyn faction did not take the chance to rebalance power within the Labour Party away from the parliamentary party and towards the mass membership. As this is an existential threat to moderate Labour MPs, a bitter battle over the rulebook is absolutely certain.

Brexit is fast ceasing to be a reason for the Labour Party to avoid tearing itself apart

Over the past nine months or so, Brexit has been something of a relief for the Labour Party. As it does not have to make any difficult decisions itself, it has been able to sit back and to criticise the Government as ministers have sought to find an internal accord on firstly the principles of leaving the EU and then the transition arrangements.

Furthermore, for most of that period, Mr Corbyn and his party have been able to maintain an ambiguous stance on whether or not the UK should be inside or outside the single market and inside or outside the Customs Union. The efforts of many MPs and the more moderate tendency within the party at large has focused on seeking to move the party to the softest end of the ‘Soft Brexit’ range, hoping to exploit a generational division between the ‘1980s’ Corbynites (instinctively opposed to the EU) and the ‘2015’ Corbynites (naturally more EU-friendly).

This age of obfuscation is at an end. It is clear that neither Mr Corbyn nor, crucially, John McDonnell, want to see the UK remain within the single market. This is partly because of their historic view of the EU as a dubious ‘capitalist club’, partly because they are not wild about the notion of a ‘market’ but mostly because they have concluded (correctly) that the various anti-State Aid provisions that the EU has adopted over the past quarter century would be an impediment to an economic strategy rooted in widespread renationalisation and other extensions of government hegemony.

Where the leadership has offered an olive branch to other strands of party opinion is over the Customs Union (Mr Corbyn sees little virtue in unilateral free trade agreements that invariably exploit a workforce) but even here the stance is to favour ‘a’ Customs Union with the EU and not ‘the’ Customs Union.

This is essentially the reverse of where the Conservative Party is likely to end up with Brexit, which is to have elements of ‘a’ single market with the EU but not ‘the’ single market, while making a clean break from the Customs Union completely. Which of these is a harder or softer Brexit is debateable.

In any case, with the Cabinet holding together on its blueprint from withdrawal and the clock ticking away towards 29 March 2019 and the political exit, Brexit is no longer an alibi for avoiding conflict. The notion that Mr Corbyn may be the unlikely agent for avoiding Brexit is a totally implausible one.

All sides are digging in for a long war lasting for the whole of what will be a long parliament

The issues relating to Labour’s Civil War are now almost exclusively ones of timing. There are already some signs of the amazing surge in Labour Party membership abating (what is far less clear is what type of member is deciding not to renew). Whereas there were some within Labour (and particularly among Mr Corbyn’s admirers) who thought that the Government might collapse after June 2017 and simply hand office to Labour on a plate, there is an evolving realisation that the Conservative Party is unlikely to implode and hence the next election will probably be in 2022, not 2018 or 2019. Allowing for Mr Corbyn’s age, that may well mean another leadership election this side of the hustings. Right now, neither the hard Left nor the centre-left have a contender ready for such a campaign. Yet this will be the showdown which determines the character and the fate of the Labour Party for a decade.

Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA


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