28 Sep 2016

Parallel Universe: The Labour Party conference occupies a world of its own

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The Labour Party conference in Liverpool which concludes about three hours or so from now is not quite the strangest event I have ever attended. There was, for example, once a student party where the dress-code was ‘wear a bin-liner’ (it was a rubbish occasion). It is, though, certainly the most bizarre political engagement that I have witnessed. It even defeats the surreal Conservative Party Conference held in Blackpool in 2003 when Iain Duncan Smith and his supporters desperately sought to pretend that it was “business as usual” while hosts of his own MPs were openly plotting to remove him from his post (which they succeeded in doing in a vote of no confidence a month later).

How Labour MPs must envy the rulebook of their rivals. Liverpool has seen an ever sharper divide between three factions: Momentum and other allies of Jeremy Corbyn; the trade union leadership, which has effectively acquiesced in the hard-left takeover of the Labour Party but who are wary of affording Mr Corbyn and his allies a complete blank cheque or freehand now they are in control; and the vast majority of Labour MPs who are in a state of deep collective despair about the situation. It is the interaction of these three forces which will determine Labour’s short-term and long-term future

The balance of power today is squarely but not completely with the Corbyn fraternity. The next year is destined to prove critical as to whether they can complete their annexation of the Labour Party. Three aspects of internal politics will determine whether and when Labour can return to ‘normal’.

To what extent will anti-Corbyn MPs now fragment?

In retrospect it is now clear that the decision to challenge Mr Corbyn this summer was a catastrophic miscalculation. It was motivated by shock at the EU referendum result and enormous anger among Labour MPs that Mr Corbyn’s indifference or ineptitude over the issue had proved to be decisive.

It was this fury and outrage that drove Hilary Benn, then the Shadow Foreign Secretary, to come out against his leader (and be sacked for his troubles), to be followed by a wave of resignations from the Shadow Cabinet and other parliamentary portfolios and a massive 172-40 vote of no confidence in the leader. If those involved thought that this would be enough to force Mr Corbyn’s resignation, then they underestimated the determination of those behind him to maintain their authority.

When he refused to depart the scene, his enemies had no choice but to nominate another candidate to challenge him (Owen Smith MP as it turned out) but without knowing whether or not the National Executive Committee would insist that Mr Corbyn also had to be nominated by 20% of the parliamentary Labour Party in order to be eligible for re-election. Once the NEC had asserted (on an 18-16 vote split) that he was not obliged to collect those signatures then the drive to oust him had essentially failed. In fact, it was worse than failure in that Mr Corbyn eventually won with 62% of the vote (a larger percentage than in 2015) which means that there is virtually no chance that he will be challenged again next year and hence every chance that he will lead Labour into a general election.

So what will anti-Corbyn Labour MPs do now? To at least some degree they will fragment. Some will announce that they are ready to serve on the frontbench again. In certain cases, this will be because they sincerely feel that they should try and make the best of the situation but in other instances it will be a personal calculation: being seen to be part of the Corbyn team makes it much harder for the likes of Momentum to seek to deselect them. Others will remain outside of the leadership tent but do so quite quietly, building alternative careers on House of Commons Select Committees or becoming prominent campaigners on subjects close to the hearts of those on the centre-left. A section will be much more vocal critics of their leader from the backbenchers. A few will drift out of politics altogether. At a minimum, the present relative unity of Labour MPs will be difficult to retain. At a maximum, Mr Corbyn and his admirers will become yet more entrenched by dividing and ruling.

Who will win the next struggle over control of the party machine?

The coming 12 months before the next conference in Brighton in September 2017 will again see the Labour Party engaged in intense introspection. The Corbyn camp knows it has won in the short-term but is vulnerable at a later moment. To be satisfied that they will be able to elect a successor to Mr Corbyn in the same mould when that moment comes they have to achieve two changes.

The first is to dilute the present leadership rules that require at least 15% of Labour MPs/MEPs to nominate a candidate (it is only a 20% threshold when challenging an incumbent leader). The second is to seize full command of the party apparatus as well as the rulebook, ideally by forcing out Iain McNichol, the current General Secretary of the Labour Party (a role that includes acting as the Returning Officer for all internal elections), and replacing him with an individual who is loyal to Mr Corbyn and his cohort.

This means an epic contest for control over the National Executive Committee. It would be for the NEC to recommend any changes in the leadership rules to the 2017 conference. The preferred route for Momentum would be to lower the number of MPs required to nominate a leadership contender from 15% to 5%, a number meagre enough that there would always be a hard-left champion on the ballot paper and able to exploit the loose requirements to participate in Labour leadership elections. If that change cannot be secured, then the Corbynites would have to engage in the far messier process of increasing the number of hard-left MPs to above 15%, primarily by making life for moderate MPs so miserable that they choose to stand down or, if necessary, by deselecting them. While Mr McNichol is General Secretary he will strive to obstruct that second route which is why his removal is such a high if unstated priority for those determined to secure a permanent revolution.

The difficulty for Mr Corbyn and Momentum is that they do not have a secure majority on the NEC on these questions. That is because the trade unions have been unwilling to assist them on their agenda. As they hold the balance of power on the NEC and still appear to regard Tom Watson, the Deputy Leader, as their de facto leader on that body, then the struggle may well end in stalemate.

So will the trade unions be the next set of institutions to be Corbynised?

This being the case then if the Corbyn fraternity cannot acquire the rule and personnel changes that they need by the conference next year, then they will have to either press ahead with deselection of MPs despite the obvious difficulties that this would entail (not least appalling publicity) or they will have to seek to change the trade unions by similar means to that which they have managed to take over the Labour Party

A number of the largest trade unions have internal elections due in 2017 and, especially, 2018 for their leadership and for their equivalent of the National Executive Committee. If Momentum supporters can be mobilised to take part in these elections (and becoming a member of a trade union is not that arduous and most of the larger unions have such broad constituencies of workers that almost anyone can qualify), then the trade unions could switch from being a constraint on the Corbyn crusade to collaborators.

Were that to have occur, then by the end of this Parliament all of the “commanding heights” of the Labour Party would have fallen to those who were regarded until recently as being on the fringe of the party (indeed, for large numbers of people, outside of it). That this might involve a massive general electoral defeat is, apparently, irrelevant.

How appropriate it is that 2017 is likely to be such an important year for the Labour Party. It is, after all, the centenary of the Russian Revolution and the bloody showdown between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks.

Tim Hames, Director General, BVCA


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