Salami Sliced Socialism. Lessons from the Labour Party conference in Liverpool

The Labour Party conference that Jeremy Corbyn is about to conclude in Liverpool has been a very strange but in its own terms extremely significant affair. It has been very strange because even by the standards of party conferences (which are surreally curious occasions) it has existed in a bubble of its own with other national and international developments seemingly irrelevant to it. Yet it has been extremely significant for the light that it has shone on the strategy and the tactics by which the supporters of the current leader intend to consolidate and intensify their hold over the party, its organisational structure, its rulebook and the policies on which it will seek to secure a mandate.
The following five features of what has been witnessed this week are of particular long-term value.
The Corbynites are willing to be patient about assuming complete control over the Labour Party
A number of substantial rule changes were agreed by the National Executive Committee (now under the control of the Corbyn camp) and by conference delegates. These included a reduction in the proportion of ward branches or constituency trade unions required to trigger a re-selection ballot against an MP from one half to one third, and a tweak to the regulations that apply to leadership elections so that any contender must be nominated by 10% of MPs plus 5% of constituency parties and 5% of trade unions.
In a strange development, the NEC backed the creation of a second deputy leader of the party (who would have had to be female) but this was abandoned yesterday in the conference hall when the hard left changed its mind as to whether this change was in its interests. Most of the conference on Sunday was taken up with internal matters.
To an extent, these changes might be considered incremental. The official line from Momentum (the party within a party established after Mr Corbyn’s victory to offer him continued backing) was that it was “deeply disappointed” that it had not achieved the mandatory re-selection of all MPs that had also been the aim of the Bennites in the 1980s.
There was, however, an element of crocodile tears here. All of these seemingly modest rule switches assist the hard left. The new rules for re-selection and de-selection will make it easier for Momentum to remove MPs it does not care for but probably not until far closer to any general election. The addition of new minimum support requirements for aspiring leaders among the constituency parties and the trade unions is a clear barrier for potential candidates on the moderate wing who are popular among fellow MPs but not in the wider party.
The Corbynites are determined to make it difficult for the moderates to form another party
The approach adopted by the Corbynites towards the rulebook reflects the determination of their high command not to offer dissident Labour MPs an easy reason for breaking away and forming an alternative Labour Party, a new centre party or defecting to the Liberal Democrats. The hard left is well aware that a formal split in Labour’s ranks would severely impede its electoral prospects. By assuming a ‘salami slice’ strategy towards taking full control of the Labour Party, it is denying its internal opponents the sort of issue that would serve as a pretext for their departure. It also has the virtue of keeping the trade unions, the only powerful potential rival to the Corbyn crowd, onside.
The (as will be outlined, mostly symbolic) shift towards allowing the option of a second referendum on Brexit was similarly motivated by a disciplined decision not to give moderates an excuse to declare that Mr Corbyn was a de facto Brexiteer and bolt from his ranks.
Similarly, Mr Corbyn has allowed his closest allies to suggest that he accepts that the party’s approval of UK nuclear weapons remains as formal policy (despite the fact that he would never use them) to prevent this being the catalyst for a schism either. The majority of Labour MPs will find themselves firmly trapped in their own party.
The Corbynites have no serious intention of campaigning to reverse the EU referendum vote
While the leadership was willing to accept that “all options” on Brexit remained on the table and that this included “campaigning for a popular vote”, it is manifestly obvious that they have no real intention of doing so.
The older generation of Corbynites are at best agnostic and at worst hostile to the European Union. They consider its State Aid provisions alone an obstacle to their ambitions. It will be their aim to use the Brexit process as a long-shot means of forcing a premature election at a moment of maximum convenience to them. Only after a Brexit deal has scraped through the House of Commons would they contemplate embracing a referendum, and even in those circumstances, as John McDonnell has made plain, the call for a ballot would be on the settlement reached with the EU itself, rather than the possibility of remaining in it. The Corbynites do not want to do anything that prevents alienated anti-EU voters from backing them at an election.
Policy is to be Marx tempered by Mori
The programme set out by the party in Liverpool is a radical one. It includes: awarding full legal rights to all employees (a direct attack on the gig economy); a real living wage of £10 per hour; reserving a third of seats on company boards for representatives of the workforce; a compulsory Employee Ownership Scheme for all businesses with 250+ employees and steering 10% of shares in their direction; and the return to public ownership of the water and energy sectors as well as the railways. These targets have been selected out of a mixture of ideological zeal and electoral calculation. Just as with the stance taken on student loans (namely abolition), these particular causes have been chosen for prominence because opinion polling suggests clear public backing in every instance. It is Marx tempered by Mori. Anything that is philosophically pure but a political liability will either be discarded, stuck in the small print of a manifesto, or referred to so ambiguously as to render it silent.
This is a vastly different approach to the 1983 Labour Manifesto which was socialism, warts and all, with little regard to whether the public would stomach it, and rightly described (anonymously at the time) by a senior Shadow Cabinet minister (Gerald Kaufman, it later emerged) as “the longest suicide note in history”. Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell are proving to be more subtle operators. Just as with internal politics, external policy is about salami slicing, putting the populist parts of socialism up first. The architect of this is not the Leader of the Opposition himself but his ally the Shadow Chancellor.
The Corbyn Labour Party is hence a very dangerous opponent to the business community
The aforementioned Shadow Chancellor may be many things but stupid is not one of them. It might not work but his game plan is a cunning one. It is to assume control over the party for years to come by stealth rather than seizure. It is to make a serious fissure from the Labour Party by the moderates an exceptionally challenging exercise and through that minimising the public exposure of divisions. It is to avoid being labelled as manifestly ‘Remain’ or ‘Leave’ over Brexit. It is to formulate a leftist version of the populism rampant throughout the democratic world at the moment and to have a set of policies which the centre-right will struggle to discredit.
These plans have the advantage that if Labour found itself forming a minority administration, then it will have manifesto priorities that the other parties which held the balance of power (the SNP, the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru) will find it impossible to object to.
Many in private equity and venture capital ask if it is Brexit or Corbyn which is the larger threat to their interests. Brexit can (and will) be mitigated. Corbyn could not be finessed.
Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA