The Corbyn Surge, whatever it is, is a resounding comment on what has become of the worst of New Labour; an unflinching belief that Britain is a “conservative country” and a “centre” that must chased not shaped.
The 2015 defeat and the Corbyn Surge proves that Labour can no longer be the vehicle to carry such a narrow vision. Surely it is time for the cleverer and more open people associated with that project to stop looking with incredulity at the Corbyn Surge and instead reflect on why New Labour has become such a marginal political force.
Yes, New Labour did many good things but most of those are now being unpicked because it never put down deep political roots. It’s a trick that can’t be repeated. It only worked when the party was desperate – on its knees. Some believed that all New Labour had to do was wait until Ed lost and the party would be desperate enough again. But New Labour required other factors to make it possible, like a growing economy (based on debt, a ballooning financial sector, cheap imports and even migrant workers not paid even a minimum wage) to paper over the cracks of the deep distributional inequalities of global capitalism. And in particular it needed the absence of political competition from the party’s left. The inability to deliver social justice because of a refusal to take on the interests of capital inevitably led to such competition and now the reawakening of the left within the party. Every political project carries with it the seeds of its own destruction.
But New Labour wasn’t just about Labour winning – it was about New Labour winning. The politics of elites, by definition, has to privilege the place of the elite. It was the unique ability of half a dozen men to understand the times, to know how to win in terrain only they understood. Its not that winning any other way was infeasible, it became undesirable because otherwise that meant there was no place for them. Blair revealed this in his latest misjudged intervention when he said he didn’t want Labour to win under a Corbyn-style manifesto. Better the Tories than the side-lining of New Labour I guess. Everyday since the late 1990s its been New Labour Groundhog Day – forget the global financial crash, the rise of UKIP, the SNP or the Greens – just use an old playbook that has little by the way of a silver lining. When the modernizers stopped modernising it eventually left the space open for a Corbyn-like Surge.
The Corbyn Surge, whatever it is, is a resounding comment on what has become of the worst of New Labour; an unflinching belief that Britain is a “conservative country” and a “centre” that must chased not shaped. The 2015 defeat and the Corbyn Surge proves that Labour can no longer be the vehicle to carry such a narrow vision. Surely it is time for the cleverer and more open people associated with that project to stop looking with incredulity at the Corbyn Surge and instead reflect on why New Labour has become such a marginal political force.
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