Home Europe Labour leadership contest will be determined by the many, not the few

Labour leadership contest will be determined by the many, not the few

by editor

Rosa Prince is the author of “Comrade Corbyn, A Very Unlikely Coup” (Biteback Publishing, February 2016).

For Labour Party leadership hopefuls lining up to replace Jeremy Corbyn, the party catchphrase “for the many, not the few” could end up being more than a slogan. If they play their cards right, it’s a roadmap to victory.

The phrase — which traces its roots back to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Masque of Anarchy,” written in response to the 1819 Peterloo Massacre —  was forced into the Labour Party’s constitution in 1995 by its then-leader Tony Blair as a replacement for the totemic commitment to full nationalization. It became a familiar rallying cry in 2015 under Corbyn, who even quoted the original stanza from “Masque” at the Glastonbury Festival at the height of Corbynmania in June 2017.

Now, following a second bruising election defeat for the Labour Party in less than three years, the phrase should be front and center in Labour leadership candidates’ minds — not just as the basis of their policy platform but, more practically and immediately, as the way to reproduce Corbyn’s past success.

Corbyn’s almost accidental discovery of the power of numbers during his own leadership bid in 2015 is the stuff of legend for socialists, not just in Britain but the world over.

Going into the contest, it was assumed that Corbyn’s focus on tinkering with his party’s internal apparatus would result in a fellow traveler becoming his successor.

Eighteen months before he electrified British politics by defying expectations to storm to victory, the rules to elect a Labour leader had been reframed by the then-incumbent Ed Miliband, ironically to weaken the power of left-wing trade unions, which held a third of the votes in the electoral college used since 1981 to select leaders.

By opening up the contest to one-member-one-vote, and inviting “registered supporters” to participate by paying a nominal fee of £3, Miliband and his team felt they were terribly modern, creating a system akin to the ones used by the Socialists in France or both main parties in the United States.

However, only the left wing of the party appeared to stumble over the true implications of the new rules. Instead of focusing on the relatively small numbers who were paid-up members of the Labour Party, Corbyn and his supporters turned the leadership contest into a race to woo new voters, including those who might never before have participated in party politics. The battle to lead the party was indeed now a contest for the many, not the few.

In the months and years that followed, many on the left outside the U.K. saw Corbyn’s victory, however accidental, as a model for how they too might achieve domestic success — by building a grassroots alliance of young people, the disaffected, those with a grudge against the “establishment,” the hitherto apolitical and the angry.

Bernie Sanders came close to nabbing the Democratic nomination in 2016 | Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images

The following year, the American socialist Bernie Sanders came close to nabbing the Democratic nomination, securing 43 percent of delegates to Hillary Clinton’s 55 percent, a startling result for a man previously considered an unelectable sideshow. He may well pull the trick off this time around, as the U.S. approaches primary season again and Sanders cements his position near the head of the pack.

Likewise, Corbyn continues to be an inspiration for left-wingers across Europe, his influence seen in parties from Spain’s Podemos to Germany’s Die Linke and France Unbowed.

But now the leader is on his way out, and Labour is wrestling with the question of how far Corbynism can survive after Corbyn.

Going into the contest, it was assumed that Corbyn’s focus on tinkering with his party’s internal apparatus would result in a fellow traveler becoming his successor.

His cronies on the ruling National Executive Committee set the rules for the race, limiting the window for registering as a supporter to just a few days. This, coupled with the composition of the existing membership — which tends to skew to the left, since so many moderates have been driven out — led many to believe that Corbyn acolytes would be a shoo-in.

When Corbyn was challenged for the leadership in 2016, 183,000 people paid £25 to register as supporters — the vast majority of whom went on to vote for him.

It’s come as a surprise that, so far, it has been Keir Starmer, the centrist, who has taken the lead, while the Corbynista candidate, Rebecca Long-Bailey, is seen to have faltered in these early stages.

With the exception of Starmer, all the candidates made heavy weather of securing the 22 nominations from MPs and MEPs needed to get on the ballot. Some will likely struggle with a further hurdle imposed by the NEC — which presumably, its Corbyn-supporting members must have calculated, would help a candidate of the left — to win the backing of three trade unions and affiliate parties, or 5 percent of constituencies.

If they do make it through the winnowing process, candidates would be wise to forget what has gone before. Who cares if Starmer scored the most nominations? After all, Corbyn only just scraped onto the ballot last time around. What matters now is the battle for the support of ordinary party members — old or new.

Moderates concluded they had created a beast they could not control when one-member-one-vote resulted in Corbyn’s victory. If they want to recapture their party, they must stop lamenting what happened in 2015 and find a way to tame it.

Corbyn won because he proved an inspirational campaigner, exciting people’s interest in politics in a way few British politicians have ever achieved.

Why shouldn’t the smart and savvy Lisa Nandy prove an inspiration? | Peter Summers/Getty Images

That might be easier to do from the far left, with its coherent worldview and enticingly simple analysis of what has gone wrong and what must be done to put it right. But it remains the case that the same opportunity exists for every candidate.

When Corbyn was challenged for the leadership in 2016, 183,000 people paid £25 to register as supporters — the vast majority of whom went on to vote for him — despite the window for doing so being narrowed to two days.

Now it is the turn of his would-be successors to sign up new members and so create a new party in their own image.

Why shouldn’t the smart and savvy Lisa Nandy prove an inspiration? Or Long-Bailey persuade the left she is the right person to take forward Corbyn’s legacy? Or Jess Phillips convert her earthy common sense into leadership star dust?

All the candidates, whether they are trailing in the race or way out in front, have it in their power to win.

That is the beauty of a contest for the many, not the few. It is democracy at its most meaningful — if only they can see it.

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