Labour pains (revisited)

I have been very critical of the UK Conservative government over the years – and with good reason – but just to show my even-handedness, I thought it worthwhile to reflect on the performance of the opposition Labour Party following the recent publication of its 2019 election review. According to the authors of the report, Labour suffered a heavy election defeat because Jeremy Corbyn was a deeply unpopular leader amongst the wider electorate and its policy on Brexit was confused. The authors also referenced deeper seated issues, as the party increasingly lost touch with its core support – a problem which was masked by the relative outperformance relative to expectations in 2017 – with the result that “Labour has a mountain to climb to get back into power in the next five years.” 

But cast your mind back five years, and three elections, ago and Labour had just lost a general election in which they were expected to run the Conservatives very close, running neck-and-neck in the opinion polls right up until election day. Although it was anticipated they would win the most seats, the Tories were expected to fall short of a majority and would be forced to form another coalition with the Lib Dems. In the event, they won a majority of 12 seats. Whilst the Tories then unleashed Brexit on an unsuspecting British public, Labour went into full introspective mode and decided that the key reasons for their defeat were: (i) the fact that they remained tarnished by the myth the previous Labour government was responsible for crashing the economy; (ii) an inability to deal with “issues of connection” like immigration and benefits and (iii) Ed Miliband was judged to be not as strong a leader as David Cameron. 

Quite how the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader following Miliband’s resignation was meant to address any of those issues was lost on me – and indeed most voters. In the words of The Economist “Mr Corbyn has been the party’s most disastrous leader ever – not just useless … but positively malign.” That he was unelectable as prime minister was obvious from day one. In a client note I put out in September 2015 just after he was elected leader, I wrote “Simply put, Mr Corbyn is an old-fashioned socialist and is a throwback (at least in British terms) to a political group which was believed to have become extinct in the 1980s … Mr Corbyn is unelectable. None of the analysis performed in the wake of the May general election suggests that Labour failed to win a majority because it was not sufficiently socialist – indeed, quite the opposite.” I take no pleasure in being right. 

Worse still, Corbyn was one of the facilitators of the breakdown in current British politics.  To quote The Economist again, “his failure to throw his party’s weight behind the Remain campaign contributed significantly to Britain’s decision to leave the EU, which most of the membership opposed. His refusal to meet Theresa May half-way during the dying days of her administration killed off any chance of a soft Brexit. His extreme politics and sanctimonious style drove traditional Labour voters into Boris Johnson’s arms.”

It is hard to disagree with any of this. Indeed, a lot of the blame for the fact that Boris Johnson’s inept government can theoretically continue in office for another four years can be laid at Corbyn’s door. But bygones are bygones and the big question for Labour is whether the party can recover. For my money, it can. For one thing, the election of Keir Starmer as party leader has put a centrist politician in charge. I have noted previously that Labour performs badly when it tacks too far to the left and Starmer will drag them way from some of the positions supported by Corbyn which were guaranteed vote losers. For the record, I am a university contemporary of Starmer and remember him standing as a student politician on a moderate Labour platform at a time when the party was run by left-wing zealots.

Whilst I maintain no party political affiliation it is important for the health of democracy that a strong opposition is able to put pressure on the government to act in the interests of all the people and not just its supporters. The abject performance of Johnson and his government is a reminder what happens when the opposition enables a poorly organised government and fails to hold it to account. But as bad a prime minister as Johnson is proving to be, few people believe that Corbyn would have been any better. Aside from having to deal with the Covid-19 crisis, which would try any leader, Labour’s position on Brexit was extremely muddled and it is far from clear how they would have handled it. Politicians on all sides are to blame for the disjointed position in which the UK finds itself. Naturally the government has to carry the can. But Jeremy Corbyn’s failure to provide leadership when it was most needed should neither be forgiven nor forgotten.