Can Corbyn change?

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The history of setting up new parties in the UK is not exactly a trail littered by success. One of the main reasons for that is the electoral system which, as long as there are two parties generally perceived as ‘natural’ front runners, allows two main parties to shut others out by each claiming that any vote not for one is, in effect, a vote for the other. It’s a tactic which has been used for decades by Labour and Tory alike, and goes a long way to explaining why neither of those parties has ever embraced electoral reform.

One of the features of such a system, however, is that there is an inherent tipping point; once any third party reaches a certain percentage of the vote it can suddenly have the effect of shutting out one or other of the traditional two main parties. Opinion polls suggest that Reform Ltd may have reached that tipping point, although there is a lot that could, and probably will, go wrong for Farage between now and the next Westminster election. It is in that context that Corbyn and friends have decided to launch a new party. Maybe, if the old system really is reaching the end of the road, the UK could see both the two old main parties being swept aside by two new main parties, however unlikely that might seem in historical terms.

Despite agreeing with much of what Corbyn has said over the years on a range of issues, I have serious concerns about a new party led by him.

Firstly, he has never exactly been an enthusiast for electoral reform. There is, of course, an element of chicken-and-egg about the issue – the best way for a new party to break through is under an electoral system which allocates seats more accurately on the basis of votes cast, and the best way of getting that sort of electoral reform is for one of the parties which is being shut out by the current system to somehow win a majority under the current system. Serious, long term reform of the UK political system depends on implementing a change which clearly runs counter to the interests of those making the decisions. Nevertheless, a clear commitment to reform might be the best way for a new party to encourage others to support it on a one-off basis in a single election. Has Corbyn the vision to understand that?

Secondly, unless the new party can get its vote share up to around 30%, it could end up with a respectable vote in many constituencies whilst winning precisely no seats. And it could even end up losing seats for the Green Party. Success in the short term necessarily involves a willingness to form alliances. Corbyn is steeped in old Labour Party values, including the one which welcomes co-operation with other parties just as long as those other parties recognise Labour’s hegemony and do as they are told. Can Corbyn put such attitudes to one side and form the sort of cross-party alliances required to bring about electoral success – and in England, that primarily means with the Green Party?

Thirdly, Corbyn has always had a strange blind spot when it comes to Wales and Scotland. This is a man who supports national liberation struggles across the globe, and is a long-time supporter of a free and united Ireland. Yet, when it comes to those parts of the UK which don’t have a stretch of water separating them from England, he somehow seems to see the dominance of England as being part of the natural order of things. Working with others in Wales and Scotland will require a willingness to adapt his attitude towards them – has he the sense to do that?

At the moment, there’s something of a gap where detailed policies should be, and we’ll have to wait and see how that gap is filled. Vague aspirational stuff isn’t enough, even if it generates a few headlines.

More like fudge than iron

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One of the PM’s attack lines on Labour is based around the idea that Labour and the SNP have stitched up a deal to allow a second independence referendum next year in exchange for the SNP supporting a minority Labour government.  It’s an outright lie, of course, but that’s only to be expected of Johnson.  There is no agreement, and Corbyn has been saying clearly and repeatedly that he will not allow such a referendum for at least a few years.  Johnson has gone so far as to give a “cast iron pledge” that he will never permit a second referendum, which sounds impressive until one tries to ascertain whether cast-iron is stronger or weaker than “do or die”, and “dying in a ditch”.  Most people would probably consider a cast-iron pledge to be a weaker promise than “do or die”, so I guess that means that we can safely assume that there will indeed be a second independence if the Tories win the election.  Assuming that he means the opposite of everything he says is always safer than taking it at face value, and only causes a problem on those frequent occasions where he manages to contradict himself.

Whilst both Johnson and Corbyn are legally correct in assuming that they can simply deny the Scottish government a second referendum (it merely underlines the old truth that power devolved is power retained), it seems a curious approach to be telling the Scots in advance that it doesn’t matter how many times or in how many ways they elect a clear majority of representatives on a pro-independence platform, their votes can and will be simply ignored.  It’s almost as though they are trying to strengthen the perception that the Scots don’t count in the ‘precious union’ of nations and encourage Scots to give their support to the SNP.  Telling people that they can’t have what they vote for may give them a way of avoiding debate about alternative futures for Scotland, but it simply means that that debate is likely to happen without them.

I assume that it’s an argument tailored to English voters rather than the Scots, but all the polling evidence suggests that English voters, by and large, aren’t particularly exercised about whether Scotland stays or goes anyway.  In Johnson’s case, it’s presumably an attempt to appeal to English nationalists who feel that Scotland should not be able to influence politics in England, but that is hardly an argument which strengthens the union.  Indeed, the best way of implementing that view is to get rid of Scottish MPs completely – another reason for believing that his pledge is probably made of soft fudge rather than cast-iron; if it is in his personal interest to get rid of Scotland, he is unlikely to hesitate for long in doing so.

It is Corbyn’s position which is the more curious, however.  This is a man who has supported national liberation movements across the globe, including the reunification of Ireland.  Why does he have such a blind spot when it comes to Scotland and Wales?

Confusing wealth ownership with wealth creation

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Elections inevitably draw out hyperbole and given the future former Prime Minister’s reputation as a ‘journalist’, the use of the technique against Corbyn is only to be expected.  That doesn’t make it fair or reasonable, of course, and his comparison of Corbyn with Stalin is a case in point.  It’s also unfortunate in that the invitation to think about the key attributes of Stalin – a hatred of democracy, a tendency to purge his party of those who don’t agree with him, and a demand that parliament does as he tells it - do indeed ring a bell in relation to a current prominent party leader, but it isn’t Corbyn.

More specifically, however, he interprets Corbyn’s antipathy to billionaires as meaning that Corbyn is an enemy of wealth creation, an accusation which reveals more about Johnson’s own lack of understanding of economics and wealth than it does about Corbyn.  Simply equating the possession of personal wealth with wealth creation is a fundamental error.  There are many ways of accumulating extreme wealth, and not all of them are honest, to put it mildly.  Even amongst the ‘honest’ routes to extreme wealth there are methods which owe more to redistribution of wealth created by others than they do to actual wealth creation, a fact which many of the conservative party’s donors demonstrate well.

Of course, there are some billionaires who have had a brilliant idea, set up a company to exploit it, sold millions of whatever, and ended up filthy rich.  To the extent that they personally created the personal wealth that they enjoy, it is through the original idea and its exploitation, but did they really personally create all that wealth?  Did their employees not contribute at least something to that success?  There’s another aspect to the question as well.  As Chris Dillow wrote last week, the very existence of so many billionaires could be seen and interpreted from a Conservative viewpoint (let alone a leftist one) as being a symptom of market failure, not its success.

Most economists would define ‘wealth’ in terms of GDP or some variant on it; the country as a whole is wealthier if its GDP is higher.  It’s a definition which says absolutely nothing about how that wealth is then distributed.  Corbyn’s opposition to the concentration of wealth in an increasingly small number of hands is not anti-capitalist in the sense in which Johnson tries to portray it; indeed a more valid critique from a socialist perspective might be that trying to make capitalism work more fairly perpetuates the system, making Corbyn a better friend of the system than Johnson.  Protecting the interests of the super-rich, as Johnson seems to want, is actually a bigger danger to capitalism in the long term.

The face seems to matter more than the substance

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Whether the PM’s aide, Dominic Cummings, is right or wrong about it already being too late for MPs to prevent a no-deal Brexit remains to be seen; at the very least, they’ve left it very late to turn their talk into action.  The constitutional experts seem to think that if MPs act quickly when parliament reconvenes and pass an early vote of no confidence, and if they can then find a majority in the Commons to support the installation of an alternative PM, then there is still time to avoid a no-deal on 31^st October.

Those are two very big ifs though.  The first is just about possible if enough Tories decide that allowing Johnson any more time to run down the clock on the assumption that he’s bluffing is no longer a safe option, and provided that there are not too many Labour MPs prepared to support a Tory PM in a vote of confidence.  The much bigger problem is the second 'if', because it seems that if MPs can’t agree an alternative, then Johnson can cling on and set an election date for after Brexit has already happened.

In theory, the second part ought to be quite easy; it’s simply a matter of identifying an individual who will agree to take on the job of PM for long enough to ask the EU27 for an extension during which a General Election is held and after which the new government decides on a Brexit strategy.  That’s a very short tenure in Downing Street, during which the selected individual would have to agree to take on a largely administrative / caretaker role rather than attempt to implement policies with which the disparate coalition of MPs putting him or her into office might not agree.  As long as that limited remit is agreed and adhered to, there’s no logical reason why it matters who the figurehead is.  But logic and politicians aren’t necessarily words which belong in the same sentence.

It seems that most Labour MPs won’t sign up to such a plan unless the figurehead is Jeremy Corbyn, and most of the non-Labour MPs opposed to no-deal won’t sign up unless it’s somebody – almost anybody, apparently – whose name isn’t Corbyn.  For all their talk about stopping a no-deal Brexit being the most important thing, and being willing to do anything in their power to prevent it, it turns out that whether Corbyn is or is not PM is even more important to most of them, and doing everything in their power excludes doing the one thing that would work.  They’re hung up on the personality rather than the substance in a way which will allow Johnson to do as he wishes.  And if they carry on in this vein, they’ll be as much to blame as he is for the consequences.

A Greek tragedy

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Just occasionally, the fates act in a way which brings about a perfect conjunction of people or events.  ‘Perfect’ doesn’t necessarily mean good, of course; something can be perfectly bad as well as perfectly good.  In the context in which I’m using the word here, what I mean is that things are perfectly complementary, like yin and yang.

In years to come, historians will marvel (although conspiracy theorists may well develop their own explanations) at how the paths taken by Jeremy (born 26 May 1949) and Theresa (born 1 October 1956) followed such apparently completely divergent routes before bringing them to precisely the right point, at precisely the right time, to create such a perfect conjunction, such a deadly duet, such a danse macabre.  So different yet so similar: the survival of each now depends on the other as they are locked in a ritual to which there appears to be no end, no obvious denouement; they can only play the roles assigned to them by the fates until the fates decide that they’ve had enough.

There is a clear consensus between them on one thing and one thing only – they are both absolutely convinced that ‘consensus’ requires everybody else to agree with them.  Theresa summoned the leaders of other parties to hector them into forming a consensus with her to back her deal, whilst Jeremy invited MPs from across the House of Commons to listen to his plans for forming a consensus around his alternative.  Both seem to have listened only with their mouths, leaving their hearing organs unsullied by any contrary opinions.  And thus the tragedy plays out, with its unexpected twists and turns all scripted centuries ago by the all-seeing fates, with the end as yet unknowable.  We have reached the point where our best hope may be that the tragedy truly is a Greek one; at least they had a deus ex machina to resolve the apparently irresolvable.