Deselect The Reactionary 26

Last week, as Jeremy Corbyn continued his glacial slide towards accepting the reality that, in order to survive, Labour must become a clear anti-Brexit party, 26 Labour MP's sent him a letter arguing for him to do the opposite. Those 26 MP's are:

Sir Kevin Barron Sarah Champion Julie Cooper Rosie Cooper Jon Cruddas Gloria De Piero Jim Fitzpatrick Rt.Hon. Caroline Flint Yvonne Fovargue Mary Glindon Mike Hill Dan Jarvis Stephen Kinnock

Justin Madders John Mann Jim McMahon Grahame Morris Lisa Nandy Melanie Onn Stephanie Peacock Jo Platt Dennis Skinner Laura Smith Gareth Snell Ruth Smeeth Emma Lewell Buck

Many on this list, like John Mann, are well known right-wingers. Others like Stephen Kinnock, and Caroline Flint are Blair-rights. Others like Dennis Skinner are part of what composed the Bennite Left, that was always compromised by its adherence to reactionary nationalist ideas that has its roots in the reactionary Stalinist concept of “Socialism In One Country”, developed by Stalin in the 1920's. For some, therefore, like Skinner, who have an ideological commitment to such ideas, at least there is some element of principle in their actions, even if that principle is formulated on the basis of a fundamentally flawed, and reactionary ideology. 

But, a look at the list shows that many of these MP's are motivated by a far less noble idea. It is the idea that they should hold on to their seats at all costs, whether that cost be an abandonment of any kind of advocacy of progressive principles, and a capitulation to bigotry, or abandonment of the prospects for other Labour MP's to win their seats, or for Labour to win a parliamentary majority. In either case, the reality is that these 26 MP's, on the most important class battle of our generation, over Brexit, and a life and death struggle between progressive internationalism and reactionary nationalism, have come down on the wrong side of the barricades. Their action on this decisive issue of the day is reactionary, and Labour members in their constituencies, the vast majority of whom oppose Brexit should act accordingly, and begin to deselect them as soon as possible. 

In their letter, they write saying that they are responding to the results of the local and EU elections, and the Peterborough by-election, but everything in their letter shows they have totally failed to learn the lessons of those elections. They say that, in 2017, Labour MP's were elected in both strongly Leave, and strongly Remain voting seats. That is true, but all of the analysis done since then shows that whether in strongly Remain or in strongly Leave voting constituencies, the same pattern is observed, that Labour voters voted by a clear majority for Remain. Why would any sane Labour MP, in a Leave voting constituency, base their decisions on what Tory, BNP, UKIP or other right-wing voters did in their constituency, rather than on what a majority of Labour voters in those constituencies did? Even in strongly Leave voting constituencies, more than 60% of Labour voters, voted to Remain, with only 40% voting Leave. Again, why would any sane Labour MP, in such a constituency act to piss off the 60% of Labour voters in their constituency that voted Remain, in order to appease the 40% that voted Leave, let alone to appease all of the Tory and UKIP voters? Such a strategy is total madness. It seems to be based on the idea that the Remain supporting Labour voters will be forced to still vote Labour, even if Labour pursues a reactionary Brexit policy, because they will have nowhere else to go. But, the local and Euro-elections, and, in part, the Peterborough by-election showed that is not true. 

In the local elections, and in the Euro-elections, 60% of Labour members, let alone Labour voters, abandoned the party in order to vote, Liberal, Green, SNP or Plaid. In Peterborough, with the Liberals and Greens starting from an impossible position, Labour managed to win, but still suffered a massive drain of its votes to the Liberals. Labour managed to win only because the hard Brexit vote was divided between Farage's Brexit Company and the Tories. With Boris Johnson ensconced as Prime Minister, and pursuing a hard No Deal Brexit, that situation will cease to exist. After Johnson becomes Prime Minister, another Peterborough would see the Tories win by a clear margin. 

The reactionary 26, in their letter say that the 2017 position of “respecting” the Referendum result, and renegotiating the withdrawal agreement is the only way of representing the national interest. But that is a fantasy that everything since 2016 has exposed. Firstly, Labour did not gain support in 2017 because of its stance of “respecting” the referendum result. It won support because on the one hand, a large number of younger voters saw Corbynism as a radical new movement in contrast to the dominance of Blairism in the previous period. But, part of that new radicalism was itself based upon a rejection of the referendum result, and of the reactionary nationalism it represented. Nearly all of those new young radicalised elements recognised that Labour's position of “constructive ambiguity” over Brexit was intended to be a fudge, and saw it as the best means of rallying the greatest number of anti-Tory votes against a hard Brexit. 

All of those young Labour voters were actually more mature than Labour MP's, who, in the following period, have turned that fudge into a hard pro-Brexit principle, and thereby increasingly separated themselves from 90% of Labour Party members, and around 80% of Labour voters. The local and EU elections showed that just as they came to Labour in 2017, so they are now being repulsed by Labour's continued adherence to Brexit, and they are flocking away to the Liberals, Greens, SNP, Plaid etc. It threatens to destroy the Labour Party. All of the evidence shows that for every Leave supporting voter, the pro-Brexit stance retains, three Remain supporting Labour voters are lost to these other parties. 

They refer to the losses by Labour in the local elections, and Leave voting constituencies, but they fail to look at the reason why Labour suffered those losses, seeing only a superficial relation between Labour losses, and Brexit Party gains. In fact, of course, in the local elections, the Brexit party did not stand, and UKIP was effectively wiped off the map. Nor did the absence of the Brexit Party and demise of UKIP benefit the Tories, who lost 1300 seats. The clear beneficiaries of the local elections were the Remain supporting parties such as the Liberals, Greens, SNP and Plaid. Labour did not lose seats in the local elections because it was too committed to Remain, but because it was too committed to Leave! Even in seats where Remain supporting parties did not actually win the seat, the fact is that the reason Labour lost them, was that Remain supporting parties were able to pick up sufficient votes to prevent Labour winning. That is why we saw, Labour actually lose some seats to the Tories in those elections. 

Overall, in the local elections, and in the EU parliamentary elections the vote for Brexit supporting parties fell notably, and the vote for Remain supporting parties rose sharply, now showing a clear majority of voters backing Remain rather than Leave. 

They refer to Peterborough and say that it shows what would happen in similar Labour-Tory marginals, many of which are Leave supporting seats. They point to the 17% point drop (the actual % rather than points drop is even more dramatic) in Labour's vote share. But, again they fail to identify that this 17% point drop was not a switch from Labour to the Brexit Party (which merely picked up the former UKIP vote plus a chunk of the Tory vote), but was a direct switch from Labour to the Liberals and Greens! Labour lost this massive share of its vote, precisely because of its pro-Brexit stance, even in a seat where the Liberals had no chance of winning. As stated earlier, Labour only narrowly won, because the hard Brexit vote was split between the Tories and Brexit party. As soon as Johnson swings the Tories behind a hard Brexit position, he will recover all of those hard Brexit votes, in which case, in Peterborough, it would mean that Labour would be trounced by the Tories. Indeed, with the Liberals rapidly rising in the polls, if Peterborough were to be re-run, the sensible option for all Remain voters in the constituency would now probably be to vote Liberal, and on the basis of the last poll, and on the basis of the swing towards Remain and away from Leave nationally, as seen in the local elections and EU elections, that would probably result in a Liberal win in Peterborough, as the Labour vote collapses. 

Certainly, in many other marginals, where the Liberals position is more hopeful than it was in Peterborough that will be the case. Moreover, if Johnson continues to pursue his No Deal Brexit stance, and with many Remain supporting Tory MP's already being threatened with deselection, there is every possibility, in the next few months, that around 100-150 Tory MP's could defect to the Liberals, as the best way of retaining their seats. Once that happens, a similar number of Blair-right Labour MP's will be likely to join them. A Liberal Party with around 300 MP's, plus the support of the SNP and Plaid, in parliament, would have a majority, and be able to put forward its own Leader as Prime Minister, thereby being able to stop Brexit in its tracks. But, more than that. 

A similar thing occurred in the 1930's with the National Government. Once formed it was able to utilise the advantages of the first past the post system to win crushing electoral majorities. As soon as such a National Liberal government is formed, the first past the post system will again provide it with such advantages. Where now the Liberals face the problem of winning individual seats because of being seen as no-hopers, it would instead be, certainly as far as Remain supporting voters are concerned, the rump Labour and Tory parties that would be in that position. The Tory Right would have succeeded in selecting Johnson as Prime Minister so as to push through a hard Brexit, only to see the Tories decimated as an electoral force, reduced to a right-wing rump, whilst the reactionary pro-Brexit wing of the Labour Party would have achieved a similar result. With the vast majority of Labour voters backing Remain, Labour could be reduced, in any future General Election, under those conditions, to the same kind of 6-10 seats that the Liberals won in 2015. It would put Labour back to the kind of position it was in in 1906 when it was formed. 

The whole of the letter from the reactionary 26 is premised on the idea that the interests of Leavers should be privileged over the interests of Remainers, even though there is every indication that the latter now form a clear majority of the electorate, and even though we know that they form a clear majority of Labour voters. That is short sighted even in terms of electoral strategy, but it is unprincipled politically, because it subordinates political principle to electoral expediency. Socialists cannot limit their opposition to reactionary policies simply because to do so, might result in the far right whipping up further fear and loathing. That is political cowardice of the first order, but it is also idiotic politics, because appeasing the fears and bigotry upon which the far right base themselves only legitimises the arguments of the far right itself, it legitimises the very bigotry that it is the job of socialists, and even consistent democrats, to oppose, and thereby only encourages a growth of that bigotry, and encourages the far right to press further forward. 

In Germany in the 1930's, when the German socialists and communists attempted to combat the nationalism of the Nazis by themselves becoming more ardent nationalists, it acted merely to legitimise the nationalist ideas that the Nazis were promoting. But, the voters then, having had those ideas legitimised, by the very forces that should have been confronting them, did the rational thing, when it come to voting, they voted for the authentic voice of that reactionary nationalism, not its pale substitute. They voted for the Nazis, and no small number of the former German Communist party members, followed the logical trajectory too, and donned the brown shirt. Today, already we see supposed figures of the Left joining the red-brown coalition that is the Brexit Party. 

The letter put forward by the reactionary 26 is full of such nationalistic nonsense, talking about the national interest, and a Brexit for the many not the few, as though any such fanciful deal was possible. Suggesting that Labour could push through any such Workers Brexit, after Britain has left the EU is even more fanciful. Britain outside the EU will be a much worse place for workers, particularly workers in Britain. Even if such a situation were to result in a Labour government, rather than the far more likely result of a further lurch to the right, and a right-wing authoritarian government under Johnson, that government would be constrained in its bunker from day one. It would have to deal with a growing economic crisis resulting from Brexit, and the increasing attacks on workers pay, conditions and rights that would go with it. It would be faced with simply trying to firefight against the falls in workers pay and conditions, rather than any ambition to create better conditions than currently exist. And, constrained within the boundaries of a relatively small, and declining UK economy, it would necessarily fail in that task. It would again undermine the concept of socialism in the eyes of workers, setting the movement back decades, once again. 

If we want to win the votes of Labour Leave voters the answer is not to appease their nationalistic ideas, but to build upon the progressive beliefs they hold. The truth is that these voters did not acquire their reactionary views overnight, with the EU referendum in 2016. This cohort of Labour voters have always had reactionary and bigoted views on a whole range of subjects from nationalism and immigration, to feminism, homophobia, through to climate change. Those reactionary and bigoted views did not stop them voting Labour in the past, and nor will they in the future, provided Labour provides them with radical and progressive policies in relation to jobs, wages, the NHS, social care, education and industrial democracy. But none of those radical policies are feasible on the basis of Brexit and of national solutions. They are only credible as solutions implemented on an EU wide basis, struggled for alongside our fellow EU workers, trades unions, and socialist parties.