The Labour Party’s civil war is intensifying. Starmer’s decision to block his most prominent potential challenger from returning to parliament has backfired spectacularly.
By Claire Laker-Mansfield
He clearly hoped that stopping Andy Burnham from contesting the Gorton and Denton by-election would be enough to save his skin. But a heavy defeat in the constituency, which appears all but certain, could end up hastening his demise…
‘Reclaiming’ Labour is a dead end
Even if Labour MPs mount a successful coup, Starmer being replaced by a figure from the so-called ‘soft left’, or indeed Wes Streeting, will change little fundamentally. Burnham may be burnishing his ‘man of the people’ credentials, but he is a politician whose record in government includes supporting the Iraq war and overseeing widespread privatisation in the NHS.
The other most prominent contender from this wing of the party – Angela Rayner – was expelled from Unite the Union after she backed Birmingham City Council against striking bin workers. She did so even while it used classic union busting tactics and fire-and-rehire in (unsuccessful) attempts to break the strike.
An alternative to cost-of-living crisis, rising militarism, racism and austerity will not come from inside Labour. This is a party which cannot be ‘reclaimed’. So the most crucial task facing our movement today, is to build a new mass socialist party, rooted in working class struggle, which can begin to cohere a real alternative to this rotten system. Your Party, which Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn launched last summer, remains the best opportunity that has existed to build such a party in many years.
Your Party – crucial leadership elections
But Your Party’s early life has been rocky – and that’s putting it mildly. Its vast potential was shown in the initial 800,000 sign ups that followed its announcement. But since then, division at the top has threatened to derail the project entirely. Internal strife has dominated all mainstream news stories relating to the party, contributing to confusion and disillusionment among many of those previously enthused.
The divisions in YP have been widely reported in the capitalist media. And contrary to what they would have us believe, they are not simply a clash of personalities. They represent important political differences about what kind of new party we need.
The elections to the Central Executive Committee of YP, which will form its collective leadership, are taking place this month. These are potentially make-or-break contests which will be crucial in determining Your Party’s future ability to build, to turn outwards to the working class, and to be space for workers to organise themselves politically and in their communities.
Two slates will be contesting the election: The Many, which is backed by Jeremy Corbyn, and Grassroots Left, which is backed by Zarah Sultana and supported by Socialist Alternative. These elections present members with a stark and very important choice. Will Your Party give power, data and resources to its members, recognise and help to build the party’s fledgling branches, respect conference decisions on allowing ‘dual membership’ and collective leadership, or will it do the opposite?
These are the key political questions around which this election hangs. They are life and death issues for the party, which urgently needs a leadership that will support, not undermine, local organising and real party democracy.
But other important differences have also begun to crystallise. These are reflected in the contest as well. Zarah Sultana has articulated a vision for socialist change which goes beyond the one that defined Corbynism 1.0. She has made clear that she supports nationalising – under democratic control – the “commanding heights” of the economy. She has also made explicit that she views socialism as representing an alternative social system to capitalism – not a ‘fairer’ version of it.
If this clearer understanding of the kind of change necessary is both connected with the struggle for immediate demands like rent controls and opposition to all austerity, and coupled with sinking real roots in working-class communities, Your Party could represent a significant step forward for working class political rearmament – both in Britain and internationally.
But there remain great potential pitfalls ahead for Your Party. The CEC elections have already seen witch-hunting tactics used by an unelected party HQ to exclude candidates for membership of left groups or parties. This is strongly reminiscent of the Labour right’s approach, which viciously targeted socialists and Corbyn supporters. What’s more, while the Grassroots Left slate has endorsed Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate for the CEC, the ‘The Many’ slate has failed to reciprocate this by endorsing Zarah Sultana, signalling an unwillingness to try and find a unified way forward following these elections.
If the ‘The Many’ slate wins a majority on the CEC, it threatens to plunge YP into another period of intense battles over who has the right to be a member of the party, and over what rights members have to organise themselves. A YP HQ crackdown could be disastrous for a party that urgently needs to turn outwards.
Already many important opportunities have been lost. It is disappointing that YP has not been able to mount a more substantial challenge in the upcoming local elections, which would have been a great opportunity to turn towards the working class with a clear programme offering rent controls, council house building and a no-cuts approach in local government.
Green surge
Partly as a result of this, in prime position to make gains to the left of Labour in these elections, is the Green Party.
Under the leadership of Zack Polanski, the Greens have adopted some clear and often very effective left rhetoric. Polanski has championed the idea of a wealth tax and supported many of the policies that featured in Corbyn’s 2017 and 2019 manifestos. This has led to a surge in support for the Greens from ordinary people hungry for an alternative.
But while it is welcome that left-wing and occasionally class-based arguments are being made in the mainstream by Polanski, it remains the case that Green Party politicians, when elected to positions of power, have often failed to use these to materially benefit working-class people. In fact, in local government, the Greens have implemented cuts and employed the union-busting playbook to break strikes. Polanski has explicitly ruled out any change in approach from administering austerity in local councils. Meanwhile, Green parties in Europe and Scotland have entered coalition governments with all manner of neoliberal and pro-capitalist parties.
In the context of a Green surge, Your Party’s job is not to define itself as in any way against the tens of thousands of people getting behind the Green Party, who are supporting them for all the right reasons. But it is YP’s responsibility to point to what is really needed to win the kind of change these voters are looking for. This requires acknowledging that standing in and fighting to win power through elections must be something that goes hand in hand with building working-class power on the streets, in workplaces and in communities.
As a first step in demonstrating what this kind of approach could look like, Socialist Alternative advocates that YP organises a mass socialist contingent on the 28 March anti-far right demo – drawing the links between the fight against racism, the far right, austerity, imperialism and capitalism. Your Party should also launch a mass membership drive – with the aim of reaching 100,000 members by the summer. And it should be boldly seeking to build support for socialist ideas in every corner of the country.
