"Call off the dogs" Chuka Umunna rather pathetically begged Jeremy Corbyn recently. "We aren't dogs" exclaimed an activist from the conference podium the other week. Not in strict DNA terms perhaps but remember, this is the party in which Ed Balls was once called Gordon Brown's "attack dog" and Damien McBride his "rottweiler", so I think we know what Chuka meant. Along with Charlie Whelan, Tom Watson and a few others, Brown's inner circle were accused of thuggish, bully boy tactics*.
However, over the last few years Labour has made bullying and intimidation something by the many not the few in the party as reports from so many constituencies have made it clear the tactics are now endemic. One might say they gave gone back to the days of Militant - indeed they have even readmitted the egregious Derek 'Degsy' Hatton, who said he was inspired by Corbyn's leadership to reapply for membership, having been booted out in 1986. "What I have seen over the past year or two, particularly with Jeremy Corbyn and the people round him is a move along the lines that I would have wanted to see in the 1980s" Hatton told the Liverpool Echo, adding "there is a prime minister in waiting who stands on every picket line, who is talking about nationalising the means of production". Labour has no rule to prevent Hatton rejoining. The main difference from the 1980s is that now the Trots are at the top and bottom of the party, which gives a new meaning to Ed Miliband's "squeezed middle", doesn't it Chuka?
So, other than sounding pathetic, what is Chuka meant to do? Quit the party and start a new, moderate centre-left party? We know how that goes after the SDP. Stay and fight the bullies but probably lose as one after another moderate MP faces a vote of no confidence in the party that officially decided against automatic reselection? What is the moderates' plan?
Like Micawberish rabbits in the headlights they wait and hope that something will turn up. Perhaps they are hoping that Labour loses the next election and the tide in the party turns. Fat chance - the left will say what it always has, that the policies weren't left wing enough. This time they would have the strength to enforce it. Or that Labour win and it all goes belly up, again turning the tide in the party. But by then there won't be any moderates left, they'll all have been forced out.
I said ages ago in this blog that the Labour entryism project was well advanced and, with the various rule changes that have been enacted, probably unstoppable. The mystery to me, with the bullying tactics and anti-semitism so visible is why Labour is fairly popular in the polls, albeit not routinely higher than a government visibly lacking in confidence, competence and coherence.
The latest Labour (what comes after 'New'?) seems to be much more popular than the last genuinely left wing option, Michael Foot's 1980s version. Bankrupt policies of tax and spend, nationalisation and returning power to the unions, all of which would set us back far more than Brexit, don't seem to be a poison pill with significant chunks of the electorate. Partly because Corbyn is popular. He seems to be seen as some kind of avuncular uncle, a harmless old well-meaning duffer.
Rod Liddle gave the lie to this on last week's Question Time. Now I'm a fan of Liddle's acerbic columns, whether on current affairs or football, but he has always disappointed me on QT. I suspect, like me, he comes up with a suitable riposte after about three hours rather than in the moment. This time he had come prepared, as he answered a question about Corbyn's Labour party conference speech, saying it had been a very good speech and that Corbyn had become a "charismatic, persuasive and likable speaker over the last three years". He went on to say that the speech was full of left wing populism and platitudinous drivel, which was not necessarily a bad thing in a party conference speech. It included many things which appeal to people, particularly given the levels of social inequality between north and south and rich and poor. "He is right and I think if there were a general election within the next few weeks Labour would win by a mile." Dimblebod was about to move on before Liddle interjected "I need to add the important bit", which was worth hearing:
"I wish people who were taken in by that and agree with that would look to the left beyond podium and see the rabble with their Palestinian flags and lanyards sponsored by Hamas, would look to the raft of hypocrites on the Labour front bench. Thornberry, Abbott, Chakrabarti - all of whom don't want you to send your kids to private schools or selective schools but do so for their kids, and for Corbyn and McDonnell, who have given support and succour to every possible hostile, violent, anti-democratic terrorist regime or organisation they can: IRA, Hamas, Hezbollah, Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela. If you want people like that running your country, vote for Corbyn."
The audience cheered this superb rant. There are clips on the internet** - it's well worth watching. Ian Lavery, the Labour party chairman was on the panel. Lavery pushed his chair back as if to walk out, or give Liddle a punch. Now Lavery is built like the proverbial brick outhouse. This is the same Ian Lavery who had his mortgage paid off by the National Union of Mineworkers Northumberland area for which he was General Secretary. In 2016 he refused on nine occasions to answer a question on Newsnight about whether he had paid off the mortgage. Subsequently he received a redundancy payment when he left to become an MP. As he had a successor it's not at all clear that he was redundant. His union subsequently discovered that it had overpaid him by some £30k. Lavery would only agree to repay half of it and the union decided to settle rather than take him to court, leading the BBC to question whether he is a fit and proper person for his current role***. The Parliamentary Commissioner cleared him of wrongdoing - well none of it was to do with him being an MP - and Jeremy Corbyn ignored it, promoting him to party chairman. Lavery would no doubt be a key figure in a Corbyn government.
But, rather disappointingly Lavery didn't land one on Liddle but tamely said it was outrageous and expressed astonishment that Liddle would "come out with an anti-Corbyn rant like that". Liddle has been a member of the Labour party for about 45 years and worked for it early in his career but is currently suspended for an anti-antisemitism in the Labour party rant in a blog post published in May in which he claimed that antisemitism "is absolutely endemic in two sections of the Labour party - the perpetually adolescent white middle class lefties and the Muslims" which all sounds like a fair cop to me.
By now the Beeb producer was in Dimblebod's ear, telling him to correct Liddle - that one shadow cabinet's offspring didn't go to a private school, maybe fearing a writ. "I said selective" insisted Liddle, naming the school. He'd done his homework.
Liddle represents a strand of old style Labour (working man, trade unionist, concerned about inequality and regional disparities, eurosceptic, worried about levels of immigration) that the party now seems to ignore. Those people are taken for granted. Whereas the Blairites are eviscerated. So where does this all leave Chuka and his endangered chums? Up the creek without a paddle. And still harrassed by the dogs. You see the avuncular old duffer Corbyn NEVER explicitly condemns the harrassment of the moderates. The most he will do is trot out a platitude, condemning all violence, by whoever - a formula you'll hear him use frequently to avoid criticising any of his "friends", like Hamas or Russia. Which the bully boys take as a green light to continue. Which is why Luciana Berger, the Jewish MP for a Liverpool constituency, needed a police escort at the conference held in the city she represents after suffering months of antisemitic abuse. There can be no doubt: Labour is the really nasty party.
There is actually a phrase for this, Chuka. Welcome to the dictatorship of the proletariat, chum. Now you know how the Mensheviks felt.
There's no way back for the Labour moderates in their party. They can only hang in and hope for a realignment of the political centre, which doesn't seem at all likely at the moment. Hoping for Brexit to crash then, I suppose. Funny that, as it's also what the trots are licking their lips at.
You may as well chuck it in, mate.
* Gordon Brown's attack dogs, The Times, 15 April 2009
** https://order-order.com/2018/09/28/rod-liddle-totally-eviscerates-labour-on-question-time
*** Ian Lavery MP received £165,000 from trade union, BBC 20 October 2017
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