‘Party-gate’ has been a lost Opportunity:

What should be the strategy of the Left? Electoral victory, Revolution, or both?

Whilst the attractiveness of activism and industrial action is growing, the left in parliament is somnolent, and indeed points to this increasing activism as a way forwards. There are all sorts of campaigns for environmental justice, social justice, economic justice, racial justice and more, but these are lacking any universal leadership or collective set of goals that people could point to as an alternative to our present society. The left must acquire these attributes, or it is doomed, and no transformational change for the better will occur. How can we go about building leadership and class solidarity for a specific long-term agenda?

The Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn won 40% of the vote in the general election of 2017. This tends to prove that there is an appetite for left wing politics in the UK. After the defeat in 2019, and the dishonest victory of the Labour right in the following leadership contest, the minority of Labour MPs who identify as socialist have failed to reorganise, to issue any new agenda or strategy and have generally procrastinated. The standard line from them and their supporters is that in ten or fifteen years time some of the elderly conservative voters will have passed away and there will be more young left wing voters who have reached voting age. But does this hold true?

Firstly, time is an issue: Climate scientists say that we have ten years to make the changes necessary to guarantee sustainable life on the planet. Whilst current governments have made nods in the direction of a ‘Green New Deal’, what they are suggesting is minimal to say the least. Waiting for a decade or more for realistic change seems like a terrible idea. Secondly, both Labour and the Conservatives are essentially anti-democratic. Both parties support the status-quo and are more interested in manipulating opinion than listening to it. The Liberal Democrats are hardly any better – running on a manifesto to entirely ignore a referendum in 2019. Even if there were a popular surge to the left in the next decade it cannot be guaranteed that this would be reflected in parliament.

The expectation that the UK will naturally become more left wing also has little solid ground to stand on. People are living for longer and longer, within the next decade we can expect more medical breakthroughs – there is not much reason to assume that many of the elderly members of the ‘red wall’ will have passed away by that point. Although we can expect more recruitment of the young to the left, Generation X – which is now middle aged – has been largely ignored in left wing strategy. Generation X will inherit property and security from the members of the older generation who do die. In their new position of security they will be less likely to support the left if they only consider their selfish interests. All in all it seems likely that the left / right division in the country will remain the same.

Even if the above analysis is wrong, there is no left-wing party available to be voted for. Although it is unlikely that a theoretical Socialist Party could win a majority at this stage, there is no need to think it would immediately be crushed given the results in 2017. If enough MPs who are already sitting would join it, it would be considered worth voting for by much of the electorate. It can be argued that this party would guarantee a Conservative victory. But in the long term the party could attract votes from a very weak and weakening centre, people in the red wall returning to their socialist roots, as well as people who don’t usually vote and who are presently being completely ignored by mainstream politics (as they were before the Brexit referendum). This may be besides the point – in a democracy people should be able to vote for candidates they have some agreement with. This is impossible for many at the present.

The free market was once considered the only viable way of running things. This is no longer the case and a majority are now firmly against it. Up until ‘party-gate’ Boris Johnson could do anything and retain his lead in the polls because he had moved away from free market ideas, whilst Keir Starmer had moved towards them. If there were another viable anti-free market party it would have likely attracted more support than Labour, and have been the beneficiary of party-gate.

Strikers and campaigners have won a few arguments, but whilst these activists have no allies in parliament – or only soporific allies – they have little chance of achieving the large scale change that we need. Society is deeply divided, whilst the media and parliament are both pro-status-quo it is easy for them to mobilise reactionary opinion and prevent solidarity for change. Activists on the streets, in the workforce and in the media are extremely important for any transformational change. But if they cannot achieve change in parliament there is only one other thing that their long-term goal can be – that is, a build up to a revolution.

Is a revolution possible or desirable in the western world? History shows us that revolutions are usually followed by powerful counter-revolutions that make society even worse than they previously were. For any revolution to succeed in the long term it would have to be somehow managed so that it brought all of society along with it – compromises would have to be made with conservatives (with a small ‘c’) that did not rip out the heart of the revolution. It would make sense to have a parliamentary party that could do this – who else could? Leftists storming parliament and government offices to entirely destroy the old order and build something new would be presented as anti-democratic and anti-British by the media and hated by a large portion of the population. Revolution can only work by forcing the present establishment to change, not by obliterating it. This means having a foot in the door of the present establishment – any forced change inflicted on them would be insincere and soon rolled back if there were little or no sympathy for change in parliament.

Furthermore, all historical revolutions that have been successful - even in the short term - have managed to recruit the police to their side. For the moment, there has been no attempt to do this. The police seem to see the public as people they control, rather than people they serve. Activists see the police as their implacable enemy. Any attempt to occupy a building or mount an illegal protest can by physically defeated by the police. If the prisons fill up, camps can be built – the right has proved itself willing to run rough-shod over civil liberties. The most that can be hoped for - if the police remain loyal to the establishment - is that the authorities give up the will to fight and a compromise is made. Again, the authorities would be insincere and undermine this compromise wherever they could. The obvious way to placate the police would be for the left to enthusiastically compete in elections for police commissioners.

Revolution may be impossible. When crises occur in countries with elected governments the governments are usually forced into some concessions by the representatives they rely upon for power. Even if the concessions are small, it is often enough to undermine the revolutionary potential of the situation and secure the general direction of government. ‘Party-gate’ is the obvious example – once Boris is gone it will be forgotten about. Some radical political philosophers hope that governments will become less democratic and more despotic in order to maximise the chances of revolution.

The mechanics of revolutions can be planned, but the time and the place they occur cannot. They are usually a spontaneous mass reaction to an unpopular decision or event that cannot be foretold. Whilst left-wing politicians and pundits have told us they are aware of this, no effort has been made to think about revolution realistically, or indeed find a leadership for it. If it were to occur, how would it be handled? What would be its objectives? How would the revolutionary zeal be maintained? If there really is no hope of electoral success at present, and little hope in a decade’s time, this needs to be discussed by motivated left wing activists, and it needs an obvious leadership that can bring it along.

‘Party-gate’ has been a lost opportunity for the left - because there is no overall leftist organisation that can take advantage of it. Whilst there has been general uproar and disgust with the government there has been no action or discernable message from campaign groups, trade unions or left wing MPs. We are just spectators to the slow demise of Boris before he is replaced with somebody who is probably worse.

It seems to me that the only people who can provide this leadership are MPs – that is supposed to be their job after all. Whilst there are celebrities who campaign successfully on various issues, they cannot hope to provide overall leadership for meaningful change. There are various small organisations that hope to provide the leadership necessary, but cannot get the exposure that they need and go unheard of by most of the population. It is not at all obvious that left-wing MPs can – or want to – provide this kind of leadership. But there is no alternative available.

Both revolutionary action on the ground and action in mainstream politics will be necessary to achieve change. Revolutionary activity can be easily quashed if parliament and the media are set against it. Even sympathetic ears in parliament will not listen unless there is general uproar against the present system. An assault on the elites in parliament and on the streets must occur in tandem. For the assault to work it must have a leadership, easily identifiable goals, and the ability to take advantage of crises. Groups co-operating ad-hoc with no central agenda or strategy could be easily bought off piecemeal, and they probably would not be organised enough to act simultaneously in the first place.

Members of the Labour Socialist Campaign Group must be forced into action – they must be forced to prioritise change above their cosy feelings for a Labour Party that is not fit for purpose. Whilst it may not be necessary for them to leave Labour, they certainly must acquire their own leadership and direction and be willing to argue collectively with the Labour leadership and against the Tories. They are not paid £83k a year because their job is easy. They should do their job.

Telling the SCG to ‘get organised’ is too much of a vague and nebulous message that they can easily ignore. Telling them they must leave Labour or they will lose their seats is the most direct message to send them. Please do so by signing this petition.

Martin Gooding.