There is a way to save the Labour Party as a force in UK politics

The urgent priority for everyone concerned with progressive politics and social justice in the UK is to work to prevent the Labour Party splitting into two. People need to be hard-headed and pragmatic. (There will be plenty of time in the years to come for the arguments currently raging as to who is to blame for the current crisis.)

The Labour Party has long been an alliance of disparate views. The first-past-the-post system makes such an alliance essential. As happened in the 1980s when the SDP split from Labour, a divided left guarantees Tory rule. 

At the moment a split seems almost inevitable. On one side are 75% of Labour MPs and the entire Establishment. On the other there is, I believe, a large majority of Labour members and, it appears, Labour voters. A YouGov/Times poll today shows that 54% of Labour voters do not want Jeremy Corbyn to resign.

The reality is that neither side can win outright. Corbyn cannot function as a leader of the party if his MPs have no confidence in him, whatever the members may want. However, it is equally true that the MPs cannot demand a different leader, because the members insist on Corbyn.

I can only see one solution to this impasse.  I propose that Corbyn stands down and the MPs guarantee that John McDonnell will receive enough nominations to go into the leadership contest and that they will accept his leadership if he wins. 

If McDonnell is prepared to put himself forward, I doubt if Corbyn would stand in the way of such an arrangement as it has never been about him personally but about the policies. I would expect most members would accept this compromise.

The fact that their candidate for the leadership, Angela Eagle, is almost certain to lose to Corbyn should concentrate MPs’ minds and make them realise that it is in their interest to agree to this proposal in order to keep the party together.  

Furthermore, having McDonnell rather than Corbyn as leader substantially answers the MPs publicly stated objections to Corbyn. They have not raised any differences on policy with Corbyn (although clearly some exist); they have attacked Corbyn’s competence and related issues. McDonnell was generally considered to have had an effective campaign for Remain; he is a more authoritative figure than Corbyn and an effective communicator. 

This proposal would not be a “victory” for either side but any such “victory” would be hollow as it would necessarily lead to the disaster of the party splitting. 

Every possible effort need to be made now to save the Labour Party as a force in UK politics and this proposal may be the only way to do that.

Murder followed by disaster followed by stupid self-indulgence

In the words of Tom Paine: - “These are the times that try men’s souls”. I have never felt so despondent about British politics as I do now. All those who want a decent, socially just society must resist succumbing to despair.

It was only just over a week ago that Jo Cox MP was brutally murdered in the street. She was a strong advocate for the rights of refugees and for a tolerant multicultural society. The man who killed her was linked to an extreme rightwing group. Her murder led to a discussion about the toxic political culture in the UK. Many, rightly, criticised Nigel Farage and the Leave campaign. In my view, David Cameron, who has used inflammatory language in the Commons and elsewhere, also bore significant responsibility for the political climate.

One politician might serve as an example of a better way to conduct politics. Jeremy Corbyn, despite being constantly vilified, has remained dignified and has never responded in kind. He practices the kinder, gentler politics which he advocates for everyone. Corbyn is nothing like Cameron, nothing like Tony Blair, nothing like Boris Johnson, nothing like any other recent leader. Millions of people like him precisely for that reason.

Last Thursday, the UK inflicted a disaster on itself. The Leave campaign succeeded with the help of lies and fomenting of hatred. The British people will suffer as a result for decades to come, economically and in many other ways. It is no consolation at all that Cameron will go down in history as one of our worst and most destructive prime ministers.

It is now said that somehow Corbyn is to blame for the result in the referendum. Here, I need to explain something. I put it in bold for emphasis. The BBC and the Guardian give as accurate an account of Corbyn as the Mail and the Sun do of the EU. I know this because I follow events involving Corbyn on social media. I know, for example, that Corbyn travelled frenetically around the country during the EU referendum but he was not properly reported on the BBC or in the Guardian (or in most of the rest of the media). 

In any event, according to the journalist Paul Mason, Corbyn did get the Labour vote out.

And now, Corbyn’s enemies within the parliamentary Labour Party are moving against him. They say, as if it was as true as 1+1=2, that Corbyn “can never win an election”. What many, probably most, members of the party believe in contrast, is that it is these same MPs' refusal to accept Corbyn’s overwhelming mandate that hampers the party’s electoral prospects.  I certainly believe that if the party united behind him, Corbyn could win.

No doubt, the MPs will depose Corbyn. There will then need to be another leadership election. All candidates will need to get the nominations of a certain number of MPs in order to go forward to then be voted on by the party in the country.

If Corbyn’s name goes forward, I expect that he will be re-elected by an electorate composed of those who voted for him overwhelmingly in September last year plus many more who have joined the party since because of him. 

If, however, the MPs conspire so that Corbyn’s name does not go forward, I think it is inevitable that the party will split. The money and the members would then mostly go with Corbyn. 

The rebel MPs have no realistic prospect of achieving any outcome favourable for them: they are being stupidly self-indulgent. They are damaging the party and helping the Tories at a time when the country is crying out for mature leadership from the political class.

And here are some questions for the rebels

1. Who is your candidate? 
2. Do you have any significant policy differences with Corbyn, apart from Trident?
3. If Corbyn wins again, will you this time respect the result and work with him to beat the Tories?

Murdoch and Brexit with thanks to Mainly Macro

I have cut and pasted the blog below, headed Mainly Macro, as it says what I want to say about Brexit but much better than I possibly could. It is written by Simon Wren-Lewis, an economics professor at Oxford.

If the UK does leave the EU, it will in significant part be due to decades of anti-EU propaganda in the 70% of the press owned by five tax-cheating billionaire press-barons.

Rupert Murdoch, the most powerful of the press-barons, has been candid as to why he wants a Brexit. The journalist Anthony Hilton once asked him why he was so opposed to the European Union. Murdoch’s reply was: -“That’s easy. When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.”

Murdoch is used to getting his way in the UK, ever since he struck a deal with Margaret Thatcher in 1981. Later he struck another one with Tony Blair in 1995. He has backed the winner of every General Election since that deal with Thatcher. In 2015, he backed the SNP in Scotland and the Tories elsewhere. 

In his last paragraph Wren-Lewis says "I hope one result of this referendum will be that otherwise sensible people will stop saying that our tabloid press is not that much of a problem. It might not be if our broadcast media were brave enough to report facts, but instead it is obsessed with balance, as well as being heavily influenced by what some tabloids say."  I completely agree, except I would not exonerate the broadsheets which can be just as bad as the tabloids. The BBC, certainly, too often allows itself to be bullied by the press.

If the UK votes to leave the EU, Murdoch and his close allies Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, will be ecstatic. It will be a very dark day for democracy in our country. 

mainly macro

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Brexit despair Posted: 16 Jun 2016 01:21 AM PDT Among everyone and everything I read at the moment there is a mixture of disbelief and despair over the now distinct possibility that the UK will vote for Brexit. Obviously that is partly because I tend to read other economists, and as Chris Giles noteseconomists are virtually united in believing Brexit will be bad for the economy. (If you cannot access the FT, read Paul Johnson.) But it is also because there is a cleareducational divide in support for Brexit, and I suspect most of what I read comes from one side of that divide. The only other event that I can imagine causing an equal degree of unanimous disbelief and despair would be if Trump looked like becoming President. There is disbelief because it makes no sense. Of course there is a minority who hate the idea of sharing sovereignty, and another minority that really hate immigrants. But these two groups combined would not be enough to win a referendum. Instead we have a much larger group that are concerned about immigration, but their concern appears to be not worth very much to them. This was something I notedsome time ago, but it seems to be a robust result: in a recent ComRes poll68% say they would not be happy to lose any income to secure less immigration (perhaps because they believe less immigration will raise their income). It makes no sense because economists are as sure as they ever are that people will on average be worse off with Brexit. But a large sectionof the population have either not got the memo or have ignored it. This will be an important point when it comes to what happens after Brexit: for many Brexit will have been a vote to control immigration, but only because a lot of those same people think that immigration can be controlled without making them worse off. In other words it will not be a clear mandate for voting against a Norway/Switzerland option, because anything else will make people worse off (as most MPs know). There is despair because economists and others who think Brexit will make people worse off have no way of getting their message across to those that really need that information. I know Gove has said he is fed up with experts, but I’m not convinced most people are (for reasons given hereand reiterated here). But writing articles in the Guardian or letters to the Times will not get through to those we need to hear the message (see final chart here). It is why I wrote this. For academic economists I think it is part of a general problem that the media are losing interest in what we think, which is why I wrote thisfor the Royal Economic Society newsletter. Whether we do or do not leave the EU, I hope one result of this referendum will be that otherwise sensible people will stop saying that our tabloid press is not that much of a problem. It might not be if our broadcast media were brave enough to report facts, but instead it is obsessed with balance, as well as being heavily influenced by what some tabloids say. How else can you account for 58% of people thinkingthat Turkey is likely to join the EU within ten years, which in reality is close to a zero probability event. Democracy can become dangerous when a few people have so much control over the means of information.