“The policies of the right wing of the Labour Party crashed up against reality and came off worse.”
By Simon Fletcher
Shackled from the start
The last two years have demonstrated the validity of the left’s longstanding case for Labour Party democracy. The left of the party warned that the policy choices adopted in opposition were inadequate to the scale of the problems of the British economy. Labour’s leadership was pursuing a set of economic and social policies that meant the incoming government was not equipped to meet the expectations of change that were held by working-class people and all those who needed improved living standards.
Labour promised no major programme of public investment, no plan to cut the cost of living, no redistribution from the richest to the poor, and no progressive taxes to raise resources to deliver change. Under the leadership’s approach, everything would have to wait for growth – and growth was to be produced by the private sector.
The failures of conservative policies
The result is a disaster on two fronts: Labour has been unable to deliver better living standards for the majority or anything like the public investment needed for real change. The Government spent the first phase of its term in office pursuing the logic of its conservative approach: attacking winter fuel payments for pensioners, attempting to slash welfare, and squeezing many public services. And Labour’s slide was far from limited to bread-and-butter matters – revulsion at the leadership’s line on Gaza broke off layers of support from among previously natural Labour voters.
In other words, the policies of the right wing of the Labour Party crashed up against reality and came off worse. Popular support – already at a low ebb – collapsed, aiding the rise of Reform UK and creating the conditions for a Green Party surge.
The attack on party democracy In addition to its policy choices, another choice was made by the party’s leadership in opposition: the decision to move hard against the party’s democratic structures and norms. Whilst the left warned that the leadership’s policies meant there would be a collision with the voters, the right understood this too and needed to prepare for it. Rather than a quirk of Keir Starmer’s personal style, the new machine politics were at one with the policy direction set by the party’s right wing, pursuing a factional interest to shape the party’s structures on its own terms. Yes, it’s true that the Starmer leadership used a confrontation with the left to build a narrative about a ‘changed party’. But the right also moved against democracy and representation to insulate the Government from the inevitable reaction its programme would provoke once in power.
The party’s left was encouraged to leave. Leadership rules were changed to set a higher hurdle for any candidate to get nominated, aiming to stop the left getting on the ballot. Selections were fixed so that candidates with support from the left, soft left, and the trade unions were blocked from standing, often hiding behind ‘due diligence.’ Members of the NEC imposed each other as parliamentary candidates on CLPs. Jeremy Corbyn was barred from standing for the party.
It amounted to a strategy to ensure that the voices likely to speak up for alternatives were stymied within the party’s structures. A compliant PLP was necessary for when tough times came along.
Whilst the right wing of the party gripped the selections, it also ensured that the National Policy Forum (NPF) would not support any policy outcomes that ran counter to its decision not to raise taxes on incomes, wealth, or corporations. The power of Labour’s NPF is itself a product of Tony Blair’s ‘Partnership into Power’, an earlier leadership’s efforts to shape the party’s structures to shield it from pressure from below.
Why democratic structures matter
The effect of the right’s strategy was a programme that would clash with the working class, the poorest, young people, and pensioners – and the election of a PLP that was designed to defend that programme. By moving against democratic accountability and fairer selections, the right of the party proved (negatively) why democratic structures matter well beyond the internal life of the Labour Party. Equally, as the consequences of the right’s policies have worked their way through, it is clearer than ever that pressure for policy change goes hand in hand with reversing the right’s dominance over decision-making.
The great innovation of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy in the 1970s was that it was interested in power: where power is found within the party and how to achieve greater democratic control of it. Today, renewed calls from unions, MPs, and the CLPS for restoring democracy in the Labour Party are welcome once again. Not because more democracy is a pleasant idea, but because of the class interests it would serve.
- Simon Fletcher is a member of Gateshead Central and Whickham CLP, and a political consultant and writer. You can follow him on Twitter/X here.
- This article is from CLPD’s annual briefing, which you can read here.
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