Jeremy Corbyn re elected. What next?

Source: BBC

So, Jeremy Corbyn has been re elected as leader of the Labour Party with 62% of the vote, up from 59% last year. His opponent, Owen Smith, congratulated him and said he hoped that he and Mr Corbyn could work together in the future. What happens next is the million dollar question.

The immediate aftermath of the leadership election is the start of the Labour Party conference, which has been taking place today. This is largely being seen as an attempt to put on a show of unity for outsiders, but in some of the fringe events, tensions are already beginning to re-emerge.

In today's Progress fringe, for instance, Tristam Hunt, the Labour MP for Stoke Central, compared Corbyn to Militant, the radical leftist group that controlled Liverpool council in the 80s, and said that he did not do enough to oppose fascists such as ISIS. At a Momentum fringe, Jackie Walker, the vice chairperson of the organisation, said that anti semitism in Labour was being exaggerated and was being used to undermine the leadership. Other radical leftist groups were allegedly distributing leaflets calling for the mass deselection of MPs perceived to be on the right of the Labour Party.

It seems impossible to predict what will happen next with certainty. Corbyn may be buoyed by his increased mandate and may be set to pursue divisive policy changes, such as the forced mandatory reselection of members of parliament, and shadow cabinet elections by the membership, rather than MPs. Equally he may also decide to be more cautious, and come to a compromise. A "Non aggression pact" being promoted by Tom Watson and others suggests that rebel MPs should stay quiet about their dislike of Mr Corbyn and that the shadow cabinet should be elected by MPs, in return for Corbyn agreeing not to pursue the afforementioned policy changes.

The one thing that Mr Corbyn does seem to be pursuing is the removal of party staff who disagree with his leadership. Squarely in the firing line is general secretary Iain Mcnicol. Mcnicol made his thoughts clear today when he declared on the conference floor that Clause I socialism would win the day-a direct reference to the main argument of MPs opposed to Mr Corbyn's leadership, due to his perceived interest in extraparliamentary politics rather than in parliamentary socialism. Jenny Formby, the political director of Unite, is reportedly being lined up for the general secretary position: She is close to both Len Mcluskey, Corbyn's main union ally, and the leadership office itself.

Due to the continued divisions that are already evidently present, just a day after Jeremy Corbyn's re-election, it also looks unlikely that the civil war in the party will stop: Many MPs may well return to the shadow cabinet, but some members of parliament such as Jess Phillips have declared that they will continue to actively oppose his leadership. Such MPs are likely to be targeted most heavily by the Momentum group for deselection.

Overall, it remains to be seen whether or not Labour can pull itself together again, though the early signs are not positive.

Why the 2016 Labour leadership election was totally pointless.

Source: The Mirror

*LONG READ*
This whole leadership election, in my view, was totally pointless.
Neither candidate looked like they could really grasp the scale of the electoral challenge now facing Labour. And here's why:

Whenever there is an internal schism within the Labour Party, it is not because of mere internal disagreements, but also because of external factors. In the early 1930s, when the social democratic and radical left factions of the party ripped each other apart, that was because of the legacy of the first Labour government and the fact that we had just been kicked out of office. In the 1980s, the arguments were caused by low poll ratings for the party, and a general swing to the right that was occurring across the developed world. The civil war again started once Labour had been kicked out of office in 1979. This time, in the 2010s, the argument has been triggered by a mixture of the same. Labour was kicked out of office in 2010. The election of Ed Miliband in the immediate aftermath, a compromise leader who was just about able to keep the party united, satisfied none of the factions. Therefore it was inevitable that when he lost the general election, the "soft left" collapsed and the blairite faction and radical left once again had the chance to rip each other apart. The threat that Labour faces this time, however, is far more serious than it has ever faced before. In the 1930s, Labour was growing as a party. It had no major rivals, with the old liberal party totally disappearing. It had a guaranteed future even if it was kicked out of power. In the 1980s, when Labour slumped to a terrible, terrible defeat, working class Wales, Scotland, and the North of England remained solid for Labour. Though it would take the party another 14 years to get back into power, there was a solid foundation of support to build upon.

Now, however, the situation is different. The "Core vote" of the Labour Party itself is slowly abandoning Labour. Labour slumped from 48% of the vote in the C2DE demographic to just 30% in 2015, and that number is now continuing to decrease all the time. In Wales, Welsh Labour managed only 32% of the vote in the Welsh Assembly elections, its worst ever result while in opposition in any Welsh election. In Scotland, the Labour Party has all but been vanquished, and in England, especially the North, a combination of right wing populism and increasing apathy of workers from established politics looks set to hand many of its heartlands to UKIP or (In larger numbers) the Conservative Party. Simply put, there is a divide that now exists between social democratic parties in Europe and the people who they used to represent. The reason social democracy is in crisis is not because of a simply left or right agenda, but primarily to do with issues of identity. Parties of the left have slowly become increasingly liberal, and have slowly become more concerned with identity issues and liberal politics than economics, thus alienating them from the traditional working classes, who have historically tended to be slightly more conservative than the norm.

There was some interesting research in the New York Times recently about the difference between the support which Donald Trump, the right wing populist candidate for American president, received from unionised and non unionised workers. The NY times found that unionised workers were far more likely to support the Democratic Party and far less likely to support Donald Trump than non unionised workers. This trend held up across all demographic, educational and income groups. What sustained parties of the centre left and left in the 20th century was the growth and maintenance of massive trade unions, and public services such as council housing. Today, everything that social democratic parties were built on has evaporated. The unions now represent a slowly decreasing proportion of public sector workers, and are basically non existent in the private sector. The miners of the past are the retail workers of today, most of whom have no cultural connection to the left as their parents may have had. It is this, combined with natural cultural resentment and economic fears, which is driving these voters who "Should" be Labour or of the left in the rest of Europe to the populist right.

 I have been longing to write this rant for the entire leadership election, but I have held my tongue. Reheated Milibandism that is preached by Owen Smith will not win us the next election. How is Owen Smith going to go to Nuneaton or to Sunderland, both places which backed Brexit by huge margins, and tell your average voter that he thinks that the vote they cast on June 23rd is invalid, and that they are stupid, and therefore a second referendum on the EU is needed?

Neither will reheated Blairism. The left has a point when it talks about the "Missing 4 million" mainly working class and lower middle class voters who abandoned Labour between the course of 1997 and 2010-this is not, however, due to a simple economic reason but due to the liberal positions of the Blair government on migration and the widening gulf between New Labour and ordinary people.

To rebuild from what is inevitably going to be a pretty big defeat on Saturday, the centre left needs to take a look at itself, ask itself what its purpose is, and then move forward to create a social democracy of the 21st century. One that is open and internationalist, but is also patriotic and open to different cultural tradition. A centre left that is not an apologist for globalisation, but a centre left that focuses on redistributing the benefits of it and mitigating the negative effects.