Against a Left populism

Rory Hamilton

I’ve been a little absent from newsletters of late as my work at the University of Glasgow has picked up somewhat - papers to mark and all that. But I had a small contribution to make to this week’s newsletter; you might want to consider it my attempt at an obituary for John Prescott, the former New Labour Deputy Prime Minister who passed away yesterday aged 86, although not really. 

Among the tributes (beyond the memorable left hook video recirculating the internet), was a short video of Prescott defending then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn, at the time, was I believe accused by 2019 General Election candidates for the Tories of being a “traitor” among other things - the clip says the rest. Now of course Prescott was by no means the perfect politician - in fact I remember one frosty Have I Got News For You exchange with Ian Hislop where he came across particularly bullish, not to mention the his part in the New Labour project - but in a heightened climate where many on the Labour Right were actively conspiring against Corbyn, I think this took some guts and recalled a time of respect across difference.

Today, Jeremy Corbyn is ostracised from the Labour Party and utilised as a scapegoat for the Party’s ills of the past years. In some senses this is a smart political move by the Starmerite wing of the party because I think it has disabled the organising capacity of the Left, and its ability to successfully assert itself electorally. You see, by funnelling all their arguments against the values and principles which Corbyn stands for into him, they made a martyr out of him, which meant that the energies of the Labour Left and those outside Labour were funnelled (rightly) into defending him, whilst at the same time cutting off the prospect of an organised Left within the party, splintering its power bases across multiple spaces in Labour, the Greens, and amongst independents. 

Of course, the genocide in Palestine has come into play somewhat, and we did see a response to that by the electorate in the election of five “pro-Gaza” MPs which now make up the Independent Alliance in parliament (including Corbyn), as well as the four Green MPs. Of course, these steps are good, but how much better would the broader Left fared with a coordinated effort than these disparate organisations with differing strategies and goals. 

The Left as a movement is looking for leaders, and amongst many of these MPs and similar civil society organisations like the trade unions and in the anti-war movement there are leaders to be found. But without a coordinated strategy, committee and mechanisms of organising this will prevent us from making the necessary inroads into communities being alienated by the centre and in some cases won over by the far right.

We cannot simply put all our hopes into Jeremy Corbyn because he was Labour leader, and because he has now been made a locus of attention by the Labour Right. We need new voices, those rooted in the communities themselves and with a vision to build - people like Corbyn will serve as wonderful mentors for and identifiers of these people, but we need to be able to give them the tools. A great example is former Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, and activist in the PAH (Platform for Mortgage-Affected Peoples) - people all around us involved in campaigns have the potential to be leaders.

Many reports on the US election from Left outlets, identified the failure of the Democratic Party to win the working class, and their failure to make the material benefits of Bidenism felt for the many deindustrialised communities in the Rust Belt (all of which turned red). The same will happen here if Keir Starmer’s economic agenda does not produce a direct impact for people - we need change now as much as we do in 5 years. The answer is not pivoting further right, and I would like to argue the answer is not a Left populism.

I can only touch on this briefly, however I imagine this is a subject I shall return to, but why should we on the Left be made to compete with the (far) right on their terms - on popular appeals through rhetoric to imagined communities defined in exclusive terms. The questions the Left need to be asking have to be about where are we already winning, and how can we expand this and replicate tailored strategies for success elsewhere?

The local scale is a good place to start. In the US, the Midwestern state of Michigan, formerly home to a booming car manufacturing industry centred in Detroit, now a core marker of the decline of US industry in the Rust Belt, voted for Trump 49.7% to 48.2% for Harris. With a large concentration of Arab-Americans in places like Detroit, candidates for the House of Representatives like Rashida Tlaib, herself of Palestinian origin, who stayed true to their voters’ issues, which in this case included the genocide in Gaza, won with staggering margins of 69.7% to 25.4%. 

Now you might say that this is only one state, one issue, and one election. But turn to the local in the UK, and places like Preston where its community wealth building model has been lauded for regranting its economy and creating a more equitable society in the North West. Similarly successful programmes in other parts of the UK, from London to Manchester, to North Ayrshire, as well as in places like Cleveland, Ohio (another Rust Belt state) and in Barcelona, as mentioned above, have brought real benefits to people and in most cases those implementing those policies have been rewarded.

A couple of weeks ago Robin said that identity politics plays into the hands of the right, and he’s right - it enables them to point fingers and construct appealing rhetorical arguments that posit them as saviours of these sites of deindustrialisation. But for the Left, its the same old saying: It’s the economy, stupid!

How ironic that those of us on the Left, usually seen as the standard bearers of identity politics, devoid of economic arguments, actually have our greatest success at a local level over the economy, an area so frequently associated with the Right.

The Right are smart - smart enough to divert all of our attentions to the legacy of one man so as to disarm us from seeing where are real successes are/have been. So we need to be smarter. Developing real change starts at the smaller scale, and getting that to convert into national electoral results requires strategies, coordination and planning. We’ll get nowhere without developing new leaders, asserting ourselves through coordinated political action, and delivering real material benefits for people at the local scale.