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We want a leadership contest

Published 01 February 2007

How young socialists in the Labour Party are demanding a leadership contest when Blair finally goes

Active young Labour party members demand a leadership contest as they look to rebuild in an era of falling party membership, faltering ideology and other well documented horrors.

Young Labour socialists Owen Jones, 22, Marsha-Jane Thompson, 26, Tim Flatman, 22, Mary Partington, 22 and Vino Sangarapillai, 25 are desperate for a leadership contest: the trick, they say, is persuading Labour's neocon cartel of the merits of such a contest, or - better still - to get lost altogether. Socialist policy set at conference is Labour's future, and leadership candidate John McDonnell the man to front it. Everybody else should be slithering towards the exits, what with the thousands of dead Iraqis, collapsed party membership, flaming thirst for a lengthy rape of the public sector by the private one , and burgeoning list of cash-for-honours delinquents, et cetera. You're a while finding a fanbase for that crap today, these five say.

Their own man strikes some observers as superannuated in ideological terms, but they say there's still plenty of lead in him. He's no ghastly eighties Labour hangover: indeed, his timing has come very good. 'McDonnell is the only candidate who has consistently supported what people want,' says the clever and articulate Jones. Jones is prepared to take it further than that: he insists that there will be a happy correlation between McDonnell's undeniable grassroots popularity and substantial parliamentary majority, and his attempt to make the leadership ballot. Jones works for the McDonnell campaign and says McDonnell is close to securing the support of the 44 MPs he needs. And no, he's not deluded, Jones grins. Delusion is for the young Blairites. They're the ones who are falling over themselves to follow washouts like Tony and Gordon off the plank.

Jones is confident that the masses are in the bag: McDonnell is one of the few MPs who speaks for them. 'Three-quarters of the population supports renationalising the railways. Two million people marched against the war in Iraq.' And while you're calling McDonnell a pinko freakout, Thompson says, remember that he's one of the few MPs who upholds policy that party conference agrees.

'Even (deputy-leadership candidate) Jon Cruddas has realised that we need to reconnect with [the party's traditional supporters],' Jones smiles. Cruddas has made an unexpected, mid-life, centre-left online impact with his calls for party members to knock on constituents' doors and reconnect with the doubting masses. Jones says that'll only work if the candidates who do the knocking canvass subjects like keeping the NHS public, and providing decent housing and a living wage, but he and Thompson feel there's hope if the likes of Cruddas have managed to wake up to the facts.

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Legendary online Blairite Shamik Das ,27, thinks a contest for the leadership is vital, but says that no sane man puts John McDonnell anywhere near it. 'Arrrrgh,' he laughs, placing a hand on a pain in his forehead. 'Arrrrggh. No.' He's heard different rumours, but doubts that McDonnell will get within a bull's roar of 44 MPs. McDonnell's problem, Das says, is that he's tremendously popular with everybody, except the people he needs to be - if members of his own socialist campaign group aren't with him, who else is there likely to be?

Das wants the debate about the party's future to take place around the deputy leadership, with Jon Cruddas doing the business for members of a vague-to-middling socialist bent, and Hilary Benn doing whatever it is he does for the right. Das will support Benn. He thinks he can stand Cruddas being around, though, because Cruddas steers clear of the serious fruitcake rhetoric. 'He isn't as barking as some of them,' Das laughs. 'His [voting] record is quite sound from my point of view.' Another major Cruddas plus, Das says, is that the McDonnell crew hate him.

It will be a sad day for Das when old Teflon Tony finally flakes off, though: Das remains a tremendous fan. He joined the party ten years ago, mainly because he admired Blair.

He cites Blair's contribution to the Northern Ireland peace process and his record in public service reform as the two key triumphs. Indeed, Das thinks the public-service reform results are such that they must be on the Gordon4Leader calling-card. 'Things have improved,' he says emphatically, 'with transport and the health service. The school I'm at (Das is a teaching assistant) has been transformed [by its relationship with the private sector]. I'm not against private capital, or shareholders making money per se.' Das believes that the McDonnell Public-Not-Private argument is an ideological, rather than logical, one: 'The argument is that as long as a service is publicly-owned, it doesn't matter, so long as those [private sector] bastards aren't making money out of it.'

Das says that the left's take on the Iraq adventure is equally misguided. 'Why would the left have been happy for [the invasion] to be solely American? It needed a British presence - as a brake, a lever.' Blair does have leverage with Bush, Das says - or, at least, if anyone was going to have leverage with Bush, it would be Blair.

Das agrees the rate at which party members are abandoning ship is a concern, but says the whingers need to remember that the membership 'did go up after Blair got in,' he grins. 'So... it's probably fallen back to where it was before then.' The country itself is still firmly centrist, Das says. Members need to remember that when the socialist groupies start up the yap about returning to the left.

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Twenty-one-year-old Kris Brown is, poor schmuck, a Labour party member trying to sell Labour in an area that really needs it. Brown is a councillor on Tory-held Enfield Council. He represents the deprived Edmonton Green ward - a part of town that Enfield council Tory deputy leader Michael Lavender described so charmingly as a 'UN feeding station' at a recent council meeting.

Brown says the issues in his ward are as you might expect in an area that isn't a Tory priority: unemployment, inadequate housing, few training opportunities, and a high teenage pregnancy rate. He joined the party in 2002 because he wanted to turn things around.

The party has a choice, Brown feels: it can debate its identity, or drop off the map. He tolerated Blairism at the start ('there was a need for the party to modernise') but he's wondering now how it will end. 'There's this awful decline and distance between the party members and the executive. We have to bring back membership, bring back policy... [Gordon] Brown will be more of the same.' The executive's ignoring of conference votes on policy like the fourth option for housing, the chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan – the policy and attitude has chased members away. Brown notes that David Cameron was bright enough, at least at the start, to see that the masses would take a centre-left turn - why is it taking so long for Labour to rally?

Brown supported McDonnell's leadership campaign at the start, but - 'you have to be realistic. We can't go back to the policies of the eighties.' Like Das, Brown feels McDonnell's problem is that his many supporters are, alas, not in the party. Brown will focus on the Cruddas campaign: Cruddas might have centre-left uses as deputy leader.

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Tom Miller, 21, a final-year law and politics student at Manchester University and a member of the Labour students group there, says Gordon Brown is the party's best option. 'We are not a socialist revolutionary party,' he says. McDonnell, he says, is a goner.

That said, Miller hasn't much time for the party's 'Blairite outriders' either. 'I think that Blair has annoyed the bulk of the party.' Gordon Brown, meanwhile, 'has made indications that he could bring the soft left and the soft right together. You can't help feeling that he will be more distributive.'

Miller joined the party when he was 16 - just a few months, as it happened, before Blair went to war with Iraq. 'I felt like ripping my [membership] cards up, but I decided I didn't want the party to be dominated by extremists, right or left.' He says he knew that he was joining a party that had been through a lot of changes, 'but that it would head back in a leftward direction. There used to be a lot more emphasis on distribution with the party. The current [Blairite] direction is manifestly bad.'

The party has a future if it focuses on policy like 'extending the minimum wage, [developing] a stronger green policy, and improving education and public services,' Miller says. Miller plans to support Cruddas: probably, the centre-left's only other option is to start praying. McDonnell has the grassroots' attention, but his party is not brave.

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11 comments from readers

trotyob
02 February 2007 at 16:05

This article is amusing, but the McDonnell speakers don't address any issues abour economy or employment. Where is all the tax for his programme going to come from? It will come from you and me. Nobody in this country would want to go back to the eighties McDonnel may say in this article that he isn't gonig to be a return to the eighties, but I don't know how else you would put it.

goldfingertells
02 February 2007 at 17:16

who is this Shamik and what is he on? Health and transport have improved under blair? I get a train to work everyday and usually they're so crowded that three will go by before I can get on. How can anyone say the transport has improved? What?!!?

Kris Brown
02 February 2007 at 19:46

Didn't I address that point. And unemployment was mentioned in the bit about my ward.

mikep
05 February 2007 at 14:33

MCDonnell has not got a chance of getting on the ballot paper. He will get half ofthe campaign group if he is lucky

annaz72
05 February 2007 at 15:26

'He cites Blair's contribution to the Northern Ireland peace process and his record in public service reform as the two key triumphs. Indeed, Das thinks the public-service reform results are such that they must be on the Gordon4Leader calling-card. 'Things have improved,' he says emphatically, 'with transport and the health service'" "

This is ignorant. I doubt this person hass had to use the NHS since Bliar started to destroy it if you had been at the Whipps Cross protest on Satruday or any of the 1000s of protests and strikes up and down the country to save the NHS you would not go round saying in public the NHS is better. bliar and his moneyman Gordon Brown have watched millions fo pounds leave the NHS in consultants pockets and at the same time have been cutting costs and staff numbers. Millions of £s are propsed for cuts in the NHS and the anger is everywhere, with protests happening up and down the country on a weekly basis in unheard of numbers. Mental health services are introuble and they are proposing even to close services like Maudsley in south London. things are not better

dannyb
05 February 2007 at 17:21

One starting point might be to consider the implications of *not* having a leadership contest. Does anyone (and who exactly does support Brown?) really want to see Brown replace Blair because they stitched up the Labour Party years ago in a posh restaurant in Islington?

Despite all the rhetoric from Blair and his cronies - and even Inspector Knacker consider them cronies - the reality of the past few years has been depressingly grim.

People ask where's the money coming from for social spending. Well, the railways were privatised and now cost the tax payer more than when they were state run. Richard Branson is millions of pounds richer, but we now have a service which is the most expensive and most unreliable in Europe, if not the known universe. D'oh.

Not only has large chunks of the public sector been privatised, the privatisation and the new contracts are costing much much more than the previous options. A PFI hospital or school is not 'best value' for money - it's a con trick to take money off the public and give it to the private sector. Take a read of David Craig's book 'Plundering the Private Sector' to find out exactly how much the large consultancies have been ripping off the public and delivering diddly squit in the process. Yeah, a good source of money for public spending would be bringing this disgraceful lining of pockets to an end (and it's interesting to note how many consultants are now in governnment and how many civicl servants and ex MPs are now in consultancies).

Oh, and despite what the rich say, believe it or not, there is still pleny of scope to tax them more. Or in some cases, at all (you may or may not be surprised at the number of millionaires who pay little or no tax in the UK).

It's not finding the money that's the problem - it's finding politicians with the guts and the will to make a difference and not just represent the interests of their business friends.

trotyob
05 February 2007 at 18:08

Kris Brown you said Didn't I address that point. And unemployment was mentioned in the bit about my ward.

what I mean was that those on the left even where you are talk alot about what they want but make no mention of how they are going to get it ie pay for it. What McDonell glosses over in all his meetings is that he will bring a heavy tax burden to this country because that is the only way to pay for his policies. how would you say he could help your area without costing the rest of us millions

mikep
05 February 2007 at 18:39

I repeat: McDonnell hasnt a hope

susan hebden bridge
06 February 2007 at 11:21

The usual measured response,I see, from opponents of John McDonnell. While they spew bile and utter untruths ( he is now within striking distance of those 44 nominations ) he quietly gets on with the business of travelling the country, meeting Party members, trade unionists,young people ;what he calls the "broad coalition" disillusioned by New Labour. I'm delighted, as a 49-year-old member, to see young people engaging with and believing in democratic socialism within the Labour Party.By that I do mean socialism . So do they. I will certainly be voting for John McDonnell. As much of the Party implodes under the weight of sleazeand scandal, he shines out asa man of principle. As Blair's authority wanes away with each passing day, McDonnell's chances of making it onto the ballot increase.John4Leader!

Shamik
06 February 2007 at 15:59

"I doubt this person hass had to use the NHS since Bliar started to destroy it"

Three points.

1. Myself and my family have used the NHS since 1997.

2. The Prime Minister and Chancellor aren't destroying the National Health Service - perhaps you believe putting record sums of money into the health service equates to destroying it; I don't.

3. It's spelt "B-L-A-I-R" not "B-L-I-A-R".

"who is this Shamik and what is he on?"

An ordinary member of the public, who uses public transport, and, yes, I get a little p***ed off from time to time if I'm delayed - but I'll tell you one thing, it's better, much much better now than it was (greater frequency on the buses, more trains/lines/stations on the underground), it's also relatively cheaper with the advent of the Oyster card.

A more general point to end with: how one perceives the public services will very much depend on their own personal experience at a local level, and If you've had a bad time, you're probably going to relay your experiences widely; while those who've received a good/great service (by far the majority) aren't likely to be shouting it from the rooftops.

dannyb
08 February 2007 at 10:34

Experience and epiricism. Yeah, New Labour has spent more on the health service. The point is - where's the money gone? Huge chunks have gone on PFI deals which are going to cost us for years and years to come. And a another great pile of money has gone to KPMG, Deloitte, Anderson Consulting and all the rest of them. Oh, and not forgetting the £82 million dished out to iSoft in a 'payments up front deal'. The sad fact is that all this extra money is lining the pockets of some of the richest and most unscrupulous companies in the world without leading to any great improvements in service.

Now, if my personal experience of using public transport is anything to go by, maybe I'm just unlucky. But everyone else says the same thing. One person's experience is ancedote, if its a widespread view then it is very likely to be based on fact.

And the facts are that Britain has some of the most expensive and unreliable public transport in Europe.