David Kogan: Which way now for the Left?
Garden Theatre
Edinburgh International Book Festival
2.15pm, 20thAugust 2019
reviewed by Paul Thompson
That’s the question I wanted to ask David Kogan. I’m a fully-paid-up member of the bourgeoisie and ditto of the Industrial Workers of the World trades union (yes, I have an acute sense of irony), and I wanted to know whether David Kogan thought that the Left today was a middle-class thing. “No,” was his answer, “but the policy-makers around Jeremy Corbyn are!”
I didn’t actually get to put the question to him during the event. I had to interrupt his book-signing to do it, but his answer shows at least two important things. That plenty of hands went up during the Q&A part of his event, so that getting a chance to hold the roaming mic was like entering a lottery. And that David’s focus is on ‘the Left’ in terms of the UK’s Labour Party. That is only to be expected, as he has been observing and reporting on the Labour party for most of his career.
The thrust of this event was to showcase David’s book, Protest and Power: The Battle for the Labour Party, and what he did for the first twenty minutes of the session was give us positively the most cogent summary of an entire book that I have ever heard from anyone at the EIBF. He is precise, he is analytical, and if his book is as good as his presentation, then it’s on my Christmas list. He gave us facts we already knew, facts we didn’t know, and facts we might have forgotten – among the latter was that only on three occasions did a Labour leader become Prime Minister by overturning a Conservative government (the Labour leaders in question being Clement Atlee, Harold Wilson, and Tony Blair). Among the facts we might have forgotten was that the sudden rise to leadership of Jeremy Corbyn was partly due to rule changes brought in by the Blairites to curb trades union influence. Among the facts we didn’t know, but might well have guessed when we stopped and thought about it, was that when he asked Tony Blair about his fall from grace, the one word the former Prime Minister never uttered was “Iraq.”
Jeremy Corbyn’s relative success in the 2017 election, which he nevertheless failed to win*, was followed by two debacles within the party. Firstly (sorry, I’m doing a lot of “firstly – secondly” today) the issue of anti-semitism. David could reveal that this wasn’t just something whipped up by hostile media, but that a minority of members or former members do or did hold some rather unspeakable views, and that the issue has not been properly dealt with, or perhaps dealt with consistently would be a batter way to put it. This subject could have filled an event of its own, and still not come to any proper resolution; it is very, very hard indeed to unravel, say, legitimate criticism of Israeli politics from unwarranted bigotry, particularly when a common vocabulary may serve to obfuscate. Secondly, a lack of clarity and consistency on our future in or out of the EU. There is a distinct reluctance in the House of Commons to back Jeremy Corbyn as an alternative to Boris Johnson, who heads the furthest-right Conservative government for generations, maybe ever; nevertheless, parliamentary convention is that the Leader of the Opposition should get the first chance to form an alternative government, should the sitting Prime Minister fall to a vote of no confidence.
Here are some sound-bites from the session:
“If the Tory party resembles the Borgias, the Labour Party resembles Game Of Thrones.” That was actually from Ruth Wishart, who chaired the event. A Wishart-chaired event is always worth going to!
“Is Labour a party of power or a party of protest?” That’s not a new question. In order to gain power, Tony Blair had to ditch socialism and back neo-liberal economics, as a result of which the UK has had right-of-centre government for about forty years. The question is not really a choice between power and protest, but whether the Labour Party can persuade voters that neo-liberalism has ruined the country and a left-of-centre alternative is a necessary cure. Discuss.
“Influence is not enough – you have to control the organs of the party.” See above.
“All the New Labour princes and princesses were parachuted into seats.” The phrase “New Labour princes and princesses” will stay with me! Thank you, David.
.
.
Footnote:
*I seem to be the only commentator who is prepared to mention the following two linked facts. Firstly that Theresa May was able to form a government not because she came to an accommodation with the DUP, but because Ruth Davidson ran a successful if disingenuous single-issue campaign in Scotland to persuade Scots who were against a second Independence referendum, that voting for the Conservatives in Scotland was the only guarantee of preventing it, and thus she magicked twelve seats out of what had been up until then a desert for the Tories. Without those twelve seats, May would have lost the general election by a Hielan mile. Secondly that the Labour Party’s virtual extinction in Scotland has been partly due to the SNP maintaining centre-left domestic policies. Had it not been for the first of these facts, we might well have spent the last two years governed by a Labour-SNP pact in Westminster. Discuss!
__________
.
.
.
Advertisements that may appear below are here by a peculiarity of the hosting platform, and are not to be taken as an endorsement of any product.
Taxonomy Domine 