I am a member of the Labour Party but not a very active one. However in early August, I was surprised to receive an email from an individual in my constituency party inviting me to attend a meeting to discuss our local nomination for the leader of the Labour Party. Why was I surprised? Two reasons.
I was pretty sure I’d read that because of the degree of unpleasantness and even bullying that had been occurring over the issue of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, it had been decided that meetings of local constituency Labour parties would be suspended until the election was over. I checked and I was right. On 12 July the Labour Party’s national executive committee ruled that ‘local constituency Labour parties should not hold members’ meetings during the leadership election period’. So what was this meeting I was being invited to attend?
Re-reading the email I’d been sent, I received another surprise. I discovered that it was not just a meeting about the leadership of the Labour Party to which I was being invited – it was a meeting to deliver our support to Jeremy Corbyn: ‘It would be a great help to the national campaign for Jeremy Corbyn to receive as many CLP nominations as possible’. So ‘if you are able to come and vote for Jeremy please do so, thank you for your time and your commitment to this campaign that seeks to support the Labour leadership’.
But what if I was able to come while being disinclined to vote for Mr Corbyn? Was I banned? Fortunately my fears were groundless. A few hours later I received a second email. This one was a formal invitation from my constituency party simply inviting me to attend a meeting to ‘decide on a supporting nomination for a leadership candidate’. Concluding that without my noticing, the NEC had decided to rescind its ruling of 12 July, I decided to go along.
Around 70 members turned up. Only a handful seemed really young – in the 18-25 age group. The great majority were middle-aged or older, just tradititional Labour Party supporters. As we waited for the meeting to get under way, the atmosphere was if anything quite subdued. Things began with a minute’s silence in memory of the murdered Jo Cox. Then the event’s procedure was detailed. A half-hour discussion would be followed by a paper ballot. Speakers from the floor would be allowed a maximum of three minutes. Throughout, a speaker favouring candidate ‘a’ would be followed by a speaker favouring candidate ‘b’. (We had all already received a two-page handout form both candidates.)
The debate began. Most striking was its relatively low key nature. National media coverage of the Corbyn v Smith contest has constantly insisted on the bitterness, the divisiveness, the rancour and even the viciousness of the exchanges between the two sides. None of this was apparent here. Misogyny, homophobia, and anti-Semitism were entirely absent. No one’s jaw was under threat. Some contributions were delivered with passion – but the passion was positive, not negative in its source. On the other hand, the arguments for or against the two candidates were nearly all entirely predictable. From the enthusiasm of party activists for Jeremy Corbyn, to the constant emphasis on his failure to appeal to the wider electorate, to the choice between political purity and the gaining of power – everyone there had surely heard it all before.
Only one contribution surprised me: the suggestion that the Labour Party above all else needed a leader who would be able to say no to whoever was elected president of the United States in November, and that Jeremy Corbyn was that leader. Now I agree that indeed Mr Corbyn would indeed say no to the USA – because saying no is the only thing he is really good at. He says no to the USA, he says no to Europe, he says no to Nato, he says no to Trident, he says no to Israel. In fact, throughout his long career in parliament of saying no to most of the policies of his own party, he comes close – as far as foreign policy is concerned – to saying no to everything the western world has ever done. That is why at the end of the discussion I put my cross on the ballot-paper next to the name of Owen Smith.
So did my constituency party vote in favour of nominating the current leader? Yes, but by quite a narrow, single-figure margin. Could that result be repeated across the UK Labour Party as a whole? If it is, it is hard to believe that this leadership contest will have done anything to solve the party’s problems.
Drawing of Jeremy Corbyn by Bob Smith
By Andrew Hook | 8 September 2016