Labour - a power sharing leadership?

A few days ago I came across an article in by Paul Mason in which he argued for some kind of power sharing in the Labour Party; that Corbyn and Smith should agree to power share and allocate shadow cabinet posts after the leadership election in a way which reflects their percentage share of the total vote.

Given that I support proportional representation (PR) in local and national elections via the added member system, it seems logical that this approach to power sharing in government at all levels should be reflected in the way the varying interests across the Labour Party work together.

Good friends in the Labour Party, who I have known for many years, some since my Young Socialist days in Wembley, are much like Susan and me. Corbyn was not our initial first choice a year ago, but the way the right-wing of the Labour Party conspired against him, forced Party members like ourselves into voting for him. I remain of the view that he is a centralist when it comes to power, whereas I am (and always have been) a localist, who believes in empowering local communities and local government. I am opposed to Beeston, Broxtowe, Lenton, Nottingham etc being ruled by Whitehall dictat.

Graham Allen argued for a Magna Carta for local government and I have referred to his work and that of his parliamentary committee on many occasions. 

Jeremy Corbyn has come late to the argument and has produced a paper called A new settlement for local government. It is a step in the right direction, but does not go far enough.

His opposition to PR supports my view that he is a centralist. In the last Parliament he was absent for all three votes on changing the voting system (see this link to They work for you). Like Owen Smith, Jeremy Corbyn has his weaknesses.

Today I would vote for Jeremy Corbyn, but I could change my mind and will not decide how I vote until the the last few days of the election.  I am no fan of Smith. Housing and changing the voting system are top of my policy list, followed by returning power to local government. There are other issues, but these are my top three.

Why Jeremy Corbyn reminds me of a former local politician and I want to hear it for RON

So Owen Smith, who has worked as a lobbyist and for a dodgy biotec firm is the 'unity' candidate and I find myself faced with no choice at all in the Labour Party leadership ballot. I have watched him on television already having to defend himself when quotes from his past are read to him. There will be weeks of this, so it will be interesting to see how Smith gets on.

I suspect that I am a 'normal' long-time individual Labour Party member insomuch as I voted remain, wanted a post-2008 strategy which took advantage of the situation to re-build Britain like the 1945 Labour Government did, who believes in local government and a unilateralist since the age of fourteen (I went on my first CND march in 1958), who accepts that Jeremy Corbyn has problems managing a team.

At this moment, logic says I stick with the devil I know (Jeremy Corbyn), but I suspect a good few Labour Party members would join me in wanting to see 'Re-open nominations' (RON) on the ballot paper. Better to take a few months more getting it right than spending years in opposition, which is what will happen if the present stalemate continues.

I am also persuaded by Lilian Greenwood's speech to Nottingham South CLP earlier this week, which you can read in full on her website (click on this link).

I trust Lilian, even though I do not share her views on a range of issues (HS2 for example).

Susan and I lived in Lenton, part of Nottingham South CLP, for thirty-five years until November 2014 and got to know Lilian well. We were not among her initial supporters when she sought the nomination to succeed Alan Simpson back in 2010, but we were impressed by her courtesy and openness from the first time we met her, when she came to visit us in our home at the start of her campaign and we gave her our 100% support the moment she was was selected. Before her selection, we did speak up for Lilian when it came to demands that she live in the constituency, given that she lived not far away.

I do not expect the individual I vote for in a selection meeting, be it a would-be councillor or MP, to have all the same views as me. I have always held the view that you give someone a job and let them get on with it. Quite clearly, Jeremy Corbyn did not give Lilian the support she deserved and other shadow cabinet members tell similar stories. Are they all liars and part of some conspiracy? Life tells me 'no'. 

However there are opportunists who take advantage and there have been plenty of them in recent weeks.

The stories I hear of Jeremy Corbyn remind me of Michael Cowan, a Labour Party councillor for many years on Nottinghamshire County Council and the City Council. Stories abound of the way Michael made decisions and how he treated colleagues. After a longstanding fight with the Labour leadership on the City Council he defected to the Conservative Party.

Michael also lived in Lenton and I got to know him in the 1970s because we were in the same APEX trade union branch. He could be a difficult person to deal with, but I always found him supportive, so my years on the county council chairing the airport and being the arts lead on leisure were enjoyable. Others were not so lucky and found him difficult to work with.

We continued to be friends after he joined the Conservatives and I shared his concerns about the way the Labour leadership managed the city and treated some communities with disdain, like Dunkirk and Lenton. These are well documented elsewhere, including my Parkviews blog, and our personal papers of these times went to the Nottinghamshire Archive a few months ago.

Michael did not have the skills to be a leader, despite his oratory and policy vision (not always right, as with his decision to sell East Midlands Airport to the private sector) and the talk I hear of Jeremy Corbyn reminds me of Michael in many ways.

Jeremy Corbyn's best act of leadership in recent weeks could have been actively seeking his own 'unity' candidate to succeed him. Instead we are left with no choice at all, so the stalemate/madness will continue.

FOOTNOTE: After writing this, I received my daily Labour List email with a news item about Crowdpac's Policy Matchmaker, which I have just done and find myself pretty close to Owen Smith. I am 70% liberty and 71% left. No questions about defence or local government.

The Labour Party — madness by another name

I begin with a paragraph from today's email from Labour List by Sarah Vine:

Owen Smith, the latest challenger for Corbyn’s crown, has manoeuvred to appeal to the hoards of young members who previously supported Corbyn by pledging a second referendum on the UK’s eventual Brexit deal. It’s a shrewd move - we could see Smith picking up votes from the pro-European members who are internationalist in outlook and would do anything to see the referendum result reversed. Also news that there is to be a legal challenge to Jeremy Corbyn's inclusion in the Labour Party leadership ballot without the support of 51 MPs/MEPs. Then, of course, the decision to ban all Labour Party branch and constituency meetings until after the Party's leadership election is over. I have yet to see anything about how, why and who actually made the decision. Nor is this madness confined to Westminster and the Labour Party's National Executive Committee, there are clear signs that it exists among Party members in Beeston, Broxtowe and elsewhere. In Beeston there are Party members who want some kind of grand alliance on the left of politics to campaign for a second referendum. It is a madness they share with Owen Smith and Angela Eagle. Perhaps by the time you read this Jeremy Corbyn will have joined them in this collective madness! I use the word 'madness' as shorthand for 'extremely foolish behaviour'. The latest post on Municipal Dreams, one of my favourite blogs, is about Harlow in Essex and ends with this paragraph: Harlow voted 67% to 33% for Brexit in the recent referendum — that's a metric we have come to recognise as a powerful measure of disillusion, and exclusion, from the more comfortable status quo enjoyed by many... this indicates a working class town which suffers the inequalities and deprivations class bestows'. Not to understand this and to label those who voted for Brexit as unworthy of Labour's attention and support, which is what a second referendum will do in their eyes, will be an act of political madness. Labour should be saying that it understands why many working class people voted out and that it will support them through this period of change. Theresa May understands this and her short speech outside No.10 Downing Street yesterday actually used the term 'working class' more than once and it was a speech I would have been happy to hear a Labour politician make. Political leaders of all parties are good at making such speeches, then not delivering, so we will have to wait and, dare I say, hope in the absence of a Labour victory at the next general election that May will deliver.  The fact that Labour Party remainers are talking about a second referendum has probably already ensured it will lose local government seats next May and a good few parliamentary seats at the next general election. In the fifty-six years since I joined the Labour Party I have never known a blanket ban on local meetings. This act in itself tells you the disdain which exists at a national level in the Party for its rank and file members. This act will have stopped countless local government prospective candidates' selection procedures for next May. For this reason alone the decision has to be challenged, but instead the money chases an effective ban on Corbyn being a candidate. At this moment, wherever I look in the Labour Party I see, with a few exceptions (e.g. Graham Allen MP), what I can only describe a collective madness. I believe I have cited enough evidence to prove my point. If you think otherwise, I suspect you are in a state of denial, refusing to recognise or accept reality. I would like to say I will look at all the Labour Party leadership candidates closely after ruling Angela Eagle because she supported attacking Iraq and bombing Syria. The trouble is Owen Smith will go the same way if he continues to support a second referendum, which leaves Jeremy Corbyn and I am hearing enough from other Party members I know and trust to wonder about his competence to lead the Party, which means right now Corbyn will get in by default and so the madness will continue! I do not want a Labour Party Leader to adore or who has the same views as me on every issue. I want a leader who will share wealth and power fairly, not just between classes, but between communities and regions, who will put building homes before HS2 type projects. I could go on, but my wants are modest and I know, from just listening to people, that the same can be said for the vast majority of us. FOOTNOTE, FRIDAY 15 JULY 2016: A link to a column in today's Guardian by John Harris, who I like. It is headed There's a fetid cloud of acrimony over Labour — it's the reek of death.  Click here to read.  Also a link to a post I made to my parkviews blog in May 2010, posted on the eve of that year's general election. Click here to read. It seems relevant to where we are today.

A letter to the Nottingham Post

On Friday 1 July the Nottingham Post published this letter which I sent to them. They published it in full.

Dear Letters Editor

I share Anna Soubry's disappointment with the result of the EU referendum last Thursday. I live in her constituency and happily admit to never being a Conservative voter. I suspect that I also qualify as one of her 'white working class', being 72, leaving school at 15 and without any qualifications. If only life was as simple as opportunistic soundbites.

Ms. Soubry supported the referendum and cannot complain about the result, nor can she blame it on the 'white working class'. The Conservative Party with its referenda promise was fighting for UKIP votes across England and won enough MPs to form a government, whilst Labour, to its credit opposed UKIP.

Of course some Labour supporters voted out, as did Conservatives and voters of all ages, and I understand why. I suspect for a good few it was a protest vote and they never expected to wake up on Friday morning having helped the 'out' campaign win - that is certainly my take on conversations I have had over the last few days.

As far as I understand it, the referendum was/is 'advisory'. If so, Ms Soubry and all the other MPs who are pro-EU could start earning their keep and choose to ignore the decision, buying some time until the next general election, when 'out' candidates can try to get a majority. I think they will fail.

What is unacceptable is Ms Soubry blaming the white working class for her own failure to take responsibility. I will vote Labour given the chance, for a party preferably led by Jeremy Corbyn and with candidates who share his agenda, but that is another argument for another day.

Yours

Robert Howard

Reading it again, it may seem to say that I think the decision to leave the EU should be thwarted and I don't believe that. My point was that Anna Soubray and all the other MPs in the remain camp could do something about the decision to leave the EU had they a mind to. Ms Soubray has already decided to support Theresa May in the Conservative Party leadership election. In other words she is happy to leave it to a pro-remain candidate to negotiate the best deal for Britain. I have no problem with her choice, but I will be amazed if Britain can still be part of the EU common market whilst restricting access to EU citizens.

I do not fall into the camp that believe Britain has suddenly become a racist country, but Susan and I are long-time friends of the HOPE not hate charity and campaign, and I used to deliver leaflets for them in Lenton. I share their concern at how the Labour MP Ruth Smeeth was verbally abused at the launch of the Labour Party report into anti-semitism within the Party. Ruth Smeeth has published a damning statement of what happened on her website (click this link). Jeremy Corbyn's behaviour was a big disappointment. He should have told her vile critic to leave the meeting and told him is attitude has no place in the Labour Party. Instead he actually spoke to the man at the end. Jeremy Corbyn is under a lot of pressure right now, but then so are Labour MPs and all of them are, in part, responsible for what is happening to them.

By any measure, these are sad sad days for the Labour Party, when we should trying to offer Britain a positive post-EU vision. The Labour Parties in England, Scotland and Wales have to have their own visions. Northern Ireland is SDLP territory and we should respect that. Of course, all the national parties need to work together, but there has not been a better opportunity in decades to campaign for a fairer, better England.

All those Labour MPs who championed the cuts in local government led services (led by Blair, Brown and Darling lest we forget) at a time when more and more people we coming to Britain from Europe to work are discredited.

The cuts were dressed up as necessary austerity measures at a time when, instead of funding more public housing and improving public transport, the same MPs were supporting HS2.

Blair and Co. blocked East Europeans from coming to Britain for two years whilst cutting local services. Labour politicians are as much to blame as Liberal and Conservative MPs for the cuts — which is why the electorate may well turn on them, having tasted blood so to speak in the referendum result.

Corbyn and a few others, like Alan Simpson, spoke out and vote against the cuts and this is something we should remember when voting for a new Labour Party leader, as we will have to.

Right now, Corbyn holds on, maybe in the hope that the Chilcot Report will remind the electorate of how right he was to oppose the Iraq war (and our earlier intervention in Afghanistan). A lot of Labour MPs must be squirming right now at how the focus will shift to them on Wednesday and I have heard it suggested that it was the real reason for the attempted coup by Labour MPs after the referendum.

A leadership campaign post-Chicot will sink Eagle and open the door to Owen Smith who, according to the media, has increasing support among Labour MPs. Perhaps he will emerge as a 'unity candidate'. Who knows?

I am not committed to Jeremy Corbyn and how he treated Ruth Smeeth makes me question his stength to manage the far left (for the record, I have never been a member of any Labour Party faction).

The coming days, weeks and months and years are going to be interesting. I hope I have another ten years in me to see what happens. I will be 82 then.