During Britain’s 1955 election when the Labour Party fought in vain to regain the lead it lost in 1951, a wall in Manchester flaunted in huge letters “VOTE LABOUR TO KEEP OUT THE SOCIALISTS!” Reflecting the rivalry between Hugh Gaitskell (son of an Indian Civil Servant and regarded by some Britons as "the best Prime Minister we never had") and the flamboyantly Welsh working class Nye Bevan, the slogan captured the personal and ideological schisms that largely explained Labour’s rout on December 12.
Such ups and downs need not, however, be definitive. Labour’s challenge isn’t existential. Only two years ago the party displayed a resilience that bears recounting in this hour of gloom. In April 2017 when Theresa May called a snap election, Labour was 20 points behind the Conservatives. But by focusing on social issues like health care, education and free school lunch in an outstanding election manifesto that also promised to end austerity, the party defied expectations by capturing 40 per cent of the vote, its greatest share since 2001, and gaining 30 seats to return 262 MPs. Immediately, 35,000 new members joined Labour. If the party could do it then, it can do it again.
However, Labour faces not just an intense postmortem but also a fierce battle for the leadership after Jeremy Corbyn quits next month. While the Labour vote dropped most in seats that had voted to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum, it declined sharply almost everywhere with the party managing to gain just one seat — Putney, a wealthy, pro-EU southwest London constituency – from the Tories. Labour must now ask itself many questions. What does the public expect from the opposition? Can there be Corbynism without Corbyn? If there can, would it be desirable? How can Britain and Europe cooperate to mutual benefit even after Brexit? Does socialism have a future? Another question concerns the impact of Mr Corbyn’s hint about restoring Clause Four of the party constitution which Tony Blair removed and which promised "common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service."
Mr Corbyn is so hugely unpopular that reports from Westminster suggest that the depleted ranks of Labour MPs are considering replacing him with an interim leader unless he steps down immediately. Some would also like to dismantle Momentum, the political organisation with 40,000 members that is seen as his private think-tank. In fact, most Labour supporters seem to accord the highest importance to the leader’s personality. There was visceral anger from lifelong Labour voters who felt they couldn’t vote for the party they had supported all their lives because of “that man at the top”. Labour MPs who survived the massacre endorsed that view. “Time after time candidates were told on the doorstep, ‘I have always been Labour but I can’t vote for you because of Jeremy Corbyn’”, according to Patrick McFadden, formerly Mr Blair’s political secretary. Others were even more blunt. Philip Wilson, who lost Mr Blair’s former seat of Sedgefield which he had held since 2007, said, “The party’s leadership went down like a lead balloon on the doorstep.”
Socialism’s fading appeal in a consumerist world of fiercely competitive private enterprise may be another reason for Labour’s reduced votes. European polities have shifted considerably to the right, and many countries see the influx of Afro-Asian migrants as a threat to national identity. It would no longer be fashionable for a British monarch to declare, as Edward VII did, quoting the Liberal politician and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir William Harcourt, "We are all Socialists now." Just as most of London’s corner shops, once owned and run by East African Indians, have disappeared because the sons of those refugees are now ambitious white-collar professionals, the sons of Labour politicians elevated to the peerage usually voted Tory. As a result, Labour was always in a permanent minority in the House of Lords until the creation of life peers ushered in a new second chamber.
Brexit is the third factor that must be taken into account even though Mr Wilson, defeated at Sedgefield, dismisses it as “mendacious nonsense”. If Britain’s Brexit Party and the UK Independence Party didn’t return any MPs, it was only because their supporters made common cause with Boris Johnson’s Conservatives. “Despite our best efforts, and our attempts to make clear this would be a turning point for the whole direction of our country, the election became mainly about Brexit,” Mr Corbyn explains. “The polarization in the country over Brexit made it more difficult for a party with strong electoral support on both sides.” He had to woo middle and upper class Remainers in London and doggedly determined Leavers in the Midlands and North of England. Mr Johnson’s majority was constructed on the ruins of Labour’s so-called “red wall” — a string of pro-Brexit seats traditionally won by the party stretching from North Wales to the North Sea — that the Tories captured this time. Working class voters in this industrial belt were convinced that EU migrants were driving native Britons out of jobs, houses, medical care, schools and all other welfare services.
Finally, rightly or wrongly, the public believes Mr Corbyn’s Labour party to be so tainted with anti-Semitism that polls suggest only six per cent of British Jews voted for it. Nearly half said they would “seriously consider” emigrating if Mr Corbyn became prime minister, while Britain’s bearded Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis in effect urged Jews to boycott Labour in which “a new poison – sanctioned from the very top – has taken root.” The former London mayor, Ken Livingstone, a Labour veteran, complained that a biased media suggested the party was institutionally anti-Semitic. “That was completely and utterly untrue.” Mr Corbyn, he claimed, was subject to “the most vile smear campaign” and only “one 20th of one per cent” of members had “tweeted or said something anti-Semitic.” It does seem that some Labour positions criticizing Israeli expansionism or supporting Palestinian rights were unfairly projected as anti-Semitic.
It all combined to work to Labour’s disadvantage, especially when pitted against a showman for all seasons like Mr Johnson. But that is no reason why a responsible Labour Party under a respected and competent national leader should not take advantage of defeat to introspect and make this a time of healing. Not for nothing did the most astute Labour prime minister of all, Harold Wilson, declare that a week is a long time in politics. Confronted with a Tory leadership that is more dazzle than substance, Labour can make use of the time to ensure a return to the caring governance that was Clement Attlee’s legacy.
The writer is the author of several books and a regular media columnist.
