Labour Leadership: Corbyn returns to the leadership but party still at an impasse as Labour Right remain defiant

Jeremy Corbyn speaking at a CWU event at Manchester Cathedral in October 2015.

On Saturday, Jeremy Corbyn started his second term as leader of the Labour Party. And yet, despite a second large popular vote victory - actually increasing his already considerable mandate - the Labour Right has already marked out their territory.

Even the night before the vote, Labour MPs where making demands. Amongst them, a demand for shadow cabinet roles that have joint policy setting power with the leader (Sparrow, 2016) and for arbitrary deadlines for leadership reviews that will effectively keep Corbyn on permanent probation (Asthana & Mason, 2016).

For Corbyn's part, he accepted his new mandate with a conciliatory speech. He said it was time to wipe the slate clean, to put aside things said in the heat of the contest and strongly denounced hostility and bullying. He called Labour the 'engine of progress' and called for unity around what the party's factions have in common.

Despite paying lip service, the Labour Right has, from the beginning, resisted Corbyn and sought every means of undermining him. And all the while it has demanded that Corbyn must compromise - which, from their attitude, can only be interpreted as saying Corbyn must do things their way.

To be fair, the leadership of Corbyn certainly has plenty of issues - but none of them really offer the Right of the Labour Party any reflected glory.

Corbyn has displayed poor media strategy - which isn't about playing the media's rigged game, but reaching out to the broader public with a coherent message and making a connection (Jones, 2015; Jones, 2016); and, as Billy Bragg expressed concern, there is a worry that he, and the Labour Party as a whole, are offering 20th century solutions to 21st century problems (Bragg, 2016) - expressed not least in Corbyn's embrace of his party's standard issue rejection of pluralism, saying no to the prospect of a broad progressive alliance.

However, while Corbyn may very well not be the party's saviour, Labour without him has nothing constructive to say. All there has been is whinging, that turns quickly into very public tantrums at the slightest provocation - and even without.

There isn't even any particular effort being made to engage with the positives of Corbyn's short tenure. Rallies where tens of thousands turn up to see Corbyn speak and a tremendous increase in membership and engagement - these things are readily dismissed, when they should be engaged with and used as a platform to reach out into communities.

Trying to reduce support for Corbyn to a 'personality cult', even making comparisons to the supporters of Donald Trump (Manson, 2016), is malicious, untrue and counter productive. It blatantly ignores the fact that many of Corbyn's more militant supporters are part of a long ignored faction and are rallying to support and defend their besieged leader, who's public role represents their fragile reemergence.

It is also to act, untruthfully, as if militant ideologists are a thing that has never otherwise existed, is an invention of Corbyn and the Labour Left, and don't form a loud minority of EVERY political movement. The only difference for New Labour or the Conservatives is that their ideologues wear suits and wield greater media savvy - not to mention both connections and influence.

The Labour Right has, from the beginning, fought Corbyn beyond all reason, sense and seemingly self awareness, undermining at every opportunity - crushing their own party's steadily recovering polling just to take a poorly organised shot at toppling him. All the while, they have failed to make any kind of constructive case for how the leadership should be done differently.

As a challenger, Owen Smith offered practically the same policies. He merely stood as not-Corbyn - an embarrassing revelation of the Labour Right's apparent reduction of all the party's problems to be the result of one old democratic socialist and nothing to do with New Labour alienating most of the country.

And now that their latest, large and embarrassing effort to oust him has failed, they're wedged deeply into a corner. How, after such a deep and prolonged an attack on Corbyn's competence, can they proclaim to the public that they stand behind him?

The next move on that front, from a purely practical viewpoint, is an opportunity for Corbyn to take the initiative. To make symbolic gestures of addressing concerns about his poor approach to the media, for example, so that recalcitrant MPs can say their fears have been allayed and so save face - that is, if he really wishes to lead Labour as the broad socialist-moderate alliance it has historically been.

The only other options appear to be continued destructive civil war, that will simply scorch the earth of the Labour brand completely and render it worthless to anyone, or for one or both factions to leave the party - likely the Right, with the party staying in the hands of the significant emergent Left-wing, socialist and radical democratic, faction of which Corbyn is but the face.

As for Labour's future electoral chances? To say that Corbyn and the Left-wing cannot win is to negate entirely the point of party politics. A party organises around a set of common values and seeks to convince the public of their importance.

The reach elected office, a party must find a way of reaching people who do not know, or currently share share, their values and secure their good will. To suggest it is impossible to convince is to say there is now point to holding a dissenting view, or moving in anyway not driven by the crowd.

If a party isn't to stand with a set of ideals, that inform an attitude to policy-making, then there seems little point to having a party. To say - as Labour MPs have - that the party's duty is just to represent the electorate, is not an argument for how to run a party. It is an argument against party politics.

To run an organised party on the basis of just reflecting your constituency's views, is to run a populist machine designed only for grabbing power - turning constituents into passive actors rather than representing them, and alienating them from power.

For the part of the Labour Right, this is just a deeply-ingrained pragmatic reaction to the iniquities of the present electoral system. At every turn there are conflicts of interest that reduce accountability. An MP cannot be held to their manifesto if they must also represent constituents that didn't vote for them - and if they do, thousands of voices are excluded.

The trouble is that playing the game well, within the iniquitous system, produces power. And that is a seductive lure. However, to express a possibly minority and dissenting view, is not supposed to be about 'winning' power. It is supposed to be about representation.

Politics is supposed to be party candidates, representing the full spectrum of beliefs, being sent by their voting supporters as the people's representatives to an assembly where together they will build a consensus. Where they will build an inclusive compromise that reflects the country as a whole. It is not supposed to be about one party supplanting the system itself, to seize power by convincing enough people it is alive to all of their prejudices.

Adversarial politics offers power at a price. That price is currently tearing the Labour Party in two. One solution is to embrace pluralism, with a number of separate parties with common ideals are willing to cooperate - not least to create a more representative and less alienating system.

However, the most likely (and classic) compromise between the party's factions will be a middle ground between the Left's ideals and the Right's demand for 'electability'. The faction that Corbyn figureheads can achieve that - and success heals rifts faster than anything else in politics.

And yet, this inward-gazing uncooperative party-first attitude, that burns within both Left and Right factions, is unhelpful. While to the two groups squabble over power within and for the party, a plural society goes unrepresented and alienated.

Labour Leadership Contest: Corbyn's year in charge has already changed Labour's policy debate, but will it be enough to heal the rift?

Corbyn speaking, just a month after his election, to a crowd of ten thousand people - inside and outside - at Manchester Cathedral, for a Communication Workers Union event.

The Labour leadership contest got under way in earnest on Thursday as Jeremy Corbyn launched his campaign. Evoking the memory of Beveridge, in his speech he promised to lead Labour towards ending the 'five greats evils' of our times (BBC, 2016): inequality, neglect, prejudice, insecurity and discrimination.

Having seen off Angela Eagle in the nominations race, Owen Smith has also stepped up his campaign (Asthana & Elgot, 2016). Unlike Corbyn, who has a - not really of his own making - hostile relationship with the media, Owen Smith is actively courting the media, making TV appearance after TV appearance to increase his exposure amongst audiences who probably don't know who he is.

Smith's key line through these appearances has been to try and present himself as able to be the intermediary between the radical membership and the more pragmatic party. He has promised to be as radical as Corbyn, but more competent at making the practical pitch to the wider country (BBC, 2016{2}).

Owen Smith, in the event of his campaign being victorious, has even pitched a job for Corbyn, offering him the position of Party President - though the proposition was rejected by Corbyn as being the equivalent to a 'Director of Football' (BBC, 2016{3}).

The launch of Corbyn's leadership defence had the appearance of an act of defiance (Sparrow, 2016). Affording no time to his detractors and opponents, he focussed instead on making a Beveridge-esque promise to combat the five great evils and called for Labour MPs to take the hand of friendship, get behind the party and work together.

In fact, the Labour leadership campaign may yet be beneficial for Corbyn. It might well give Corbyn the platform to calmly propose and discuss policy that his leadership so far failed to - conducted as it has been under a concessionless, constant barrage, of media negativity (Cammaert, 2016).

However, his support will be under strain, potentially squeezed by a candidate like Smith - if he can put his message across - with the polls showing trade union members have become less enthusiastic about Corbyn's leadership (MacAskill, 2016).

Smith has already made some promises. The set piece of which was a promise to boost public investment, with a £200bn New Deal for Britain (Edwards, 2016). The proposal has already enthused some Labour MPs, such as Louise Haigh who said she was excited to see anti-austerity turned into practical proposals.

There was a bit of oneupmanship to the campaign though, when a day later Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell announced a £500bn investment plan (Pope, 2016). McDonnell's plan included a National Investment Bank, to have regional sub-sects, for instance a Bank of the North, to manage investment to local needs.

Whatever the variations, both candidates are though confirming support for ending austerity with a big increase in public investment - a move that sits well with what the experts are arguing that the British economy sorely needs to move forward (Blanchflower, 2016; Elliott, 2016).

That alignment between Labour's Left and Right, with economists, is a good sign for the Left, signalling that thinking has shifted away from austerity - making conditions perhaps somewhat easier for those on the Left friendly to public spending.

It might also be a sign that Corbyn supporters, and those on the Left wing of the party that have long felt ignored, even an Owen Smith win in the leadership contest will be far from a defeat to the hated Blairites. Corbyn and his supporters have changed the party and Smith's approach has proved that - they can't ignore the Left anymore.

Contained within the pitch Owen Smith is making is an acknowledgement of the impact that Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters, who put him into the leadership, have had on the party. Their values cannot be ignored.

And yet, tensions remain high. Claims of abuse have come from both sides, of which there is plenty, but those valid claims are undermined at times by claims of abuse by thin-skinned public figures who, earnestly or cynically, mistake criticism for something less legitimate (BBC, 2016{4}).

The question that provokes is whether the breach had already been widened too much. Though concessions are being made in terms of tone and policy, if Corbyn doesn't retain the leadership - and even if he does - the hostility of the party's establishment to the Left still really doesn't make it look, however, like the long term future of the Corbynistas, and their well wishers, is in the Labour Party.

Proportional representation cannot come soon enough.

Spain shows us that to break old status quo and make proportional representation work, we need to outgrow adversarial politics

The Palacio de las Cortes in Madrid, home to the currently implacably divided Congress of Deputies. Photograph: Congress from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

In twenty three days, Spain will go to the polls for its second election in just six months. Its first saw the seats in congress divided between Left and Right in such a way as to make forming a government unlikely (Tremlett, 2016).

Therein lies the challenge of proportional representation. While each political party may be able to make its ideas and its membership more homogeneous, there ultimately remains the need to be able to work amicably with those holding other such 'purified' stances.

Over the last five to ten years, Spain's has seen it political mainstream collapse. New parties of Citizen movements have sprung up, and through the proportional electoral system have found themselves to be collectively a third force, along with the regionalist parties, that must enthrone a new government.

Yet they have found an old social democratic Left, that might make the more tolerable ally, weakened and shrunken and the old conservatives the intolerable but only realistic option. The numbers did not add up and a new election awaits.

In the UK, voices on the Left and Right have considered how the break up of the present political alignment, itself an incoherent and inconsistent series of alliances, might be redrawn with more coherency.

Tim Montgomerie has envisioned Westminster's political parties rearranged into parties for Solidarity (essentially Democrats), Liberals, Nationals (Conservative Christian Democrats) and a party of the Far Right (Montgomerie, 2016). And Owen Jones has argued that Labour's internal strife may not be curable, with a split into more coherent groups inevitable and ultimately desirable (Jones, 2016).

Spain reveals that this is only the first step. In their incomplete breakdown of two party politics, the adversarial division remain. The old grievances are clung to as a marker of identity. The next step has to be maturity.

If the future of British politics splits the establishment in four parties then at least two will have to work together to form a government - and it may not always be the ideal two. That will require the parties to compromise and cooperate, and to find a way to do so without feeling their identity is threatened.

The attitude of the Labour supporters or Trade Unionists who hissed BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg does not suggest a group of people ready to swap the UK's archaic adversarial politics for a system based on tolerances and compromise (Cowburn, 2016). Neither does the unbearable and vicious braying of the Tory parliamentarians every Wednesday at PMQs.

For the Left, finding a way beyond this confrontational, intolerant state is essential. Achieving progressive aims is only becoming less and less likely to be achievable through the medium of one, monolithic, party.

An alliance of progressives, of different strands, each on their own coherent - trade unionism, eco-socialism, democratic socialism, liberalism, social democracy and other various shades of centrism - requires those on the Left to find common aims, and to work amicably together with other progressives, while tolerating fundamental differences in ultimate priorities.

The introduction of proportional representation and seeing the old establishment parties split can only do so much to improve politics. Without the spirit of cooperation, without outgrowing adversarial divisions, we risk falling back into the same divisive patterns.