David Wearing: A battle of two vision
Putting aside the legal merits of today’s high court judgment, what does this episode tell us about what’s really happening in the Labour party?
Two fundamentally opposing visions are in conflict. The first seeks to market the parliamentary Labour party to majority public opinion, the press and big business as competent managers of the status quo. Here, the role of party members is to pay their fees, act as the doorstep infantry at election time, ratify predetermined policy decisions, and occasionally select a new party leader from a list pre-vetted by their elders and betters.
The second vision is one that sets the party a harder task: to win power in order to substantively change the country (as it did after world war two). This involves turning Labour into a
social movement, with a mass membership playing an active day-to-day role in communities across the country, winning the battle for hearts and minds on the ground, countering the inevitable attacks from those with a vested interest in the Thatcher-Blair-Cameron settlement, and shaping party policy from the bottom up.
The Labour establishment, horrified by this second approach, is determined to strangle it in its crib. Hence this week’s retreat into “red scare”
conspiracy theories and witch-hunts. Hence raising the registered supporters’ fee
from £3 to £25, which will disproportionately affect Corbyn supporters, who are
more likely to be working class. Hence the shameless disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of fee-paying members, which a high court judge upheld this afternoon.
While this has been going on,
Owen Smith – the parliamentary Labour party’s candidate for leader – has been telling members that he shares their values and priorities and seeks only to pursue them more effectively. Would Smith stay committed to such an agenda if he won the leadership, or shift back rightwards once the vote was out of the way? A strong clue lies in the open contempt for members now on display from the party old guard standing behind him.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...rship-election-decision-nec-corbyn-owen-smith