We need to talk about Labour. Specifically, we need to start talking about us and Labour.
Not the bit of the party that Jeremy Corbyn gets to keep after its leadership election – the trademark and some very shouty people – but about our attitude to, and relations with, the c.170 MPs who will likely decide that that they need another vehicle to jump into when Owen Smith loses, and who would then enter the next election as some mutated strain of Labour.
They will be attempting something quite difficult, and it will be messy.
With grand scale election defeat still a bitter, recent memory for Lib Dems, the temptation to make some popcorn, stick beer in the fridge and ask friends round to watch Newsnight is understandably strong.
Instead we should be asking some serious questions. How do we want to behave towards those Labour ‘moderates’? Could we make common cause on some key issues? And come the next general election, do we want to run against all of them as hard as we run against Conservative candidates?
The shock of the EU referendum result is an awful and stark illustration that the political culture of the UK is in a dangerous place. As a party we weren’t able to stop that, however up for the fight we were, or however much integrity he had.
As things stand, with a Commons presence that could fit into people carrier, that’s not an electoral opportunity for us as Lib Dems – it’s sinkhole that threatens to pull in an awful lot that we care about.
How we answer these questions will also affect our ability to pull back into politics parts of the party we have lost. Lib Dems who argued that the groundwork should be laid for a possible Lib/Lab pact in event of a hung parliament (I was one) did not act in unison faced with Clegg’s leadership and the coalition. Some joined Labour (to be fair, who saw Corbyn coming?), some served as coalition ministers (Tom McNally).
Yet more are still members, but like me are currently on the disengaged side – there’s plenty of private life to get on with if the reasons for a Focus delivery round are not made compelling enough.
Maybe, reading this, you don’t want those of us who drifted away back in the thick of the fight. If that’s the case, well – good luck, but I think that’s a shame.
Going into the next general election – and beyond – a decent narrative for the centre-left, using an adequate parliamentary bridgehead to make it heard, is urgent.
Do I ‘like’ Labour if you take the Corbyn and Momentum folk out? No, and that’s why I’ve never cast a first preference vote for them.
I know that even among the ‘moderates’, there are many people we’ve had bruising ideological and campaigning encounters with. But look, I’m not suggesting you go on holiday with these people.
For me it comes down to this. Was I pleased Sadiq Khan beat Zac Goldsmith? You bet I was. It was a centrist success that moved the position and tone of an important bit of our political landscape. And if Clinton beats Trump, the tone of the Anglophone political world will alter in key regards.
We need the formation of a new sort of Labour party to work, and we need to think about a range of ways to work with it. The alternative – that the sinkhole gets even bigger – is for me simply too awful an alternative to contemplate.
* Eduardo Reyes is a former Liberal Democrat agent, council candidate and parliamentary researcher.
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I have argued before that we should be friendly with any Centrist Labour breakaway. Friendly but cautious. What the current plan of the 170 is, I have no idea, I doubt that they will hold together as a group. Any new group will probably start with very few activists, it took The SDP 5 years to build a membership of 60,000. We should be trying to persuade Labour rebels to join us rather than spending years building a new SDP.
Here they go again the Lib Dems pratting on about process rather than dealing with the real world. The real world wants planned migration, where Brexit is Brexit and trade agreements need sorting. If you haven’t reached base camp on this intellectual journey then i suppose wish list thinking is the order of the day.
My advice is to heed Norman Lamb and deal with the actual ISSUES – it’s economy, migration, nhs and physical security. Once you have those new policies that deal with people as they are rather than where you’d like them to be you can discuss fairytale process fantasies to your hearts content.
You know how non-Corbynite Labour will take on board what you say? When you beat them at the polls. It’s the only language they understand.
Oh dear, oh dear. Anyway the chance of 170 Labour MPs breaking away from the official party is in the far realms of the galaxy. There may however be interesting things happening at local level in some areas and we will need to react to those.
If the Liberal Democrats want to survive the task is to get to work building a progressive Liberal movement from the bottom up, with the support of what national leadership and support we have left. We can leave the Labour Party to its own gradual implosion and self-immolation.
Tony Greaves
Thank you for the comment Jane. My argument wasn’t really about process, which I think we don’t have time for. In practical terms, I want the centre left to be doing much, much better on pushing issues I think are imperilled – human rights, environmental policy, health, employment rights and so on.
The place politics is at is not a rerun of the Blair/Ashdown “project”, not least because Labour in a very poor condition.
Immigration, it sounds like we might disagree on, and it’s an area where Labour tend to disappoint come election rhetoric time.
Paul, special thanks for your comment. We can’t, I know, make Labour moderates behave logically, but I sense the scale of their problem is such that they are more willing to act as a block. If they are sensible, that’s what they will do and do so quickly. It is, current;y, much, much worse being a centrist in the Labour party than it was when Michael Foot was leader.
We’ll see though – right now everything moderate feels fairly dicey from where I sit.
Who’d have predicted that the EU vote would split the Labour party rather than the Tories as expected? Did anyone manage to predict the oil price slump? There are countless similar lessons for those that are so certain about the future. We need to forget about Labour, or better enjoy it, and concentrate on forming a credible manifesto alternative that avoids dogma of any hue.
It would be nice if we shut up about Trump too: It’s none of our business and we sure as heck can’t influence anything, which means all we are doing is annoying a likely future US president.
So much depends on timing. If The PLP majority had broken away last Autumn they could have crushed us. If they were to break off in November say, we would still be in a very weak position. If Labour Centrists keep faffing about as they have been that gives us more time to recover.
If we were to keep recovering at the pace of the last few months then we could stage a full Electoral recovery in 18 months – thats a very big IF. A Labour split would mean there would be No “Safe” Labour seats anywhere in England, not one.
2018 could see voters in “Safe” Tory seats facing a new question, instead of Tories or Labour, it would be Tories or a revived Libdems.
For us, the best outcome would be the most probable one, endless Labour conflict & The Anti-Corbynites fracturing into rival groups, with a few defecting to us.
Tony Greaves and JamesG: exactly. Well said both.
Barking up the wrong tree, maybe?
Seems to me that UK MPs are in a non-party quandary – pro or anti-EU. Only LibDems and SNP are 100% pro. I suspect most Lab and many Con are also pro. The challenge is to establish a strong pro party. Jointly, Farron and Sturgeon are in a position to call for this, aided by voices like David Lammy, Ken Clarke, etc. Yes, it will start out as a marriage of convenience but the possibility of a centrist pro-Europe party exists, and it needs credible champions to make it happen.
I hope some of those parliamentarians whose conviction is pro-EU are having real, pragmatic discussions about how to make a new grouping work. It will, though, mean abandoning party labels, logos and dogma for the time being.
I don’t expect Labour to split. More likely that it remains in a state of civil war for the next 10 years. The problem is that there is a significant chunk of the electorate that will vote for the Labour brand whatever it stands for – and a significant number of activists who feel emotional attachment to the brand, whatever it stands for, and that is too big a prize to give up for it to be worth either side splitting away.
I say “either side” because the unelectable/electable fault line currently being fought is not the open/closed society fault line which falls differently, nor even the proud working class/ashamed middle class fault line which is different again. And I haven’t even asked whether you agree with socialism or not yet. But for a party to tear itself apart there has to be two clear sides and there aren’t.
And we shouldn’t expect that if you pull away half of the Labour Party and half of the Tory party and add the Lib Dems and maybe a few others, that that grouping would win half of the current Labour vote and half of the current Tory vote. It wouldn’t. It is not so much about the people and resources as an understanding of what it is that wins votes from which people, and splinters are always liable to leave that behind.
No I think our best approach to all this is to show that in areas where we are strong, that we can win and do some good, and maybe win over some people from Labour who don’t relish 10 years of civil war.
48% of the voting population is crying out for a strong pro-EU voice. If that’s not a major electoral opportunity I don’t know what is. Or are the LibDems content to fiddle in the third row of the string section and just play unassumingly while the principals get all the kudos?
My own experience, prior to the 2010 election, was that a great many people whose instincts and personal history placed them with the Labour party voted for us in seats where it made tactical sense to keep out a Tory and a Tory government. (Encouraged, not least, by people like me.)
Quite understandably they wouldn’t do the same in 2015, and for one I couldn’t have urged them to with a straight face post-coalition.
So yes, there are some opportunities. But it will be incredibly hard to take them without some evidence that we don’t intend to use their support for the same purpose it was ultimately used in 2010.
This is another reason why voters like that need to hear some clear, authentic things for us. That’s not quite to original point of my article, but it is a related point.
“pleased Sadiq Khan beat Zac Goldsmith?” Labour held the seat in the Commons that Sadiq Khan left when he became Mayor of Greater London. Zac Goldsmith won a seat in the Commons previously held by a Liberal Democrat. Didn’t Channel 4 News criticise his election expenses?
Policy on airport expansion is currently awaiting a decision.
When interviewed for 45 minutes at The Oval by Test Match Special this year Sadiq Khan said that he wants to continue being London Mayor, basically for as long as the electors will have him. He would like increased powers as Mayor. He does not want to be an MP again. A cricketing career would have been tempting. Asked whether he backed Pakistan or England he said The winning side”. He backed Remain and opposes Jeremy Corbyn, but is not an MP and therefore cannot be a leadership candidate.
Labour’s electoral success varies widely and geographically, so we should caution against treating local perceptions as typical, however well informed.
“… the task is to get to work building a progressive Liberal movement from the bottom up …” Yup.
Sorry, I think the basic premise of this is flawed. The 170 Labour MPs define as ‘moderates’ only by their opposition to their leader. Apart from that they are the same people who banged on about how the Coalition was the most right-wing government in British history and who created and sustained the narrative that the Liberal Democrats had ‘betrayed’ their supporters by going into coalition with the Tories. I thought that all the leadership contenders, bar Corbyn, were deeply unimpressive, and I can’t think of a single Labour MP that I would welcome into our party. (OK, there may be a few but I can’t think of any). I’m sure, though, that there are many members of the Labour Party who would be much more at home with us.
Opinions will vary Tony Hill (I suspect ours are not aligned), but we did enable some surprising things in government. The choice of Tim Farron as leader points to a different intended course on many fronts.
But I refer to a “sinkhole” in the centre, because I don’t think we alone can fill it in the timeframe required. In which case, I am asking whether we have folk with a common cause in filling it.
Some of what Andrew George has written on this is part of the same conversation. I’m afraid I think it I one we need to have.
The urgency of events and these times places a heavy responsibility on us to have it.
None of this is was though.
Joining with Labour moderates? Been there. Been obliged to do that. While there are ex SDP people who have ended up at home in a party which is a significant distance from Labour “moderates”, I still count seat negotiations with the SDP as the worst night (and early morning) of my political life. I agree with Tony.
Both Tonys!
@Ken “48% of the voting population is crying out for a strong pro-EU voice.”
Or based upon the Remain campaign’s message, 48% of the voting population are indifferent about the EU but very frightened by the prospect of the alternative.
As Brexit becomes more of a reality and less of a scare-story, opposition to it might diminish (though is more likely to be replaced by indifference than support), so pro-EU Lib Dems risk overestimating their constituency if they are targeting voters on the basis that only the EU matters and other policy areas will sort themselves out.
I would echo jane’s suggestion that the party should concentrate on communicating a clear and consistent message on a range of vital policy areas else it risks being seen as a sort of anti-UKIP one-trick pony.
Labour moderates? Pro austerity, pro snooper’s charter any any other authoritarian legislation of last 20 years, pro Trident, pro Iraq war, pro Syria military intervention, pro marketisation of NHS and resolutely opposed to party members having any input to policy. As for the personal integrity of some -bullying and nasty. Take them please.
Experience over many years tells us that we can’t trust Labour or their MPs, certainly not on PR. The Lib Lab pact showed the contempt Labour have for agreements. They are just desperate to get into power and stay there and will do anything to ensure that happens. So I don’t want them on our party and think we are wasting our time even thinking about it. We must focus on our message and persuading the electorate that it’s for them and if some people come and join us let it be on our terms. By the way, getting 48% of the vote would do me fine. We’d have a landslide victory if we did!
Treat them with a great deal of distrust. They include some moderates and some good people but more opportunists who would sell their granny to keep their seat and might offer to buy her back on expenses. And Owen Smith is not the Messiah, he is…
If there are 170 Labour MPs who are discontented with their leader, then will any of them leave the party?
Their options are: Sitting as an independent, founding a new party, Joining UKIP, joining the Greens, taking the SNP whip, joining the Tories, joining the Lib Dems.
Do we really think that even one or two them in total will take any of these options (which I have placed in decreasing order, in my opinion, of probability)?
48% of the voting population is crying out for a strong pro-EU voice
Are they? Some of the 48% are ardent Europhiles but I’d suggest most voted Remain as the lesser of the two evils. The best argument for staying in was the fear of possible repercussions after a Leave vote. The PTB in the EU are so concerned that if Britain gets what it wants, free trade with the EU, then others will follow.
Its also a good argument for leaving. If the benefits of the EU are so minimal what’s the point of it all?
If there is any “crying out” it is that the Population has voted Leave, so let trigger article 50 or do whatever it takes to actually leave and stop prevaricating!
Is there not in reality 3 Labour parties now? 1. What is described as the “hard left” – very much committed to a socialist agenda and built rpind the Corbyn/McDonnell axis; 2. A more traditionalist, some would say “authoritarian” others “centrist” Labour (see ID cards & anti immigrant rhetoric as examples). 3. A progressive left which actually is pretty keen on individual liberty. As I see it, Lib Dems can only really find common cause with 3. But then that’s because they’re in the wrong party and should recognise that they are social liberals not liberal socialists
I’ll echo Tony Greaves’s “Dear, oh dear!”…
170 Labour MPs to join 8 LibDems? If only one tenth of that number acted we’d be outnumbered 2 to 1….
A far greater likely scenario will be the switch of Labour voters to UKIP, the resultant shift of the Tories to the right, an entrenched left wing minority Labour party and an increasingly irrelevant LibDem rump….
Labour MPs tend towards policies of centralisation and government intervention – not very liberal attributes.
Liberal Democrats should resist entryism by Labour MPs with such views.
Unlike many who have written on this subject, I see little evidence that any MP or national figure will leave the Labour Party. My guess is that they will either be deselected and then have to make a choice or will wither on the vine and retire to their hidey holes.
The reasons are many, some would see no future with any other party ,some have trades union links and would not like to be ostracised by current “friends” and others would say enough is enough and disappear o various other levels of public life.
#
I do agree however that at a local level ,a strong Liberal Democrat organisation could be attractive but we should not be grateful for their interest, we should be wary and only those who have demonstrated some Lib values should be encouraged to come aboard.
As far as I’m aware, the small fraction of the 172 MPs who could actually leave Labour are largely the same figures that hate the party membership and want to strip the party of any internal democracy.
Combined with the likelihood that any LibDem leader would be considered too leftwing by these MPs, I think the LibDems would do well to avoid them, or in the very least make sure they can’t trigger a leadership election and install one of their own as leader.
They’ll stay put in Labour and whinge. The thing is people don’t really vote for MPs in general election or that often in local election. They vote for the Party. These MPs have steady incomes and will, despite the claims, not on mass want to risk being deselected and replaced. The problem is that the Blair wing are to0 linked to a vastly divisive figure and are not actually popular enough to take voters with them.
Some very interesting comments above, and I realise people are also now debating with each other, but just a reminder that the original proposition is certainly not that c170 Labour MPs could just quite happily join us, or indeed that we’d be happy to have them.
I’m asking fellow Lib Dems to consider how they’d respond to the emergence of a (somewhat humbled) non-Corbyn strain of Labour at a time when I think we’re further from the Tories than ever.
I think it’s a question of central importance for anyone who thinks (as I do) that things could be going better on the centre-left, and finds that cause for deep concern.
Hello Lib Dems, I do not frequent these spaces as I once used to but having peeked through the door, I feel I must contribute, if only as a rare female voice on this thread.
Many if you are questioning whether Labour moderates will split from the party. I do not think they will be left with much choice. At the Conference in a few weeks time, there is an amendment proposed to the existing rules for nominating a leadership candidate, known as The McDonnell amendment, it is designed to reduce the number of nominations necessary from the current 15 %, or whatever, to 5%, meaning that McDonnell would only need 12 nominations. Corbyn is, in the view of many, hanging on simply to ensure this amendment goes through.
Furthermore, the NEC is being changed so that it is heavily pro-Corbyn.
The Labour moderates will soon be deselected or not selected as an outcome of the boundary changes, or they will find themselves in a party which has a left-wing leader for the next few decades. Many of them will simply find themselves out of a job, certainly in 2020 if not before then, others will find themselves outnumbered and impotent in an increasingly hostile PLP/NEC. Whoever is left may just walk away, or the 170 may foresee all this and be forced to split before all this comes to fruition. The Labour Party under Corbyn is expected to return 150 MPs to Parliament in 2020.
In any case, I think that comparisons with the Gang of Four are misleading and distracting.
As for the 170 being pro-Austerity, pro-Snoopers Charter etc, I gently suggest you look back at your own party’s recent history. We are in uncharted waters and they are about to get very choppy. For those who say none if this is the concern of the LibDems, I can only remind you that a strong Opposition is in all our interests, otherwise be prepared for more Snooper’s Charters, more inequality, more running down of the NHS etc.
Eduardo “I think it’s a question of central importance for anyone who thinks (as I do) that things could be going better on the centre-left, and finds that cause for deep concern.”
Yes I agree. The Labour Party is only going to become more left wing over the next decade not less. The Moderates have lost and are about to be routed, and the power will shift from Corbyn to McDonnell, Mason and Momentum. In the next few years, those of us on the centre-left are going to be left impotent and bickering amongst each other, if we cannot organising ourselves into a strong opposing force to an ever-increasingly right wing Tory party and a Labour Party which will clearly resemble Militant Tendency by this time next year. Already I am struck by how many seemingly serious Labour politicians have started calling each other Comrade, as though it were not a joke term from the 70s and early 1980s. The direction of travel is ever leftwards and has not even begun yet. The centre-left parties cannot afford, for the good of the country as a whole, to be passive or tribal in the coming months and years.
Labour are finished.
The bulk of the PLP are muscular liberals and globalists.
The bulk of the membership are hard left socialists.
Traditional Labour voters are protectionists.
Very interesting points Phyllis – not least because in part my original article was prompted by conversations with Labour friends.
When a particular sections of a party gets the upper hand, other sections normally have ‘muddling through’ options that they can take while waiting for things to swing back their way. But Momentum etc have found effective ways to remove those options for their opponents.
I think many on the outside don’t realise quite how serious things are, and therefore will fail to respond in the pretty narrow window there will be to keep the centre left on the field of battle.
I’ve had more positive private messages since writing this – the gender balance of which was also healthier.
Things may still be difficult for us LibDems, but we haven’t yet sunk to the point where we need to turn to the Blairite wing of the Labour Party for its strategic wisdom, political insight, and tactical brilliance, not to mention their renowned outstanding leadership.
“Oh dear, oh dear” – well, yes. Jane assumes that if we’re talking about one important thing. we’re not talking about another. As for “planned migration”, what fantasy world is that?
I agree we need to consider the nature of relations with Labour MPs who may be at odds with their party. Forget “centrism”. Centrism took us down to eight MPs and nearly wiped us out in a whole lot of cities and London boroughs where we had tough local strength before. However, yes of course some such MPs may have something in common with us. Irrespective of if they’re 170 or five strong, we might well find things on which we can co-operate. However, two warnings. One: the more towards the Labour right someone is, does not indicate how close they are to Liberalism. Two: any agreement not to stand against such MPs must depend on a local party decision. We must have no rerun of the Liberal-SDP carve-up. But if I was in a constituency where the rebel Labour MP was pro-devolution and pro-civil-rights and we clearly couldn’t win, yes, I’d advocate us not standing and (after quizzing him/her), giving our support.
@Simon Banks re cooperate with the 170 or so (Lab MPs) if pro civil rights.
But that is surely the issue. It is these MPs who were pro austerity, pro Iraq war, pro secret courts, pro ID cards and snooping. They are precisely the last group of Lab MPs I would want the LibDems to work with. Yet there is a willingness to do so with at least some LibDems. On top of that they have a dreadful attitude towards party democracy.
By contrast the Corbyn side are, on many policies, much closer to traditional LibDem beliefs especially on civil liberties. Sadly opportunism and tribalism seems to prevent any consideration of a more logical group re Labour cooperation.
PS On a topic much discussed on LDV – the railways. Two days ago the Govt announced an emergency funding boost to Southern Rail of £20m to get to grips with their performance i.e. contractual requirements. Yesterday their parent group posted profits increased by some 27% of around £100m. The case for increased public ownership in a nutshell.
We only need 9 Labour MP’s to defect for them to form a majority of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party. 50 let alone 170 would make the takeover swift and complete. If just 10% of existing Labour members then subsequently joined plus a surge of new Remainers/Toynbees then the job would quickly be complete. All that would remain would be for ” Liberal ” to be dropped the party’s day to day branding ( but not Constitution ) and the job’s done. Pity none of the is going to happen.