The left should deal with their own, not look after them
The Soft Left should exemplify and explore how to take the corruption out of politics without falling to technocracy.
It had to be Liverpool didn’t it? I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are places where dodgy stuff is going on all over. Places where councils have fallen apart among scandal and corruption. But for it to get this bad, it had to be Liverpool.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Liverpool. My ex-boyfriend and still close friend lives there and in visiting him over the years we were together I fell in love with the place. Seeing the regeneration that has taken place since the lows of the 1980s gives you hope. It’s an arty, vibrant, cultured city (that barely ever mentions it’s the birthplace of the Beatles….).
I’m not going to write here about what Labour should do about Liverpool specifically, or local government oversight and its approach to localism more widely as I have a couple of pieces on that coming out and I am still - technically - a paid journalist. I will link to these in the next newsletter.
What I want to talk about is the way in which factionalism has played a big part in allowing situations like this to fester and why ultimately that isn’t just bad for the people we serve, it isn’t just bad for the party as a whole, but it is also damaging to the faction themselves.
It is obvious why corruption hurts the poorest the most. Money that should be going to services and infrastructure for the many is lining the pockets of the few. A lot is often made of these people’s ‘humble’ beginnings. Usually by people with something to lose or who didn’t start from the same place. There is a fetishisation of starting from poverty that allows some to have a blindness to poor behaviours. But it’s so backwards. the vast majority of people who either live in or started from poverty don’t behave like this. Those who have such low expectations of the working class are rarely from that class themselves. That’s why they romanticise illegality - even though it is almost always other working class people who are victims. They think they’re “sticking it to the man” (really, some fairly high-level political actors never lifted their politics beyond their Sixth Form Rik phase) when actually they are screwing over their neighbours and communities.
More often though, it is considerably less naive than that and a lot more cynical. Politics is often talked about as a calling or a crusade. But ultimately it’s a numbers game. I win/you lose. My gang is bigger than yours. That’s internal democracy.
The problem with this is that numbers have no morality. Numbers don’t care if you’re a sleezy arsehole perving over young girls or a corrupt councillor awarding contracts to your mates. Your vote is a tally in the column of the people you support. So in the short term - and especially while things within the party remain feral, there is little incentive (as I said about misogyny last week) to do anything about it when you want this person’s vote to elect your faction to roles within the council or CLP.
So we let things slide. We all *know* of course. But no one does anything about it. Because, well, that’s just Tom/Dick/Harriet. They’re salt of the Earth really. And there’s never really been any proof as such. Not really.
And so things carry on. And they get worse. Because of course they do. Once boundaries have been tested and found not to exist, why would they not? And more people sort of know, but there’s the AGM coming up, or the council selections. Got to get our guys into the right positions.
This is not endemic to any one faction. But I will say that I have seen it play out more on the organised hard left. I think in part because for a long time, their focus has been on power within the party - not the party as a vehicle for change. And when that is your focus the priority you give those internal votes changes and so then do the dynamics of looking the other way.
This can seem helpful to those numbers in the short term. And for many, it isn’t really what their faction is supposed to stand for that counts but who they stand with. It’s about the people you like, not the beliefs you ascribe to them. As long as your gang is on top, that is all that matters.
But in the long term it puts bad people in powerful places in your movement and reduces that movement to their level. It makes it unattractive to new blood and it stagnates in terms of ideas and passion and dynamism until all that is left is a bitter defensiveness.
And if all you see if a numbers game, you fail to develop the talent you should have been spotting, nurturing and bringing through. You don’t sort the wheat from the chaff. You end up with Jared O’Mara and Claudia Webbe (I will keep an eye out for the next lot of DMs Claudia). People suspended from the party and clearly unfit to represent it. But they were loyal, they did their time. They were good numbers.
There are plenty of good people far to my left who aren’t like that. Who have a strong set of values and beliefs and are appalled at both the corruption but also the attitude of others lumping them in with the Derek Hattons of the world. And it is them I want to work with.
I know people in places where the factionalism got so nasty that they are now quite traumatised. Former councillors who were so abused that they can never see any good coming from the faction that so abused them. I totally understand that, but I don’t agree. There are good people throughout the factions of the Labour party and interesting ideas both in policy and political terms.
We can all learn from each other and we should all be working together to have a minimum set of standards we consider acceptable to us as party members. Maybe the Soft Left can be the brokers of such a tool. But we too have to recognise that we would not be coming into this without our own issues. We too will have looked the other way when convenient. Or if we haven’t, been made to feel like pariahs for speaking up.
This has to be done with a blank slate. It cannot be done in such a way that starts from a position of what will benefit one faction or the other. Becuase it is always at that point that the rot sets in.
What I’ve been up to
I’ve written a play. Yes, this again! I discovered on Saturday night that threatening to snog half of Twitter was quite a good fundraising driver. Got up to 45%. Don’t ask me what I’ll be willing to do for 100%. But if you can help out please consider giving what you can.
I wrote about Keir Starmer’s first year for The Article. I wasn’t quite sure what to say, which I think rather sums it up.
I was on Midatlantic, where I got very ranty about female issues just before the show and got cross at everyone talking over the only pro-gun voice (how’s that for pluralism).
Finally, my episode of Drunk Women Solving Crime came out. and if I do say so myself, it’s something of a belter!
Reading List
Just the one piece this week as I have been falling down some odd reading rabbit holes that none of you needs to know about.
But this by Jonathan Freedland on Biden’s presidency and its radicalism is brilliant. It reflects so much of what I have always said. Don’t tell people you’re radical. Tell people you’re moderate and sensible. Then when you do things that might be a bit radical, they will be reassured that they are being done in a moderate sensible way. that’s far more radical than sloganeering on the outside.
Questions, comments and arguments are very welcome. Insults will get you summarily blocked on every platform that no longer hosts Donald Trump. I’m at emmaburnell@gmail.com or on Twitter (far too often) at @EmmaBurnell_.