What Labour Needs to Do Next

This time last year, Jeremy Corbyn supporters were not well thought of. Journalists tended to treat them as an anomaly, commentators often described them as out of touch, and even parts of the left thought they were leading the party to defeat. To say you still supported Corbyn invited a long explanation about why you were wrong.

The ground has shifted dramatically since then. When 12,878,460 people voted Labour in the general election, it became apparent that Corbyn supporters were not a dismissible minority. Now, Labour are inching ahead in the polls and Corbyn converts aren’t so difficult to come by, there is an altogether different challenge for the left: understanding what’s changed for the party and what they should do next.

The 2017 exit poll did not solely symbolise a change that had taken place in British politics over a two-month election campaign; the roots stretch further back – they are messy and numerous.

In recent years, decades of growing inequality have been compounded by the 2008 western financial crash; xenophobia and racism had been intensifying; and the moribundity of the status quo was increasingly visible. Politicians and pundits spent countless hours discussing growing disenfranchisement, but there was no attendant shift in the Labour Party. Whether it was New Labour broadly maintaining Thatcherism or Ed Miliband diagnosing problems but failing to cure them, the party never managed to offer a substantial alternative to the politics of the right. But then came the change: Jeremy Corbyn was elected as leader – twice. The past year of Labour politics must be understood against this backdrop.

The shift Corbyn is helping to usher into the UK can broadly be understood through two different but overlapping ideas: what parliamentary politics offers and how it is done. Labour roundly rejected austerity, an unthinkable feat under Miliband, and clawed back support from people who had long given up on Labour as a vehicle for change. Corbyn’s bold political stance and refusal to triangulate (on most issues) were first presented on a public platform in the July 2015 leadership contest. This eventually led to the 2017 manifesto, which essentially represented a standard social democratic platform of wealth distribution and public investment, deemed radical by UK standards, and made Labour a viable opposition again.

But change doesn’t just come through policy; people wanted a different way of doing politics. Tired of the power-hoarding that has long characterised parliamentary politics, an opportunity to disperse power has been welcomed. The 2016 leadership contest was proof of that. Self-proclaimed reasonable politicians told members they knew, without even going to the public, that Labour under Corbyn was unelectable. But activists still mobilised around Corbyn when he promised them a stake in the project. The same happened this summer – Corbyn told the UK that leadership is a collective effort and activists spilled out into the streets to support this vision.

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During the snap election we were repeatedly told the forecast was grim; that Labour was unelectable. This was an intensification of the past two years of received wisdom that Corbyn’s Labour was a disaster. The real story – the surge in support for Labour – was assiduously overlooked. In the days and months following the election, there was a scramble to make sense of Corbynism. But this has not yet proved significant: popular media analysis has not altered to the extent the political landscape has. With the Tories in disarray, there is an enduring idea that Labour should be ahead in the polls, misunderstanding the slow burning nature of political crisis or the long-term project Corbyn’s leadership represents. And left-wing activists are still attacked as dangerous entryists trying to hijack the party.

But now Corbyn’s leadership is not continuously being called into question, the Labour left has more time to ask itself what it should do next. Here, "Labour" can denote different groups: the party as a structure, the leadership and its supporters.

In terms of Labour’s leadership, their challenges lie in how to build on the manifesto. Brexit looms large in the news and the party must continue to adapt their approach to negotiations they don’t control. But there remain other pressing concerns: how to refashion the economy in a world where growth is not feasible, and amid the growing threat of climate change, the country’s plummeting living standards and ongoing anti-migrant politics.

The party as a whole needs to continue its efforts to democratise, which could mean a historic transformation in Labour. When Blair swept to power in 1997 change was decisive and often quick. He centralised party decision-making and, within months, the Labour party had a new general secretary from within the Prime Minister’s inner circle. Contrary to New Labour’s power hoarding tendencies, which alienated members and voters, Labour are shifting in the other direction: giving members complete say over who should represent the party in elections and a say in policy.

Discussions about democratisation are batted away by so-called "moderates" as a hostile left-wing takeover. But this is not a plot to steal power from MPs; giving power to people lies at the heart of one of the key changes Corbyn’s leadership embodies.

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The future of left-wing politics domestically and internationally doesn’t just lie in party structures or in ideas cooked up in Westminster: there is a necessary reformulation of where power lies, moving away from top-down managerial modes of leadership to giving people a say. But if – as their most vicious critics fear and their vociferous supporters hope – Labour form the next government, change is not inevitable.

If Labour in opposition have been attacked, a Labour government will face unparalleled hostility – there is, as Gary Younge has pointed out, a distinction between being in office and being in control. Activists will provide a necessary ballast to secure the economic and social transformations Labour promised earlier this year, but which are not welcomed by the establishment.

However, Corbyn supporters should also be prepared for the fact that a Labour government will not provide a complete reworking of the state and that a constructive critique of a Corbyn government is not tantamount to betraying the project. In fact, the opposite is true. For instance, the party have not significantly attempted to debunk right-wing narratives on migration; it will likely be from outside the leadership, with collaboration from outside the party, that the intellectual work will need to be done on how to mainstream migrant justice in an intensely hostile climate.

UK politics has undergone a monumental change; the long-held orthodoxy that the left have no place in the mainstream has been exposed to be false. But while Labour are capitalising on Tory disarray, most people's material circumstance have gotten worse. Grenfell stands as a monument to rampant inequality, people drown at Europe’s borders while xeno-racism continues to breed and climate change is treated as a mere sideshow in a world where the nation state is privileged as the best way to organise global politics. Change is at once with us and at the same time out of reach – but Labour provides hope.

@MayaGoodfellow