Labour Under Corbyn: Constraints on Radical Politics in the UK [1st ed.] 9783030602611, 9783030602628

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Labour Under Corbyn Constraints on Radical Politics in the UK Prapimphan Chiengkul

Labour Under Corbyn “This book provides an overview of Corbynism from a critical political economy perspective. Based on an extensive review of relevant materials, the book offers a useful resource for students and scholars interested in this important period in the history of the British Labour Party.” —Scott Lavery, Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI), University of Sheffield, UK

Prapimphan Chiengkul

Labour Under Corbyn Constraints on Radical Politics in the UK

Prapimphan Chiengkul Faculty of Political Science Thammasat University Bangkok, Thailand

ISBN 978-3-030-60261-1 ISBN 978-3-030-60262-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60262-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

This book is in part based on research funded by the Faculty of Political Science, Thammasat University in 2018. The author would like to thank the faculty for supporting its publication, as well as anonymous reviewers for providing useful feedback. Last but not least, the author would like to thank Ben King for his encouragement and for helping to proofread the manuscript.

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Contents

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Introduction Labour Under Corbyn: An Overview Methodological and Theoretical Approach Main Arguments Book Outline References

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Labourism and Structural Constraints Before 2015 Introduction Parliamentary Socialism and Labourism Revisited Ideological, Institutional and Material Political Economic Constraints Political Rules, Institutions and Conservatism Conclusion References

15 15 17

Labour Under Corbyn (2015–2020) Introduction The 2015 Labour Party Leadership Election Mainstream Media and Conflicts Within the Labour Party The 2017 General Election Brexit and the 2019 General Election

39 39 41 44 48 52

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Political Narratives, Structural Contradictions and Fragmented Voters Conclusion References 4

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Labour’s Policies to Transform the British Political Economy Introduction Interpretations of ‘Corbynism’ in Political Science The 2017 and 2019 Labour Manifestos Compared Criticisms, Reactions from Elites and Potential Problems Labour After Corbyn and the Future of Dissent Conclusion References

73 73 75 78 87 97 103 104

Conclusion Summary of the Book’s Main Arguments Final Reflections on the Book’s Relevance to Other Countries References

115 115 118 119

Index

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract The chapter provides an overview of the book. It discusses the methodological and theoretical framework, which draws on neoMarxist and neo-Gramscian perspectives. A summary of the book’s main arguments and a chapter outline are also provided. Keywords Corbyn · Coxian critical theory · Neo-Gramscian · Neo-Marxist · Eroding capitalism · State autonomy

Labour Under Corbyn: An Overview After its defeat in the 2015 General Election, one might expect the Labour Party to shift ‘right’ along the political spectrum to attract more voters, according to the prevailing Downsian political common sense of the day. Therefore, it was a surprise when Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong leftwing backbencher, won the Labour leadership election in late 2015, aided by strong grassroots groups that helped his campaign. Corbyn was heavily criticised by mainstream media and also by Labour members of parliament (MPs) who were dismayed by the party’s shift to the left. Labour under Corbyn proposed to reorient the economy to serve progressive socio-environmental goals and bring about an egalitarian transformation of society. Labour did unexpectedly well in the 2017 General Election; the party achieved a large increase in its vote share comparable to that which © The Author(s) 2021 P. Chiengkul, Labour Under Corbyn, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60262-8_1

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saw Labour’s Clement Attlee become Prime Minister after the Second World War. Nevertheless, the rise to power of a left-wing government in the UK, a deeply conservative country, was undermined by various structural constraints. By the end of 2019 the Corbyn project was in terminal decline; Labour’s position on Brexit, strategic political challenges from the Right, and Corbyn’s unpopularity, amongst other factors, contributed to Labour’s devastating defeat in the December General Election, which was characterised by many seat losses in the so-called Labour ‘heartlands’. Corbyn stepped down as leader in April 2020 whilst Labour members engaged in tense debates about the party’s future direction. Inspired by these developments, as well as by scholarly debates on the Labour Party and the prospect of ‘parliamentary socialism’, this book aims to provide an accessible yet critical analysis of the Labour Party under Corbyn’s leadership in the context of contemporary British political economy. It attempts to: (1) explore the socio-politico-economic development in the UK that finally led in 2015 to the resurgence of radical left-wing politics in the Labour Party; (2) analyse structural limitations on left-wing politics, the prospect of a radical Labour government gaining power, and the transformative potential of Labour’s economic and social policies under Corbyn. Given ongoing discussions about the future direction of the Labour Party, it is more important than ever to reflect not only on the immediate causes that led to Labour’s defeat in the 2019 General Election, but also on structural constraints on left-wing politics and democratic socialism. The following section discusses the methodological and theoretical framework of the book, which draws on neo-Marxist and neo-Gramscian perspectives. A summary of the book’s main arguments and a chapter outline are also provided in this chapter.

Methodological and Theoretical Approach This book adopts a qualitative research approach and relies on primary sources such as statistics, and also a wide range of secondary sources such as books, academic journals, Labour Party publications and reports by non-governmental organisations. Its underlying epistemological stance is that of critical realism; whilst subscribing to a foundationalist ontological position and the idea that structures constrain and facilitate agents, the study in this book also gives importance to how agents interpret

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reality and shape these structures (Marsh et al. 2018, 193–194). Moreover, the book follows Marsh’s dialectical approach to the relationships between structure and agency, where material and ideational structures ‘provide the context within which agents act’ and can also have effects on agents even though they are not conscious of them (Marsh 2018, 207). Agents have their own preferences/objectives and interpretations of context, which shape their actions and the structures in an ‘interactive and iterative’ manner (Marsh 2018, 207–208). The book also broadly adopts Robert W. Cox’s critical theory approach, which commits to exploring the possibilities of a different future. Based on historical analyses, critical theory seeks to clarify what are feasible alternative transformations that serve as ‘a guide to strategic action for bringing about an alternative order’ (Cox 1981, 130). Similar to approaches adopted by Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci, Coxian critical theory subscribes to historical materialism and focuses on the dialectical process at the level of real history, which enables the study of how contradictions and opposed social forces may give rise to change and alternative developmental paths (Cox 1981, 133–134). Overall, the book draws inspiration from Cox’s conceptualisation of social forces, historical structures and the possibility for transformative radical change. However, to enhance this framework, the book also draws on various neo-Gramscian and neo-Marxist writings, as well as from relevant critical political economic writings, to analyse the Labour Party’s prospects of advancing a radical left-wing political agenda in the UK, as the following paragraphs briefly discuss. First of all, it is important to ask whether the Labour Party should be viewed as an agent that could advance a radical political economic agenda in the UK, given that many neo-Marxists have warned of the limitations of using the state to advance anti-capitalist and socialist causes. In the 1970s, the famous debate between Ralph Miliband and Nicos Poulantzas on the nature of the state (see Miliband 1969, 1973; Poulantzas 1976) raised important questions about how, in addition to state managers’ generally sympathetic stance to the capitalist status quo (the ‘instrumentalist’ perspective associated with Miliband), there are deep structural constraints that limit the state from pursuing options that contradict capitalist interests, which means that changes in state personnel will not simply bring about radical transformation of capitalist society (the ‘structuralist’

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perspective associated with Poulantzas).1 There are some contemporary left-wing scholars, however, who have argued that capturing the state to advance socialist agenda should not be ruled out. For example, whilst accepting that there are elements of truth in both Miliband’s and Poulantzas’ theories of the state, Coates (2013) argued that left-leaning political parties could use the state to manage the capitalist economy in favour of the labouring class, and also to instigate social redistribution and institutional reforms (Coates 2013, 50). Drawing from Poulantzas’ work on the democratic road to socialism (Poulantzas 1978) and Panitch and Gindin (2017) also pointed to the importance of institutional reforms, particularly that of democratising state apparatuses to support alternative ways of organising the economy, such as by supporting collective property rights and further socialisation of the economy (Panitch and Gindin 2017, 178–182). For Poulantzas (1978), the central concern of the democratic road to socialism was how to combine social struggles within and outside the state in order to radically transform the state, its apparatuses and representative democracy, as well as promote direct democracy and selfmanagement bodies in a comprehensive manner (Poulantzas 1978, 79, 83–86). Chapter 2 expands on the discussion above by exploring academic debates on the Labour Party and the possibility of parliamentary socialism in the UK. Chapters 3 and 4 also draw on the work of Erik Olin Wright (2010, 2019) to help analyse the transformative potential of Labour’s policies under Corbyn. Wright (2010) argued that the state should be seen as ‘a hybrid structure’ containing contradictory non-capitalist and (predominantly) capitalist elements (Wright 2010, 190), and that it is an important site of struggle to push for transformative social change. This, however, does not mean that bottom-up practices to challenge capitalism should be ignored, but that the state could be used to widen space for bottom-up initiatives (Wright 2019, 64). Having ‘civil societybased collective actors’ and progressive political parties working together to ‘erode capitalism’ (Wright 2019, 121), as well as encouraging these collective efforts (Wright 2019, 142–143), is also important.

1 These are popular characterisations of the two perspectives that formed subsequent debates, which arguably do not capture the nuances in Miliband’s and Poulantzas’ arguments. The instrumentalist interpretation of Miliband’s work, for example, might overlook the importance of state elite’s ideological socialisation and ideology’s role in perpetuating capitalism (Konings 2010, 178–179).

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As discussed previously, the book also uses a Coxian critical political economy approach to enrich its analyses on the nature of the state, the constraints imposed on the state by the global capitalist system, and the prospect of transformative radical change. Cox (1981) argued that agents cannot act absolutely freely as their actions are situated within ‘a framework of action’ or ‘historical structures’ that can be studied through a historical approach. It is further recognised that this ‘framework of action’—‘a particular combination of thought patterns, material conditions and human institutions which has a certain coherence among its elements’—changes over time and that critical theory’s central concern is to explore these changes (Cox 1981, 135). To analyse the current historical structures that are constraining the actions of individuals, the Coxian approach takes into account configurations of three main forces: material capabilities, ideas and institutions. It also introduces a dialectical element by studying emerging rival structures or configurations of forces that could lead to alternatives (Cox 1981, 135–136). On this issue, Marsh’s dialectical approach to the relationships between ‘the material’ and ‘the ideational’ provides supportive insight, as it highlights how both the material and the ideational constrain the actions of agents, and affirms that material reality does affect the effectiveness of narratives (Marsh 2018, 210–211). Cox is famous for using his historical structures approach to study how the world order came about, and how it might change and be transformed through the interactions of social forces, forms of state and world orders (Cox 1981, 141). This may not appear relevant to the study of British political economy. However, the relevant insight from Cox is that social forces, forms of state and world orders are interconnected and that at each level dominant and rival structures of the three main forces—material capabilities, ideas and institutions—continue to operate (Cox 1981, 137– 138). This is useful in the book’s conceptualisation of how competing social forces could give rise to a different form of state, and also helps to highlight how an analysis of the state, and of domestic politics, could benefit from taking into account domestic and transnational forces. These points are further explored below. From a Coxian or neo-Gramscian perspective, the ‘form of state’ is based on the characteristics of leading social forces that managed to combine cross-class and factional interests and successfully form a hegemonic ‘historical bloc’. By highlighting how social forces shape the nature of the state, this theoretical conception of the state takes into account

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state–civil society relations and supports the view that there can be different forms of state based on the results of political struggles (Bieler and Morton 2006, 90–92). Notably, analyses of social forces should also take into account seemingly ‘non-class’ issues such as ‘peace, ecology and feminism’ (Cox 1987, 353, cited in Bieler and Morton 2006, 90) and other forms of identity such as those based on nationalism, religion and gender (Bieler and Morton 2006, 90). Moreover, the concepts of ‘class’ and class identity should be historicised based on the process of economic exploitation rather than seen as a static category (Bieler and Morton 2006, 90). Central to a neo-Gramscian analysis is the focus on rival counterhegemonic historical blocs that engage in anti-capitalist transformative politics (for example, see Rupert 2005, 492). Neo-Marxist perspectives also provide additional insights on the conceptualisation of counterhegemony. As Poulantzas argued, advancing democratic socialism would require a long process of modifying ‘the relationship of forces within the state apparatuses’ (Poulantzas 1978, 81–82), so the democratic socialist project ought to rely on broad-based popular alliances, such as women and ecological movements, to guard against obstruction from capitalist interests (Poulantzas 1978, 85–86). Whilst people are shaped by structural social relations, they should also be seen as ‘conscious initiators of actions’, whether as individuals or as collective entities (Wright 2019, 123). Although the institutional limits to social empowerment are fixed in stable capitalist democracies, it has been argued that there can be historical moments where these limits can be seriously challenged to establish mutually beneficial class collaborations (Wright 2010, 363–364). In these historical junctures, it is possible for the state to push through ‘symbiotic transformations’ or reforms that strengthen capitalism as well as support democratic socialist alternatives (Wright 2019, 110). Notably, Cox (1981) did not prioritise institutions over the ideological or material forces, and he recognised that ‘institutions may be out of phase’ with changes in ideas and material forces, which could undermine their hegemonic positions (Cox 1981, 137). Important to the construction of counter-hegemonic projects are also ‘organic intellectuals’ who can help to contest hegemonic ideas in society (Morton 2007, 92). However, organic intellectuals ought to be wary of their elitist cosmopolitanism tendencies and instead try to develop ‘national-popular’ strategies that are relevant to the socioeconomic needs and cultural demands of the general public (McNally

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2009, 62). Chapters 3 and 4 return to these issues in their discussions of the challenges that Labour faced under Corbyn. Drawing on the framework discussed above, this book analyses Labour under Corbyn as an attempt to establish a counter-hegemonic historical bloc, and takes into consideration material capabilities, ideas and institutions that constrained and/or enabled the Corbyn project. The following chapters also explore structural economic problems that help to justify the need to reform the capitalist economy. Needless to say, however, that people perceive the causes and the solutions to their problems differently. Despite the potential of Labour’s policies under Corbyn to address structural problems in the British political economy, as Chapters 3 and 4 discuss, Labour did not manage to convince enough voters to support its transformative project. On this issue, the book makes use of Colin Hay’s (1999) distinction between structural contradictions and the narration of ‘crisis’, and different types of responses to the identification of crisis. This framework helps in the analysis of Labour’s failure to win power in 2019. Another important insight from the Coxian perspective is how social forces can operate beyond state boundaries, whilst states can be seen as intermediaries between global and local forces (Cox 1981, 141). In the post-World War II historical juncture, for example, international economic institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank helped to propagate certain norms around the world. Certain state agencies such as ministries of finance also adjusted domestic policies to resemble generally accepted international norms. Additionally, since the 1970s one can observe the dominance of internationally oriented sectors over nationally oriented sectors, as well as a more prominent role for finance capital over industrial capital (Cox 1981, 145–147). The dominant position of finance capital in the UK and its regressive material consequences for society are discussed in Chapter 2. Chapter 4 also explores Labour’s attempt under Corbyn to challenge the finance-led growth model. Under contemporary global political economic arrangements, it can be argued that states are constrained from pursuing policies that deviate from ‘international norms’ that reflect neoliberal economic ideas, which include support for deregulation, free trade and foreign direct investment. These ideas and policies support economic globalisation and serve to aid capitalist accumulation (Lavelle 2008, 22). States are generally perceived as structurally constrained because uninterrupted capital accumulation relies (at least partly) on business confidence, and states might not pursue

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certain policies due to fear of transnational capital flight (for example, see Rupert 2005, 486, and also see a brief overview of different perspectives on globalisation and state autonomy in Marsh 2018, 210–211). It has been argued, for example, that British governments have adopted neoliberal policies, such as privatisation, deregulation, lower taxes and a flexible labour market, due to capital flight concerns (Thompson 1996, 251). Chapter 2 discusses further how the New Labour and Conservative governments before 2015 subscribed to these ideas. It is important, however, to note that the extent of states’ autonomy to choose what economic policies to implement is still being debated. For example, Hirst (1999) used empirical evidence to suggest that capital is not as ‘footloose’ as some believe, whilst states have some degree of independence when it comes to macroeconomic policies (Hirst 1999, 84– 86). Consistent with the critical realist framework discussed above, the book attempts to analyse structural factors that constrain state actions, as well as how state managers interpret global structural constraints on the state. The book also draws on the ‘structurationist approach’, which conceptualises states and globalisation as ‘co-constitutive’ (Hobson and Ramesh 2002, 8), to better understand strategies that states may opt to pursue. Even though states are ‘embedded within, and shaped by, domestic and global social forces/structures’, they also have agency (Hobson and Ramesh 2002, 8). It has been argued that states may use their positions in the global, regional and domestic realms to mitigate, overcome or adapt to structural constraints, often by playing one spatial realm against the others. For example, the state might become a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to halt domestic demands for trade protectionism. However, as a member of the WTO, the state would also be pressured to deepen its liberal economic policies. Overall, states can be shaped by domestic as well as global structures, but this does not completely take away its agency (Hobson and Ramesh 2002, 10–12). As discussed in Chapter 3, some support the UK’s exit from the European Union (Brexit) because it would allow the UK government to pursue neoliberal policies even more intensely. Chapter 4 also returns to the issue of state autonomy in its analysis of constraints on Labour’s policies to transform the British political economy.

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Main Arguments The central argument of the book is that political economic contexts before 2015 provided ideological, material and institutional conditions that opened political space for a left-wing Labour Party. However, dominant historical structures characterised by economic neoliberalism, conservative ideas and political institutions, continued to provide the ‘frame of action’ that severely limited the possibility of a radical leftwing Labour Party coming to power. Chapter 2 discusses how Labour’s commitment to social democracy declined as Thatcherism and neoliberal economics rose to a hegemonic position in the late 1970s. It further argues that, although New Labour governments (1997–2010) managed to expand public expenditures for socially beneficial purposes, it also led the UK deeper into an unbalanced, unequal and finance-led economy. Despite its electoral successes, New Labour arguably left Labour with no inspiring alternatives to austerity, neoliberal economics and finance-led growth to offer voters after the 2008 economic crisis. In addition, it is argued that material inequality, the centrist political economic consensus and the hierarchical and elitist British political tradition contributed to democratic disaffection in the UK, and that this discontent was partly expressed in Labour grassroots’ support for Corbyn in the 2015 Labour leadership election. Another central argument of the book is that Labour under Corbyn tried to establish a counter-hegemonic historical bloc and that, to a certain extent, it was able to propagate alternative economic ideas and policies. Labour challenged the primacy of the finance sector over the industrial sector, promoted alternative models of ownership, and put forward a bold green industrial strategy. It also challenged political norms through the promotion of extra-parliamentary forces and grassroots political mobilisation. Nevertheless, as indicated by the General Election results in 2017 and 2019, the dominant historical structures continued to provide the ‘frame of action’ that severely limited Labour’s electoral chances. Chapter 3 discusses how, in addition to Labour’s strategic errors in the 2019 election and other shortcomings, the UK’s preoccupation with Brexit stole the limelight away from Labour’s radical reform agenda. Ultimately, Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party was more successful at creating a new right-of-centre ‘hegemonic bloc’ based on the propagation of populist Brexit narratives.

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Contrary to common portrayals, it is argued in Chapter 4 that Labour’s policies under Corbyn went beyond the promotion of a centralised state and conventional ‘tax and spend’ policies. Moreover, it would be misleading to characterise the policies as populist, nationalist, backward looking and anti-business. Labour’s economic policies aimed to redress structural economic problems such as inequality and uneven regional development, and sought to tackle contemporary challenges such as climate change and disruptive technologies. Labour wanted to increase productivity and investments in the economy, and to secure long-term economic growth. In addition, it clearly promoted economic democracy, the devolution of power and progressive internationalism. Labour’s policies were likely to face great opposition, including from transnational capital groups and state bureaucracy. If Labour had come to power, their policies might also have required adjustment and further development due to possible implementation problems. Nevertheless, the book generally argues in favour of Labour’s economic policies under Corbyn; the policies contained important political economic ideas embedded in progressive social goals, and were supported by valid economic arguments. Whilst it is natural for the Labour Party to focus on winning elections, the book argues that the party also needs to adopt a long view of political struggle for radical change so as not to shrink the space for progressive politics. This is why, even after Labour’s bitter disappointment following its 2019 General Election defeat, it is important to guard against reactionary responses to shift the party back to the centre-ground. It is argued that, post-Corbyn, Labour and the Left could continue to popularise progressive political and economic ideas, support bottom-up economic initiatives and institutions at the local level, campaign for political reforms, and foster alliances at the international level. Chapter 4 briefly discusses how the post-coronavirus economic situation has opened up opportunities for the Left to promote progressive economic alternatives, although the political outcome is far from certain. It is up to the post-Corbyn Labour Party to navigate through the changing political and economic landscape and create broad-based political support in society to effect change.

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Book Outline Chapter 2 discusses academic writings on the Labour Party and parliamentary socialism. It then analyses the material, ideological and institutional political economic conditions before 2015 that both constrained and facilitated the Corbyn project. This includes discussions of the rise of the New Right and neoliberalism, as well as the emergence of ‘New Labour’ and the centrist political consensus that lasted many years. Furthermore, the chapter discusses the UK’s conservative-leaning political rules, norms and institutions, including its powerful right-wing mainstream media, and argues that they help to constrain the prospects of radical politics in the UK. Chapter 3 focuses on structural constraints and political obstacles that Labour faced under Corbyn. In the first section, various factors that contributed to Corbyn’s victory in the 2015 Labour leadership election are explored. The second section then discusses conservative constraints that limited Labour’s electoral chances, as well as conflicts within the party. The third and fourth sections discuss Labour’s 2017 and 2019 General Election campaigns and results, including how Brexit complicated the situation in 2019. The fifth and final section further analyses Labour’s political challenges. Its analysis draws on Hay’s (1999) conceptualisation of crisis narratives and structural contradictions, as well as Erik Olin Wright’s (2010, 2019) work on democratic socialist transformation. Chapter 4 focuses on Labour’s policies under Corbyn, which aimed to promote a radical transformation of the British political economy. The first section briefly describes how the chapter takes a different view to that of mainstream accounts of Corbynism in political science literature. The second section summarises important components of Labour’s 2017 and 2019 manifestos. The third section evaluates criticisms directed at Labour’s economic policies. The possibility of strong opposition to the implementation of these policies if Labour had come to power is also discussed. The fourth and final section draws on socialist writings and the book’s Coxian/Gramcian theoretical approach to reflect on Labour after Corbyn and the future of dissent for the Left. The final chapter summarises the book’s main arguments. It also discusses how the study of the Labour Party under Corbyn in this book might be relevant to the study of politics in other countries where neoliberal economic policies and political centrism are increasingly being questioned.

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References Bieler, Andreas, and Adam David Morton. 2006. “A Critical Theory Route to Hegemony, World Order and Historical Change. Neo-Gramscian Perspectives in International Relations.” In Global Restructuring, State, Capital and Labour. Contesting Neo-Gramscian Perspectives, edited by Andreas Bieler, Werner Bonefeld, Peter Burnham, and Adam David Morton. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Coates, David. 2013. “Labour after New Labour: Escaping the Debt.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 15 (1): 38–52. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-856X.2012.00514.x. Cox, Robert W. 1981. “Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory.” Millennium—Journal of International Studies 10: 126–55. https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298810100020501. ———. 1987. Production, Power and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History. New York: Columbia University Press. Hay, Colin. 1999. “Crisis and the Structural Transformation of the State: Interrogating the Process of Change.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 1 (3): 317–44. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-856X.00018. Hirst, Paul. 1999. “Has Globalisation Killed Social Democracy?” The Political Quarterly 70 (1): 84–96. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.70.s1.8. Hobson, John M., and M. Ramesh. 2002. “Globalisation Makes of States What States Make of It: Between Agency and Structure in the State/Globalisation Debate.” New Political Economy 7 (1): 5–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/135 6346012011549. Konings, Martijn. 2010. “Renewing State Theory.” Politics 30 (3): 174–82. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9256.2010.01381.x. Lavelle, Ashley. 2008. The Death of Social Democracy: Political Consequences in the 21st Century. Aldershot: Ashgate. Marsh, David. 2018. “Meta-Theoretical Issues.” In Theory and Methods in Political Science, edited by Vivien Lowndes, David Marsh, and Gerry Stoker, 4th ed., 199–218. London: Palgrave. Marsh, David, Selen A. Ercan, and Paul Furlong. 2018. “A Skin Not a Sweater: Ontology and Epistemology in Political Science.” In Theory and Methods in Political Science, edited by Vivien Lowndes, David Marsh, and Gerry Stoker, 4th ed., 177–98. London: Palgrave. McNally, Mark. 2009. “Gramsci’s Internationalism, the National-Popular and the Alternative Globalisation Movement.” In Gramsci and Global Politics. Hegemony and Resistance, edited by Mark McNally and John Schwarzmantel, 58–75. Oxon: Routledge. Miliband, Ralph. 1969. State in Capitalist Society. London: Quartet Books.

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———. 1973. “Poulantzas and the Capitalist State.” New Left Review 82 (November–December): 83–92. https://newleftreview.org/issues/I82/ articles/ralph-miliband-poulantzas-and-the-capitalist-state. Morton, Adam David. 2007. Unravelling Gramsci. London: Pluto Press. Panitch, Leo, and Sam Gindin. 2017. “Class, Party and the Challenge of State Transformation.” In Reflections on the Future of the Left, edited by David Coates, 159–85. Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda Publishing Limited. Poulantzas, Nicos. 1976. “The Capitalist State: A Reply to Miliband and Laclau.” New Left Review 95 (January–February): 63–83. https://newleftre view.org/issues/I95/articles/nicos-poulantzas-the-capitalist-state-a-reply-tomiliband-and-laclau. ———. 1978. “Towards a Democratic Socialism.” New Left Review 109 (May– June): 75–87. https://newleftreview.org/issues/I109/articles/nicos-poulan tzas-towards-a-democratic-socialism. Rupert, Mark. 2005. “Reading Gramsci in an Era of Globalising Capitalism.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 8 (4): 483–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230500205060. The Labour Party. 2018. “John McDonnell’s Full Speech to Labour Conference 2018.” 2018. https://labour.org.uk/press/john-mcdonnells-full-speech-lab our-conference-2018/?fbclid=IwAR3g67-DhGB81p8tBUhpskWMQgtfNLi J7GqJaLBI25uGAu9O71AY9ZtgZFM. Thompson, Noel. 1996. Political Economy and the Labour Party: The Economics of Democratic Socialism, 1884–1995. London: UCL Press. Wright, Erik Olin. 2010. Envisioning Real Utopias. London and New York: Verso. ———. 2019. How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century. London and New York: Verso.

CHAPTER 2

Labourism and Structural Constraints Before 2015

Abstract The chapter discusses academic writings on the Labour Party and parliamentary socialism. It then analyses the material, ideological and institutional political economic conditions before 2015 that both constrained and facilitated the Corbyn project. This includes discussions of the rise of the New Right and neoliberalism, as well as the emergence of ‘New Labour’ and the centrist political consensus that lasted many years. Furthermore, the chapter discusses the UK’s conservative-leaning political rules, norms and institutions, including its powerful right-wing mainstream media, and argues that they help to constrain the prospects of radical politics in the UK. Keywords Parliamentary socialism · New labour · Finance-led growth model · Right-wing media · British Political Tradition

Introduction Jeremy Corbyn was perhaps the most unlikely person to become leader of the Labour Party in 2015. Some of the Members of Parliament (MPs) who agreed to nominate him for the leadership election did so not because they believed in his left-wing ideas, but because they were certain that he would not win and that he would only help to ‘broaden the

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debate’. When Corbyn won the leadership election, many social commentators, academics, Labour supporters, activists and politicians sympathetic to the progressive cause in the UK were divided on whether to support him and ‘the Left-turn’ of the Labour Party. Their reluctance and opposition can partly be traced back to old debates on the Labour Party and ‘parliamentary socialism’, and also to mainstream interpretations of the lessons for the Left that were drawn from political developments in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including the rise to dominance of Margaret Thatcher in British politics, and also the subsequent electoral successes of ‘New Labour’. The 2019 General Election defeat reignited this discussion on the extent to which Labour’s commitment to socialist values acts as a hindrance to winning elections. This chapter is divided into three main sections. The first section builds on the theoretical discussion in the last chapter on the transformative potential of the state in capitalist societies. It discusses selected examples of academic writings on the possibility that the Labour Party could help to advance parliamentary socialism, particularly that of R. H. Tawny, Ralph Miliband, Stuart Hall, Leo Panitch, Colin Leys and David Coates. The second and third sections then focus on analysing the material, ideological and institutional political economic contexts before 2015 that both constrained and facilitated the Corbyn project. In the second section, the historical development of the British political economy and the Labour Party since the Second World War are explored, with a focus on the New Labour years under Tony Blair. The third section then discusses the UK’s conservative-leaning political rules, norms and institutions, including its powerful right-wing media, which encourage a centrist political consensus and constrain the prospect of radical left-wing politics in the UK. Overall, this chapter argues that New Labour managed to use economic growth to fund public spending whilst in office, but that it also encouraged a finance-led and unbalanced economy that supports the perpetuation of structural inequalities. After the financial crisis of 2008, Labour’s neglect of alternative left-wing ideas meant that it could not offer inspiring progressive alternatives to austerity, neoliberal economics and a finance-led growth model. This was arguably a missed opportunity for the Left and for radical politics. In addition to the short-term goal of winning elections, it is argued that the Labour Party ought not to retreat from consistent ideological struggle to advance democratic socialism in the UK, since this is important to securing its electoral chances in the long term. Furthermore, it is suggested that material inequality, together

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with the hierarchical, elitist British Political Tradition (BPT), might have helped to create democratic disaffections in the UK, which have partly been expressed as grassroots support for Corbyn. Nevertheless, Labour under Corbyn was significantly constrained by conservative ideas and institutions, as discussed in Chapter 3.

Parliamentary Socialism and Labourism Revisited In the 1930s, R. H. Tawney suggested that ‘[t]he greatest weakness of British Labour … is its lack of a creed’ or, in other words, its lack of common political goals and the means to achieve them (Tawney 1932, reprinted in 2011, 23). Tawney argued that if this underlying problem remained unsolved, then, all of Labour’s moderate attempts to transform society would likely disappoint. Instead of merely concentrating on wining power, the Labour Party needed to prepare itself to become a socialist government, and it needed to educate people as to how a socialist Labour government would be met with significant opposition (Tawney 1932, reprinted in 2011, 23–31). Many decades later in 1983, Ralph Miliband argued that leaders of the Labour Party had little commitment to socialist objectives and that they only wanted to solve immediate, short-term problems within the capitalist framework, rather than fundamentally transform society. Labour governments had not only accepted the capitalist economic system; they had also accepted the centralised and elitist democratic system. They consented to hereditary monarchy and House of Lords peers, and prioritised parliamentary political process and winning elections over grassroots and extra-parliamentary political activities (Miliband 1983, reprinted in 2015, 291–292, 305). Miliband therefore uses the term ‘Labourism’, as opposed to socialism, to describe the Labour Party’s ideological advocacy of reform within the boundaries of capitalism (‘ideology of adaptation’), which is different from an ideology of transformation such as that of Marxism (‘ideology of rupture’) (Miliband 1983, reprinted in 2015, 293). In another call for transformation, Stuart Hall (1988) argues that mass mobilisation is needed to advance socialism and unpack ‘the oldest capitalist system in the world’ (Hall 1988, 187). Reflecting a Gramscian perspective, Hall emphasises the fundamental importance of transforming ‘popular consciousness in a socialist direction’ (Hall 1988, 187) and

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engaging in ‘the politics of populism’ in a way that would unite heterogeneous groups of people with different interests around the ‘root’ ideas underlying the party’s socialist programme (Hall 1988, 191). Recent reflections on the role of the Labour Party in advancing parliamentary socialism include, for example, those of Panitch and Leys (2001). They argue for a ‘new socialist project’ that could rise from the anger and disappointment with global capitalism. Important to this project are democratic discussions in the party, similar to that of the New Left project in the 1970s. One crucial element of the new socialist project is a radical reconceptualisation of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary practices (Panitch and Leys 2001, 268). This involves discussions of how to radically reform the party and the state so that the extra-parliamentary party is not merely seen as subservient to parliament. Other important tasks include finding mainstream media platforms for the Left to help support massive-scale political mobilisation (Panitch and Leys 2001, 263, 270–271). Another recent contribution comes from Coates (2013), who suggests that the next Labour government ought to be more committed to socialist values such as equality, social justice and deepening democratic practices. It should also champion democratic management of the economy and commit to bringing a ‘fundamental rupture’ with neoliberalism, including the ways in which capital are being regulated by the state (Coates 2013, 47–48). Although structural contradictions in capitalism cannot simply be ‘legislated away’, a left-wing government should recognise these contradictions and try to ‘widen the space for social reform by managing capital in the interests of labour’ (Coates 2013, 50). A left-wing political party arguably faces a much more difficult task compared to that of a conservative party, because a left-wing party has to engage in ‘hegemonic’ politics, as opposed to ‘technocratic’ politics (Coates 2013, 51). To bring about progressive change, a left-wing government has to build an effective counter-hegemonic project that contests ‘the policy status quo and the ideological status quo’ (Coates 2013, 51). Similar to the writings of other socialist thinkers, Coates (2013) highlights the importance of preparing for a left-wing Labour government that is likely to face significant resistance. This includes ‘shaping’ the electorate ahead of time by educating them on how a Labour government will try to transform society, so that they are well-prepared to support the party’s ‘new social contract’ and know how to handle conservative media. With widespread support from the electorate, a left-wing

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government would likely be able to implement some progressive social and institutional reforms (Coates 2013, 49–51). The socialist scholars discussed above advocate turning the Labour Party into a mass-mobilisation party capable of challenging hegemonic ideas, promoting radical institutional reforms, and transitioning beyond the capitalist economy. It can be argued, however, that past Labour leaders tended not to share these views. Miliband, for example, criticised the Wilson and Callaghan governments (1964–1970 and 1974–1979) for cutting welfare services and curbing wages, which alienated potential Labour voters and those in the labour movement (Miliband 1983, reprinted in 2015, 294–295). At one point, Miliband proposed establishing a new socialist party, since the Labour Party was a ‘dead end’ that trapped British socialists (Miliband 1983, reprinted in 2015, 303). However, it can be argued that the actions of the Wilson and Callaghan governments were constrained by the material conditions of the global political economy in the late 1970s, which made Labour’s commitment to social democracy unsustainable. As Hall (1988) argues, Labour leaders’ commitment to social democratic reforms was ‘undermined by fundamental weaknesses in British industrial capitalism and by the logic of capitalism itself’ (Hall 1988, 186). The Labour governments in the 1960s and 1970s chose to ‘reform’ rather than ‘transform’, and then finally ‘exhausted [the] political ideas of the last two decades’ (Hall 1988, 187). This enabled the New Right and Thatcherism to establish ideological hegemony and redefine people’s common sense in a way that deeply infiltrated and gathered support from traditional labour supporters, such as skilled workers and working women (Hall 1988, 188). The next section continues to discuss the decline of Keynesianism and social democratic policies in the 1970s, as well as British political economy during the Thatcher and Blair years.

Ideological, Institutional and Material Political Economic Constraints It has been argued that, despite some flirtations with the idea of socialism, the Labour Party was never committed to bringing about a socialist society (Thorpe 1997, 234), and that its foundation was rooted in many different schools of political thought, such as social liberalism and Victorian ethical reformism (Jones 1996, 2). Given that Labour governments in the aftermath of the Second World War and in the mid-1970s

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paved the way for the foundation of a welfare state, and also adopted what can broadly be described as Keynesian macroeconomic management (Thompson 1996, 143–235), it is perhaps more appropriate to view the Labour Party as a social democratic party. By the mid-1970s, however, Keynesianism was increasingly discredited, not just in the UK but internationally, due to its inability to explain and cope with stagflation amongst other issues, whilst monetarism emerged as the new dominant global economic doctrine. The sterling crisis of 1976 also prompted the Labour Party leadership to adopt a monetarist policy approach to secure loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (Panitch and Leys 2001, 117; Thompson 1996, 236–237). After the 1979 General Election defeat, left and right factions within Labour bitterly competed for leadership, which led a group of Labour MPs to split from the party to form the Social Democratic Party in 1981. Another disastrous electoral defeat in 1983 was blamed on the supposedly unpopular left-wing manifesto, now famously referred to as the ‘longest suicide note in history’ (Kavanagh 1997, 182–183; Pimlott 2005, 179). This narrative helped Neil Kinnock to become leader of the party in 1983 and enabled him to shift the direction of the party rightwards in search of the centre-ground (Kavanagh 1997, 185; Thompson 1996, 224). Instead of taking on Thatcherism through the renewal of social democracy and left-leaning platforms, the Labour Party slowly conceded ideological ground and moved to occupy a centrist position in British politics to appeal to median voters in a Downsian fashion (Garrett 1992, 378; Norris 2001, 32). This repositioning was solidified under Tony Blair, who became leader in 1994 and rebranded the party ‘New Labour’. Its policies on taxation and public spending, for example, were positioned at the centre-ground of the left-right political spectrum (Norris 2001, 35). New Labour’s landslide victory in the 1997 General Election is often used as evidence to support the view that Labour lost four elections between 1979 and 1992 because its policies were too radical and did not therefore appeal to median voters (Wickham-Jones 2005/2006, 654). One of New Labour’s legacies is the belief that ‘winning’ means being in power, and that to win elections means appealing to the centre-ground instead of trying to build support for left-wing ideas and policies (Panitch and Leys 2001, 241). After 18 years as the Opposition, New Labour sought to win the next election by adopting a pro-business approach under the perceived constraints of globalisation. It has been argued, for example, that prominent party figures, such as Peter Mandelson, believed

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globalisation imposed strong constraints on social and economic policies (Panitch and Leys 2001, 245). Anthony Giddens’ concept of ‘the Third Way’—an attempt to modernise social democracy with a more friendly approach towards capitalism—is often cited as an inspiration for New Labour. However, the ‘Third Way’ has been criticised for its vagueness, which allows the concept to accommodate different, even contradictory, political philosophical views on how the government should promote core values, such as opportunity, responsibility and community (White 2001, 5, 11). As for the New Labour project, it involved attempts to balance marketfriendly neoliberal policies and social goals. The Labour government in 1997 continued many neoliberal economic policies similar to that of the Conservative government that preceded it, including a finance-led growth model and relatively low business taxes, prioritisation of reducing public debt, extensions of privatisation, deregulation of the labour market, and reduction of trade unions’ power (Beer 2001, 28; Farnham 1996, 593; Gamble 2010, 648; Gray 2004, 43). A constrained discretion macroeconomic approach was used to establish ‘credibility’ with the markets and the voters, in hope that the government could use this credibility to pursue active macroeconomic policies when necessary (Weldon 2013, 22). New Labour’s abolishment of Clause IV of Labour’s Constitution, which ended its commitment to nationalisation, can also be seen as an attempt to win business confidence (Wickham-Jones 2005/2006, 667). From 1999 onwards, however, the Labour government increased public spending quite significantly, especially on the National Health Service (NHS) and education (Gamble 2010, 649). New Labour has been portrayed in different ways: as an attempt to accommodate Thatcherism, as a result of the party’s gradual transformation, as a modern form of social democracy adjusted to suit the contemporary political economic context (Meredith 2008, 159), and as a ‘hybrid’ socio-economic development regime (Lavery 2019, 8). Some scholars argue that New Labour can be seen as a modernised form of Keynesianism where, given the power of transnational financial capital, the government needed to achieve a balance between ‘credibility’ and fiscal policy space (Clift and Tomlinson 2007, 47–48). During its early years in power, New Labour restrained its spending and focused on establishing credibility with the financial sector but, from 2000 onwards, social spending significantly increased, including spending on health, education and poverty reduction policies (Smith 2014, 605–608, 615). Hay (2007),

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however, argues that New Labour cannot be seen as Keynesian because the budget surplus accumulated between 1997 and 1999, which was used for investments from 1999 until the 2001 General Election and slightly beyond, was not part of a strategy to promote full employment or to manage the business cycle. Rather, public expenditure in this period can more appropriately be interpreted as part of ‘the political business cycle’ (Hay 2007, 192). Regardless of how New Labour is portrayed, it can be argued that its reliance on finance-led economic growth to fund the expansion of its public expenditures, and also on borrowing from the financial market (especially since 2002), have proven to be unsustainable. Deregulation of the financial sector helped spur economic growth that its socially redistributive policies relied upon, but deregulation arguably also contributed to the 2008 financial crisis that ended this model of development (Smith 2014, 615–616; also see Lavery 2019, 8–9). Moreover, New Labour’s embrace of a finance-led growth model and its neglect of more fundamentally transformative progressive policies had long-term ideological, institutional and material consequences that served to constrain the Labour Party and left-wing politics in the years to come, as the following paragraphs elaborate. During the Thatcher era, trade and finance were prioritised at the expense of British industry, which encouraged financial speculation and deindustrialisation (Alavi 1997, 1906). Under New Labour, the Bank of England was reformed to make it independent from the government, and also to prioritise monetary policy (with inflation as the major concern) over fiscal policy. The ideological consequence of such an institutional change is that macroeconomic policies are ‘depoliticised’ and portrayed as technical matters (Hay 2004, 44), even though economic policy decisions are inherently political. These reforms supposedly helped to establish macroeconomic ‘credibility’, but it has also been argued that ‘competitiveness’ was sacrificed as a consequence (Hay 2004, 50). Using increases in the interest rate to control inflation was problematic during the New Labour years because, whilst it might have been appropriate to deal with the housing boom concentrated around South East England, it compounded recessionary effects in other regions and in the manufacturing sectors. Prioritising anti-inflationary goals might have also created a ‘vicious cycle’ of high interest rates and low investments in physical capital, which further constrained the UK’s productive economy (Hay 2004, 42–43). It has also been argued that traditional Keynesian

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characteristics of ensuring economic growth, based on rising wages, a welfare state and government demand management, have instead been replaced by ‘privatised Keynesianism’, in which economic growth is stimulated by housing and low-to-medium income household debts, as well as unregulated derivatives markets (Crouch 2009, 382, 392). Overall, these economic policies led to an unbalanced economy where the powerful financial sector thrived on speculations and private debts whilst the manufacturing base was weakened. Other serious problems include North–South domestic inequality and insufficient investments in public infrastructures (Faucher-King and Le Gales 2010 cited in Diamond 2013, 95). In addition to pursuing a finance-led economic development, it has been argued that New Labour pursued a ‘legitimation strategy’ through the expansion of public services in the areas of health, education and public transport to benefit those left out of the finance-led growth model (Lavery 2018, 31–32). Even though New Labour made positive contributions to the improvement of public services, introduced the minimum wage and reduced child poverty, it did not challenge capitalism as an economic model (Weldon 2013, 24) or attempt to implement progressive redistribution of income and wealth (Gamble 2010, 650–651). Its support of minimal regulation of the labour market also left British workers vulnerable to unemployment during recessions (Hay 2004, 47). The unbalanced and unequal nature of the finance-led growth model of the British economy became more apparent after the global economic crisis of 2008. The mainstream account of the crisis, propagated by the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats, attributed its cause to the debt and budget deficit of previous Labour governments (Craig 2015, cited in Gamble 2015, 157–158), rather than a fundamental problem with the growth model itself, and so policy responses focused on deficit reduction rather than a renewal of the UK’s manufacturing base (Hay 2012, cited in Rogers 2013, 3). The Conservative Party propagated the narrative that it was Labour’s over-spending that was to blame for the economic crisis (Craig 2015, cited in Gamble 2015, 157–158). As the third biggest party in Westminster at the time, the Liberal Democrats endorsement of this narrative helped to overwhelm Labour’s response (Gamble 2015, 158–159). Blair’s successor as Labour leader and Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, implemented some Keynesian measures during the initial phase of the 2008 economic crisis. However, these measures were abandoned in favour

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of austerity by the Conservative-Liberal Democrats coalition government that came to power in 2010 (Green and Lavery 2015, 897). Many macroeconomists, such as those at the Office of Budget Responsibility and Oxford economist Simon Wren-Lewis, have suggested that the austerity programme pursued by the coalition government in its first two years in office was unnecessarily severe, and that it was harmful to economic recovery that had already begun in early 2010 (see the discussion in Gamble 2015, 159). Whilst economists disagreed on the importance of ‘fiscal rectitude’, defined by spending cuts to maintain budget surpluses and large reductions in the UK’s debt to Gross Domestic Products (GDP) ratio, politicians in the main parties seemed to form a consensus in support of such ‘deficit fetishism’, which served to depoliticise the issue (Hopkin and Rosamond 2018, 649–650). The coalition government also constructed a narrative pitting ‘workers’ against ‘benefit claimants’ to gain support for its welfare reforms (Lavery 2018, 35– 36), even though its implemented welfare cap reduced the incomes of 7 million households in low-paid employment, as well as the incomes of 2.5 million unemployed households (Mason 2013, cited in Lavery 2018, 36). There were some discussions about ‘rebalancing’ the British economy after the economic crisis, particularly by reducing the dominant position of finance whilst stimulating the manufacturing and service sectors. Yet, by 2012, the government had gone back to privatised Keynesianism (Gamble 2015, 165). Monetary policy continued to be privileged over fiscal policies, which intensified existing inequality. Between 1961 and 2012, the incomes of the top 10% grew significantly more than the incomes of the bottom 10%, which helps to explain increased income inequality during the same period (Jenkins 2015, 10). On top of this, there is evidence that suggests austerity had regressive economic consequences. On the one hand, austerity policies between May 2010 and 2014/2015 negatively affected the bottom 50% of the income distribution more intensely than the rest of the population (Hills 2015, 5). Moreover, the burden of austerity disproportionately fell on those of working-age through the decline in real wages (Lavery 2018, 34). Real wages for low and middle-income earners declined in the years after the recession, and Britain’s wage share fell from 61.2% in 2009 to 58.2% in 2014, according to the European Commission’s Annual Macroeconomic Database (Green and Lavery 2015, 907). On the other hand, quantitative easing measures aimed at increasing asset prices (to boost demand to

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aid economic recovery) promoted regressive redistribution, since financial assets are concentrated in the hands of the wealthiest households in Britain (Green and Lavery 2015, 900–906). As a report from the Bank of England (2012) suggests, those who benefited from increased asset prices were mostly the top 5% of households that owned 40% of assets (cited in Green and Lavery 2015, 904). It can be argued that Labour failed to counter the narrative that it was their over-spending that caused the 2008 economic crisis (Gamble 2015, 159), and that this was a missed opportunity to push through reforms to rebalance the UK’s finance-led economy. As the following paragraphs elaborate, by 2015 Labour had lost the battle of ideas on how to manage the economy and allowed neoliberal economics to go more or less unchallenged, which contributed to dire political economic consequences. During the 2015 General Election campaign, Labour’s economic policies were not that different from the Conservatives’ policies (Craig 2015, cited in Gamble 2015, 160). Despite suggestions from academia that the British economic model needed rebalancing because growth was too reliant on the financial sector and the housing market in the South East (Froud et al. 2011, cited in Weldon 2013, 25), these important political economic issues were missing from the public debate. None of the major parties raised issues about how to restructure the economy to ensure future growth (which will affect the tax base that the state relies on) or how to increase productivity that would help increase wages and stimulate consumption-led economic growth (Gamble 2015, 162–166). Notably, past increases in employment were mainly in low-skill insecure sectors, and firms also used many wage suppression measures (Gamble 2015, 166; Green and Lavery 2015, 908). Ed Miliband, the then Labour leader, did advocate some progressive reforms to bring about a ‘responsible capitalism’ in Britain with ‘broader-based growth’ (E. Miliband 2012). However, Miliband was unable to counter the aforementioned mainstream narrative on the causes of the 2008 economic crisis, as well as right-wing media attacks on his policies and personality (discussed in the next section), and so he succumbed to the Conservatives’ dominant narrative and tried but failed to combat it by projecting an image of fiscal discipline (Watt 2015). For instance, Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls announced in the lead up to the election that Labour would not reverse the spending cuts of the previous government (Seymour 2016, 59). As many social critics pointed out, yielding to fiscal ‘discipline’ helped to

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keep the debate on the economy within the Conservatives’ narrow frame of discussion, instead of paving a way for progressive politics and alternative economic ideas (for example, see Monbiot 2015). Labour under Miliband also moved rightward and promised to control immigration to appease average voters, which ignited criticisms from left-wing activists in the party (for example, see Bush 2015). The roots of wage earners’ weak bargaining power is also important to discuss. This issue can be traced back to the Thatcher and New Labour governments that reduced the power of trade unions and deregulated the labour markets, which led to low unionisation and job insecurity (Beer 2001, 18; Farnham 1996, 588, 593). Moreover, inequality had arguably been sidelined by these governments. The rise in income inequality increased significantly between 1961 and 2012, particularly in the 1980s (Hills 2015, 10). The importance of poverty and inequality cannot be underestimated as they can be seen as structural problems that encourage financialisation, which made the economy more susceptible to financial crisis (Kumhof and Ranciere 2010, cited in Weldon 2013, 26–27). The roles that declining wage share and inequality played in reducing aggregate demand, which increased the need for privatised Keynesianism, were also insufficiently discussed in public debates (Green and Lavery 2015, 896; Weldon 2013, 26–27). Moreover, inequality affects people’s life opportunities, such as their access to higher education (Marsh 2008, 260–261) and lifespans. On average, people living in the poorest neighbourhoods in England die 7 years earlier than those in the richest neighbourhoods (Marmot 2010, 16). Chapter 3 also discusses how these material conditions might had laid the ground for a current of anti-politics that manifests itself in various ways, including in the support for Brexit and for Corbyn. The discussion so far has focused on the role of the Labour Party in promoting mainstream neoliberal economic ideas and policy practices, as well as its role in narrowing the discussion about structural reforms of the economy. The ideological and material consequences of New Labour discussed in this section call into question the sustainability of its form of social democracy and finance-led growth model, which clearly unravelled after the 2008 financial crisis. This section has argued that, despite implementing socially beneficial policies, New Labour failed to tackle growing inequality and was negligent in not seeking to widen space for alternative political economic ideas and policies whilst in power. This eventually

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undermined Labour’s role as a vehicle for progressive and radical leftwing politics. In other words, although the New Labour project might be viewed as a short-term political success, its approach undermined the party’s long-term chances of electoral success as it had no inspiring alternatives to austerity, neoliberal economics and finance-led growth to offer voters. Due to its lack of new progressive and radical ideas, Labour missed an opportunity to push forward alternative economic policies after the 2008 economic crisis. After Labour lost the 2015 General Election, the ideological defeat on economic policy was apparent, particularly when acting leader Harriet Harman whipped Labour MPs to abstain from voting on the new Conservative government’s Welfare Reform and Work Bill, which would intensify austerity (Seymour 2016, 60). It is understandable that Labour leaders made these choices given perceived constraints, such as the power of transnational capital in a globalised world (discussed in Chapter 1). This helps to explain why economic ‘credibility’ was a priority for New Labour. However, as the previous chapter discussed, the extent to which the state is constrained in its policy options by globalisation remains a matter of debate, and a more nuanced understanding of the relevant structures and agency is required. As critical realists have suggested, structures might constrain agents (state managers and politicians) to a certain extent, but it is agents who interpret the structures and, in turn, the structures can be altered by the agents’ actions (Marsh 2008, 253). In addition to economic constraints, political constraints likely played an equal and perhaps more crucial role in determining New Labour’s policy approach and its lack of interest in promoting left-leaning economic alternatives. As the next section explores, the UK’s dominant political norms, institutions and sociopolitical conservative ideas are obstacles to progressive and radical left-wing politics.

Political Rules, Institutions and Conservatism In ongoing debates on the British Political Tradition (BPT), some suggest there are multiple competing strands of political tradition, whilst others argue that there is a dominant hierarchical and elitist tradition in British politics (see Diamond and Richards 2012, 180–183; Flinders 2015, 245; Marsh and Hall 2016; McAnulla 2006). The latter is characterised by support for parliamentary sovereignty, strong government and the participation of citizens through the act of voting (Marsh and Hall 2007). It has

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been suggested that, throughout the development of British democracy, ‘the Executives’ have primarily been drawn from elites, who have incentives to maintain the status quo that is to their advantage (Marsh and Hall 2016, 134). However, some elements of the working class have also supported the continuation of the status quo, and endorsed institutions such as the monarchy and the supremacy of Parliament, which reinforced the dominant BPT (McKibbon 1990, 17 and 20, cited in Marsh and Hall 2016, 135). Even though New Labour implemented some constitutional reforms to decentralise power, most importantly the devolution of powers to Scotland and Wales (Gamble 2010, 645–646), it has been argued that the reforms were limited (Flinders 2015, 244–245). The ‘centralist traditions’ proved difficult to change as the central government did not trust local governments or the voluntary sector with important public services (Diamond and Richards 2012, 185; Gamble 2010, 647). Another argument is that structural inequalities in British society, which are entwined with social status, gender and ethnicity, are reflected in unequal access to the policy-making process and variation in degrees of political participation (Marsh 2008, 260–263). Given the dominant BPT and economic inequality unaddressed by past governments, it is perhaps not surprising to find that there is considerable ‘democratic disaffection’ or ‘democratic discontent’ in the UK—terms which refer to how the public generally believes in democracy but has negative views of ‘politics as usual’ at the institutional and individual levels (Flinders 2015, 244). Democratic discontent can be expressed in different ways, such as through declining party membership and low voter turnout. General elections after 1997 saw turnouts below 70%, with the lowest turnout in 2001 at only 59.4% (House of Commons Library statistics, cited in The Guardian Datablog 2012). In 2010 many surveyed non-voters expressed apathy about voting on the basis that it would not make a difference, as well as beliefs that they lack sufficient knowledge of politics, lack trust in politicians, and that only small differences existed between the main political parties (Survation poll, cited in Barker 2014). Other common complaints include that parliament is not representative of the UK population’s diverse social backgrounds, that MPs are out of touch with their local constituencies and the wider public, and that they are untrustworthy (Allen and Cairney 2015, 1–3). There is evidence to support these perceptions. For example, 35% of MPs elected in 2010 were privately educated, compared to a national average of 7% (The Sutton Trust 2010, cited in Jones 2014, 68), and most Cabinet members in 2010 had assets and/or

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investments estimated to be over one million GBP (Marsh and Hall 2016, 132). Negative perceptions are likely also fuelled by the Westminster expenses scandal in 2009, close ties between politicians and the private sector (Gonzalez-Bailon et al. 2013, in Allen and Cairney 2015, 3; Jones 2014, 71–77; Marsh and Hall 2016, 131–132), and more recently the Chilcot report findings which suggest that the UK’s participation in the Iraq war was based on dubious grounds (McSmith and Cooper 2016). The Downsian political strategy of vote-maximisation through centrist policy platforms might seem rational given the British majoritarian electoral system. However, it can contribute to democratic disaffection if voters become apathetic about centrist policies and yet that is all the main parties have to offer. Party conferences used to be a forum for party members to express their concerns and engage in the policy-making process, but in recent years policy decisions within the main parties have tended to be controlled more or less by ‘parliamentary elites’, and in 2008 they were viewed as rather similar by a majority of voters (Marsh 2016, 208). Moreover, regional economic inequality and different social attitudes make it difficult to formulate policies that will satisfy not only the areas of growth, where people tend to be supportive of the European Union (EU) and more likely to be pro-immigration and socially liberal, but also declining provincial areas where people tend to hold opposite views (Jennings et al. 2016, 372). Discontented voters who feel unrepresented by the centrism of the major parties might opt to vote for smaller right or left-wing parties that focus on particular concerns; although votes for smaller parties are unlikely to produce parliamentary representation given the UK’s firstpast-the-post electoral system. At the 2015 General Election, for example, smaller parties such as the right-wing UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the left-wing Green Party both benefited from democratic discontent (Flinders 2015, 250; Jennings et al. 2016, 876). UKIP, aided by concerns over immigration (Dennison and Goodwin 2015, 169), won roughly 3.88 million votes (12.6% of total votes), whilst the Greens received approximately 1.16 million votes (3.8% of total votes) (Hawkins et al. 2015, 11). However, as first-past-the-post distributes parliamentary seats according to constituency victories, as opposed to proportionally according to vote share, these parties won only a single parliamentary seat each. In contrast, the Scottish National Party (SNP), which received approximately only 1.45 million votes (4.7% of total votes), but importantly received the most votes in many Scottish constituencies, won 56

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seats (Hawkins et al. 2015, 11). Indeed, due to the electoral system, British politics will likely continue to be dominated by two and perhaps three main political parties. The prospect of left-wing political alternatives in the UK is also limited by the overwhelming power of the right-wing mainstream media, such as The Times, The Sun and Daily Mail. Whilst the right-wing press present themselves as a vanguard that opposes the political class by exposing their dubious practices (Stanyer 2003, 310), it can be argued that they reinforce socially and economically conservative ideas that protect the interests of political economic elites. They also use their position as influential shapers of public opinion to exert pressure on political parties to keep them in line. It has been argued, for example, that the mainstream media played an important role in soliciting public acceptance of ‘deficit fetishism’ by reinforcing the notion that the national economy is similar to that of a ‘household’, and that therefore austerity measures in hard times were appropriate (Hopkin and Rosamond 2018, 651–652). Recent estimates suggest that only 3 companies (News UK, DMG and Reach) dominate 83% of the national newspaper market in 2019 (5 companies dominate 80% of the market if online readers are also taken into account) (Media Reform Coalition 2019). Such concentrated ownership is cause for concern as it gives media moguls significant power to shape public narratives and political outcomes. Rupert Murdoch, who owns The Sun (daily circulation of 2 million between 1997 and 2015 (Fielding 2015, 63) and 1.4 million in 2018 (Media Reform Coalition 2019, 4)), for example, has admitted that he interferes in major issues, such as which party to back in a general election (House of Lords 2008, cited in Fenton 2016, 83). Some studies also suggest that issues such as law and order, immigration and Europe are avoided by parties or approached in ways intended not to provoke hostile reactions from the media (Davis 2002; Dean 2011, cited in Fenton 2016, 83). Moreover, as included in the findings of the Leveson Inquiry in 2012, frequent visits and mutually beneficial relationships seem to exist between politicians and media owners (Leveson 2012 cited in Fenton 2016, 81). Even in the digital age, there is evidence to suggest that mainstream media remains important in setting public agendas and perceptions; mainstream news outlets have strong presence online (Fenton 2016, 83) and shape the topics being discussed on radio and television (Fielding 2015, 63). In 2018, it was estimated that the print and online reach of the Daily Mail and The Sun were the highest of all national newspapers at 6.5 and

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7 million people per day, respectively (Media Reform Coalition 2019, 6). Small online news websites received far fewer site visits compared to larger and more established news sites (Media Reform Coalition 2019, 12–13). Right-wing media helped to defend the Conservative Party throughout the 1980s and 1990s (Jones 2014, 88–89). Tony Blair’s New Labour also had good relations with the mainstream media. Labour under Blair managed to exploit the party’s more neoliberal image and the Black Wednesday 1992 event, which discredited the Conservative Party’s economic competency, to receive Murdoch’s support in 1997. Shortly before the 1997 General Election, The Sun declared its support for Labour (Jones 2014, 91–92; Wickham-Jones 2005/2006, 667). New Labour gave a great deal of importance to news management (Gray 2004, 44), yet by 2002 its good relations with the media started to break down, and government messages began to have less impact as they were increasingly seen as ‘spin’ (Stanyer 2003, 309, 314). Labour under Blair did not pursue media reform, and the right-wing media turned on Labour as soon as it implemented policies contrary to the interests of media owners. Displeased with rises in the top rate of income tax from 40 to 45%, and a further rise to 50% during the economic crisis years of 2008 and 2009, the Murdoch press turned on Gordon Brown’s government, with The Sun claiming on 26 November 2008 that Labour had finally succumbed to socialism (Fielding 2010, 657). The Daily Mail and The Sun were amongst six out of ten national newspapers that supported the Conservative Party or the incumbent Conservative Liberal Democrats coalition government at the 2015 General Election, whilst only two national newspapers supported Labour (Wring and Ward 2015, 231). Right-wing media attacks became more venomous during Ed Miliband’s leadership of the Labour party. Some of Miliband’s economic policies included a tax hike on large companies to fund tax breaks for small businesses, a temporary freeze on energy bills as monopoly energy companies raised fuel prices, and measures to curb tax avoidance (Jones 2014, 64; Miliband 2012). Miliband promoted what he called ‘responsible capitalism’ (Fielding 2015, 62). However, he did not manage to overturn the narrative that the Labour Party was to blame for the economic crisis of 2008, nor was he able to challenge orthodox ideas about the economy (Fielding 2015, 62). As Miliband promoted progressive reforms to the British economy and supported the Leveson Report’s proposals for media regulation, the right-wing media branded him ‘red Ed’ (Fielding 2015,

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63). British tabloids also portrayed Miliband as having a strange personality, criticised him for running as Labour leader against his brother, and sometimes attacked his father, Ralph Miliband, who was a famous neo-Marxist academic (Fenton 2016, 83; Fielding 2015, 63). Chapter 3 discusses how the mainstream media also appealed to socially conservative attitudes to portray Corbyn in a negative light.

Conclusion This chapter has focused on analysing the material, ideological and institutional political economic contexts before 2015 that both constrained and facilitated the Corbyn project. It has discussed the academic debate on parliamentary socialism and the Labour Party, and traced how the Labour Party’s post-World War II commitment to social democracy was eroded over time. Changes in the global economic conditions aided the rise of neoliberal economic ideas and policies to a hegemonic position since the late 1970s, but leading actors in the Labour Party also chose to adopt neoliberal economic ideas and policies. The electoral successes under Tony Blair’s leadership of New Labour helped to solidify the narrative that the Labour Party cannot shift ‘too Left’ without sacrificing its electoral chances and therefore its ability to implement socially beneficial policies. This chapter has argued, however, that although New Labour governments managed to expand public expenditures for socially beneficial purposes, it also led the UK further into an unbalanced, unequal and finance-led economy. This chapter has also argued that the New Labour project might have been politically successful in the short-term, but it consequently left Labour with no inspiring alternatives to austerity, neoliberal economics and finance-led growth to offer voters after the 2008 economic crisis. This inability to offer left-wing alternatives was a missed opportunity for the Left that contributed to the deterioration of material conditions for a large number of people in the UK. By retreating from consistent ideological struggle, the New Labour project undermined the party’s chances of winning future elections, as well as progressive politics and the socialist cause in general. Similarly, Panitch and Leys (2001, 271) argue that it is important to think long term and that the supposed dilemma between winning elections and being committed to the utopian socialist cause is false. In their words, ‘[it] is not a matter of choosing one or the other, but

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of learning how to act in the present in such a way as not to undermine our capacity to build a different future’ (Panitch and Leys 2001, 271). This chapter further argued that material inequality, the centrist political consensus and the hierarchical and elitist British political tradition all contributed to democratic disaffection in the UK. The next chapter argues that this discontent was partly expressed in Labour grassroots’ support for Corbyn, and that the Labour Party under his leadership can be seen as an attempt to create a rival counter-hegemonic bloc. It also discusses Labour’s performance in the General Elections of 2017 and 2019, as well as Brexit and its effects on British politics.

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Gonzalez-Bailon, Sandra, Will Jennings, and Martin Lodge. 2013. “Politics in the Boardroom: Corporate Pay, Networks and Recruitment of Former Parliamentarians, Ministers and Civil Servants in Britain.” Political Studies 61 (4): 850–73. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2012.00994.x. Gray, John. 2004. “Blair’s Project in Retrospect.” International Affairs 80 (1): 39–48. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2346.2004.00364.x. Green, Jeremy, and Scott Lavery. 2015. “The Regressive Recovery: Distribution, Inequality and State Power in Britain’s Post-Crisis Political Economy.” New Political Economy 20 (6): 894–923. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467. 2015.1041478. Hall, Stuart. 1988. The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left. London and New York: Verso. Hawkins, Oliver, Richard Keen, and Nambassa Nakatudde. 2015. “General Election 2015.” CBP7186. London. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/res earch-briefings/cbp-7186/#fullreport. Hay, Colin. 2004. “Credibility, Competitiveness and the Business Cycle in ‘Third Way’ Political Economy: A Critical Evaluation of Economic Policy in Britain since 1997.” New Political Economy 9 (1): 39–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 1356346042000190376. ———. 2007. “What’s in a Name? New Labour’s Putative Keynesianism.” British Journal of Political Science 37 (1): 187–92. https://doi.org/10.1017/S00 07123407000099. ———. 2012. “Treating the Symptom Not the Condition: Crisis Definition, Deficit Reduction and the Search for a New British Growth Model.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 15 (1): 23–37. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-856X.2012.00515.x. Hills, John. 2015. “The Coalition’s Record on Cash Transfers, Poverty and Inequality 2010–2015.” 11. London. sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/spcc/WP11. pdf. Hopkin, Jonathan, and Ben Rosamond. 2018. “Post-Truth Politics, Bullshit and Bad Ideas: ‘Deficit Fetishism’ in the UK.” New Political Economy 23 (6): 641–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2017.1373757. House of Lords. 2008. “Communications—First Report Session 2007– 2008.” London. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ ldcomuni/ldcomuni.htm. Jenkins, Stephen P. 2015. “The Income Distribution in the UK: A Picture of Advantage and Disadvantage.” Discussion Paper No. 8835. Bonn. ftp.iza.org/ dp8835.pdf. Jennings, Will, Gerry Stoker, and Joe Twyman. 2016. “The Dimensions and Impact of Political Discontent in Britain.” Parliamentary Affairs 69 (4): 876– 900. https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsv067.

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Britain Went to War in Iraq.” The Independent, July 6. https://www.ind ependent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chilcot-report-inquiry-tony-blair-iraq-warweapons-of-mass-destruction-evidence-verdict-a7122361.html. Media Reform Coalition. 2019. “Who Owns the UK Media?” London. https:// www.mediareform.org.uk/media-ownership/who-owns-the-uk-media. Meredith, Stephen. 2008. “The Parliamentary Labour Right, Labour Party Revisionism(s) and the Roots of New Labour.” In Labours Old and New: The Parliamentary Right of the British Labour Party 1970–79 and the Roots of New Labour. Manchester and New York: Palgrave. Miliband, Ed. 2012. “Building a Responsible Capitalism.” https://www.ippr. org/juncture/building-a-responsible-capitalism. Miliband, Ralph. 2015. “Socialist Advance in Britain (1983).” In Class War Conservatism and Other Essays, 286–308. London and New York: Verso. Monbiot, George. 2015. “Just When Hope and Courage Are Called for, Labour Promises Bean-Counting.” The Guardian, April 14. https://www.thegua rdian.com/…/apr/14/labour-bean-counting-hope-courage-deficit-voters. Norris, Pippa. 2001. “New Labour and Public Opinion: The Third Way as Centrism?” In New Labour: The Progressive Future?, 32–44. New York: Palgrave. Panitch, Leo, and Colin Leys. 2001. The End of Parliamentary Socialism: From New Left to New Labour. 2nd ed. London and New York: Verso. Pimlott, Herbert. 2005. “From ‘Old Left’ to ‘New Labour’? Eric Hobsbawm and the Rhetoric of ‘Realistic Marxism.’” Labour/ Le Travail 56: 175–97. https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/LLT/article/view/5384/0. Rogers, Chris. 2013. “The Political Economy of British Social Democracy After New Labour.” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 15 (1): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-856X.2012.00510.x. Seymour, Richard. 2016. Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics. London and New York: Verso. Smith, Martin. 2014. “Globalisation and the Resilience of Social Democracy: Reassessing New Labour’s Political Economy.” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 16 (4): 597–623. https://doi.org/10.1111/ 1467-856X.12020. Stanyer, James. 2003. “Politics and the Media: A Breakdown in Relations for New Labour.” Parliamentary Affairs 56 (2): 309–21. https://doi.org/10. 1093/pa/gsg021. Tawney, Richard H. 2011. “The Choice before the Labour Party (1932).” In The Progressive Tradition: Eighty Years of The Political Quarterly, edited by Andrew Gamble and Tony Wright, 21–34. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. The Guardian Datablog. 2012. “UK Election Historic Turnouts since 1918.” The Guardian, November 16. https://www.theguardian.com/news/dat ablog/2012/nov/16/uk-election-turnouts-historic.

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CHAPTER 3

Labour Under Corbyn (2015–2020)

Abstract The chapter focuses on structural constraints and political obstacles that Labour faced under Corbyn. In the first section, various factors that contributed to Corbyn’s victory in the 2015 Labour leadership election are explored. The second section then discusses conservative constraints that limited Labour’s electoral chances, as well as conflicts within the party. The third and fourth sections discuss Labour’s 2017 and 2019 General Election campaigns and results, including how Brexit complicated the situation in 2019. The fifth and final section further analyses Labour’s political challenges. Its analysis draws on Hay’s (1999) conceptualisation of crisis narratives and structural contradictions, as well as Erik Olin Wright’s (2019) work on democratic socialist transformation. Keywords Labour 2015 leadership election · Jeremy Corbyn · 2017 and 2019 General Election · Labour and Brexit · Crisis narratives · Democratic socialism

Introduction The previous chapter discussed an old debate in the Labour Party regarding the balance between winning elections and ideological commitments to parliamentary socialism, which became relevant again following Jeremy Corbyn’s rise to leader of the party in 2015. On the one hand, © The Author(s) 2021 P. Chiengkul, Labour Under Corbyn, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60262-8_3

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Corbyn attracted many new supporters to the party and popularised leftleaning ideas and policy proposals that challenged the political economic status quo. On the other hand, many Labour Members of Parliament (MPs) and mainstream media criticised Corbyn for his unelectability and vigorously opposed him throughout his leadership. Whilst the results of the 2017 General Election reinforced Corbyn’s position and suggested that Labour could perform well electorally based on a left-wing manifesto, the results of the 2019 General Election threaten to unravel Corbyn’s legacy. Chapters 3 and 4 explore how Labour under Corbyn attempted to promote radical reform of the British political economy in ways that fundamentally challenge the status quo. Specifically, this chapter focuses on the political obstacles faced by the Labour Party under Corbyn between 2015 and 2020. Chapter 4 then analyses Labour’s policies during that period. It is argued in this chapter that Labour under Corbyn defied conventional expectations and challenged political norms, as well as shifted contemporary debates on economic policies away from austerity. However, the party suffered from many internal problems and, as the results of the 2017 and 2019 General Elections suggest, the dominant historical structures characterised by conservatism and neoliberalism severely constrained Labour’s political prospects. This chapter also discusses how the Conservative Party under Boris Johnson utilised Brexit narratives to win the 2019 election, and suggests that in addition to appealing to people’s economic interests, Labour might need to pay more attention to people’s identities and values. The first section explores how the dominant ideological, institutional and material structures of the British political economy created seeds of dissent that partly grew into grassroots support for Jeremy Corbyn in 2015. The second section offers an account of the conservative ideological and institutional constraints on the Labour Party under Corbyn, including mainstream media representations of Corbyn. It also covers conflicts between Corbyn and the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), including his re-election as leader following a leadership challenge in 2016. The third section discusses Labour’s 2017 General Election campaign and its unexpectedly good electoral performance amidst conservative structural hindrance. The fourth section reflects on Labour’s electoral defeat in the 2019 General Election and argues that its prospects under Corbyn were significantly complicated by the realities of Brexit. Finally, before concluding with a summary of the main points, the fifth

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section further analyses the 2019 election defeat and Labour’s political challenges.

The 2015 Labour Party Leadership Election Political centrism and neoliberalism in the UK have faced consistent challenges in recent years. Since 2010 there have been many events that can be interpreted as public expressions of dissent, such as the student tuition fee protests and the UK Uncut protests against cuts to public services and tax avoidance (Bailey 2018, 11–12; Nunns 2018, 135), the Occupy movement, public sector strikes and riots in the UK in 2011, and the anti-austerity protests in June 2015 (Seymour 2016, 19). It has been suggested that the 2015 General Election was also affected by ‘antiestablishment’ sentiments, popularised by left-leaning social critics such as Owen Jones and Russell Brand. Although they appealed to different audiences, they helped to politicise some ‘disaffected democrats’ sections of the electorate, such as the young, ethnic minorities and those from poorer backgrounds (Flinders 2015, 242–243). Jeremy Corbyn’s 2015 leadership campaign also benefited from democratic disaffections and anti-establishment sentiments. As Nunns (2018) argued, anti-austerity movement protests occurred intermittently between 2011 and 2014, but the anti-austerity movement finally found a home in the Labour Party under Corbyn, which allowed it to utilise Labour’s longestablished connections to trade unions and voter bases (Nunns 2018, 136–138). As discussed in Chapter 2, Ed Miliband tried to promote economic reforms before he resigned as leader of the Labour party. However, it has been argued that Miliband lacked ‘intellectual infrastructure’ support and that he was also held back by centrist Labour MPs (Guinan and O’Neill 2018). Corbyn, on the other hand, was able to draw from alternative policies promoted by institutions such as the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). Nevertheless, during his time as leader, Miliband paved the way for change in the leadership election rules to allow registered supporters and members of affiliated trade unions to vote in a ‘one member-one vote’ (OMOV) system (Garland 2016, 24). This rule change empowered Labour grassroots and activists, and enabled Corbyn’s election as leader of the party in 2015. At the outset, no candidates in the 2015 Labour leadership election represented the Left of the party, and arguably the push to have a leftwing candidate came from the lower levels of the party structure. In May

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2015, 10 young Labour MPs, including Rebecca Long-Baily, Richard Burgon and Clive Lewis, published a letter in The Guardian calling for a new leader who would strongly challenge austerity in the UK. Labour activists then organised an online petition, which eventually received over 5,000 signatures, that called for an anti-austerity candidate to stand in the election (Nunns 2018, 62–63). Jeremy Corbyn was not the most obvious choice. He volunteered to be the Left’s candidate mainly to broaden the debate and he only gained the necessary 35 nominations from the PLP to stand in the election at the last minute (Nunns 2018, 71–78, 91, 102). Personally and as a politician, Corbyn provided a clear contrast to centrist and centre-right Labour MPs that had dominated the party before 2015, mainly due to his lifelong commitment to left-wing socialist causes, and also due to his mild manner. Corbyn was once a Voluntary Service Overseas worker in Jamaica, a trade union organiser, and a member of the Socialist Campaign Group in the party (Seymour 2016, 4–6). Influenced by left-wing ideas in the 1970s and 1980s, Corbyn maintained his beliefs and clearly expressed them during the Labour leadership campaign, including in his opposition to austerity and the Trident nuclear submarine programme. He also advocated left-leaning policies such as renationalisation of the railways, a People’s Quantitative Easing programme for job creation and infrastructural investment, policies to tackle tax loopholes, and policies to support high-tech industries (Richards 2016, 15; Seymour 2016, 8–9). In contrast, other candidates did not significantly distinguish themselves from Labour’s recent past; Liz Kendall was seen as the Blairite candidate, Yvette Cooper was seen as the Brownite candidate, and Andy Burnham, who was supposed to be the ‘soft-left’ option, re-positioned himself more to the right (Nunns 2018, 65–68). Corbyn’s leadership campaign was aided by volunteers and the widespread use of social media. The campaign also involved more than a hundred old-style local political rallies that were often highly attended (Nunns 2018, 113–114, 209–215; Seymour 2016, 7). Corbyn received a great deal of support from trade unionists and new members, notably young people (Seymour 2016, 61), as well as support from the antiausterity movement (e.g. People’s Assembly demonstration, 20 June 2015) (Nunns 2018, 123–125). By the time of the registration deadline for new members to be eligible to vote, Labour had gained 105,973 new members since the 2015 General Election defeat, which increased its total membership to 553,954 (Garland 2016, 23). Despite Tony Blair warning that Labour should not shift too far leftwards and that members

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who wanted to follow their hearts and vote for Corbyn should ‘get a transplant’ (BBC 2015a), on 12 September 2015, Corbyn won a landslide victory (59.5% vote share), based on support from both full members and registered supporters (Nunns 2018, 253–255). The registered supporter scheme allowed non-members to easily vote in the leadership election by paying merely 3 GBP (Nunns 2018, 126–129). Out of the registered supporters’ 105,598 votes (25% of total votes), 83.8% were for Corbyn (Nunns 2018, 255). Whereas those who supported other candidates cited conventional rationales such as electability and acceptability within the party, those who supported Corbyn tended to disregard these criteria and instead cited his policies, as well as how he represented a break with New Labour, as their reasons for voting for him (Quinn 2016, 766, 773). The grassroots support that enabled Corbyn to become leader of the Labour Party has been used as an example to suggest that the old ‘law of curvilinear disparity’, which suggests that party activists tend to be more radical than MPs, might become relevant again in British politics (Quinn 2016, 760). It is often argued, however, that achieving popularity amongst a pool of left-leaning Labour supporters is one thing, but that achieving sufficient popularity with voters to win a general election is an entirely different matter. Chapter 2 discussed the writings of socialist scholars on the need to prepare voters for a socialist government, since a political party of socialist orientation is likely to face great political obstacles. Corbyn and his allies, however, barely had time to prepare to lead the Labour Party. Corbyn was pushed forward as a leadership candidate by the Left of the party—a faction that had never controlled the party. Campaigning for Corbyn to be leader was a significant risk for the Left. Even the left-wing political commentator, Owen Jones, initially thought it was a bad idea because the Left was not ready, and that the defeat of a left-wing candidate might severely set back the Left in Britain (Nunns 2018, 70). The next section offers an account of how numerous Labour MPs attempted to undermine and end the Corbyn project, as well as how conservative ideological and institutional constraints harmed Labour’s electoral prospects under Corbyn. Aspects of Corbyn’s past and his unconventional views on security and foreign policy also made him an easy target.

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Mainstream Media and Conflicts Within the Labour Party Since the first week of his leadership, Corbyn became a target for mainstream right-wing media. MPs who believe in republicanism tend not to express those beliefs as it might invite negative reactions from voters (Norbauer and Studlar 2011, 235–237). Corbyn, however, was open about his republicanism. Shortly after becoming Labour leader, he faced a media onslaught and was labelled ‘unpatriotic’ by the Conservative Party and monarchists for not singing the national anthem, ‘God Save the Queen’, during the Battle of Britain service at St Paul’s Cathedral (Bloom 2015). Moreover, due to his anti-war and anti-nuclear weapons positions, Corbyn was portrayed by the media and his opponents as a pacifist who was a threat to national security (Seymour 2016, 206). For example, Prime Minister David Cameron set the tone by tweeting that Labour was now a ‘threat to our national security, our economic security and your family’s security’ (cited in Gunter 2015). The Conservative Party also smeared Corbyn in an online video that portrayed him as a terrorist sympathiser (Jones 2015). The ability to paint Corbyn in this light was made possible by his willingness to engage with protest and rebel groups in the past. For example, he invited Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams to parliament in 1984 as the violence in Northern Ireland was raging—an act that was widely criticised at the time. After he became leader, however, Corbyn tried not to publicly stray from the party line on security issues, such as its support for the Trident nuclear submarine programme (Piper 2019). A study by the Media Reform Coalition (2016) suggested that in Corbyn’s first week as Leader of the Opposition the press ‘systematically’ undermined him through overwhelmingly negative coverage; based on an analysis of 8 national daily newspapers, 60% of news, comments and editorial pieces were negative, 27% were neutral, and only 13% were positive (Media Reform Coalition 2016, 2). News stories and editorial coverage from right-wing newspapers such as The Sun and the Daily Mail, the two largest national papers, were mostly negative, whereas The Guardian and the Daily Mirror were more balanced (Media Reform Coalition 2016, 4). Similarly, an academic study within the London School of Economics’ Media and Communications Department in 2016, which analysed media representation of Corbyn in 8 British newspapers from 1 September to 1 November 2015, identified a process of ‘delegitimisation’ that involved

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not representing his views directly (‘lack of or distortion of voice’), use of ridicule, scorn and personal attacks, and association of him with terrorism. The study also raised concerns about how media bias of this sort might subvert the functioning of British democracy (Bart Cammaerts et al. 2016). Media hostility and exaggerated criticisms of Corbyn persisted until the 2019 General Election and beyond. What Corbyn experienced was similar to previous attempts to ridicule and smear past leaders of the Labour Party, as discussed in Chapter 2, but in his case it was especially severe. Some of the more recent unfounded stories include, for instance, The Sun’s allegation that Corbyn was a spy for Czechoslovakia during the Cold War (see Tait et al. 2018). Perhaps more damagingly, news reporting of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party sometimes insinuated it could be traced directly to Corbyn, which seems dubious given that he has consistently championed racial equality and promoted a multifaith and multicultural society (for example, see Datoo 2015; Edwards 2017; Nunns 2018, 107). A 2018 study on media coverage of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, conducted by the Media Reform Coalition and Birkbeck, University of London, pointed out that there was significant news coverage (95 clear examples out of around 250 examples), both on television and in online news, that involved either distorted facts, misquotations, failures to provide essential context, and/or false suggestions by journalists or their sources, which could be interpreted as ‘systematic reporting failures’ (Schlosberg and Laker 2018, 3 and executive summary). Following this report, 27 academics and activists, including Noam Chomsky, signed an open letter in The Guardian that expressed concerns about inaccurate and distorted reporting on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, which contributed to ‘an underserved witch-hunt’ against Corbyn, whilst prevalent anti-Semitism amongst far right groups across Europe went underreported (The Guardian 2018). Labour implemented measures to address anti-Semitism in the party. It set up an inquiry to investigate the issue in 2016 (Wainwright 2018, 40) and it adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism, which, the party stated, does not prohibit free speech on Israel (BBC 2018). Citing anti-Semitism within the party and the leadership’s reluctance to advocate a second Brexit referendum, several Labour MPs splintered from the party to form ‘The Independent Group’ (TIG) in early 2019. After being joined by a few defections

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from the Conservative Party, TIG later became the now defunct political party, ‘Change UK’ (Elgot 2019). The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) launched a formal investigation into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party in May 2019 (Buchan 2019), whilst in July of the same year, 64 Labour peers (a third of Labour members in the House of Lords) took out an advertisement in The Guardian that criticised Corbyn for failing to tackle anti-Semitism and argued that he had ‘failed the test of leadership’ (Mason et al. 2019). Labour responded by committing to full cooperation with the EHRC. It also argued that the party’s disciplinary procedures had been improved, and that since September 2015 the number of anti-Semitism cases that had undergone disciplinary procedures related to around 0.06% of its members (Buchan 2019; Mason et al. 2019). Nevertheless, criticism of the leadership’s handling of antiSemitism continued to plague the party up until its election defeat in 2019. Centrist and right-leaning Labour MPs made numerous attempts to undermine Corbyn’s leadership, which likely harmed the party’s image even further in the eyes of the voters. For the sake of party unity, Corbyn’s first shadow cabinet consisted of MPs from different ideological positions in the party (Nunns 2018, 258–262). However, this attempt to build unity was unsuccessful. One of the first signs of conflict between Corbyn’s leadership and the PLP concerned a parliamentary vote on airstrikes against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria. Although Corbyn wanted the party to vote against the strikes, he was pressured by his shadow cabinet to give MPs a free vote (BBC 2015b). The infighting erupted in June 2016 following the UK’s European Union (EU) membership referendum, as some Labour MPs blamed the result (51.9% voted leave) on Corbyn’s lack of enthusiasm to campaign for Remain. Mass shadow cabinet resignations and a leadership challenge followed (Nunns 2018, 269–270). Labour MP Angela Smith, for example, argued that Corbyn should take responsibility for the referendum result and insisted that he had shown ‘insufficient leadership’ (The Economist 2016). The conflict within the party was also fought at the level of its bureaucracy. According to Nunns (2018, 272–274), pre-Corbyn party bureaucrats intentionally tried to damage his leadership, such as by delaying press releases and leaking information to the press. Similarly, a leaked internal report in April 2020 alleged that many right-leaning officials rooted for Labour to perform badly in the 2017 General Election, attempted to channel funds

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to anti-Corbyn candidates in that election, and failed to act resolutely on anti-Semitism complaints (Stone 2020). Despite hostilities from the right of the party and the mainstream media, Corbyn remained popular with Labour members and trade unions in 2016. On 24 September 2016, he easily fought off the leadership challenge by winning the resulting leadership election with an increased mandate of 62% of total votes (Nunns 2018, 276 and 284). By 2018, Corbyn’s allies had taken control of Labour’s National Executive Committee and a major Corbyn supporter, Jennifer Formby, had become Labour’s General Secretary (Stewart 2018). Richard Leonard, who became the Leader of the Scottish Labour Party in 2017, is also from the left of the party; he has supported radical redistributive taxation, the return of Scotland’s railways to public ownership, and claimed that Scottish Labour aims to ‘fundamentally change the existing economic system’ (Brooks and Carrell 2018). Corbyn’s leadership gained greater acceptance amongst the PLP after the better-than-expected general election result in 2017, which is discussed in the following section. However, internal conflicts persisted throughout Corbyn’s leadership. The main sources of infighting were the leadership’s handling of anti-Semitism in the party and the party’s position on Brexit. Criticisms were often directed at Corbyn’s closest advisors, particularly Karie Murphy, Seumas Milne, Andrew Murray and Len McCluskey (sometimes referred to as ‘The Four Ms’), who were often portrayed as hard-left Euro-sceptics (Pickard 2019a). They were heavily criticised by some Labour MPs for ineffective handling of antiSemitism allegations, for blocking adoption of a clear second referendum and ‘remain’ position on Brexit, and also blamed for Labour’s disappointing European Parliament election results in May 2019 (Blunkett 2019; P. Mason 2019; Stewart 2019a). Internal conflicts also stemmed from the rise of Momentum—an organisation formed from Corbyn’s grassroots supporters. Momentum helped canvass grassroots support for the Corbyn project, attracted new members to the Labour Party, and its activists were instrumental to the party’s election campaigns in 2017 and 2019. As discussed in Chapter 2, socialist scholars have argued in favour of connecting extra-parliamentary forces with political parties to advance parliamentary socialism (Panitch and Leys 2001, 268). Nevertheless, despite its positive contribution, Momentum’s influence also increased tensions within the party. Its call for mandatory reselection of Labour MPs to ensure they were supported

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by local party members and affiliated organisations (Sabbagh et al. 2018) placed significant pressure on centrist and right-leaning MPs in the party. In return, anti-Corbyn Labour MPs were often hostile towards Momentum activists, even referring to them as ‘dogs’ (Nunns 2018, 266, 275–276, 281). Momentum’s prominence in the party during Corbyn’s leadership also caused some tension with trade unions, which is the more traditional support base of the party’s left wing (for example, see Kettle 2018; Stewart 2018). The following sections discuss Labour’s performance in the General Elections of 2017 and 2019. The increase in Labour’s share of the vote in 2017 suggested that many of its left-leaning policies were popular and that perhaps the Overton window had shifted leftwards. However, Labour’s catastrophic defeat in 2019 suggests that Labour under Corbyn failed to unite fragmented groups of votes to form a successful counterhegemonic bloc.

The 2017 General Election When Prime Minister Theresa May called a snap election in January 2017, she sought a strong mandate to negotiate a Brexit deal with the EU, which would include leaving the single market and the customs union, and ending the free movement of people (Heath and Goodwin 2017, 347). Labour, however, did unexpectedly well in the election. It increased its vote share by 9.5% compared to the previous election; the biggest increase in vote share for Labour since Clement Attlee won the 1945 General Election (Heath and Goodwin 2017, 346). Overall, Labour received 40% share of the vote, gained 30 seats and won 262 seats, whilst the Conservatives lost 13 seats and won 317 seats (Heath and Goodwin 2017, 345–346). The results defied conventional expectations and forced the Conservative Party to establish a ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to retain power as a minority government. Before the election, most polls (except one) indicated that the Conservatives would win a majority (an average prediction of roughly 70 seats) (Heath and Goodwin 2017, 345–346). The Conservatives initially had a lead of 19 points over Labour in April 2017 but its lead over Labour dropped to 9.5 points by late May and dropped even further to 6.6 points by June (Heath and Goodwin 2017, 348). An eventful campaign contributed to this unexpected result.

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During the campaign, there was a stark contrast between, on the one hand, Theresa May’s approach to Brexit and her business-as-usual policies, and, on the other hand, Corbyn’s soft-Brexit approach and his anti-austerity policies (Heath and Goodwin 2017, 346). One study argued that party manifestoes in 2017 (including Conservative, Labour, SNP, Green, and Liberal Democrats) were more ‘left-wing’ (although only very slightly in the case of the Conservatives) than in 2015 (Allen and Bara 2019, 6–7). Although the Conservatives’ manifesto was perhaps more socially liberal, its economic policies had become even more neoliberal (Allen and Bara 2019, 8). Some policies were deeply unpopular, particularly what became known as the ‘dementia tax’, which would have involved reforming state-funded home care for the elderly, such that, excluding a protected 100,000 GBP of assets, people would have to pay for it after death through the value of their homes (Allen and Bara 2019, 3). The Conservatives were forced to ditch the ‘dementia tax’ mid-campaign in an embarrassing U-turn and their manifesto was also criticised for being un-costed; whereas the Labour manifesto was fullycosted (Heath and Goodwin 2017, 348). Furthermore, May proved to be a poor campaigner and was widely criticised for it (for example, see Ward and Wring 2018, 204–205). Theresa May might have hoped to retain the support of middle-class and pro-remain voters whilst seeking to attract votes from workingclass Brexit supporters in traditionally Labour held seats. However, this strategy did not pay off. Although the Conservatives gained votes in predominantly white and marginalised areas, they were less popular in areas with more high-skilled workers, and they suffered losses in traditionally Conservative held seats in the South where high numbers of graduates tended to oppose Brexit (Heath and Goodwin 2017, 345, 355, 356– 357). In contrast, many polls suggest that Labour did particularly well at attracting younger voters (under 45) compared to 2015 (see the discussion in Travis 2018). Labour also achieved some ‘shock wins’ in places such as Kensington, which had been held by the Conservatives for the last 20 years (Chaffin 2017), and in Canterbury, which Labour won for the first time since the constituency was formed in 1918 (BBC 2017). Labour ran a campaign that aimed to mobilise young, marginalised and politically apathetic voters (Nunns 2018, 288). The strategy resembled Corbyn’s 2015 Labour leadership campaign in which political speeches were organised in local areas around the country with the help of Momentum volunteers. Momentum assisted in coordination of campaign

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activists and their online tool, ‘My Nearest Marginal’, helped Labour activists identify their nearest swing seats (Ward and Wring 2018, 215). Notably, Labour’s campaign was aided by the use of social media and left-leaning online news websites, such as The Canary and Paul Mason News, and by support from sports and television celebrities, as well as popular music artists such as the rapper Lowkey and grime artists (‘Grime4Corbyn’) including Stormzy (Nunns 2018, 322–335, 341–342; Ward and Wring 2018, 214–215). Compared to the Conservative Party, Labour’s political campaign dominated Twitter and Facebook and it was generally more successful in terms of stimulating bottom-up engagement (Ward and Wring 2018, 211, 214). Arguably, the UK’s election broadcasting rules were another factor that allowed Labour to catch up in the polls. These rules came into effect after the dissolution of parliament on 3 May and they impose stricter constraints on news reporting. Corbyn’s supporters believe it helped voters hear Labour’s message more directly, as opposed to through hostile distortions, and led to more accurate reporting of Labour policies. Labour also tightly controlled the ‘message’ it wanted to communicate to the public during the election campaign (Nunns 2018, 351). Nevertheless, the majority of national newspapers did not support Labour and right-wing newspapers continued to portray Corbyn and his allies as extremists sympathetic to terrorism (Ward and Wring 2018, 206–207). Even The Guardian, a supposedly ‘left-leaning’ broadsheet, did not fully endorse Corbyn until early June 2017 (Nunns 2018, 353). As Chapter 2 discussed, mainstream media outlets have strong online presence (Fenton 2016, 83) and shape the topics that are discussed on radio and television (Fielding 2015, 63). Small online news websites received significantly fewer visits compared to large and more established news sites (Media Reform Coalition 2019, 12–13). It has been suggested that young adults might rely on social media for their news. However, BBC News remained the most important source of news for all age groups (Ward and Wring 2018, 216). These factors suggest that there are limits to using online media as a platform to counter mainstream narratives. There is evidence to suggest that Labour’s 2017 manifesto was one of the main causes that contributed to Labour’s unexpected electoral performance in 2017. Research by YouGov in 2017, for example, found that 28% of surveyed Labour voters cited the party’s manifesto or policies as the main reason for voting Labour (15% cited anti-Conservative sentiment, 13% cited their support for Corbyn, and 12% cited how the party

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provided hope/fairness for the many) (Smith 2017). Chapter 4 discusses the policy proposals in detail. In brief, the 2017 manifesto proposed extensive state intervention and radical restructuring of the economy, including nationalisation of utility companies, support for alternative models of ownership, and the establishment of a National Investment Bank and regional development banks (Wainwright 2018, 38). Although May attempted to frame the election as a ‘Brexit election’, Labour successfully brought attention to other issues, particularly the effects of austerity on welfare. Moreover, shortly before the election, after the Manchester terrorist attack in May, Corbyn made a speech that linked public sector cuts to a weakening of the police force (Heath and Goodwin 2017, 348). This was a bold attempt to reshape narratives on terrorism and security issues as being about past foreign policy failures and the effects of austerity (Nunns 2018, 348–349; see also Ward and Wring 2018, 207–208). The unexpected popularity of Labour’s 2017 manifesto and its electoral gains perhaps contributed to a leftwards shift in the ‘Overton window’ of British politics. Prior to the election, the Conservative Party under May had already adopted some of Labour’s policies under Miliband, such as an energy price cap and publication of pay ratios within companies (D’Urso 2017; Dresner 2016). During the 2017 election campaign, May argued that there was no ‘magic money tree’ that could satisfy everyone, and that it was necessary to bring public spending under control after previous mismanagement by Labour governments (Dearden 2017). However, since the election, the Conservatives have slowly turned away from austerity. For example, in June 2018, the Conservative Party announced tax increases to fund a 20 billion GBP increase in the budget of the National Health Service (NHS) by 2023 (Triggle 2018). May’s successor as Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party, Boris Johnson, when opting for a snap election to seek a parliamentary majority and resolve the Brexit impasse in late 2019, also pledged to increase public spending. The next section discusses the Conservative Party under Johnson and argues that it was more successful than Labour in uniting cross-class interests through effective electoral strategies and Brexit narratives, which enabled its election victory in 2019. The section also explores how Labour continued to suffer from internal conflicts during the 2019 election campaign, and how its 2019 manifesto, unlike its 2017 manifesto, was

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criticised for being excessive and lacking focus in a Brexit dominated election. Together with other strategic errors, these factors help to explain why Labour suffered a massive defeat in 2019.

Brexit and the 2019 General Election Labour’s unexpectedly positive performance at the 2017 General Election gave the Corbyn project more credibility. However, its electoral prospects under Corbyn in 2019 were very much complicated by the unresolved issue of Brexit. On the one hand, Corbyn is known to be a Eurosceptic and a large portion of Labour voters voted to leave the EU. There are arguments against the EU from the Left (for example, see Lapavitsas 2018, 2019). The EU’s state aid rules, for example, are seen as obstacles that prevent national governments from setting industrial development directions (Lapavitsas 2018). The EU is also seen as a fundamentally undemocratic institution that structurally embodies neoliberalism, with member countries that have highly unequal power (Lapavitsas 2019, 8– 11, 70–71, 113, 121–122). On the other hand, 85% of Labour members supported a second Brexit referendum and 90% voted to remain in the EU (Gamble 2019, 6). Additionally, many figures in the shadow cabinet such as Emily Thornberry and Keir Starmer openly supported the ‘remain’ camp. As the following paragraphs discuss, Labour’s middleground position on Brexit was widely perceived as a major factor that contributed to their heavy defeat at the 2019 election. Other factors include Labour’s perceived inability to effectively tackle anti-Semitism in the Party, Corbyn’s decline in popularity, a strategically inefficient campaign, and a bloated manifesto that was less well-received than the 2017 manifesto. Many studies suggest those who support Brexit tend to have low education and income, harbour political disaffection and anti-migrant sentiments, and live in areas characterised by high levels of unemployment and recent increases in immigration. This led many scholars to interpret Brexit as a reaction against globalisation by those people it had left marginalised (for example, see Hay 2019, 9; Rosamond 2019, 413). Individuals’ motivations to vote for Brexit, however, were driven by more than just economic interests. Some scholars have argued that people’s decisions to vote leave were based not only on risk assessments and cost– benefit calculations centred around economic and immigration issues, but also on emotional reactions to images of EU leaders, as well as leading

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figures in the remain and leave camps (Clarke et al. 2017, 460–461). Both economic and cultural insecurities factored into people’s voting behaviour (Jennings and Stoker 2019, 159). Support for Brexit became tied up with ‘the emotional politics of identity and subjectivity’ (Browning 2019, 222), as Leave campaigners appealed to people’s existing anxieties and ontological insecurity to build nostalgic populist fantasy narratives about Brexit - that it would bring freedom, sovereignty, control and agency, and hence a sense of fulfilment (Browning 2019, 229–235). Brexit dominated parliamentary politics throughout 2019 and there were also many popular mobilisations on the issue, whether from Remainers (e.g., the People’s Vote campaign) or Leavers (e.g., the Leave Means Leave campaign). The newly established Brexit Party, led and founded by the former leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and Member of the European Parliament (MEP), Nigel Farage, also received growing support, particularly from former UKIP voters (Cutts et al. 2019, 18). Notably, Farage was widely criticised for inciting racial hatred through his anti-immigration ‘breaking-point’ poster during the 2016 referendum campaign. This prompted Boris Johnson to distance the official Vote Leave campaign from Farage (Stewart and Mason 2016). At the European Parliament election in May 2019, the Brexit Party won the most UK seats (29 seats based on 32% of the popular vote) and the pro-remain Liberal Democrats came second (16 seats based on 20% of the vote) (Uberoi et al. 2019). In contrast, the Conservatives and Labour won very few seats (4 and 10 seats respectively) (Uberoi et al. 2019). In this polarised Brexit-dominated election, many of Labour’s traditional white working class voters instead supported the Brexit party, whilst many younger voters in cosmopolitan areas turned to the Liberal Democrats (Cutts et al. 2019, 18). Even though voter turnout was only 37% (Uberoi et al. 2019), the election result drove many in the Conservative and Labour parties to rethink their positions on Brexit. Some suggested the Conservative Party ought to win back Brexit Party supporters (which was polling 12–16% support by September 2019) (Sabbagh 2019), whilst some senior Labour figures, such as Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry, argued that Labour required a clearer position on Brexit and that it ought to support a second referendum (Elgot and Mason 2019). In early 2019, Labour’s position was to support a ‘soft Brexit’ that would involve and a permanent customs union with the EU, as well as regulatory alignment on rights and protections (Finn 2019, 29). Nearer to the December General Election, Labour promised that, within 6 months of

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being in government, it would renegotiate a Brexit deal that would be more closely aligned with the EU’s rules on trade, the environment and workers’ rights, and that it would then allow the people to decide whether to accept the deal or ‘remain’ in another referendum (Parker and Blitz 2019). Corbyn maintained that Labour’s stance aimed to ‘bring people together’ and ‘give the people the final say’, and that he would adopt a neutral position during the referendum (Corbyn 2019). As discussed below, this position is widely perceived as costing Labour many of its ‘heartland’ seats in the North at the 2019 General Election. Similar to Labour, the Conservative Party sought to maintain their traditional supporters that included both leave and remain voters (Cutts et al. 2019, 18). Nevertheless, after Boris Johnson became leader, the party’s commitment to Brexit was strengthen to the extent that it would accept a no-deal Brexit if necessary. Both Johnson and Dominic Cummings, who became Johnson’s chief advisor in 2019, were leading figures in the 2016 Vote Leave campaign. Further boosting his proBrexit image, Johnson challenged the parliamentary model of democracy in the UK by proroguing parliament for 5 weeks - an act widely criticised as an attempt to avoid scrutiny by parliament, which was taking measures to rule out a no-deal Brexit (for example, see Proctor 2019). The prorogation was later ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, it allowed Johnson to pursue what some commentators called a ‘people versus parliament’ narrative and unite Leavers behind him (for example, see Kibasi 2019). Johnson’s promise to ‘get Brexit done’ can be viewed as an attempt to recapture votes from the Brexit Party and attract votes from Leave supporters who traditionally vote Labour. By early September, polling averages suggested the Conservatives had managed to regain a significant proportion of support that had been lost to the Brexit Party (Sabbagh 2019). The Conservatives also tried to neutralise Labour’s popular anti-austerity position by promising more spending in politically sensitive areas, such as the NHS; Johnson pledged 1 billion GBP for immediate spending on equipments and upgrades for hospitals, and another 850 million GBP for 20 hospitals in the next 5 years (BBC 2019a). He also promised to hire an extra 20,000 new police officers by 2022 and increase funding for schools (BBC 2019a). Shortly after parliament rejected his swift timetable for passing the Withdrawal Agreement Bill in October, Johnson won parliamentary support for a snap general election in December 2019. Labour under

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Corbyn would therefore again challenge the Conservatives with a leftwing agenda that sought to capture people’s desires for change and popular participation in politics. However, by this point, the party was in disarray. Labour continued to face anti-Semitism accusations and the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis suggested that anti-Semitism in the party came from the very top (BBC 2019c). Corbyn polled badly throughout 2019; perhaps unsurprising given the amount of toxic news coverage he had received in the mainstream media since 2015. A YouGov poll in July suggested that many people thought Labour should change its leader (the top 3 most popular alternatives were future leader Sir Keir Starmer, John McDonnell and Emily Thornberry) (Wearmouth 2019). In September, the percentage of people who thought Johnson would make the best Prime Minister was double that of Corbyn (Pickard 2019b). Many Corbyn allies, such as Shadow Transport Secretary Andy McDonald, attributed some of the blame for Corbyn’s unpopularity to mainstream media, including the BBC, for allowing him to be unfairly ‘demonised and vilified’ and portrayed as an anti-Semite (Walker 2019). There is also evidence to suggest that Labour ran an inefficient and ineffective campaign. Seat targeting reportedly suffered from a lack of planning (Stewart 2019b), and an internal party report pointed out that whilst door-to-door campaigning helped to increase turnout for Labour, it was badly organised. There was often a lack of campaign materials and it was unclear which key policies were to be promoted, especially since numerous different policies were released throughout the campaign (Proctor 2020). In addition, there were many accounts of internal infighting between senior figures in the leadership, as well as confusion about who was in charge of the campaign (for example, see the discussion in Stewart 2019b). Compared to the 2017 manifesto, the 2019 manifesto was significantly heavier on policy. Despite containing many interesting and progressive proposals (discussed in Chapter 4), the manifesto was criticised for being incoherent and unfocused. It was therefore difficult to communicate key policy ideas to voters and it contrasted sharply with the simple and focused Conservative slogan of ‘get Brexit done’ (Stewart 2019b; Syal et al. 2019). In addition, Labour’s policy of free high-speed broadband was perceived negatively by some voters as a ‘gimmick’ (Proctor and Murray 2020). Labour councillors have also argued that the leadership did not listen to their concerns, which helps to explain why the party failed to connect with voters (Butler 2020).

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Labour activists put a great deal of work into online media during the campaign. Through its digital tool, ‘mycampaignmap.com’, Momentum mobilised its network of volunteers to canvass for Labour, and it also formed a team to create video campaign materials for social media (Rodgers 2019). However, the growing use of online media for political campaigning may not necessarily benefit the Left. As previously discussed, mainstream news organisations still dominate online news. Moreover, political advertising on social media can be used to target specific constituencies, yet, because expenditures are not counted as part of local constituency spending, this can undermine a level playing field at the local level (Moore 2019, 99). It also allows candidates with greater financial resources an extra advantage. Large personal datagathering through social media additionally creates a situation where political campaigners are in a privileged position as they can use the data to predict people’s political views (Moore 2019, 95). This compromises the secrecy of people’s voting choices and leads to the possibility of targeted advertisements being used to discourage people from voting (Moore 2019, 95–97). Right-leaning groups in the UK, such as the Vote Leave campaign, have used large online data-gathering and analysis, but lack of regulation has meant insufficient scrutiny of how the data was used (Moore 2019, 101). The Conservative Party effectively utilised digital advertising on platforms such as YouTube and Facebook during the campaign, both to widely disseminate a simple message on Brexit and to micro-target audiences based on their constituencies (The Economist 2020). According to the ‘We Are Social’ consultancy, although the Conservatives spent less than Labour and the Liberal Democrats on online advertising (Kelly and Blood 2019), it nevertheless succeeded in gaining 10% more engagement with its advertisements compared to Labour (The Economist 2020). Interestingly, there were also ‘shadow campaigns’ with unclear connections to political parties that spent half a million GBP on political advertising, including on Facebook and other channels, to promote issues relating to Brexit and tactical voting, and to campaign against Labour’s policies (Kelly et al. 2019). ‘First Draft’, a non-profit which monitors misinformation and disinformation online, claimed that 88% of the Conservatives’ Facebook ads in the first 4 days of December contained misleading information (Kelly and Blood 2019). The Conservatives also exploited Labour’s promise to renegotiate Brexit and have another referendum by using Facebook advertisements to target Leave voters in key Northern

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and Midlands seats (O. Wright and Knowles 2019). To compensate for potential losses of votes from Conservative Remainers, ‘Onward’, a right-wing think tank, identified ‘Workington Man’ (older, white, nongraduate, northern, traditional Labour supporter who voted to leave the EU) as the type of voter the Conservatives needed to attract to win the election (ITV 2019; Martin 2019). As the 2019 election result suggests, the Conservatives’ strategy seemed to pay off. The party gained 48 seats and won 365 seats in total (43.6% of total votes compared to 42.3% in 2017), which allowed it to form a government with a sizable majority of 80 and push through Brexit (Baker et al. 2020). In contrast, Labour lost 60 seats and only won 202 seats in total (32.1% of total votes compared to 40% in 2017) (Baker et al. 2020). A YouGov study of almost 500 voters who voted Labour in 2017 but not in 2019 suggests the reasons for this were: Corbyn’s leadership (35%), Labour’s Brexit position (19%), Labour’s perceived ability to implement their economic policies (16%), tactical voting (10% generally, 15% amongst Remainers), and other unspecified reasons (Curtis 2019). It has been argued that the main reason the Conservative Party won the election was because it managed to consolidate votes from almost 75% of Leavers, whereas Labour received slightly less than 50% of votes from Remainers (approximately 20% voted for the Conservatives and roughly 20% voted for the Liberal Democrats) (Curtice 2020). Many Leavers and Remainers who voted Labour in 2017 instead voted for the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in 2019 (Curtice 2020). Labour lost many of its traditional seats to the Conservatives in the so-called ‘red wall’ across the North and Midlands, such as Blyth Valley (Labour since 1950), Sedgefield (Tony Blair’s former constituency) and Bolsover (Dennis Skinner’s seat since 1970) (D. Wainwright 2019). Many Labour MPs and former MPs in Leave areas strongly criticised Corbyn’s leadership and his Brexit strategy after the election. Caroline Flint, for example, insisted that ‘Labour has ignored working-class voters who chose leave’ (Flint 2019). Arguably, the ties between working class voters in the ‘red wall’ and the party began to weaken in the New Labour era, with many working class voters previously switching their support to other parties such as UKIP. Nevertheless, since the majority of the working class voted to leave the EU, the Conservative Party’s support for Brexit made it an increasingly appealing electoral choice between 2015 and 2019 (Evans and Mellon 2020).

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It is worth noting that the Conservative Party won a significant parliamentary majority despite increasing its vote share by only 1.4% compared to 2017 (Norris 2019). In addition to the first-past-the-post electoral system and the disunity of Remainers, Norris (2019) argued that the Brexit Party, in deciding not to run candidates in Conservative-held seats, significantly benefited the Conservatives. Compared to other parties, Labour appears to have been more negatively affected by the Brexit Party. In constituencies where Brexit Party candidates ran, Labour’s vote share fell by 8.6% on average compared to 7.3% in other constituencies (Norris 2019). Norris (2019) also estimated that votes lost to the Brexit Party enabled the Conservatives to gain 20 former Labour seats, which doubled Johnson’s parliamentary majority. The next section continues to analyse Labour’s 2019 electoral defeat, drawing from Hay’s (1999) conceptualisation of crisis narratives and structural contradictions, and Wright’s (2019) work on collective political actors. It also discusses future political challenges for the Labour Party.

Political Narratives, Structural Contradictions and Fragmented Voters In light of the 2019 General Election, this section argues that the Left should consider more seriously the construction of crisis narratives, and also people’s cultural identities, in its attempt to create broad-based support for its political project. As the previous section discussed, Brexit and the narratives surrounding it played an important role in determining the outcome of the 2019 election. The following paragraphs discuss Hay’s (1999) conceptualisation of crisis narratives to help analyse the importance of Brexit in the election, as well as Labour’s political challenges and Wright’s (2019) ideas about creating collective political actors to support social transformation. Hay (1999) suggested that Gramsci’s ‘war of position’ could be reinterpreted as ‘a war of competing narratives, competing constructions of crisis, increasingly fought out in the media between conflicting political elites …’ (Hay 1999, 336). The discursive construction of crisis narratives arises when fundamental contradictions within the current state regime threatens social stability and can no longer be solved through ‘minor tinkering’ within the current system (Hay 1999, 329–330). ‘Crisis’ is conceptualised as a moment where political actors widely perceive that ‘decisive intervention’ can and must be made (Hay 1999, 323). There

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are likely to be competing political narratives of structural crisis that resonate with (but also simplify) the material conditions experienced by citizens. Distinct and separate events are also interpreted to support these narratives. Eventually a ‘dominant crisis narrative’ that emerges will form the basis of a new state project and new political economic consensus, even though it might not fully address the complex underlying causes of structural contradictions (Hay 1999, 331–335). It can be argued that Johnson’s 2019 General Election victory was based on the Conservative Party’s successful attempt to capitalise on the dominant crisis narrative that blends political discontent with Brexit promises. As discussed in the previous section, the support for Brexit was driven by economic and cultural insecurities (Jennings and Stoker 2019, 159), and was also tied up with ‘the emotional politics of identity and subjectivity’ (Browning 2019, 222). Pro-Brexit campaigners had promoted nostalgic populist fantasy narratives about Brexit and anxieties tended to arise when the ‘fantasmatic’ narratives were threatened, as can be seen from how some Leavers blamed Remainers, civil servants and judges for what they saw as unreasonable attempts to obstruct Brexit (Browning 2019, 238–239). This played into Johnson’s ‘people versus parliament’ narrative, which suggested a singular drastic solution to break the political deadlock and ‘get Brexit done’. The political alliance of those in the leave camp, however, is likely to unravel after the Withdrawal Agreement passed through parliament in January 2020. Many promises made by the Vote Leave campaign in 2016 have already been widely challenged. For example, Johnson and Vote Leave claimed that leaving the EU would allow the UK to spend 350 million GBP extra per week on the NHS, instead of as payment to the EU, but Sir David Norgrove, Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, argued that this figure did not take into account payments from the EU to the UK (see the discussion in Lee 2020). As discussions proceed on the UK’s future relationship with the EU, it might become increasingly clear that Brexit cannot satisfy all Leavers’ wishes. Although the ‘hyperglobalist neoliberals’ and ‘nativist economic nationalists’ allied during the EU referendum, they have fundamentally different visions for the future direction of the UK economy; the former wants to commit the UK more fully to the market economy, whereas the latter prefers to pursue state-directed industrial strategies (Rosamond 2019, 414–415). The differences between the ‘discursive construction of crisis narratives’ and actual ‘structural contradictions’ (Hay 1999, 323) are also

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likely to become more pronounced in the post-Brexit era. As Hay (1999) argued, the new state project founded on the dominant crisis narrative might selectively address some contradictions or symbolically respond to the ‘crisis’ as constructed in the narrative, or both (Hay 1999, 337). The pursuit of neoliberal policies during the Thatcher era, for example, corresponded with the dominant narration of crisis in the 1970s, which portrayed the interventionist state as the culprit. Even though Thatcherism did not resolve structural contradictions, it was arguably a successful state project that reduced people’s expectations of the state, with occasional suppressions of dissent (Hay 1999, 325, 337–338). An interventionist and developmental state project, on the other hand, might arguably have been more successful in solving fundamental contradictions in the British political economy (Hay 1999, 338). It has been suggested that there are ‘multiple imagined Brexits’ (Hay 2019, 15). Nevertheless, given competitive global economic pressures, the post-Brexit UK economy is likely to be characterised by more intense forms of austerity and the neoliberal growth model, which contradict the economic interests of those Leavers who were ‘left behind’ by neoliberal globalisation (Hay 2019, 15–17). Moreover, Brexit is likely to harm Leave areas in the North more than Southern areas and exacerbate uneven development due to the uneven effects of trade disruptions, losses of EU structural funds and regional support, lower government funding, and rising living costs outside of London (Jessop 2018, 1741–1742). Brexit might also complicate the UK’s political union, since only 2 out of 4 constituent nations (England and Wales) voted to leave (Hay 2019, 9, 16). Together with the economic effects of the coronavirus outbreak in 2020, which is briefly discussed in Chapter 4, structural problems in the British political economy, such as high levels of inequality, are likely to become more prominent in the post-Brexit era. Labour under Corbyn arguably tried to put forward a form of crisis narrative based on its analysis of the British political economy’s structural problems (discussed in Chapter 4). During the 2019 election campaign, Corbyn also tried, unsuccessfully, to reframe the Brexit discussion by maintaining that the government was putting the NHS at risk by including it in ongoing post-Brexit UK–US trade agreement negotiations (BBC 2019b). As previously discussed, Labour suffered from various problems during the campaign and adopted a middle-ground position on Brexit that alienated voters, which caused it to lose the election along with many traditional Labour seats in the North and the Midlands.

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In addition to convincing voters that its economic policies are credible, winning over fragmented groups of voters remains one of Labour’s most important political challenges. Chapter 2 discussed how increased polarisation in the voting behaviour of people located in ‘cities’ and ‘towns’ makes it difficult for national parties to build a broad-based political alliance. Younger, socially liberal, more educated and ethnically diverse city dwellers increasingly vote Labour, whilst town dwellers who tend to be older, more socially conservative and less ethnically diverse increasingly vote Conservative (Jennings and Stoker 2019, 155–156, 161). Brexit further polarised voters at the 2019 election, which made it difficult for political parties to target ‘the median voter’ in both Remain and Leave camps (The Economist 2019). After the 2019 election, there was much discussion about how to win back the Labour heartlands (for example, see Nandy 2019). However, this should not be done at the cost of alienating Labour’s other bases of support that were inspired by Corbyn, such as the young and ethnic minorities in urban areas. As Sarkar (2019) argued, Northerners in traditional Labour seats are not representative of the entire working class, which Labour is supposed to represent. Arguably, the definition of ‘working class’ in contemporary Britain should be broadened to take into account generational wealth gaps and situations facing white collar workers in precarious jobs, amongst other factors (Sarkar 2019). Moreover, strategies to win back voters in Scotland ought to be developed if Labour hopes to form government. Whereas the ‘cities and towns divide’ characterises voting behaviour in England and Wales, Scotland’s voting behaviour in the past decade indicates rising nationalism (Jennings and Stoker 2019, 156, 162). Labour has lost dominance of the Scottish Parliament to the Scottish National Party (SNP) since 2007, and in the 2015 UK General Election it managed to retain only one Scottish seat. Corbyn inherited this problem but was unable to reverse Labour’s decline in popularity in Scotland (Finn 2019, 23–24). To establish broad-based alliances of fragmented voters to win the next election, Labour and the Left might benefit from reflecting on Wright’s (2019) proposal about the formation of collective actors to drive social transformation. To mobilise individuals for a sustained political project, it is insufficient to take into account people’s economic interests; people’s (often competing) identities and values must also be considered. Wright (2019) noted that class identities are important but that they might be insufficient as a basis to foster solidarity. Other forms of non-class identities, such as race and gender, might on appearance have identity-interests

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that contradict class interests, but, if values align across identities (e.g. shared egalitarian beliefs), these non-class identities may still be used to aid the Left’s political project (Wright 2019, 133–138). In other words, values ‘constitute a potential basis for constructing political unity across these diverse identities’ (Wright 2019, 138). The Left might still be able to attract working class people who are sympathetic to right-wing populism, but this depends on political contexts, particularly political cultures, rules and institutions (Wright 2019, 139–141). It is also important to link political parties with left-leaning grassroots groups, which can together push to reform the ‘political rules of the game’ in their favour (Wright 2019, 141). As previously discussed, Labour’s 2019 election campaign focused on the importance of structural economic reforms and appealed to people’s material interests, but in an overwhelmingly disjointed manner. Labour was unable to construct a simplified and compelling narrative relative to that of the Conservatives, who successfully capitalised on Brexit narratives linked with cultural identity and used strategic political targeting to secure the support of Northern voters. Many left-leaning scholars have noted the importance of changing the political narrative, and suggested that the Left could learn from the popularisation of Thatcherism that took place years before Thatcher’s electoral victory (Berry 2019; Coates 2017, 90). As Coates (2017) argued, ‘[p]olitical power is ultimately about establishing the hegemony of ideas in the minds of voters, and the Right has been extremely effective at hegemonic politics of late. It is time, therefore, for the centre-left to imitate and outmatch them’ (Coates 2017, 90). This does not mean that persistent ideological challenges to the status quo need to be prioritised over winning elections. The choices before the Labour Party should not be framed as a binary choice between either ‘winning elections’ or ‘commitment to the socialist cause’, since in the long run they are both important and complementary. As discussed in Chapter 4, Labour’s 2019 manifesto contained important policy ideas that could radically transform the British political economy. However, the Conservative government under Johnson might introduce measures that deepen structural inequality and imbalances in the British political economy in ways that are difficult to reverse. Chapter 4 also returns to Wright’s (2019) ideas to reflect on the future of the Labour Party after Corbyn.

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Conclusion This chapter has argued that the dominant material, institutional and ideological structures of the British political economy created seeds of dissent that partly grew into grassroots support for Jeremy Corbyn in 2015. Nevertheless, the dominant historical structures, characterised by economic neoliberalism, conservative ideas and political institutions, continued to provide a ‘frame of action’ that severely limited the possibility of a radical left-wing Labour Party winning power. In addition to Labour’s strategic errors during the 2019 election campaign, the UK’s preoccupation with Brexit stole the limelight away from the party’s radical reform agenda. Ultimately, Johnson’s Conservative Party was more successful at creating a new right-of-centre ‘hegemonic bloc’ based on the propagation of populist Brexit narratives. Nevertheless, Labour under Corbyn was able to propagate alternative economic ideas and policies to a certain extent. It also challenged political norms through the promotion of extra-parliamentary forces and grassroots political mobilisation. To achieve broad-based political support, it is suggested in this chapter that Labour might need to pay more attention to people’s identities and values in addition to their economic interests. This chapter has also pointed to the importance of political narratives and the interconnections between ideas and material realities, which relates to one of the main arguments of this book - the Labour Party necessarily needs to engage in consistent ideological challenges to the status quo if it wants to drive progressive socialist changes in society. Nevertheless, it is important to make a clear distinction between structural contradictions and dominant crisis narratives. As Chapter 4 discusses further, structural problems in the British political economy are unlikely to wither away after Brexit. The post-Brexit and post-coronavirus economy might also create a climate where Labour’s alternatives to neoliberal economics could be more relevant than ever. The next chapter discusses in detail Labour’s attempts under Corbyn to challenge the neoliberal economic status quo and push for a new economics that works for the majority, with goals such as job creation, social care and environmental sustainability. It also discusses the future for Labour and for the Left in light of the 2019 General Election defeat.

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Norris, Pippa. 2019. “Was Farage the Midwife Delivering Johnson’s Victory? The Brexit Party and the Size of the Conservative Majority.” London School of Economics Blogs, December 16. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/ ge2019-brexit-party-impact. Nunns, Alex. 2018. The Candidate: Jeremy Corbyn’s Improbable Path to Power. 2nd ed. New York and London: OR Books. Panitch, Leo, and Colin Leys. 2001. The End of Parliamentary Socialism: From New Left to New Labour. 2nd ed. London and New York: Verso. Parker, George, and James Blitz. 2019. “Labour’s Brexit Plans Will Keep UK Closely Aligned with EU.” The Financial Times, November 21. https://www. ft.com/content/85d1ebc4-0c55-11ea-b2d6-9bf4d1957a67. Pickard, Jim. 2019a. “Who Are Labour’s ‘Four Ms’ Influencing Jeremy Corbyn?” The Financial Times, July 10. https://www.ft.com/content/166 d32d8-a26b-11e9-974c-ad1c6ab5efd1. ———. 2019b. “FT Poll Shows Voters Prefer Johnson to Corbyn.” The Financial Times, September 9. https://www.ft.com/content/7fc3ca7c-d0c3-11e999a4-b5ded7a7fe3f. Piper, Elizabeth. 2019. “Jeremy Corbyn, Britain’s Unlikely EU Warrior, Makes Last Stand on Brexit.” Reuters, September 9. https://www.reuters.com/inv estigates/special-report/britain-eu-corbyn. Proctor, Kate. 2019. “Boris Johnson’s Move to Prorogue Parliament ‘a Constitutional Outrage’, Says Speaker.” The Guardian, August 28. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/28/boris-johnsonsmove-to-prorogue-parliament-a-constitutional-outrage-says-speaker. ———. 2020. “Labour’s Canvassing Strategy Had ‘Major Deficiencies’, Leaked Report Says.” The Guardian, February 7. https://www.theguardian.com/ politics/2020/feb/07/labours-canvassing-strategy-had-major-deficiencies-lea ked-report-says. Proctor, Kate, and Jessica Murray. 2020. “Labour Defeat Due to Gimmicks and Division, Say Members.” The Guardian, January 27. https://www.the guardian.com/politics/2020/jan/27/labour-defeat-due-to-gimmicks-anddivision-say-members228. Quinn, Thomas. 2016. “The British Labour Party’s Leadership Election of 2015.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 18 (4): 759–78. https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148116664268. Richards, Steve. 2016. “Leadership, Loyalty and the Rise of Jeremy Corbyn.” The Political Quarterly 87 (1): 12–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X. 12221. Rodgers, Sienna. 2019. “Momentum Hosts ‘Largest Mobilising Call in UK Political History’ with Corbyn.” LabourList. https://labourlist.org/2019/10/ momentum-hosts-largest-mobilising-call-in-uk-political-history-with-corbyn.

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Rosamond, Ben. 2019. “Brexit and the Politics of UK Growth Models.” New Political Economy 24 (3): 408–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467. 2018.1484721. Sabbagh, Dan. 2019. “Snap Election Looming? Five Factors That Could Shape the Result.” The Guardian, September 3. https://www.theguardian.com/ politics/2019/sep/03/snap-election-looming-five-factors-that-could-shapethe-result. Sabbagh, Dan, Heather Stewart, and Jessica Elgot. 2018. “Revealed: How an Increasingly Powerful Momentum Is Transforming Labour.” The Guardian, March 18. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/18/revealedhow-increasingly-powerful-momentum-is-transforming-labour. Sarkar, Ash. 2019. “It’s a Myth That Labour Has Lost the Working Class.” The Guardian, December 10. https://www.theguardian.com/commentis free/2019/dec/10/myth-labour-lost-working-class-pollsters. Schlosberg, Justin, and Laura Laker. 2018. “Labour, Antisemitism and the News: A Disinformation Paradigm.” http://www.mediareform.org.uk/blog/ new-mrc-research-finds-inaccuracies-and-distortions-in-media-coverage-of-ant isemitism-and-the-labour-party. Seymour, Richard. 2016. Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics. London and New York: Verso. Smith, Matthew. 2017. “Why People Voted Labour or Conservative at the 2017 General Election.” YouGov, July 11. https://yougov.co.uk/topics/ politics/articles-reports/2017/07/11/why-people-voted-labour-or-conservat ive-2017-gener. Stewart, Heather. 2018. “With Jennie Formby’s Coronation, Corbyn Has Total Control of Labour.” The Guardian, March 21. https://www.theguardian. com/politics/2018/mar/21/with-jennie-formbys-coronation-corbyn-hastotal-control-of-labour. ———. 2019a. “‘Back in the Bunker’: Labour Unease with Corbyn’s Cadre Grows.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/ 12/back-in-the-bunker-labour-unease-with-corbyns-cadre-grows. ———. 2019b. “Clashing Egos and ‘Policy Incontinence’: Inside Labour’s Campaign.” The Guardian, December 13. https://www.theguardian.com/ politics/2019/dec/13/inside-labours-campaign-behind. Stewart, Heather, and Rowena Mason. 2016. “Nigel Farage’s Anti-Migrant Poster Reported to Police.” The Guardian, June 16. https://www.thegua rdian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/nigel-farage-defends-ukip-breaking-pointposter-queue-of-migrants. Stone, Jon. 2020. “Anti-Corbyn Labour Officials Worked to Lose General Election to Oust Leader, Leaked Dossier Finds.” The Independent, April 14. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leak-reportcorbyn-election-whatsapp-antisemitism-tories-yougov-poll-a9462456.html? fbclid=IwAR2PZZYrv7b3qdZh9Rtf2FZUW0qRrOpNuSCosV_Bz-_nAvLkF djDJ-gVINg.

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Syal, Rajeev, Rowena Mason, Heather Stewart, and Frances Perraudin. 2019. “Corbyn, Antisemitism and Brexit: Labour MPs on Why They Lost.” The Guardian, December 17. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/ dec/17/corbyn-antisemitism-and-brexit-labour-mps-on-why-they-lost. Tait, Robert, Luke Harding, Ewen MacAskill, and Ben Quinn. 2018. “No Evidence Corbyn Was a Communist Spy, Say Intelligence Experts.” The Guardian, February 20. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/ 20/no-evidence-corbyn-was-spy-for-czechoslovakia-say-intelligence-expert s%0A. The Economist. 2016. “The Culpability of Jeremy Corbyn.” The Economist, June 24. https://www.economist.com/britain/2016/06/24/the-culpability-of-jer emy-corbyn. ———. 2019. “What Happened to Britain’s Median Voter?” The Economist, October 31. https://www.economist.com/britain/2019/10/31/what-hap pened-to-britains-median-voter. ———. 2020. “How the Conservatives Won the Social Media Campaign.” The Economist, January 18. https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/01/18/ how-the-conservatives-won-the-social-media-campaign. The Guardian. 2018. “Flawed Reporting on Antisemitism Claims against the Labour Party.” The Guardian, September 30. https://www.theguardian. com/politics/2018/sep/30/flawed-reporting-on-antisemitism-claims-aga inst-the-labour-party. Travis, Alan. 2018. “Youthquake: Why Age Did Matter for Corbyn in 2017.” The Guardian, January 29. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/ jan/29/youthquake-why-age-did-matter-for-corbyn-in-2017. Triggle, Nick. 2018. “Tax Rise Need to Help Pay for £20bn NHS Boost, Says PM.” BBC, June 18. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-44516123. Uberoi, Elise, Richard Cracknell, and Stefano Fella. 2019. “European Parliament Elections 2019: Results and Analysis.” House of Commons Library Website. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8600/. Wainwright, Daniel. 2019. “General Election 2019: How Labour’s ‘red Wall’ Turned Blue.” BBC, December 13. https://www.bbc.com/news/election2019-50771014. Wainwright, Hilary. 2018. “The Remarkable Rise of Jeremy Corbyn.” New Labor Forum 27 (3): 34–42. https://doi.org/10.1177/1095796018791151. Walker, Peter. 2019. “Vilification of Corbyn in Broadcast Media ‘fuelled Election Defeat’ – Shadow Minister.” The Guardian, December 16. https://www. theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/16/vilification-of-corbyn-in-broadcastmedia-fuelled-election-defeat-andy-mcdonald. Ward, Stephen, and Dominic Wring. 2018. “Out with the Old, in with the New? The Media Campaign.” Parliamentary Affairs 71: 203–21. https://doi.org/ 10.1093/pa/gsx057.

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CHAPTER 4

Labour’s Policies to Transform the British Political Economy

Abstract The chapter focuses on Labour’s policies under Corbyn, which aimed to promote a radical transformation of the British political economy. The first section briefly describes how the chapter takes a different view to that of mainstream accounts of Corbynism in political science literature. The second section summarises important components of Labour’s 2017 and 2019 manifestos. The third section evaluates criticisms directed at Labour’s economic policies. The possibility of strong opposition to the implementation of these policies if Labour had come to power is also discussed. The fourth and final section draws on socialist writings and the book’s Coxian/Gramcian theoretical approach to reflect on Labour after Corbyn and the future of dissent for the Left. Keywords Labour’s 2017 and 2019 manifestos · Alternative models of ownership · Labour’s economic policies · Economic democracy · Green industrial strategy

Introduction Chapter 3 discussed political obstacles that Labour faced under Corbyn, as well as the dominant historical structures that severely limited the possibility of a radical left-wing party coming to power. After Labour’s defeat at the 2019 General Election, Corbyn stepped down as leader in April © The Author(s) 2021 P. Chiengkul, Labour Under Corbyn, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60262-8_4

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2020 amidst fierce debate about the future direction of the party. On the one hand, Corbyn argued that Labour won the economic arguments and shifted political narratives on issues such as austerity, corporate power, inequality and climate change, even though it lost the election (Corbyn 2019). Moreover, he pointed out that many of Labour’s policies were popular and argued that one of the party’s main tasks in the future is to win the trust of voters (Corbyn 2019). On the other hand, Labour’s defeat was used by some critics to argue that it had moved too far to the Left under Corbyn and that its radical policies were primarily to blame for its defeat (for example, see Tony Blair and Andy Burnham cited in Syal 2019). This chapter evaluates common criticisms directed at Labour’s economic policies during Corbyn’s leadership and argues that the policies should not simply be dismissed as ‘too radical’ or ‘populist’. Focusing on the contents of the 2017 and 2019 Labour manifestos, the chapter discusses major aspects of Labour’s political and economic platform. It argues that Labour’s economic policies had the potential to redress structural problems in the British political economy and tackle contemporary challenges. Moreover, it argues that Labour’s policy proposals were broadly a step in the right direction, even though many policies might have required further adjustment or development if Labour had come to power. Given the likelihood that the implementation of these policies would have met with significant opposition and challenged most voters’ common sense about the economy, it is further argued that in future Labour should prioritise its transformative agenda and compromise when necessary. Nevertheless, the post-coronavirus material conditions have arguably opened up opportunities to promote and popularise progressive economic alternatives. The following section discusses how this chapter offers an alternative perspective to mainstream interpretations of Corbynism in political science literature. The second section then explores important components of Labour’s economic policies, such as its green industrial strategy and measures to strengthen workers’ rights. It also briefly discusses Labour’s political reform proposals and its international policies. The third section evaluates criticisms of Labour’s economic policies and potential problems that may occur from their implementation. This includes the possibility that the policies would be met with strong opposition from capital groups and state bureaucracy. Nevertheless, this section generally argues that Labour’s policies had the potential to redress

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structural problems in the British political economy and meet contemporary challenges, particularly those of climate change and technological disruption. The fourth and final section revisits socialist writings and the Coxian/Gramcian theoretical approach discussed in Chapters 1 and 2 to help reflect on Labour after Corbyn and the future of dissent for the Left.

Interpretations of ‘Corbynism’ in Political Science Maiguashca and Dean (2020) argued that many studies on Corbynism in British political science adopt problematic assumptions, insufficiently engage with empirical evidence and generally ‘fail to do justice to the heterogeneous strands that constitute the politics of Corbynism’ (Maiguashca and Dean 2020, 48). It was argued that generally dismissive attitudes towards Corbynism in these studies might reflect narrow ‘Westminster model’ views of politics and the normative orientations of the scholars and/or mainstream media influences (Maiguashca and Dean 2020, 60–65; also see Peter Allen 2019). Some studies tend to focus on Corbyn’s poor leadership or suggest that Labour under Corbyn represented an undesirably ‘populist’ and extreme ‘hard left’ form of politics (Maiguashca and Dean 2020, 49). A 3-year field research on the movement surrounding Corbyn, however, challenged these dominant narratives with regards to the criteria for good leadership, and argued that it is more appropriate to label the politics of Labour under Corbyn as social democratic (Maiguashca and Dean 2020, 54–60). Notably, the term ‘Corbynism’ is often used to portray Corbyn and supporters as a religious-like cult (examples include phrases like ‘the high priesthood of Corbynism’ in Bolton and Pitts 2020b, 121), and Corbyn supporters are often ‘infanti[lised]’ as populists or as ‘deluded’ left-wingers (Maiguashca and Dean 2020, 61). Such portrayals are problematic because they insinuate that the movement inspired by Corbyn’s politics does not deserve careful consideration as a progressive political movement. Moreover, Wainwright (2017) pointed out that Corbyn’s appeal was not based on charisma but on his style of leadership that encouraged people to participate in Labour’s political project and in the policy-making process (Wainwright 2017, 99). Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party has also been interpreted as a form of ‘intra-party populism’ (Watts and Bale 2019, 100), or as being part of the recent surge in populism (see the discussion in Maiguashca and Dean 2020, 53). So-called ‘populist’ parties are defined as those that

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claim to represent the general will of the ‘virtuous people’ in their struggles against the ‘corrupt elite’ (Mudde 2004, 543 cited in March 2017, 284). However, calling Labour under Corbyn ‘populist’ is misleading. It is argued here that Labour’s discussion of economic inequality in the UK should not simply be dismissed as populist rhetoric about the people versus the elite. As Chapter 2 discussed, there are many statistics and studies that point to a high level of economic inequality in British society. Arguably, inequality is an important structural political economic problem that warrants serious scrutiny. There might be some discursive similarities between right-wing populist parties and Labour with regards to their criticisms of the elite and the political system that does not benefit the majority of the population, but describing all of these parties as ‘populist’ would obscure their essentially very different political economic platforms. The following sections discuss Labour’s policies under Corbyn and argue that they aimed to promote progressive reforms of the British political economy in ways that would fundamentally challenge the status quo, which clearly distinguished Labour from right-wing populist parties. It is argued that Labour’s policies were designed to address structural problems in the British political economy and, if implemented, would have likely led to large-scale redistributive material consequences. The policies of right-wing populist parties, however, often contradict their anti-elite rhetoric. For example, despite claiming that it cared about economically neglected regions in the North, one Brexit Party policy was to abolish inheritance tax. This would mostly benefit the wealthiest people in society and the wealthiest regions in the country, specifically London and Southeast England, which on average pay twice the amount of inheritance tax than other regions (Bell 2019). Chapter 3 also discussed how Boris Johnson’s populist Brexit ‘crisis narrative’ is likely to unravel and reveal unsolved structural problems in the British political economy, which might become even more pronounced in the post-Brexit era. The analysis of Labour’s policies in this chapter also provides a different perspective to that of Rutherford’s (2017), who discussed ‘Corbynism’ and ‘Blue Labour’ as the two opposing ‘intellectual forces’ in the Labour Party. Rutherford argued that Corbynism was shaped by a variety of old and new Left influences, but he mainly seemed to equate Corbynism with accelerationist views on post-capitalism that promote the idea of a ‘fully automated luxury communism’(see Bastani 2019) where, according to Rutherford, people will be entitled to free money amongst other

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utopian promises (Rutherford 2017). Moreover, he argued that, unlike Blue Labour, the 2017 Labour manifesto aimed to give ‘more power to the central state’ instead of promoting the decentralisation of power, and also that the manifesto promoted ‘the same kind of command and control, tax and spend politics that had characterised Labour in the last century’ (Rutherford 2017). Blue Labour scholars have provided useful warnings about how Labour’s increasingly socially liberal stance alienates its traditional working-class voters (Rutherford and Glasman 2020, 111). However, the claim that the Corbyn project stood opposed to Blue Labour’s support for redistribution of power is rather unfair. As discussed in the following section, the 2017 and 2019 manifestos clearly promoted decentralisation of power and redistribution of economic gains. There were also other sources of left-leaning ideas that, significantly more so than accelerationism, informed Labour’s policies under Corbyn. Examples include policy proposals of progressive think tanks, such as the Policy Network, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), Compass, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), and the works of academics and economists, such as Mariana Mazzucato, James Meadway, Ann Pettifor, Graham Turner and those in the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI) (Coates 2017, 83–84; also see the discussion in Blackburn 2018, 19–22). The book Economics for the Many (2018), edited by Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer John McDonnell, also pointed to many economists and writers, including Joseph Stiglitz, Simon WrenLewis, Prem Sikka and Ann Pettifor, who influenced the ‘intellectual roots’ of Corbynism (McDonnell 2018). As stated above, this chapter takes the 2017 and 2019 manifestos as the main texts that represented Labour’s official policies during Corbyn’s leadership. Notably, some policies supported by party members and Momentum, such as a 4-day work week (Pickard 2019b), did not always become official Labour policies. For example, at Labour’s annual conference in September 2019, party members voted to support a 2030 net zero-carbon target and to abolish private schools, but these proposals were softened or not adopted in the 2019 manifesto (Pickard 2019c). It is also problematic to equate some of Corbyn’s views with Labour’s official policies. Corbyn personally adopted an anti-nuclear stance and criticised the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) on the grounds that it is problematically shaped by the politics of the Cold War era (Worrall 2019). However, Labour under Corbyn was committed to spending the

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NATO target of 2% of the UK’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defence and to maintaining the UK’s Trident nuclear submarine deterrent (Elgot 2017; The Labour Party 2017a, 116–120; 2019b, 101). It has also been suggested that Labour under Corbyn did not sufficiently subscribe to liberal internationalism (Bolton and Pitts 2020a, 104–105). The following section, however, argues that the Corbyn project was the opposite of this characterisation, as can be seen from the contents of Labour’s 2017 and 2019 manifestos.

The 2017 and 2019 Labour Manifestos Compared This section explores key elements of Labour’s 2017 and 2019 manifestos. Both manifestos proposed a progressive reform and extension of the welfare state, as well as measures to radically transform the economy. The 2017 manifesto advocated reform of the financial system so that it would benefit more of the population and proposed an industrial strategy that would support high-skilled jobs and small businesses (The Labour Party 2017a, 8). The 2019 manifesto contained similar policies but went further in many areas, particularly with regards to the role of the state in facilitating the transition to a green economy and the extension of workers’ power. The following paragraphs explore Labour’s social policies and its plan to invest in welfare state institutions. Economic policies to transform Britain’s political economy are then discussed, followed by a brief discussion of Labour’s proposal for political reform and its international policies. Labour’s 2017 and 2019 manifestos challenged austerity and proposed the establishment of new public institutions to promote social welfare and equality. The manifestos called for massive-scale investment in the National Health Service (NHS) and highlighted the need to improve its services (The Labour Party 2017a, 66–69; 2019b, 31–35). In addition, Labour wanted to replace the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) with a Department for Social Security, as well as put an end to the Conservatives’ Universal Credit social security programme, which has been criticised for imposing complex tests on vulnerable citizens (for example, see Standing 2019b, 22) and for failing to end poverty (The Labour Party 2019b, 72–76). Citing how 1.2–1.5 million elderly citizens did not receive sufficient care due to social care funding cuts, Labour proposed to establish a ‘National Care Service’ that would work alongside the NHS to meet the needs of the population (The Labour Party 2017a,

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71; 2019b, 35–36). Reflecting similar ideals to that of the NHS, Labour also proposed to establish a ‘National Education Service’ to provide a cradle-to-grave style of free and lifelong education. Labour argued that this would help to reduce inequality in access to education, as well as help to upgrade the skills of the UK’s workforce (The Labour Party 2017a, 14, 34; 2019b, 37). Other institutions that Labour proposed to establish include, for example, a new Department for Women and Equalities to end discrimination based on gender, race and disability (The Labour Party 2019b, 65–69), and a new English Sovereign Land Trust to purchase land for low-cost housing (The Labour Party 2019b, 78). Homelessness is arguably a major social issue; in 2019 the UK had the highest rate of homelessness in Europe and relatively weak tenants’ rights (Dorling and Peggs 2019, 19). Whilst the Conservative Party pledged to build 200,000 Starter Homes in 2015, none were built as of 2019 (Dorling and Peggs 2019, 19). To help people find affordable homes, Labour aimed to build at least 150,000 new council and social homes annually in its first term in office, in addition to other supportive measures (The Labour Party 2019b, 78). It would also establish a Prime Minister-led task force to end rough sleeping in 5 years (The Labour Party 2019b, 80). To fund public services and its other policies, Labour proposed to implement a more progressive form of taxation and seriously clamp down on tax avoidance (The Labour Party 2017a, 9). The main rate of corporation tax was 28% in 2008 (HM Revenue & Customs 2014, 5), but it was gradually reduced to 19% by 2020 (HM Revenue & Customs 2020). Labour proposed to reverse some of these cuts so that the main rate of corporation tax would incrementally rise to 26% by April 2022 (Small Profits Rate for firms with profits under 300,000 GBP/year would be 21%) [The Labour Party 2019a, 31]). Moreover, the income tax rates of the top 5% of the population would be increased (45% for those whose income is above 80,000 GBP/year and 50% for those whose income is above 125,000 GBP/year) (The Labour Party 2019a, 5). Labour also planned to introduce unitary taxation of transnational corporations, which would treat corporations under common ownership as unitary enterprises to prevent transnational companies from booking their profits in low-tax countries (The Labour Party 2019a, 32). Moreover, Labour wanted to introduce a more comprehensive system of financial transactions taxes, tax capital gains at the same level as income tax and reconsider corporate tax reliefs (The Labour Party 2019a, 32–37).

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Labour under Corbyn rejected the narrow focus on government deficit reduction and instead concentrated on investments to support economic growth (The Labour Party 2017a, 10). It proposed to adopt a ‘Fiscal Credibility Rule’ that would constrain the government from borrowing for day-to-day spending but, at the same time, allow for public investments to support future growth (for details, see in The Labour Party 2019a, 7). The rule would take into account government assets as well as liabilities - an approach supported by Lord Robert Skidelsky, a widely respected economist (see Skidelsky 2019b, 6). The Office for Budget Responsibility, accountable to Parliament, would also be given increased power and an independent role in monitoring government compliance with the rule (The Labour Party 2017a, 10). Essential to Labour’s proposals were measures to rebalance the economy and to encourage the financial sector to serve the real economy. As discussed previously, Labour wanted to introduce a more comprehensive system of financial transactions taxes, particularly by extending the Stamp Duty Reserve Tax to cover more financial assets. It also wanted to implement significant regulatory reform of the financial sector, such as placing a firm ring-fence between investment and retail banking to protect consumers (The Labour Party 2017a, 16; 2019a, 35). Similar to the discussion of the UK’s finance-led growth model in Chapter 2, the 2017 manifesto argued that the UK had ‘relied too heavily on the financial sector, centred on London and the South East’, whilst many areas, such as the North and coastal towns, had been left-behind economically (The Labour Party 2017a, 13). Corbyn himself criticised the financialised UK economy and proposed that the next Labour government would make ‘finance the servant of industry’ by reining in financial speculations and supporting lending for productive purposes (Jeremy Corbyn’s speech, February 2018, cited in Chapman 2018). Another important component of Labour’s economic programme was its industrial strategy that aimed to increase productivity and invest in the local infrastructure of economically left-behind regions (The Labour Party 2017a, 13). Inspired by the work of Mariana Mazzucato, Labour’s 2017 manifesto proposed ‘a mission-oriented industrial strategy’ that would involve strategic investments by the public sector to aid the private sector and increase innovations across the economy, but in ways that would meet important social objectives such as the care needs of an ageing population (The Labour Party 2017b, 2). Given the challenge of climate change, Labour’s industrial strategy was also geared towards

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creating a green economy that would provide good quality jobs (The Labour Party 2017b, 1). In 2017 Labour’s industrial strategy had 2 main goals: (1) The Green Economy goal - by 2030, 60% of the UK’s energy sources ought to come from low carbon or renewable sources, and (2) The Innovation Nation goal - by 2030, the UK ought to have the greatest percentage of high-skilled jobs amongst member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and roughly 3% of GDP should be spent on Research and Development (R&D) (The Labour Party 2017b, 3, 6). Labour planned to provide targeted support to certain industries that had high economic potential, but it recognised that focusing on a few elite sectors would not meet its broader social goals. To increase productivity and wages, Labour argued that innovations ought to be promoted in sectors that provide significant levels of employment, such as retail and hospitality (The Labour Party 2017b, 16–17). Low-wage sectors, such as hospitality and agriculture, employ around a third of the UK workforce. However, these forms of employment provide not only low wages but also low security. Additionally, these workers are at risk of being replaced by automation in the future. To tackle these issues, Labour argued that it was important to create decent and high-skilled jobs. The National Education Service that Labour proposed to establish would support adult education and lifelong learning to help people learn new skills and/or to improve on their existing skills (The Labour Party 2017b, 7–8). Moreover, to take advantage of new technological advancements, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation, Labour highlighted the importance of upgrading the country’s digital infrastructure. In 2019 it proposed to establish a new public institution called ‘British Broadband’ to provide free full-fibre broadband to all households and businesses in the UK by 2030. This initiative would bring parts of the BT group into public ownership (The Labour Party 2019b, 53). As of 2019, only 10% of British households and businesses could connect to a full-fibre broadband internet, as compared to 75% in Spain and 97% in Japan (Fildes and Pickard 2019). Whilst the 2017 manifesto showed an interest to promote a greener economy and environmental issues (see The Labour Party 2017a, 12, 14, 20–22, 93–94), the 2019 manifesto went much further to centrally embed environmental sustainability in Labour’s flagship economic policies. Spurred by the Extinction Rebellion protests that urged the government to take the threats of climate change more seriously, in May 2019

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Corbyn moved a motion to declare a ‘Climate Change Emergency’, which was passed by parliament (Walker 2019). Moreover, at the heart of the 2019 manifesto was Labour’s promotion of the ‘Green Industrial Revolution’ or the ‘Green New Deal’ that would create 1 million jobs to help facilitate a transition to a green economy (The Labour Party 2019b, 12). Other economic policies were also adjusted to reflect Labour’s environmental goals. For example, in 2017 Labour proposed to establish a National Transformation Fund to invest 250 billion GBP over 10 years to upgrade the UK’s infrastructure, including investments in energy, transport and digital systems (The Labour Party 2017a, 10–12). In 2019, Labour proposed that the National Transformation Fund would additionally help to tackle the climate emergency. It allocated 250 billion GBP over 10 years to a Green Transformation Fund and 150 billion GBP over 5 years to a Social Transformation Fund (The Labour Party 2019a, 6). Another Labour policy was to establish a ‘Sustainable Investment Board’ that would include the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Business Secretary and the Governor of the Bank of England as board members. The Board would oversee green investments in the country and listen to opinions of stakeholders, including trade unions and businesses. Moreover, the Office for Budget Responsibility would incorporate ‘the cost of not acting’ to solve climate and environmental problems into the government’s fiscal decisions, and the Treasury’s investment rules would be rewritten to ensure that government spending helps to advance environmental goals (The Labour Party 2019b, 13). To achieve ‘a netzero-carbon energy system within the 2030s’ (or before that if possible), the 2019 manifesto advocated imposing a windfall tax on oil companies and to delist companies from the London Stock Exchange if they failed to help tackle climate change (The Labour Party 2019b, 13–15). Labour also proposed various other policies to tackle climate change and create green jobs (see The Labour Party 2019b, 16–18). To help correct past investment patterns that were highly concentrated in London and the South East, Labour proposed to establish a National Investment Bank and an accompanying network of Regional Development Banks. These public institutions would direct investments more evenly across the country, taking into account the rate of return as well as ‘long-term objectives of stable growth and fairness’ (The Labour Party 2017a, 10). Citing successful examples in Germany and Nordic countries, Labour proposed that the National Investment Bank would

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direct 250 billion GBP of private capital lending for economic development purposes, which would include lending to small businesses and co-operatives, as well as lending for R&D and projects that would help promote a transition to a low-carbon economy (The Labour Party 2017a, 16; 2019b, 13). Since the National Investment Bank would be state owned, it could engage in long-term borrowing at relatively low costs and focus on projects that yield social and environmental benefits (GriffithJones and Naqvi 2019, 11). Notably, there is already a British Business Bank that was established by the Conservative Party in 2014, but it is perhaps too small to drive a transition to a green economy. The Green Investment Bank in the UK has also been privatised and is now owned by the Australian Macquarie Group (Griffith-Jones and Naqvi 2019, 11– 12). Moreover, since the government has great spending power (200 billion GBP/year in private-sector procurement), a Labour government would adjust procurement standards to correspond with its social and economic goals. For example, it would require government suppliers to protect the environment and workers’ rights, as well as reduce the income gaps between the highest and lowest paid employees in their organisations (The Labour Party 2017a, 14–15). Taken as a whole, it can be argued that Labour’s mission-led industrial strategy and regional development banks were designed to help redress uneven regional development and encourage more equitable sharing of gains from economic growth. Labour also looked to move some functions of the Bank of England to regions outside of London so that the Bank would take into account different regional needs, and to generally reduce ‘imbalances in decision-making’ (Walker 2017). Additionally, the National Transformation Fund, which would be part of the Treasury, would be placed in the North of England, and regional governmental offices would also be set up (The Labour Party 2019b, 14, 82). Furthermore, Labour promised to devolve more power to local communities and give local governments extra funding (The Labour Party 2017a, 86; for arguments in favour of further devolution of political and economic power see, for example, Blakeley and Raikes 2018). It also proposed to expand the ‘the Preston Model’ in Lancashire to the national level. The Preston Model is an example of how local ‘anchor’ institutions, such as hospitals and universities, can be used to support local economic development and revitalise communities that might have been adversely affected by neoliberal capitalism (Guinan and O’Neill 2018, 3–4).

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Another important aspect of the Corbyn project was the promotion of economic democracy. A Labour government under Corbyn would have promoted ‘democratic ownership structures’ in the economy and doubled the size of the co-operative sector, as well as introduced a ‘right to own’ measure where employees would have had a chance to purchase their companies if they were put up for sale (The Labour Party 2017a, 19; 2019b, 51). Since co-operatives tend to be in sectors that are not capitalintensive, such as retail and services, other measures might be needed to help promote public ownership and economic democracy in the wider economy (Ford 2019). In 2019, Labour proposed that companies that employ more than 250 people ought to set up ‘Inclusive Ownership Funds’ (IOFs). Each year, the companies ought to transfer at least 1% of their ownership shares into this fund so that, eventually, up to 10% of each company would be owned by employees (The Labour Party 2019b, 60; Pickard 2018b). Employees would have the same rights as shareholders and receive dividend payments capped at 500 GBP/year/employee (the rest of the dividend payment would contribute towards the government’s Climate Apprenticeship Fund) (The Labour Party 2019b, 60). It has been argued that IOFs would help to redistribute wealth and income through shared profits and increase workers’ power, since workers would have a say in the decision-making process. Broadening ownership to workers is also seen as a way to guard against the short-termism of financial capital, since it is assumed that workers are more likely to care about the long-term development of their companies (M. Lawrence 2019, 63–64). Labour under Corbyn also argued that its policy to nationalise public utility companies (rail, mail, energy and water) can be seen as a way to promote their democratic accountability (The Labour Party 2019a, 7). Labour planned to purchase water and energy companies through government bonds, with the level of compensation offered to investors in these companies set by parliament (Ford and Plimmer 2019a). In contrast to criticisms that Labour wanted to strengthen centralised bureaucratic control over public utilities, Labour clearly promoted decentralised, publicly owned local energy and water companies or co-operatives (The Labour Party 2017a, 19–20; 2019b, 15). It can also be argued that greater public ownership of the energy system would allow the state to direct profits and investments towards socially beneficial goals, such as renewable energy development, in ways that private companies have failed to do (Cumbers 2016, 327). Taking the energy system back into public ownership would occur gradually through stages. During this period

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Labour would implement measures to reduce fuel poverty and winter deaths, such as insulating 4 million homes and imposing a price cap on household energy bills (The Labour Party 2017a, 20). Labour’s plan to nationalise utility companies was sometimes criticised as a backward-looking policy that resembled the post-World War II nationalisation projects of the Clement Attlee government (1945– 1951). However, this characterisation is inaccurate. Attlee’s nationalisation projects were criticised by Tony Benn, a prominent left-wing Labour MP in the 1970s, for being too top-down and undemocratic (Seymour 2016, 4). Similar to Benn, who preferred to promote economic democracy, Labour under Corbyn was against top-down nationalisation projects that would give too much power to centralised bureaucracy. Notably, such an organisational model would contain similar structural features to that of multinational corporations (Guinan and O’Neill 2018, 5). Unlike the ‘statism’ of the Attlee government (Alavi 1997, 1901), Labour under Corbyn supported various forms of decentralised and democratically managed ownership arrangements. As discussed previously, it was committed to promoting workplace democracy, expanding the co-operative sector and supporting small businesses and the selfemployed (Brighton 2017; Guinan and O’Neill 2018, 1). Labour’s support for economic democracy and alternative models of ownership arguably reflects a strand of socialist thinking that can be traced back to the early days of the Industrial Revolution, specifically to that of the Rochdale Pioneers that inspired the co-operative movement (Guinan and O’Neill 2018, 2). Labour’s 2017 and 2019 manifestos also included commitments to strengthen workers’ rights and promote job security and equality in the workplace. The 2017 manifesto offered to ban zero-hours contracts, repeal the Trade Union Act and raise the minimum wage to 10 GBP/hour (The Labour Party 2017a, 46–48). In 2019, Labour proposed to establish a ‘Ministry for Employment Rights’ to extend workers’ rights and a ‘Workers’ Protection Agency’ to enforce compliance and inspect workplaces if necessary. It also supported a pilot Universal Basic Income programme (The Labour Party 2019b, 60, 63; also see Standing 2019a), sectoral collective bargaining, and the requirement that one third of company board positions should be filled by elected worker-directors (The Labour Party 2019b, 61, 64). Labour further argued that workers should hold positions in public bodies, such as the Competition and Markets Authority (The Labour Party 2019b, 61, 64). Although Labour

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was interested in the idea of a 4-day work week (see Skidelsky 2019a), the 2019 manifesto indicated that Labour would promote a gradual reduction of the average working week to 32 hours in 10 years, whilst increasing productivity so that there would be no loss of pay (The Labour Party 2019b, 62). Aside from its plan to challenge the economic status quo, Labour under Corbyn also tried to challenge the dominant British Political System (BPT). Labour wanted to put a stop to the hereditary principle in the House of Lords (The Labour Party 2019b, 81) and promote political reform to bring about democratically elected senators (The Labour Party 2019b, 81). Moreover, Labour proposed reforms to further decentralise political power, reduce the voting age to 16, ban political donations from tax avoiders and reform laws governing corporate lobbying (The Labour Party 2017a, 102; 2019b, 81–83). Labour’s foreign policy would be based on the values of peace, human rights and international law. Labour also recognised the importance of new forms of security threats such as cyber warfare and climate change, and was committed to finding multilateral diplomatic solutions to international conflicts (The Labour Party 2017a, 116–120; 2019b, 101). Corbyn had personally criticised the UK government’s missile strikes in Syria in April 2018 and advocated finding a UN consensus to solve the Syria situation (Corbyn 2018). He also called for ‘moral and political leadership’ rather than ‘kneejerk military responses’ (Corbyn 2018). Although Labour would pursue negotiations on nuclear disarmaments, the party was committed to spending NATO’s target of 2% of GDP on defence and continuance of the Trident nuclear submarine deterrent (Elgot 2017; The Labour Party 2017a, 116–120; 2019b, 101). In contrast to the suggestion that Labour under Corbyn did not sufficiently subscribe to liberal internationalism (Bolton and Pitts 2020a, 104–105), it can be argued that the 2017 and 2019 Labour manifestos clearly expressed Labour’s commitment to a progressive-liberal form of internationalism. Labour was committed to spending 0.7% of the UK’s gross national income on international development assistance, and to supporting progressive multilateral development initiatives, including the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Paris agreement on climate change, global tax system reform, the UN’s international treaty on business and human rights, which would make companies legally accountable for human rights violations or environmental harm, as well as international efforts to help refugees (The Labour Party 2017a, 118,

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122; 2019b, 103–105). A Labour government would also cease aid spending related to fossil fuel production, and instead support initiatives that promote climate justice, the right to food, human rights and the right to essential medicines (The Labour Party 2019b, 104–105). In summary, this section discussed how Labour under Corbyn challenged austerity and conventional neoliberal economic ideas, such as through its support for alternative models of ownership and a mission-led industrial strategy. Labour’s economic policies aimed to provide decent and high-skilled jobs, reduce inequality and uneven regional development and ensure that economic growth serves the needs of local communities. It also challenged the centralisation of economic and political power and proposed various measures to promote economic democracy and increase the power of small players in the economy. The next section evaluates criticisms directed at Labour’s economic policies under Corbyn more fully.

Criticisms, Reactions from Elites and Potential Problems This section explores common criticisms directed at Labour’s economic policies under Corbyn and discusses counter-arguments. It argues that many critics overlooked the transformative potential of Labour’s policy proposals, which aimed to redress structural problems in the British political economy and tackle contemporary challenges such as climate change and disruptive technologies. This section also discusses how, if Labour had come to power, implementation of its policies would have likely faced strong opposition that might have constrained their transformative potential. Mainstream economic think tanks, such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), and right-wing think tanks with connections to the Conservative Party, such as the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and Policy Exchange, similarly criticised Labour’s policies under Corbyn regarding tax rates, public spending, nationalisation and the strengthening of workers’ power. Labour took into account behavioural changes from their proposed increases in tax rates (see The Labour Party 2019a), but critics argued that Labour underestimated these changes and that tax revenues would therefore decline in the medium to long term (Gudgin et al. 2019, 10). The IFS also claimed that Labour’s

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proposed increase in corporation tax rates would be passed on to shareholders, employees and consumers and that it would reduce long-term business investments, productivity and wages (Johnson 2019). Nevertheless, the extent to which businesses can pass on their tax burden through wage cuts, price increases and reductions in shareholder dividends arguably depends on many factors, such as the bargaining power of these groups and market competition. Trade unions and well-protected workers’ rights would help to protect workers’ income levels (Meadway 2019b; also see Blakeley 2019). Improved competition laws would also help to increase consumers’ power (Mason 2019). Additionally, one cannot simply assume that cuts in corporation tax rates will necessarily help to increase the level of business investments. Arguably, cuts in corporation tax rates since 2010 (from 28 to 19%) did not significantly stimulate post-2008 business investments (Meadway 2019b; The Labour Party 2019a, 32). It has been argued that the result of the Brexit referendum was probably the main cause for the recent stagnation of business investments (Nabarro and Schulz 2019, 48– 49). Moreover, the IFS’ narrow focus on microeconomic analysis might have led it to neglect positive macroeconomic consequences of Labour’s economic policies (Meadway 2019b; Wren-Lewis 2019). Labour’s infrastructural investments, for example, would have arguably benefited the private sector, whilst its other economic measures would have helped to create multiplier effects (Meadway 2019b) that would have stimulated growth and raised tax revenues. Critics such as the IFS portrayed Labour’s public spending plan as unprecedentedly massive. However, it is arguably inappropriate to compare the scale of Labour’s public investment plans with UK government public spending in the past few years, as various critics did, since the latter was quite low relative to other developed countries (2.6% of GDP compared to the average of 3.6% in OECD countries) (Meadway 2019b). Labour’s plan would have brought public spending to about 4.5% of GDP—a level comparable to that of Sweden and Norway (The Labour Party 2019a, 8). The scale of Labour’s proposed investments also ought to be analysed in the context of contemporary challenges, particularly that of climate emergency, which so far has been insufficiently addressed by the private sector (Blakeley 2019). As John Weeks (2019) aptly argued, politicians’ preoccupation with ‘affordability’ pales in comparison with the current ‘existential threats’ that face the UK, which include that of ‘climate change and social cohesion’ (Weeks 2019, 8). Even if one prioritises

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the economy above all else, it can still be argued that climate change inevitably harms economic prosperity. According to the widely referenced Stern review (2007), neglecting to tackle climate change would take away 5–20% of global GDP/year or even higher (Stern 2007, vi). Given such contemporary challenges, Labour’s plan to invest in long-term projects to increase productivity and to help tackle climate change (The Labour Party 2019a, 7) was arguably a sensible economic strategy. Right-wing think tanks argued that nationalisation of utility companies would cost an exorbitant amount and adversely affect pension funds that have invested in these utilities, and also prompt investors to pursue legal challenges if a Labour government did not pay compensation at market prices (Crossman et al. 2019, 2; Gudgin et al. 2019, 12; Jessop and Shackleton 2019, 6; Mahoney 2018, 20–21). An important business lobby group, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), argued that the cost of Labour’s nationalisation plans would amount to 196 billion GBP, but later admitted a mistake in their assumptions and calculation (Roberts 2019). Some news reports also claimed that foreign investors had tried to seek legal protections offered by bilateral investment treaties (BITs) between the UK and 90 other countries (Ford and Plimmer 2019b). Labour argued that nationalisation of utility companies would increase the democratic accountability of these organisations (The Labour Party 2019a, 7). Notably, water, telecommunications and electricity companies in the UK have been offering reliable and high returns, which has prompted many international private equity, pension and sovereign wealth funds to invest in these companies in recent years (Ford and Plimmer 2019b). Water companies have been criticised for placing more importance on dividends and executive payments over service improvements and infrastructural investment (Plimmer 2019; Ford and Plimmer 2019a). English water companies have borrowed 51 billion GBP but paid 56 billion GBP in dividends since their privatisation in 1989 (Ford and Plimmer 2019a). There have also been recent reports of sub-standard services and incidents of pollution that have harmed the environment and public health (Laville 2019). Labour also pointed out that nationalisation of utility companies would increase public sector assets, not just debts (The Labour Party 2019a, 7). In addition, David Hall’s research (2019) has suggested that Labour’s plan to nationalise water, energy, broadband and mail companies would bring in large monetary returns and benefits that outweigh the costs (Hall 2019). The nationalisation of utility companies would likely reduce the

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government’s bureaucratic transaction costs from having to coordinate with many companies, increase accountability to the public and make it easier for the government to promote renewable energy (Hall 2019). The money saved from not having to pay shareholder dividends and interest on the companies’ debts (around 8 billion GBP/year in total [Hall 2019]) would allow the companies to lower their prices or to pursue productive investments, and/or perhaps transfer some of the money saved to the Treasury (Blackburn 2018, 15; Hall 2019). The argument that UK pension funds will incur significant financial harm from nationalisation of these companies is also problematic, since UK pension funds own only around 5% of water and energy companies (95% of these companies are owned by foreign investors) (Hall 2019). As for possible legal challenges by foreign investors, it is worth noting that BITs do not necessarily prohibit nationalisation that serves public purposes, nor do they specifically require that government compensation be paid at market value (Ford and Plimmer 2019b). There is a legal basis for the government to pay compensation below market value if it can be argued that nationalisation is part of economic reforms and/or measures to promote social justice (Hall 2019). Moreover, BIT arbitration processes can be lengthy and costly, and they might also be subjected to political opposition and have unpredictable outcomes (Hall 2019). These factors could deter investors from pursuing this option. Nevertheless, retaliation from transnational capital groups ought to be taken seriously by Labour, as discussed further below. Many critics of Labour’s economic policies, including economists from right-wing think tanks and commentators in finance-oriented newspapers such as The Financial Times, often focus on conventionally narrow criteria such as ‘efficiency’ and ‘competitiveness’ as an important basis for economic growth (for example, see the discussion in Giles and Stubbington 2019). Notably, critics were often silent on fundamental problems in the British political economy such as inequality, productivity, financialisation and sustainability. As Chapter 2 discussed, political debates on the economy in the UK before 2015 focused narrowly on the government’s budget deficit. Other important structural issues that concerned academics and economists, such as how to raise productivity, discourage growth in mainly low-wage and insecure jobs and cope with the consequences of climate change, were often ignored (Gamble 2015, 166). Chapter 2 also discussed the finance-led growth model and uneven development in the UK. Arguably, there is cause to be concerned that

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the centralisation of decision-making power led to economic policies that consistently favoured the financial sector based in London, whilst allowing for increases in regional inequality (Blakeley and Raikes 2018, 100–105). Labour under Corbyn broadened political discussions about the economy. Its policy proposals looked beyond conventional economic criteria, such as efficiency and GDP growth, and took into account social justice, environmental sustainability and progressive goals such as democratic accountability and economic democracy. Labour argued that it was important to consider the sources of growth, how they would affect local communities, and whether growth would serve social objectives such as job creation (The Labour Party 2017b, 1). The policy document Richer Britain, Richer Lives (The Labour Party 2017b), for example, stated that ‘[t]he role of government has to be about more than redistribution, it must be to ensure we all share in our country’s growth in the first place’ (The Labour Party 2017b, 1). This indicates Labour’s support for predistribution policies (see also Coates 2016, 17) and its concerns for the qualitative aspects of growth. Despite claims that Labour’s policies were backward looking, it can be argued that Labour attempted to prepare the British economy to meet future challenges, particularly those of climate change and disruptive technologies. Even though Labour’s 2019 policy to provide free full-fibre broadband was perceived by many voters as a ‘gimmick’ (Proctor and Murray 2020), there were economic reasons behind this policy. Largescale digital infrastructural upgrades are needed in order for the UK to take full advantage of new technologies such as 3D printing and 5G technology, which would help to empower small-scale businesses and community-owned enterprises across the country (Meadway 2019a). An open letter in The Guardian signed by 13 academics, including HaJoon Chang from Cambridge University and Danny Dorling from Oxford University, argued that Labour’s broadband project ‘would have a high social and economic rate of return’ and that it was unlikely to impede private investments (Patrick Allen 2019). Labour’s policy proposals were inspired by alternative economic approaches that have flourished in recent years. Many academics and progressive think tanks have pointed out that structural reforms of the economy are necessary. Shortly before the 2019 General Election, 163 economists led by David Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee, signed a letter published in The Financial Times in support of Labour’s economic programme, citing how

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‘the Labour party has not only understood the deep problems we face, but has devised serious proposals for dealing with them’ (Blanchflower 2019). Years of austerity have arguably weakened the British economy, which predominantly relies on consumption and rising levels of debt, and also has one of the lowest levels of private and public investments compared to OECD countries (Pettifor 2018, 51–54). The lack of corporate investment and productivity growth, the widening of regional economic gaps, as well as the threat of climate change, are arguably good reasons to support large-scale public investment, a green industrial strategy, and other measures to increase wages and productivity (Blanchflower 2019). A recent study by the IPPR (2018) highlighted similar issues and pointed to the prevalence of insecure jobs and lower levels of material well-being for younger generations. It also called for fundamental reform of the British economy on a scale comparable to that of the Keynesian reforms of the 1940s or the free market reforms of the 1980s (IPPR Commission on Economic Justice 2018, 4). Many critics also seemed to assume that the private and financial sectors are the main creators of growth and wealth in the economy, which explains why they might look sceptically upon left-of-centre measures, such as corporation tax increases. It can be argued, however, that even though Labour under Corbyn wanted to increase tax rates for high income earners, reverse corporate tax cuts and impose unitary taxes on transnational companies, its economic policies would nevertheless generally benefit the economy and the private sector. The National Education Service and the National Transformation Fund, for example, would have helped businesses by providing skilled labour and upgraded infrastructure (for other policies to help businesses, see The Labour Party 2017a, 14). Although it has been argued that higher corporation tax rates would reduce their incentives and prompt many businesses to leave the country, this may not necessarily happen on a significant scale. Academics such as Richard Murphy, for example, argued that business behaviours were likely to be rather ‘inelastic’ in the face of Labour’s tax reforms (R. Murphy 2019, 17–18). Labour’s policies on wages and workers’ rights were sometimes portrayed as a hindrance to the private sector. It was argued, for example, that these policies would tamper with market mechanisms and make the labour market less flexible (Gudgin et al. 2019, 10–11). Such perspectives reflect a neoliberal economic belief that labour market flexibility allows businesses to be more responsive to changes in market conditions, which

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positively contributes to job creation and growth. Nevertheless, there are opposing views that rightly caution how labour market flexibility places business owners in a privileged position. Moreover, it does not necessarily increase secure employment and might also increase inequality between workers (for example, see Posner 2017, 237–238; Elliott 2018). Contrary to neoliberal perspectives, Labour’s policies on wages and workers’ rights had the potential to help reduce in-work poverty and inequality, which would arguably benefit the economy as a whole. Notably, there is international evidence to suggest that more economically equal societies yield social benefits as well as help to secure stable growth (IPPR Commission on Economic Justice 2018, 4). Drawing inspiration from Mariana Mazzucato’s work, Labour’s policy proposals challenged the conventional conceptualisation of ‘the market’ and ‘the government’ as being mutually exclusive. Mazzucato argued that wealth is co-created by the private and public sectors, and that the UK government should adopt a ‘market-shaping framework’ that recognises the necessity of strategic and long-term capital (Mazzucato 2016). Moreover, the government should support investment-led growth that prioritises investments in innovation, people and communities rather than debt-fuelled consumption-led growth (Mazzucato 2019; for support of investment-led growth, see also IPPR Commission on Economic Justice 2018, 4). Mazzucato also argued that the UK government should address inequality and unsustainability that harms society as well as the economy (Mazzucato 2016). Labour under Corbyn also drew on studies from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the OECD to argue that public investments positively affect GDP (IMF 2014; Mourougane et al. 2016, cited in The Labour Party 2019a, 8). Given that public capital stock and interest rates were low in 2019, Labour argued that it was a good time to increase public investment to stimulate and grow the economy (see The Labour Party 2019a, 8–10). Furthermore, it can be argued that Labour’s social investments (for example, in education and social services), which would be funded by higher rates of corporation tax, should be seen as a ‘winwin’, rather than as a burden on businesses, because investing in people and communities helps to create value in the economy. Labour’s plan to support innovation and a green economic transition would also likely raise productivity, address environmental problems and stimulate growth (Mazzucato’s argument in Hutton and Mazzucato 2019).

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Some may argue that, even though the British economy is in need of reform, Labour’s policies might not constitute a suitable remedy. Rightwing critics often cite ‘government failures’ as opposed to ‘market failure’ as the main problem to be concerned with, and point to past examples of government mismanagement and misinvestment (Jessop and Shackleton 2019, 6; Mahoney 2018, 21). A report by Policy Exchange, for example, expressed scepticism that the National Investment Bank and the Preston Model could be used to stimulate economic growth (Gudgin et al. 2019, 13). Many commentators, not only from the Right, argued that Labour’s attempt to promote economic democracy might result in bureaucratisation, cronyism and paternalism (Gudgin et al. 2019, 12, 14; Painter 2018, 5). National institutions that Labour proposed to create to deliver services, such as the National Education Service, might also become unresponsive to local needs (Painter 2018, 7). Another concern was possible tensions between Labour’s plans to devolve power and the need to coordinate policies between various institutions to achieve its broader economic goals, such as the Green New Deal (C. Murphy 2019, 10). On the one hand, it is important to take into account these concerns and minimise potential problems, such as with regards to the possibility of misinvestment, bureaucratisation, and tensions between centrally directed goals and local needs. Labour could also learn from the experiences of alternative models of ownership and national investment banks in other countries (for examples, see Guinan and Hanna 2018, 101, 110–122; also see Griffith-Jones and Rice 2019, 13). On the other hand, it is important to recognise the urgent need to redress structural problems and fundamentally reform the British political economy, and to point out that the ‘business-as-usual’ approach is unlikely to meet contemporary challenges such as climate change. If one acknowledges the importance of redressing high levels of inequality, uneven development, ecological unsustainability and the promotion of economic democracy, not merely the virtues of efficiency, GDP growth and ‘business confidence’, then Labour’s economic programme could very well be appreciated as a step in the right direction. In other words, it is argued here that Labour’s economic policies under Corbyn held too much potential for them to be discredited or discarded based on the possibility that the problems discussed above might occur. Policies can be adjusted over time and so any problems that might occur during their implementation could gradually be solved. With regards to the possibility of government misinvestment, Simon Wren-Lewis of Oxford University has suggested that

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Labour’s ambitious investment plans might not necessarily be problematic if a Labour government ‘takes the time to invest wisely’ (Wren-Lewis 2019). It is unsurprising that radical reforms proposed by Labour provoked hostile reactions from powerful elites and kindled scepticism amongst those who did not see the need to fundamentally reform the economy. Chapter 1 discussed left-wing scholars’ warnings about the limitations of using the state to advance anti-capitalist or socialist causes. Coates, for example, warned that a left-wing government would face significant opposition, especially due to pressure from economic globalisation (Coates 2013, 49–50). If Labour under Corbyn had formed a government, it would likely have faced significant retaliation from transnational business and finance capital groups, and perhaps resistance from state bureaucracy as well. The danger of ‘capital flight’, in particular, is often cited as an important form of retaliation by transnational capital that massively constrains the state’s policy options. Reportedly, many people in the City of London were uneasy about Labour’s plans to reform financial transactions taxes (Blackhurst 2018). Following the 2017 election, many financial investors apparently became nervous about the prospect of a Corbyn government and moved hundreds of millions GBP out of the UK (see Espinoza and Bounds 2017; Flood and Thompson 2018). As Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, John McDonnell prepared for capital control measures and tried to establish a ‘positive’ relationship with the financial sector (Pickard 2018a), although it is doubtful he succeeded in the latter task. It can be argued that other factors, such as Brexit, might have caused foreign capital to flow out of the UK after 2016. Wren-Lewis (2019) also argued that massive capital flight and currency collapse were unlikely to happen if Labour won power in 2019, and that Labour’s monetary policy and its fiscal rules were hardly radical and were ‘nothing to frighten investors’ (Wren-Lewis 2019). Moreover, Labour pointed out that financial transactions taxes are common and have long existed in many countries such as France, Ireland, Hong Kong and Singapore, and that the UK could simply extend its stamp duty reserve tax further (The Labour Party 2019a, 36). As discussed previously, foreign investors might attempt legal challenges to the nationalisation of utility companies (Ford 2019), claiming that such moves constitute asset expropriations by the state. It has also been argued that the ‘threat of expropriation of assets’ (Gudgin et al.

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2019, 12) might damage investor confidence in the UK, which would then reduce foreign direct investment (FDI) and increase the costs of borrowing for the government (Gudgin et al. 2019, 12–15; Mahoney 2018, 21). Moreover, nationalisation might provoke other countries to implement similar policies that damage British investments overseas (Jessop and Shackleton 2019, 6). Some critics from the private sector also argued that the IOFs should be considered as an additional tax on companies (Giles 2019). An analysis from The Financial Times and the law firm Clifford Chance estimated that over 300 billion GBP worth of shares in 7000 large companies would be handed over to workers under Labour’s IOFs scheme - an act they described as ‘one of the biggest state raids on the private sector to take place in a western democracy’ (Pickard 2019a). It was argued that the IOFs could be considered a form of unlawful expropriation, which would mean they could be legally challenged according to the rules of investment treaties and the World Trade Organization (WTO) (Ford 2019). Furthermore, it was argued that Labour’s proposal to impose unilateral tax on transnational companies without international agreement might result in retaliatory taxes on transnational British companies by other governments (Fildes and Pickard 2019). The issues discussed above ought to be taken seriously, but it is not necessarily the case that a Labour government would lose these legal cases or that other governments would retaliate against nationalisation of utility companies and increased taxes on their transnational companies, especially if international political and economic norms were to shift in favour of the Left. This possibility is discussed in the next section. Labour under Corbyn also recognised the need to establish international collaborations to advance progressive agenda, as discussed previously. For example, it supported multilateral attempts to solve international problems such as climate change, trade wars, the concentration of wealth in the hands of financial elites, and exploitation in developing countries by transnational corporations (The Labour Party 2018). The Civil Service is supposed to be politically neutral, but this might not always hold true for all civil servants. In 2019, two senior civil servants informed The Times that Corbyn was ‘too frail’ and might not be able to serve as Prime Minister due to health concerns (BBC 2019). There are historical examples that indicate how a left-wing Labour government might face resistance from the bureaucracy when it comes to implementing radical policies. For example, after the economic crisis of 2008,

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the Treasury consistently opposed the industrial policy of the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) (Diamond 2013, 101). Another example was how, when Tony Benn became Labour’s Minister of Industry in 1974, his industrial strategy and support for worker-run companies were strongly opposed by senior civil servants, as well as by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the City of London, the media and other ministers in his own party (Panitch and Leys 2001, 95–100). As the previous section discussed, Labour recognised the need to institutionally reform state functionaries to help advance progressive causes. For example, it proposed to alter the Treasury’s investment rules to promote environmental sustainability (The Labour Party 2019b, 13), as well as move some functions of the Bank of England to different regions to make it more responsive to specific regional needs (Walker 2017). The next section discusses how widespread political support for a left-wing government is essential in order to ward off bureaucratic resistance and inertia. Overall, this section argues that Labour’s policies under Corbyn had the potential to progressively and fundamentally transform the British political economy. However, given the breadth and depth of Labour’s policy proposals, as well as strong opposition from powerful elites, it would have been strategically sensible for Labour to prioritise key reforms. As Berry (2018) argued, a left-wing party and/or government should strategically choose its battles and even appease powerful interests at times. Arguably, Labour under Corbyn did not do this in 2019, instead opting for a manifesto that went radically beyond the 2017 manifesto. The next section reflects on Labour’s electoral defeat in 2019 and the future of left-wing politics in the UK.

Labour After Corbyn and the Future of Dissent The previous section argued that Labour’s economic policies under Corbyn were supported by valid arguments. However, Labour’s electoral defeat in 2019 and the end of Corbyn’s leadership means that the potential of these policies will probably not be realised. It is unlikely that Corbyn’s successor, Keir Starmer, will support radical left-leaning economic policies, or at least not to the same extent as Corbyn. Understandably, the end of Corbyn’s leadership raised many questions about the future for Labour and the Left. As a contribution to ongoing debates, the following paragraphs discuss how the Gramscian/Coxian theoretical

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framework and insights from socialist scholars, which were discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, provide useful guidance. In summary, this section proposes that, even after the 2019 electoral defeat, Labour and the Left should still continue to engage in counter-hegemonic struggle, such as by supporting alternative economic initiatives at local levels, as well as by promoting progressive political economic ideas and policies at national and international levels. At the time of writing, it is too soon to evaluate the Labour Party under Starmer or to discuss fully the effects of Brexit and of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. However, this section briefly discusses how the economic consequences of the pandemic has created opportunities to shift the political economic consensus leftwards, and for Labour under Starmer to promote its green recovery economic policies. Given many structural constraints on radical left-wing politics, one might be tempted to disengage with national politics, especially after Labour’s 2019 electoral defeat. However, it is important to remember that national political struggle is an indispensable ingredient that can help to advance democratic or parliamentary socialism. As discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, many socialist scholars have argued in favour of using the state to advance democratic socialist reforms. Nevertheless, capturing and harnessing the power of the state should be seen as just one important part of a counter-hegemonic project. Following Wright (2019), this book supports a strategy of ‘eroding capitalism’, which combines a strategy of ‘dismantling and taming capitalism’ by the state (such as through the promotion of a mixed economy, social democracy and changing economic rules) and a strategy of ‘resisting and escaping capitalism’ through bottom-up practices (to neutralise or insulate oneself from the harms from capitalism) (Wright 2019, 42–53, 92–93). Notably, the state can be used to widen space for bottom-up initiatives (Wright 2019, 64). As discussed in Chapter 1, the Coxian critical political economy approach adopted in this book highlights the importance of building counterhegemonic configurations of ideas, institutions and material capabilities to challenge the status quo. This approach also takes into account the interplay of both domestic and transnational forces (Cox 1981, 135– 136, 141). As discussed in Chapter 3 and in this chapter, it can be argued that Labour under Corbyn attempted to engage in counterhegemonic struggles, including by propagating alternative progressive economic ideas in society and proposing institutional reforms (see Guinan and O’Neill 2018). However, there is always room for improvement. The following paragraphs propose how Labour and the Left could continue

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to develop strategies to popularise progressive economic ideas, support bottom-up economic initiatives and institutions at local levels, campaign for progressive political reforms, and foster alliances at the international level. The previous chapters have argued that, whilst it is important to focus on winning elections, Labour should not neglect to engage in long-term counter-hegemonic ideological struggle. Finding a balance between these two demands, however, is a difficult task. After the better-than-expected 2017 election result, some might have thought that Labour could move even further to the Left. Some academics, for example, criticised the 2017 manifesto for not being novel or radical enough (Worth 2019, 8–10), or argued that it was unclear how Labour’s industrial strategy formed part of a broader plan to promote socialism (Panitch and Gindin 2018). However, it is likely that Labour’s manifestos, particularly the 2019 manifesto, were perceived by many voters as too radical and perhaps not very credible, which partly explains Labour’s electoral defeats. In hindsight, even though Labour’s economic policies were supported by many economists, these policies might have gone too far in challenging voters’ economic common sense. According to a YouGov survey in 2019, many of Labour’s policies were popular, such as the proposal to increase the tax rates for top earners and the nationalisation of utility companies. However, 57% of those surveyed thought a Labour government might contribute towards an economic recession in a few years, whilst 53% thought that Labour’s spending promises were not affordable (M. Smith 2019). Many scholars, such as Berry (2019), have recognised the need to change political economic ‘common sense’ in order to build a strong social base to support the Left’s project. This includes initiatives to promote economic literacy, new think tanks to develop progressive policies and more effective media strategy (Berry 2018, 2019). Similar to Wright’s (2019) support for bottom-up practices that challenge capitalism, Berry (2018, 2019) argued that Labour ought to connect with and help to support grassroots projects that experiment with alternative economic practices, such as community-owned renewable energy co-operatives. There is no ‘blueprint’ for a democratic socialist economy, but such an economy is likely to consist of co-operatives and public banks, and might also promote participatory planning and universal basic income (Wright 2019, 72–92). Notably, Momentum activists have been involved with many self-organised local initiatives, such as food banks and childcare

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centres (Pitts and Dinerstein 2017, 424, 429). Labour could also step up its community-level engagements. For example, a Labour councillor suggested that Labour could use its vast resources and its Community Organising Unit (COU) to listen to local concerns and support community projects around the country, such as mutual aid groups and breakfast clubs (Wilson 2020). The COU was set up in 2018 so that Labour community organisers could engage with local issues and support local self-help initiatives. However, in practice, the COU was often used to help with Labour’s election efforts (Wilson 2020). Engaging with local communities throughout the country in this manner might help Labour to overcome the ‘cities and towns divide’ discussed in Chapter 3, as well as to develop ‘national-popular’ strategies (this term is discussed in Chapter 1 and in McNally 2009, 62) to gain widespread political support. Having more successful examples of alternative economic practices and institutions at the local level would also help to justify policies to promote their expansion at the national level. The previous chapters have raised many political issues, particularly those of widespread political disaffection, rising nationalism in Scotland and the majoritarian voting system that favours large parties. This chapter has also discussed Labour under Corbyn’s opposition to the hereditary peerage system in the House of Lords and its support for further decentralisation of political power. These issues, as well as political constraints on progressive politics generally, should continue to be discussed by the Left. Moreover, the benefits of a proportional representation voting system should be explored further (for example, see a discussion in Lewis 2020). Aside from counter-hegemonic struggles at local and national levels, the Coxian critical political economy approach suggests that counterhegemony at the international level should not be neglected. Labour under Corbyn recognised that a global dialogue, and perhaps new ‘Bretton Woods’ international institutional arrangements, were needed to solve serious international problems (The Labour Party 2018). Spearheaded by John McDonnell, Labour organised an International Social Forum at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, in July 2019 to promote a more equitable global economic system and discussion of solutions to major international threats such as climate change (Huck 2019). Nevertheless, it has been argued that Labour and the Left ought to place international governance more centrally in their discussions about reforms. Bishop and Payne (2019),

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for example, called on the British Left to take on the task of developing a ‘re-embedded post-neoliberalism’ form of global governance where states would have more autonomy to pursue economic and social policies, even though they would still be committed to multilateralism (Bishop and Payne 2019, 90). In 2018, Guinan and O’Neill argued that Labour under Corbyn had made an ‘institutional turn’ when it tried to ‘bring about an egalitarian rebalancing of power through a reordering of the basic institutions of the economy’ (Guinan and O’Neill 2018, 4). Adler (2019), however, further argued for Labour’s ‘international institutional turn’ - that Labour ought to pay more attention to structural reforms of global institutions that affect the distribution of wealth between countries (Adler 2019, 13). Labour could also support the establishment of new multilateral international institutions and promote economic democracy internationally (Adler 2019, 19). Fostering progressive transnational alliances seems like an even more pressing task if one takes into account the power of transnational rightwing forces that help to sustain the neoliberal economic order. Reportedly, many US and UK right-wing think tanks are part of a large umbrella network, funded by wealthy institutions and billionaires, that consists of over 450 think tanks and lobby groups (F. Lawrence et al. 2019). It has been argued that, due to the sheer number of these institutions and their influence in the mainstream media, they very effectively coordinated their messages to promote Brexit and right-wing economic ideology (F. Lawrence et al. 2019). Nevertheless, there are reasons to suggest that, even amongst centrist and right-leaning groups, the economic shocks brought about by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 might have altered the economic debate to the benefit of the Left, as discussed below. Government borrowing in the UK has increased to cope with the negative economic consequences of the pandemic. One estimate suggests that government borrowing will likely reach 300 billion GBP, or even 500 billion GBP if the economy takes longer to recover (Elliott 2020). As a sign that mainstream economic views have shifted to support greater state intervention in the economy, right-wing think tanks, such as the CPS, Policy Exchange and the Adam Smith Institute, now agree with increased public spending and investment to tackle the outbreak as well as to stimulate the economy (Inman 2020). Many economic commentators have also pointed out that monetary policy is going to be a very limited tool to combat the next economic crisis since interest rates are already at very low levels, and that fiscal policy to stimulate growth is likely required (for

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example, see J. Smith et al. 2019; Harari 2020). Surprisingly, Conservative MP and former Brexit secretary, David Davis, has even discussed how US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s broadly Keynesian ‘New Deal’ programmes in the 1930s, as well as a new ‘Bretton Woods’ form of international governance, might be needed to solve the current economic crisis and to promote international trade (Elliott 2020). In addition to the coronavirus pandemic, it can be argued that serious contemporary problems, particularly those of climate change and disruptive technologies, justify new approaches to economic policy and an increased role for the state in the economy (see similar discussions in Wright 2019, 105–107). These contemporary challenges arguably provide opportunities to push for ‘symbiotic transformations’ in which state reforms are used to strengthen capitalism as well as expand the development of democratic socialist alternatives (Wright 2019, 110). Notably, there have been times in the past when state interventions, such as Roosevelt’s New Deal programmes and other social democratic policies, helped to stabilise and strengthen the capitalist economy as well as ‘set in motion dynamics that ha[d] the potential to erode the dominance of capitalism over time’ (Wright 2019, 104). It has been argued, for example, that Clement Attlee’s post-war government was able to implement many transformative reforms of the British political economy because, given the historical circumstances, it did not face significant resistance from financial and industrial capital groups, and also because it received widespread support from trade unions and working-class movements (Jackson 2016, 4). Due to the aforementioned reasons, one could argue that the current historical juncture provides a similar opportunity to promote transformative reforms. Nevertheless, the hegemony of neoliberalism should not be underestimated. As Chapter 3 discussed, Brexit might give the Johnson government opportunities to abolish EU-style economic governance and fully embrace neoliberalism. The extent to which Labour can capitalise on this historic opportunity and challenge neoliberalism greatly depends on Keir Starmer, Labour’s newly elected leader. Starmer has already been criticised by some for shifting Labour rightward (for example, see Foster 2020), but he has expressed commitments to socialism based on the principles of economic, social and climate justice, and argued that Labour is ‘the party of the green new deal’ and that this agenda must be ‘hardwired’ into the party (Starmer 2020). Ed Miliband, appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy by Starmer,

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has also been tasked with developing Labour’s post-coronavirus green recovery plan, which will focus on creating green jobs for young people (Walker and Taylor 2020). Many economists are likely to endorse such policies, such as Lord Nicholas Stern and Joseph Stiglitz, who have argued in favour of green economic recovery plans (reported in Harvey 2020). They have also pointed out that there are labour-intensive ‘shovel-ready’ projects, such as retrofitting buildings, planting trees and so on, which could create jobs quickly since those jobs do not require highly skilled or extensively trained workers (Harvey 2020). At the time of writing, it is too soon to evaluate the progressive nature and transformative potential of Labour under Starmer. It is up to the Left in the party to push for Labour’s continual support of transformative economic policies and for Labour to consistently engage in counter-hegemonic ideological struggles at national and international levels. Nevertheless, left-wing supporters of the Labour Party ought to be realistic about constraints on radical politics and the pace of change. As Berry (2018) has argued, the Left ought to learn from past radical state projects that successfully toppled the dominant political economic paradigm, including that of Thatcherism, and keep in mind that fighting for transformative change will take a long time, with many setbacks and compromises along the way. Therefore, the Left should guard against ‘tribalism and purism’ or uncritical loyalty to movement leaders and refusals to compromise (Berry 2018).

Conclusion This chapter has discussed how Labour under Corbyn challenged the neoliberal economic status quo and put forward alternative economic policies embedded with progressive socio-environmental goals. Contrary to common portrayals of Corbynism in political science, the chapter argued that Labour under Corbyn went beyond ‘tax and spend’ policies, and that Labour did not adopt a nationalist, backward looking or antibusiness approach. It was further argued that it is misleading to label the Corbyn project as populist, and that Labour’s economic policies aimed to redress structural economic problems such as inequality and uneven regional development. Labour under Corbyn aimed to promote economic democracy, the devolution of power and progressive internationalism, as well as increase productivity, investment and secure long-term economic

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growth. Although Labour’s policies might have required further refinement, these policies contained progressive political economic ideas that were supported by valid economic arguments. This chapter also drew upon theoretical discussions and arguments in previous chapters to reflect on the future direction of Labour and the Left after Corbyn’s leadership. It proposed that, even after Labour’s 2019 electoral defeat, it is important for the Left to continue its engagement with national politics and support counter-hegemonic ideological struggles at national and international levels. To continue its counter-hegemonic project, Labour and the Left should also increase its engagement with local communities and support for alternative economic initiatives. Moreover, the chapter discussed how the present historical juncture involves opportunities for the Left to popularise progressive political economic alternatives, although success in this regard is far from certain. The following and final chapter brings together the major threads of the book and summarises its main arguments.

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CHAPTER 5

Conclusion

Abstract The final chapter summarises the book’s main arguments. It also discusses how the study of the Labour Party under Corbyn in this book might be relevant to the study of politics in other countries where neoliberal economic policies and political centrism are increasingly being questioned. Keywords Jeremy Corbyn · The Labour Party · Neoliberalism · Political centrism · Counter-hegemonic struggle

Summary of the Book’s Main Arguments This book explored socio-politico-economic developments in the UK that finally led in 2015 to the resurgence of radical left-wing politics in the Labour Party. It analysed structural constraints on left-wing politics, the prospects of a radical Labour government gaining power, and the transformative potential of Labour’s economic and social policies under Corbyn. In sum, the central argument of the book is that the material, institutional and ideological conditions before 2015 opened political space for a left-wing Labour Party. Yet at the same time, dominant historical structures, characterised by economic neoliberalism, the disciplining power of transnational capital and conservative ideas and political institutions, still provide a ‘frame of action’ that severely limited the possibility of © The Author(s) 2021 P. Chiengkul, Labour Under Corbyn, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60262-8_5

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a left-wing Labour Party coming to power. Labour under Corbyn was unsuccessful in its attempt to establish a counter-hegemonic bloc but, to a certain extent, it was able to challenge the political economic status quo and propagate alternative ideas and policies. Drawing from a neoMarxist and neo-Gramscian framework, the book argued that Labour ought to adopt a long-term approach to counter-hegemonic political struggle so as not to shrink the space for progressive politics. It also argued that Labour’s policies under Corbyn contained important political economic ideas that aimed to redress structural economic problems and tackle contemporary challenges. The following paragraphs elaborate on these arguments. Chapter 2 discussed the academic debate on parliamentary socialism and the Labour Party, and analysed the material, ideological and institutional political economic conditions before 2015 that both constrained and facilitated the Corbyn project. It briefly explored how changes in global economic conditions aided the rise of neoliberal economic ideas and policies to a hegemonic position in the late 1970s, and how the Labour Party’s post-World War II commitment to social democracy was eroded over time. The chapter also discussed how the electoral successes under Tony Blair’s leadership of New Labour helped to solidify the narrative that the Labour Party cannot shift ‘too Left’ without sacrificing its electoral chances. Nevertheless, the chapter argued that, whilst New Labour governments managed to expand public expenditures for socially beneficial purposes, they also led the UK further into an unbalanced, unequal and finance-led economy. Even though New Labour was politically successful in the short term, it consequently left Labour with no inspiring alternatives to austerity, neoliberal economics and finance-led growth to offer voters after the 2008 economic crisis. Chapter 3 built on the discussion in Chapter 2 regarding how the material, institutional and ideological conditions before 2015 opened political space for a left-wing Labour Party. Nevertheless, the dominant historical structures characterised by economic neoliberalism, conservative ideas and political institutions, continued to provide the ‘frame of action’ that severely limited the possibility of a radical left-wing Labour Party coming to power, as evidenced by the results of the General Elections of 2017 and 2019. In addition to Labour’s strategic errors and other shortcomings, the UK’s preoccupation with Brexit stole the limelight away from Labour’s radical reform agenda in 2019. Ultimately, Johnson’s Conservative Party was more successful at creating a new right-of-centre

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hegemonic bloc based on the propagation of populist Brexit narratives. Nevertheless, Chapter 3 argued that, to a certain extent, Labour under Corbyn was able to shift political debates leftwards and propagate alternative political and economic ideas in wider society. Furthermore, Chapter 3 highlighted the importance of political narratives and the interconnections between ideas and material realities, and reaffirmed one of the book’s main arguments that the Labour Party necessarily needs to engage in consistent ideological challenges to the status quo if it wants to drive transformative changes in society. Chapter 4 discussed in greater detail how Labour under Corbyn challenged the neoliberal economic status quo. The chapter argued that it is misleading to characterise Labour’s economic policies under Corbyn as populist, nationalist or anti-business, or simply as ‘tax and spend’ policies that would fund an enlarged centralised paternalistic state. Instead, it argued that Labour’s economic policies aimed to redress structural economic problems such as inequality and uneven regional development, and to tackle contemporary challenges such as climate change and disruptive technologies. Labour also aimed to increase productivity, investments and long-term economic growth, as well as to promote economic democracy, devolution of power and progressive internationalism. If Labour had come to power its policies would likely have faced great opposition, such as from transnational capital groups and state bureaucracy. Possible implementation problems might also have led to further adjustment and development of the policies. Nevertheless, Chapter 4 argued that these policies contained important progressive political economic ideas that Labour after Corbyn and the Left could draw inspiration from. Based on the discussions in Chapters 3 and 4, the book argued that Labour under Corbyn tried but failed to establish a rival historical structure to alter the form of state in the UK. Chapters 3 and 4 also discussed the future of dissent for Labour and the Left after the 2019 General Election. Chapter 3 pointed out some of Labour’s most important political challenges, which include convincing voters that its progressive economic policies are credible and winning over fragmented groups of voters. To form broad-based, cross-class, cross-region and cross-generational political support, which is necessary to win elections and push through transformative political and economic reforms, Chapter 3 argued that Labour might need to pay more attention to people’s identities and values, as opposed to only voters’ economic interests. Chapter 4 further argued that, even after Labour’s 2019 electoral defeat, it is important for

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the Left to continue its engagement with national politics and support counter-hegemonic ideological struggles at national and international levels. Chapter 4 proposed that Labour and its supporters ought to develop strategies to popularise alternative economic ideas, campaign for progressive political reforms and foster transnational alliances. Labour and the Left could also increase its engagement with local communities to overcome the ‘cities and towns divide’, as well as step up its support for alternative economic initiatives. Arguably, having more successful examples of alternative economic practices and institutions across the country would help to justify national policies to promote economic democracy and alternative models of ownership in the future.

Final Reflections on the Book’s Relevance to Other Countries The study of the Labour Party under Corbyn in this book contributes to scholarly debates on the interconnections between material, institutional and ideological structures at domestic and international levels, and on the possibilities of agents realising radical social transformations, given hegemonic structural constraints. It also supports the view that consistent ideological challenges to the status quo are an important part of a long-term counter-hegemonic project to drive transformative changes in society. This approach might be relevant to the understanding of politics in other countries where neoliberal economic policies and political centrism are increasingly being questioned by left-of-centre (as well as right-of-centre) forces. As Chapter 4 argued, the present historical juncture has opened opportunities for the Left to popularise progressive economic alternatives, such as those developed by Labour during Corbyn’s leadership. The social and economic consequences of the coronavirus and serious contemporary problems, such as climate change and technological disruptions, arguably provide justifications for new approaches to economic policies and an increased role for the state in the economy. World-renowned economists, including Lord Nicholas Stern and Joseph Stiglitz, for example, have argued in favour of green economic recovery plans (reported in Harvey 2020). Moreover, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently claimed that ‘[t]he global political and economic system is not delivering on critical global public goods: public health, climate action, sustainable development, peace’ (cited in Al Jazeera 2020). He also argued that the coronavirus pandemic

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has highlighted the immense magnitude of global inequalities, including highly unequal power relations between countries, and called for a fundamental reform of global governance to help rectify these problems (cited in Al Jazeera 2020). There is cause to be concerned, however, that the present historical juncture might prove to be a challenging period for progressive forces. It has been argued that the far right’s ‘ultra-nationalist, racist, sexist and homophobic overtones’ might receive increased support from citizens in many countries where neoliberalism and liberal democratic politics are increasingly being questioned (Panitch and Gindin 2018, 11). As of early 2020, right-leaning forces have maintained, gained or solidified their power in countries such as the US, the UK, Brazil, Poland, China, India and Thailand. It is up to the Left in countries across the world to work towards popularising progressive political and economic alternatives that would tackle pressing socio-ecological problems, as well as promote social justice and greater equality. Given bleak future prospects and the overwhelming power of right-wing forces, the most important task for the Left is perhaps not to lose hope. The costs of giving up are simply too high.

References Al Jazeera. 2020. “UN Chief: World ‘at the Breaking Point’ with Vast Inequality,” July 19. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/chiefworld-breaking-point-vast-inequality-200718163541857.html. Harvey, Fiona. 2020. “Heed Lessons of 2008 Crisis, Experts Warn Global Leaders.” The Guardian, May 20. https://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2020/may/20/heed-lessons-of-2008-crisis-experts-warn-global-leaders. Panitch, Leo, and Sam Gindin. 2018. The Socialist Challenge Today: Syriza, Sanders, Corbyn. London: The Merlin Press.

Index

A Alternative models of ownership, 9, 51, 85, 87, 94, 118 Anti-Semitism, 45–47, 52, 55 Austerity, 9, 16, 24, 27, 30, 32, 40, 42, 51, 60, 74, 78, 92, 116 B Blue Labour, 76, 77 Brexit, 2, 8, 9, 11, 26, 33, 40, 45, 47–49, 51–54, 56–63, 88, 95, 98, 101, 102, 116, 117 British Political Tradition (BPT), 17, 27, 28, 86

Democratic socialism, 2, 6, 16

E Economic democracy, 10, 84, 85, 87, 91, 94, 101, 103, 117, 118 Eroding capitalism, 98

F Fiscal Credibility Rule, 80

G Green New Deal, 82, 94

C Capital flight, 8, 95 Corbyn, Jeremy, 1, 2, 4, 7, 9–11, 15, 17, 26, 33, 39–47

H hegemonic bloc, 116 Historical bloc, 5

D Democratic disaffection, 9, 17, 28, 29, 33, 41

I Inclusive Ownership Funds (IOFs), 84, 96

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Chiengkul, Labour Under Corbyn, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60262-8

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INDEX

Industrial strategy, 9, 74, 78, 80, 92, 97 Internationalism, 10, 78, 86, 103, 117 J Johnson, Boris, 9, 40, 51, 53–55, 58, 59, 62, 76

National Investment Bank, 51, 82, 83, 94 Nationalisation, 21, 51, 85, 87, 89, 90, 96 National-popular strategies, 6, 100 National Transformation Fund, 82, 83, 92 New Labour, 9, 11, 16, 20–23, 26, 27, 31, 32, 57, 116

L Labourism, 17 M May, Theresa, 48, 49, 51 McDonnell, John, 55, 77, 95, 100 Miliband, Ed, 25, 31, 41, 102 Momentum, 47–49, 56, 77, 99 N National Education Service, 79, 81, 92, 94

P Parliamentary socialism, 2, 4, 11, 16, 18, 32, 39, 47, 98, 116 Populism, 62, 75 Preston Model, 83, 94

S Starmer, Keir, 52, 55, 97, 98, 102, 103 Symbiotic transformations, 6, 102