Alas piffle Jones

The mere fact that something is a truism does not imply that it is true. One example is "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", a thesis it would be interesting to test out on Polio victims. Another is "the pen is mightier than the sword". I'm not actually aware of any historical instance of a writer taking on a fencing master armed only with a Parker fountain pen, but if this did happen, I suspect it did not end well.

The point is, of course, supposed to be about the power of ideas, and to that extent there is a certain truth in it, which is a comfort to those of us who are far more comfortable inserting semi-colons into sentences than we would be thrusting rapiers into a foe. Amongst this legion of geeks I count myself. Still the kind of ideas with which I am concerned here, political ideas, are powerless in the absence of a political movement, and are only formed reliably in close critical relationship with such a movement. This is, understandably in the wake of the SWP rape crisis, the kind of talk which evokes nervousness on much of the left; yet it is often the most vital maxims that require the most careful handling. Whatever is meant by 'a movement', it has to be more than the whims of some central committee. But that is a matter for another day. When ideas come apart from a movement which they can inspire, and which can test them in the crucible of daily life, then they become lifeless things, phantoms and illusions.

Which brings me to Owen Jones. I am, I should say, angry about his intervention in the Labour leadership contest. The Labour left which gave rise to Jeremy Corbyn, and which is currently being tried in his person, also provided Owen with a hand up to his career as a commentator. I remember well him cutting his teeth in the pages of Labour Briefing and his early political days as a co-chair of the LRC's youth wing. He was born of the movement to which he has delivered a timed slap in the face. It is sometimes said that the Left speaks too easily of betrayal, and there may be something to this. Yet a sensitivity to treachery is the flip-side of valuing comradeship. If you are prepared to show solidarity with me, I should be similarly prepared to take you into account in making my own decisions. This might be uncomfortable talk for those for whom individual freedom, or career, or whatever else is the highest conceivable good. Others of us think that the freedom to shout lonely in the desert is no freedom worth having.

In what does the betrayal consist here? A political writer who views their writing as an intervention, as opposed to, say, a means to a better CV has to consider not only what they want to say but whether this is the right time to say it. There is much that could be said and asked about Corbyn and the movement around him; I have myself been far from uncritical. The time for articulating that is not, however, when the man is seeking re-election as leader of the Labour Party in the wake of a concerted attempt to wrestle the Party back into the hands of the Blairite cabal. There is a question we should ask ourselves before we ask questions of others. That is the question implicit in every picket line, "which side are you on?"; and the answer we give to that provides the context for our subsequent questioning.

Owen has chosen to lay bare his soul on the internet; that is his decision. I have nothing to say about it. Of more interest are the nine questions he asks at the end of his piece - without, one notes, offering much in the way of answers. Marx said that each age asks only the questions which it can answer. He might have added that the way those questions are understood, and for that matter framed, constrains the answers that are considered admissible. Nowhere is Jones' descent into a bland safe parliamentariansim more apparent than here, the sense he gives of what an acceptable answer to each of his questions would look like. I do not consider myself similarly bound by the norms of Westminster nicety, and for what it's worth I think that the primary reason the inhabitants of Westminster's famed bubble (amongst whom Owen must now be numbered) are disturbed by the member for Islington North is that he has refused to play the game of Westminster politics as normal. For all that, Corbyn is still a reformist, and some kind of answer to Owen's questions is probably needed, given that they have now been asked.

Here, off the top of my head, is a first attempt. 

1. How can the disastrous polling be turned around? Well, a few of us have been expressing concern about the polls for a good while. There's a lot that I would want to say about the need for forming a movement that works at community level to form 'public opinion', rather than receive it as a passive given. It is the model of politics as an exercise in customer relations, rather than social transformation that needs to be challenged above all else by any Left movement that takes contesting elections seriously. The point is not that we should not want to win elections, but that we need a new approach to how we win elections.

All of this said, Labour's polling really warrants the term 'disastrous' during the period since the EU referendum and the beginning of the relentless attacks on Corbyn from within the PLP. Outlandish though this idea might seem, perhaps Labour might do somewhat better in the polls if those attacks were to stop.

2. Where is the clear vision? I don't really understand the question. There is a reading of "clear vision" on which the phrase is as oxymoronic as "thoughtful Sun journalist". Vision is the stuff of motivating principles, big ideas, and utopian imagining. Vision is not meant to be clear in the sense that Owen seems to demand. The parable of the Good Samaritan presents a vision of how human beings might live, but it wouldn't necessarily be much use on the doorstep. It would certainly be a brave minister who gave it to a civil servant as indicative of the government's intentions. I think anyone who believes that Jeremy lacks vision in this sense hasn't been listening to him. Much of the British population has a good excuse for this, since much of what Jeremy has said hasn't been reported. If only there was, for example, a left-wing writer with a regular column in a national paper who could help on this front.

Perhaps, though Owen is concerned with policy rather than vision. Some of these have been forthcoming: think about John McDonnell's announcements on matters macroeconomic, providing a clear alternative to the Conservative programme. But there have been relatively few detailed policies, this is true. Is this a bad thing? It depends whether you are happy with what one might call the Thick of It model of policymaking: policies arising ex nihilo from the heads of special advisors and the cars of front bench politicians en route to press conferences. Once upon a time the Left argued that policy should emerge from the labour movement, through its democratic structures. If this is right then it is a good thing that there hasn't currently been much policymaking in Owen's required sense. Here we see the double bind in which Corbyn is being placed: if he doesn't do politics as usual, he is criticised; if he does do politics as usual, what is the point in Corbyn?

3. How are the policies significantly different from the last general election? See answer to previous question. Jones does accidentally touch on the interesting area of economics. Here McDonnell is quite right not concede to pseudo-Keynesian nonsense about the deficit. Yet in the background lurks a more troubling issue: capitalism can no longer afford social democracy. It's not simply a question of "the money being there", as the familiar leftist refrain has it, but rather of whether capital views the money being used for [insert favoured social spending here] is consistent with the reproduction of capital. This was the case during the long (and exceptional) post-war boom; this is in general no longer so. That doesn't mean nothing can be done - here again, I have not been uncritical. McDonnell is not, that criticism aside, not without good ideas - to with redistribution, investment, and productivity. Far more importantly, Corbyn's Labour is committed to setting working people free to fight for themselves, to do what the state can increasingly no longer do. The repeal of the Thatcher era trade union legislation is far, far, more important than anything a Shadow Chancellor can do.

4. What is the media strategy? Once again, the assumption of politics as usual pervades the question. "Most people", that most useful of demographic categories for a columnist with an axe to grind, don't get their news from social media. They get it from the mainstream print and broadcast media. This is probably right. It does not follow that it is written into the grain of the universe that this is so. What if people had more opportunity to talk about politics through the presence in their communities and workplaces of a real mass movement? 

At this point, I feel slightly as though I'm lapsing into John Lennon territory: you may say that I'm a dreamer. So let's allow that what is said in the mainstream media matters. As indeed it does; hence all those books by 80s Marxist sociologists on the press. It is a difficult question what a socialist electoral movement might do to get the best media coverage. Even putting it this way, though, assumes that the traffic between media and politics is one way. The media follow as well as lead; the Scottish Sun at crucial points cannot get away with carrying the same line as its southern cousin - witness the vastly differing attitudes towards the SNP and independence in recent years. Newspapers need to sell in order to survive, and political consciousness determines what they can say and still sell. Allowing even that, there's still some kind of question: how might we get nice things said about Jeremy in the papers? Again I can only express my wish that there was a reasonably well-known left-wing journalist about who could help in this respect.

5. What's the strategy for winning over the over-44s? Well, as the man himself says, pensioner poverty and social care are important issues. And I simply do not believe that the interview Owen describes is the first he has heard from Corbyn on these questions.

6. What's the strategy to win over Scotland? Labour needs a really big rethink on Scotland and the national question. With this proviso, it would be pretty easy to make the ad hominum point that the people who presided over Scotland's reduction to a solitary Labour MP, namely the Labour right are not likely to be the best people to win it back for the party of Keir Hardie. However, it's not clear that Labour needs to win over Scotland. It held a majority in England in 2005.

7. What's the strategy to win over Conservative voters? Liberals can be useful in spite of themselves because, much like stopped clocks, they sometimes tell the truth accidentally. Thus Bill Clinton, "it's the economy stupid". There is good evidence that a good number of swing voters opted for the Tories because they didn't trust Labour on the economy. An economic strategy of the sort McDonnell has in fact crafted is a good start here. The task now is to communicate it, a task from which this leadership contest is an unhelpful distraction.

8. How would we deal with concerns about immigration? It's not because of immigrants that you can't get a hospital bed, a job, a council house... Talk about immigration, but talk about it precisely in terms of its function to deflect attention from the Tories' attacks. To say this is to treat the electorate as agents, who can be engaged politically, rather than as passive consumers to whose "concerns" we need to appeal. I'm terribly sorry, I should say in passing, that Jones' dire liberal baby, the Immigration Dividend, went nowhere, but them's the brakes.

9. How can Labour's mass membership be mobilised? This is the crucial question. I'm not really sure that it's a question for Jeremy Corbyn, though. It's a question for all of us. Over to you, Owen.

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Corbyn and The Referendum Bind

Richard Seymour's book on the Corbyn phenomenon is well worth a read. Or at least, this is my judgement on the basis of having read two chapters earlier today. His take on the matter, which whilst being utterly supportive of the Labour leader is more pessimistic than is fashionable on the left , corresponds broadly to my own. 

That said, Richard brings out some genuine reasons for hope to which I think I've paid insufficient attention. The mere presence of Corbyn in the public sphere introduces left-wing ideas to a popular debate that has been dominated by neo-liberalism in recent decades. Meanwhile, his position as Labour leader and the related growth of groups like Momentum provides a context for a beleaguered British left to regroup and organise. We have more opportunities now, albeit ones we approach from a position of historic weakness, than we have had at any point in my adult life.

To state the obvious, this remaining the case depends to a large extent on Corbyn staying Labour leader. And there are people who have other ideas about that. From before his election as leader the knives have been out for him within the Parliamentary Labour Party and the structures and staff of the party. If the threat of a coup against his leadership seems less immediate after last month's election results (which, outside Scotland, were not too bad for Labour), this should be understood as a stay of execution, rather than a reprieve. Corbyn knows this; his parliamentary allies and advisors know this.

It is against this background that Corbyn's support for a Remain vote in this month's EU referendum should be understood. Let's be honest about this: he does not support the EU. Nor does John McDonnell. Nor does their most prominent media ally, Owen Jones, who is currently vocally advocating a remain vote. Jones has acknowledged the volte face: his line is that Labour must make the left case for a reformed EU and that the pro-Exit case will be dominated by anti-migrant racism. This does not wash: since last year, when he advocated exit, neither the prospects of a left reform of the EU (namely zero) nor the nature of the anti-EU forces in Britain have changed. Indeed, to the extent the left critics of the EU, like the Jones of Columns Past, have silenced themselves, they have gifted the pro-exit case to the nationalist right.

My point in saying this is not to accuse Corbyn and his circle of hypocrisy. They are in a genuine bind. Their support, lukewarm as it is, for Labour Remain is a calculated concession to the Right, much like their retreat on Britain's NATO membership. The hope is that by deferring to the post-Blair consensus on these issues they can broaden their coalition of support and secure their position. I do not share that hope.

The Labour leadership's advocacy of a Remain vote has been less than wholehearted. This matters because Labour voters could hold the future of Britain's EU membership in their hands and, if recent research is to be believed, hearly half of them are unaware of the Party's official position. Pressure is being put on Corbyn to be more vocal in his support for the Remain cause.

Whichever way the poll now goes, it will be used against Corbyn. If Britain leaves the EU, he will be blamed, and the indignation of the overwhelmingly pro-EU PLP stoked. On the other hand if, as is most likely, the vote is to stay this will be in spite of Corbyn. The Right will point to the example of the charismatic new mayor of London who, unlike John McDonnell (whose attitude on this will no doubt be that of a 'sectarian dinosaur'), was prepared to share a platform with the Prime Minister in defence of the national interest. He looks, they will say, like a leader in waiting.

Corbyn is in a double bind, and there is nothing he can do at this late stage. He will discover that he will never be able to concede enough to satiate his opponents in the PLP. But nor is he in any position to take them on directly; he lacks sufficient parliamentary support. If there is to be a future for this leadership, the task of fighting his corner rests with party activists and our ability to build a coalition of support for the leadership outside of parliament whilst exerting pressure on MPs.

The Political Economy

So, after a little hesitation, Labour voted against the fiscal charter. Well, when I say 'Labour', I mean 'all but twenty Labour MPs'. And those who heroically abstained did so, not because they thought the fiscal charter - committing British governments to obtain a a budget surplus by 2019 and maintain it subsequently unless GDP growth falls below 1% - is a good idea, but in order to have a pop at McDonnell and Corbyn.

It is, after all, manifestly obvious that the charter is not a good idea. In order to recognise this, you don't need to be a signed up adherent of any specific school of economic thought . In particular, you don't need to buy into the 'Keynesianism' attributed to McDonnell by some of his leftist critics, a doctrine whose relationship to anything Keynes actually said is decidedly minimal. No, to take this view, you just need to think that it's sometimes handy for governments to be able to borrow outside the terms dictated by the charter. You could think this for any number of reasons: deep or shallow, right or left. Thus, for example, the wide-eyed Trotskyists at The Economist. Or, for that matter, some character called George Osborne. To be honest, you don't even need this level of justification for rejecting the charter: the simple empirical observation that governments have borrowed far more freely than the charter allows without the sky caving in ought to suffice.

Now, George Osborne knows all of this. He does not, for one moment, think it is either possible or desirable for a government to abide by the terms of his charter. To understand why he brought it to the floor of parliament, we need to see that it is about politics, not economics. Or rather, it is about economics as politics. He knows that a section of voters think Labour is 'weak' on 'the economy'. Hence all the rhetoric about Corbyn being a 'threat to your family's economic security', and hence the charter, which is designed to mark out the Tories as the tough, responsible, party who can be trusted with 'the economy'. Quite why someone struggling to make ends meet should care much about some abstraction called 'the economy' may not be apparent, but this is where a powerful analogy kicks in.

Government accounts, for this analogy, are our household budget. And, as the less than feminist Margaret Thatcher put it,  'every housewife knows' you can't spend more than you earn. Even as an approach to personal budgets this is simplistic at best. It's an image born in a time before mass consumer credit and student loans, one of the insufficiently told stories about debt in advanced capitalist societies being the extent to which it has shifted from the public to the personal. But as a picture for government borrowing and spending it is grotesquely misleading. Still, it is powerful: not only simple, but comforting, it ties the abstract and economic to the homely and familiar, speaking of collective responsibility (being 'responsible' with 'our' finances) in a world that can seem both atomised and amoral. It is ideology in its pure, brilliant, form.

And the picture has captured hearts and minds. I've lost count of the number of conversations I have had where the household analogy has been flung back at me when I've opposed cuts or one sort or another. This audience member on Question Time is a good example of the phenomenon:


Varoufakis is obviously correct; his answer is quite literally a textbook one. But I doubt very much that the questioner was convinced, and I'm not too sure about viewers at home, beyond the echo chamber of the already-converted Left, who shared the video clip with gleeful abandon on every social media website known to humankind. The man is speaking common sense, which is one way of describing successful ideology. Varoufakis is speaking economics.

The function of the household analogy is not so much as to build up support for near-perpetual budget surpluses - I've said already that this is not Osborne's purpose - but to render a section of the population suspicious of public spending, and to thereby gain consent for the dismantling of collective provision, privatisation and welfare cuts.

The household analogy is not the only manner in which an image, picture, or cluster of ideas serves to reconcile people to economic attack in Cameron's Britain. Think of the what has been called the business ontology, the way so many of us view the world as one big interplay of consumers and individual entrepeneurs (rather than as, say, a site of conflict between workers and capital). The language of entrepeneurship is endemic: what might once have been thought of as terrifyingly insecure short term work might now be presented as an opportunity to advance one's CV in the cause of career entrepeneurship. Then consider all those television programmes inviting us to view our homes as investments (rather than, for example, shelters), and murmuring suggestively that we too might make big on the property market.

This stuff is long-standing and deep-seated. Unless and until the Left can establish some kind of counter-hegemony, a socialist common sense as well-entrenched as that visible in the wide grin of the Question Time inquisitor, until we can communicate clear and attractive accounts of the world to rival that of it as one big market place, we will not make progress. We can have all the correct arguments about the economy we like. We can explain how Osborne's policies are wrong, as indeed they are. We can even make the case that capitalism itself is a barrier to human flourishing, as indeed it is. But politics is about more than arguments, however much those of us who are most at home in the world of facts and figures might wish otherwise. It is about pictures, broad-brush ideas, hopes, fears, and dreams. As any housewife knows.