BREXIT and Labour
In the wake of the 23 June 2016 Brexit referendum, which turned British politics upside down, most international attention focused on the turmoil in the ranks of Britain’s ruling Conservatives and their Game of Thrones style, treacherous leadership contest to replace Prime Minster David Cameron. But the country’s main opposition party, Labour, was also tearing itself to shreds, deeply divided between mainstream Labour MPs and the younger generations of leftist party members.
Only 10 of Labour’s 229 MPs supported the Leave campaign, but studies suggest that majorities in 70 percent of districts won by the party in the 2015 general election voted for a break with the European Union.
John McDonnell, a fellow MP from the hard left who served as Shadow Chancellor, was the only likely contender whose views mostly align with Corbyn’s. He coupled his socialist politics — like Corbyn’s unsullied by a career largely free of compromise until he took office — with a stronger tactical sense than Corbyn. Margaret Hodge, a former minister in the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon, is well-known in Westminster circles but probably wouldn’t be the obvious choice for opposition leader.
Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader and once known as an arch-plotter (he was one of Gordon Brown’s closest allies in his attempts to force his frenemy Tony Blair out of office), was Labour’s Deputy Leader. He backed Prime Minister David Cameron in his support for renewing Britain’s “Trident” nuclear deterrent regardless of how pro-disarmament Corbyn voted. Dan Jarvis, a rugged former soldier who entered parliament in 2011, as a potential future leader predate Corbyn’s ascendency. Chuka Umunna, a polished London MP who was once a leading contender to succeed Ed Miliband, pulled out of the last Labour leadership race, citing undue intrusion into his family and private life. His associations with the old Blairite wing and criticism of Corbyn could prove a challenge.
Often floated as a potential post-Corbyn unity candidate, Shadow Energy Secretary Lisa Nandy’s “soft-left” politics could put her in line with both pro- and anti-Corbyn voters. Hilary Benn, son of Corbyn’s greatest political hero, the late Tony Benn, had long been known as further toward Labour’s pro-intervention right than his father. His passionate speech in favor of launching air-strikes against the Islamic State in Syria, in defiance of his leader, earned near-hysterical praise from pundits and pro-strikes MPs.
Jeremy Corbyn said he would not resign after Members of Parliament (MPs) in his party overwhelmingly passed a motion of no confidence in his leadership. Corbyn lost a confidence vote on 28 June 2016, with 172 of his Labour Party's lawmakers voting against him and 40 in favor. The motion was tabled in the wake of Britain's vote to leave the European Union and backed by many who felt he had not campaigned hard enough to keep the country inside the EU, and would not be able to win a future election.
Friend turned on friend amid claims of bullying and even of death threats. Much of this was played out in the genteel surroundings of parliament – a kind of political Agatha Christie mystery. By 2016 many among the party’s lawmakers and other Grandees feared that Labour is facing its biggest challenge since Ramsay MacDonald split and nearly killed the party in 1931, forming a national government with Conservatives. Lawmakers accused Corbyn of failing to provide a clear, unambiguous pro-EU message and say his office sabotaged the Remain side in the EU campaign.
Most of the party’s "shadow Cabinet" quit. They argued Corbyn was ill equipped to be party leader and must share the blame for the Brexit referendum result. They wanted Corbyn, who appeared to have the backing of the grass-roots party membership [soem of whom are far-left activists], to resign. There are people around him, some who were members of far-left Trotskyite parties - the so-called Loonie Left - who were determined to hijack the party.
Labour's social foundations – the unions, heavy industry, the nonconformist church, a deference to the big state that has long evaporated – are either in deep retreat or have vanished completely. Its name embodies an attachment to the supposed glories of work that no longer chimes with insecure employment and insurgent automation.
The split between party members of older generations and the young Corbyn loyalists in parliament and in the constituencies is clear. Corbyn loyalists focused on issues away from the workplace and the traditional Labour politics of hearth and home. They concentrated on gay rights, climate change and gender equality, and their bid to bring about a progressive Rainbow coalition of diverse and very London-based far left and social justice groups. For working-class folk beyond London living in the hollowed-out industrial, steel and mining towns of Britain devastated by globalization, the nativist message of the anti-immigrant UKIP resonated.
Richard Seymour observed " Journalists steeped in the common sense of Westminster, assumed that it was all over for Labour’s first ever radical socialist leadership. ... The putschists’ plan, such as it was, was to orchestrate such media saturation of criticism and condemnation aimed at Corbyn, to create such havoc within the Labour Party, that he would feel compelled to resign. The tactical side of it was executed to smooth perfection, by people who are well-versed in the manipulation of the spectacle. And yet, in the event that Corbyn was not wowed by the media spectacle, not intimidated by ranks of grandees laying into him, and happy to appeal over the heads of party elites to the grassroots, their strategy disintegrated. This was not politics as they knew it.
"... the decline of the Left’s fortunes and the rampant success of the neoliberal centre was also concurrent with a growing crisis of representative democracy, as more and more of the state’s functions were taken out of democratic control and handed over to Quangos, businesses, and unelected bodies. Millions of people, no longer seeing much real choice on offer, began to boycott the electoral system. Party elites retreated into the state and into the manipulation of news cycles, having less and less to do with mass politics.
"In the context of the Labour Party, the result of this was that a generation of political leaders emerged who were experienced as special advisers, think-tankers, policy wonks and spin doctors, but had little real understanding of how to motivate activists and communicate with the broad public."
Corbyn, who supported the Remain camp ahead of the Brexit referendum, was challenged by former Work and Pensions Shadow Secretary Owen Smith. Veteran Labour Party's parliamentary member Sir Tam Dalyell said 22 August 2016 that he would no longer support embattled party's leader Jeremy Corbyn in the ongoing leadership contest over the Brexit issue. "When Owen Smith says that he will campaign against Brexit I will vote for him because I think that is the most overwhelmingly important issue of our time," Dalyell, who had been the member of Parliament for 43 years, said.
Veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn was re-elected head of Britain's Labour Party on 24 September 2016, defeating a challenge to his year-old leadership of the divided opposition party. Corbyn won almost 62 percent of the more than 500,000 votes cast by Labour members and supporters. Challenger Owen Smith got 38 percent in a result announced at the party's conference in Liverpool, northwest England.
In 2019, although Labour lost far more votes to pro-Remain parties than pro-Leave parties, the bulk of the seats that were lost were in majority Leave-voting constituencies, particularly in the Midlands and the North. It’s possible that some of these could have been saved if we’d had a clearly pro-Brexit position. Not every battle is winnable. The election was called specifically to resolve the issue of Brexit, which is something that divides Labour’s support base and that doesn’t meaningfully divide the Tory support base.
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