tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/labour-leadership-race-17001/articlesLabour leadership race – The Conversation2016-09-22T15:02:48Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/656802016-09-22T15:02:48Z2016-09-22T15:02:48ZWhy do we treat political party members as oddballs and zealots?<blockquote>
<p>It’s all very well enthusing party members, but what about the wider public? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>If any question can summarise the Labour leadership contest, this is surely a decent candidate.</p>
<p>For many, the two contenders in this election have had their eyes on different constituencies. Leader Jeremy Corbyn, it is said, revels in his bond with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/poll-says-66-of-labour-members-support-corbyn-but-its-hard-to-find-a-friend-in-parliament-51002">party membership</a> and struggles to speak beyond it. He is more concerned with denouncing austerity than addressing the aspirations of ordinary voters.</p>
<p>Corbyn’s challenger <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/owen-smith-29294">Owen Smith</a>, on the other hand, is seen as aiming to connect with the larger population. They are battling to decide who the party will speak for – members first and voters second, or vice versa.</p>
<p>This distinction between voters and members reflects a long-term suspicion of the latter. They are typically seen as a different species from the ordinary citizen. They have their own concerns and a set of passions that others do not share – hence comparisons with <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/26/jeremy-corbyns-labour-party-is-a-cult-even-losing-his-shadow-cab/">religious sects</a>. </p>
<p>Members’ attachment to the party tends to be presented as an identity – the expression of a personality type rather than the outcome of a reasoned decision. Voters choose, whereas members just are. Their views are an extension of their characters: well they would say that wouldn’t they?</p>
<h2>A conscious choice</h2>
<p>But what were members before they were members? They were ordinary citizens of course. No-one in modern Britain is born into a political party: it is a status chosen by the previously unaligned. The category is inherently elastic. A story like Labour’s, of expanding membership, is already a story about the larger population.</p>
<p>The habit of dividing up the electoral universe is a longstanding part of our political culture. Democracy has always tended to be accompanied by efforts to discern laws of behaviour. The idea is to divide people into separate and largely stable groups – voters, elites, members and so on – in order to chart patterns and make predictions.</p>
<p>Each has a distinct personality type, each their own set of attitudes. Those we attribute to the party member can be traced to a broader suspicion of political commitment. Viewed as those who stick relentlessly to their cause, members are those who stand for the intrusion of passions on civilised society. They are the kind of people who do not know how to compromise – probably mad, possibly bad. </p>
<h2>Rising numbers</h2>
<p>But if it was ever possible to view party members as a world unto themselves, it is unfeasible at a time when levels of membership are fluid. When large numbers are joining Labour – and in recent years also the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/green-party-5002">Greens</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/snp-3033">SNP</a> – there can be no denying that plenty are members by choice, not identity. And given we cannot know what the ceiling to these numbers will be, and what factors genuinely limit them, we can hardly mark sharp boundaries between party members and ordinary citizens.</p>
<p>Nor should we want to. Even the detached observer must surely baulk at the negative way party members are being portrayed in this contest. Joining a party is one way to seek to improve society. It means taking a stand on important issues, in a measured and rule-bound way. To join a party is a classic way to exercise the rights and responsibilities of a citizen.</p>
<p>Rather than rising numbers, it is party decline that has been more commonly observed in recent years, in Britain and well beyond. Revealingly, when a party is abandoned by its members, this tends to be read as a valid judgement cast – a sign of the party’s irrelevance or folly. We are comfortable attributing reflection to those who leave a party: those who join one tend to be viewed more sceptically.</p>
<p>But as long as one is broadly committed to some notion of party democracy, the decision of individuals to join parties demands to be seen as no less reasoned than the decision of others to abstain or to leave.</p>
<p>Indeed, rather than see members as the oddity, perhaps it is time we saw non-aligned citizens simply as people who are yet to find their party.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65680/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Meaning of Partisanship, by Jonathan White and Lea Ypi, will appear with Oxford University Press in early October 2016. Jonathan is a member of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>The Labour leadership contest is discussed as though people inside and outside the party were a different species.Jonathan White, Associate Professor (Reader) of European Politics, London School of Economics and Political ScienceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/627282016-07-19T16:35:50Z2016-07-19T16:35:50ZHere’s what we know about Labour’s £3 supporters – and whether they’ll pay £25 to help Corbyn again<p>Forces on both sides of the Jeremy Corbyn debate are apparently trying to make the most of the 48-hour window within which anyone can register as a supporter of the Labour Party and have a vote in the impending leadership election. Both pro and <a href="http://labourlist.org/2016/07/saving-labour-tells-supporters-it-is-last-chance-to-sign-up-and-topple-corbyn/">anti-Corbyn campaigners</a> are hitting the phones and the streets to convince people to pay £25, either to get the current leader out, or keep him in. </p>
<p>The committed Corbynistas of Momentum are apparently doing their best to <a href="http://labourlist.org/2016/07/dont-be-silenced-momentums-anger-over-reforms-to-labour-leadership-election/">re-establish contact</a> with people who joined as registered supporters during the last leadership contest at the bargain price of just £3. The aim is to get as many Corbyn backers as possible to pay the increased fee of £25. That way, Momentum hopes, they will deliver another victory for Labour’s sitting leader. </p>
<p>The battle for these £3 supporters is so intense because so little is known about who they are and why they signed up last time. Were they hardline Corbynistas, hard-up party loyalists, or simply troublemakers willing to fork out a few quid to troll Labour? And, just as importantly, what might they do this time?</p>
<p>We surveyed nearly 900 of them a couple of months ago in May 2016, so we thought it would be interesting to take a look at what sort of people they are. Why did they take that cheaper, lower-commitment option rather than going the whole hog and becoming full members of the Labour Party? The answer to this question may, perhaps, tell us something about the £25 supporters who might be clamouring to sign up for a vote now – and whether their interest is good or bad news for Corbyn.</p>
<h2>The three quidders</h2>
<p>The first thing to say about the £3 supporters is that they weren’t very different from those who joined Labour as full members after the 2015 general election. Although they were slightly more likely to be male rather than female than those who went the whole hog, some 74% fell into the ABC1 category (roughly middle or upper class) and 56% of them were graduates. That’s very similar proportions to full members.</p>
<p>Since they were, on average, 51-years-old, they were also around the same age as the full members. In other words, although high social grade does not necessarily always equate with high social income, the majority of those people are not going to find it too difficult to pay the £25 required to express their support and vote for the leader again.</p>
<p>Interestingly, those who joined as supporters (and remained as such without upgrading, as it were) were slightly less likely to belong to a trade union (17%) than those who joined as members (23%). They were also less likely, ironically enough, to consider themselves members of Momentum (3%) than those who joined as full members (9%). That suggests that Momentum’s ability to get them to pay up again to save Corbyn may be rather more limited than some imagine.</p>
<p>Another difference between those who registered as supporters after the general election and those who joined as full members is that the former were less likely to have voted Labour in 2015 (64% vs 72%) and more likely to have voted Green (19% vs 13%). One reason why they chose a lower level of commitment may well have been because, quite simply, they felt less partisan loyalty toward Labour in the first place. Or maybe they just felt less politically engaged than those who chose to join as full members. Whether Corbyn has upped that level of engagement enough to see them take up the same offer but at a much higher price will be interesting to see.</p>
<p>It is also true – although here we are talking about very fine differences of degree – that those who registered as £3 supporters were ever so slightly less left wing, socially liberal and pro-immigration than those who joined the party as full members.</p>
<p>But, like those full members, this means they were still very left-wing, very socially liberal and very pro-immigration compared with most voters – even most Labour voters. So all in all, if they can be persuaded to re-register to vote in this election – or if the people who register for the first time today and tomorrow are anything like them – that’s likely to favour those hoping to keep Corbyn rather than ditch him.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62728/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Bale receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Monica Poletti receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Webb receives funding from The Economic & Social Research Council.</span></em></p>They signed up in their droves to vote in the last leadership election, but will they back Corbyn again?Tim Bale, Professor of Politics, Queen Mary University of LondonMonica Poletti, ESRC Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Queen Mary University of LondonPaul Webb, Professor of Politics, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/475002015-09-14T15:18:54Z2015-09-14T15:18:54ZExplainer: just how exceptional is Jeremy Corbyn’s victory?<p>An earthquake isn’t any less of an earthquake for its being called such repeatedly. At least this one was predicted, eventually. Some indications as to just how seismic Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader of the Labour Party really is may be found by measuring it against the party’s historical Richter scale.</p>
<p>For all the justified astonishment, Corbyn’s win isn’t uniquely remarkable. Slightly more than Tony Blair’s 57%, Corbyn’s 59.5% is a shadow of Neil Kinnock’s two wins: <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/2/newsid_2486000/2486483.stm">71%</a> over Roy Hattersley, Eric Heffer and Peter Shore in 1983, and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4bJhAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA63&lpg=PA63&dq=kinnock+leadership+election+1988&source=bl&ots=C4UrW5Nu69&sig=DxWpJ9SLPEfphHbb3KIhhs4Mu2g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEoQ6AEwCGoVChMIm4OTyKb2xwIVSukUCh3kvADr#v=onepage&q=kinnock%20leadership%20election%201988&f=false">89%</a> over Tony Benn in 1988. Kinnock’s successor John Smith achieved 91% in his 1992 contest with Bryan Gould, whose challenge was avowedly tokenistic (something it shared with Corbyn’s). The difference is that Kinnock and Smith were expected to win.</p>
<p>The political identity of the new Labour leader is genuinely historic. Depending on one’s political disposition, since its emergence as a party of government in 1924, Labour has been too sensible, or too timid, to elect a radical as leader. The frequently mis-cited Michael Foot had been a conspicuously loyal cabinet minister for five years (<a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2008/09/callaghan-government-cabinet">in contrast to Benn</a>, Corbyn’s mentor). Even George Lansbury (1932-5), the predecessor with whom Corbyn has most in common, was a national figure who’d held ministerial office.</p>
<h2>Not just his turn</h2>
<p>Corbyn’s victory reverses a generational shift. As perhaps befits a house of legislators often accused of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/23/ed-miliband-supports-prime-ministers-questions-reform">acting like children</a>, intakes of MPs are often referred to as “classes”. Labour’s class of 1945 produced four leaders (Hugh Gaitskell 1955-63, Harold Wilson 1963-76, James Callaghan 1976-80, Michael Foot 1980-3), and 1970 two (Neil Kinnock 1983-92, John Smith 1992-4). We might have thought that the <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-corbyn-wins-the-class-of-1983-looks-set-to-reshape-labour-once-again-47291">classmates of 1983</a> had long since graduated to long trousers, after Gordon Brown followed Tony Blair out of office and parliament – but it turns out there remained <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/fashion-and-style/11858601/Corbyns-casual-summery-style-our-style-editors-verdict.html">one refusenik</a>.</p>
<p>No major party has ever had a permanent leader who hadn’t planned to be leader (or possibly even want to be). Modest in all matters, Corbyn meant it when he said he’d not expected to win, and that it was merely “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/17/jeremy-corbyn-labour-leadership-dont-do-personal">my turn</a>” to follow Diane Abbott (2010), John Prescott (1994), Gould, Benn, and Heffer and offer the party a clear alternative to candidates of the “right” or “centre”. The climate of politics in 2015 – internationally as well as nationally – has proven to be more propitious than it was for the earlier campaigns, and Corbyn is the beneficiary.</p>
<p>As with Kinnock, Corbyn spent years refusing to serve on the front bench, but only one Labour leader has had as much ministerial experience as Corbyn (that is, none): Blair. And when Blair became leader in 1994, Labour had been out of office for so long that few MPs had any ministerial experience at all. In 2015 it was Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper’s ministerial experience that turned many against them.</p>
<h2>Defenestrated and demonised</h2>
<p>Whereas Conservative MPs have seldom baulked at ridding themselves of leaders who proved to be liabilities, Labour’s more collectivist political culture meant it was <a href="https://theconversation.com/deep-aversion-to-regicide-means-labour-is-stuck-with-ed-miliband-33121">averse to defenestration</a>. Labour leaders have unwillingly relinquished office only through death, and indeed, the only party leaders to have died in the last century were Labour ones: (<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/18/newsid_3376000/3376971.stm">Gaitskell</a> in 1963, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/1994/may/13/obituaries.past">Smith</a> in 1994). </p>
<p>Demonisation is another matter. From Ramsay MacDonald (1922-32; “<a href="http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr203/mcdonald.htm">Having been born a socialist, he died a bloody Tory</a>”) to “<a href="http://www.theblairdoc.com/">Bliar</a>” himself, Labour prime ministers are usually regarded as having let the movement down. (The effect of Blair’s three public warnings against electing Corbyn is testament to his standing with members.)</p>
<p>The scale of Corbyn’s victory means that he cannot be thought of – as Blair was, not least by Corbyn himself – as something grafted onto the party, and susceptible to antibodies. Instead, Corbyn’s near-60% vote share has shattered the most plausible case for an internal challenge on grounds of legality or morality: there weren’t anything like enough <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/toriesforcorbyn">#toriesforcorbyn</a> to have swung the result.</p>
<h2>Bigger than ever</h2>
<p>Labour is, as its new leader has <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/party-politics/articles/story/jeremy-corbyn%25E2%2580%2599s-labour-leadership-victory-speech">said</a>, bigger than it’s been “for a very, very long time”, in large part due to him. There are now around <a href="http://labourlist.org/2015/09/14500-people-sign-up-as-labour-party-members-following-jeremy-corbyns-election-as-leader/">325,000 members</a>, more than the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties <a href="http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN05125">put together</a>, and more than Labour has had since 1999, when Blair was still an asset. (Curiously there were still 131,608 people eligible to vote who chose not to.)</p>
<p>Some things haven’t changed. On February 12 1906 Keir Hardie’s election as Labour’s first leader was declared. On September 12 2015, a special conference announced that Corbyn and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34220438">Tom Watson</a> were leader and deputy leader. At each event, the only people who spoke in an official capacity were men. At least in 1906, women weren’t allowed to participate in parliamentary affairs – <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1910/jul/11/parliamentary-franchise-women-bill#S5CV0019P0_19100711_HOC_306">much to Hardie’s disgust</a> – but 97 years after (limited) female suffrage, and 22 years after Labour itself introduced <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-27665486">all-women shortlists</a>, anyone following the results event on radio would be forgiven for thinking that no woman was present (none are now in the five most senior positions in the Parliamentary Labour Party). </p>
<p>2015 can now be added to 1918, 1945, and 1979 as one of the most significant years in British politics in the last hundred years. Corbyn immediately promised that <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/party-politics/articles/story/jeremy-corbyn%25E2%2580%2599s-labour-leadership-victory-speech">things will change</a>. Much already has, and more may yet with the inevitable aftershocks. And if 2020 sees Corbyn as prime minister being greeted in the White House Rose Garden by <a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/">President Trump</a> – or, as Corbyn might prefer, <a href="https://berniesanders.com/">President Sanders</a> – not entirely dissimilar <a href="http://inthesetimes.com/article/17695/syriza_podemos_america">transatlantic currents</a> will have brought them together.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47500/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Farr does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s been hailed as the most radical course correction in Labour history. But is it?Martin Farr, Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary British History, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/473082015-09-14T14:52:41Z2015-09-14T14:52:41ZHow Labour’s modernisers can survive in the party of Corbyn<p>It wasn’t supposed to be this way. After Labour’s election defeat at the 2015 general election, many Blairites <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/10/miliband-made-terrible-mistake-in-ditching-new-labour-says-mandelson">believed</a> that their shattered party needed a turn to the right to revive the New Labour electoral magic.</p>
<p>Instead, they are living a political nightmare, having lost first the country to the Conservatives and then the Labour party to Corbyn and his supporters. The result has plunged those who have always viewed themselves as the vanguard of Labour party “modernisers” into crisis. </p>
<p>As Peter Mandelson <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bc778688-4cb6-11e5-b558-8a9722977189.html">has conceded</a>: “modernisers no longer carry Labour’s middle ground”. If they want to win it back, they must first take stock of what’s happened, and then overcome some seriously daunting challenges.</p>
<h2>Turn it around</h2>
<p>Before the outcome was announced, there had been rumblings of a legal challenge to the result, or even a parliamentary coup to depose Corbyn should he win. Now he’s triumphed not by a whisker, but with a landslide, the Blairites appear to realise they must be seen to accept the result. A sore loser, after all, is unlikely to win the public’s sympathy.</p>
<p>But it remains to be seen if the Blairites can accept how just how marginal they’ve become. Although Blairism still attracts the support of many MPs and senior party figures, Liz Kendall’s 4.5% showing in the leadership contest implies that enthusiasm amongst the grassroots is desperately low. </p>
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<p>So instead of spoiling for a coup, they must adapt to life under Corbyn. Several key figures, including most of Corbyn’s defeated rivals, have said they will not serve in his shadow cabinet. Yet they are unlikely to mount direct attacks on the leader in the short-to-medium term. They know that if they appear churlish or divisive, they might get some of the blame if the party fails to show signs of recovery by the end of the year. </p>
<p>Meantime, they may look for opportunities to limit the fallout from Corbyn’s reign, using the party’s structures to try and stop Labour taking positions they deem particularly harmful. That may mean trying to discourage Corbyn from <a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/labour-campaign-stay-eu-benn-says-073820453--business.html">backing the campaign</a> to exit the EU in the upcoming referendum, or <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/09/13/tom-watson-jeremy-corbyn-labour_n_8128908.html">threatening Britain’s membership of NATO</a>.</p>
<p>The modernisers must also reassess their attitude to party colleagues. During the leadership campaign, the Blairites came across as loftily condescending, suggesting that anyone who thought differently was either mad or a revolutionary. Many seemed positively miserable about the influx of new Labour party members and supporters, reinforcing their image as a narrow Westminster elite concerned about their own careers above anything else. </p>
<p>Tony Blair himself was honest enough to admit that he <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/29/tony-blair-labour-leadership-jeremy-corbyn">did not understand</a> the massive wave of support for Corbyn, but this was insufficient to lead him question his own attitude to the phenomenon. A more humble approach may be called for, one which concedes that rival viewpoints are valid in a period where no section of the party yet has a convincing blueprint for how Labour might regain office.</p>
<h2>Moving on</h2>
<p>The Blairites also need to revise their whole analysis of British politics. During Blair’s premiership, the traditional left-wing vote had nowhere else to go, leaving Labour free to adapt policies to seek more votes in the South. Yet now Labour is simultaneously losing support not just to the Tories but also UKIP, the Greens and the SNP.</p>
<p>Pollster and political scientist John Curtice has <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/21/pollster-john-curtice-warns-labour-majority-2020-election-improbable-politics">argued</a> that “events north of the border show the Blairite analysis of why Labour lost is frankly wholly inadequate”, and indeed, the party’s centrists have had very little to say about how to win back Labour’s lost Scottish heartlands. </p>
<p>More generally, they have struggled to set out an appealing centre-left agenda, raising suspicions that they had not really moved on from Blair’s “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/feb/10/labour.uk1">third way</a>” vision.</p>
<p>Having woefully misjudged the leadership campaign, all Corbyn’s opponents must avoid compounding this error by assuming he will quickly fail as leader. While the likes of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/13/chuka-umunna-quits-over-jeremy-corbyns-eu-stance">Chuka Umunna</a> and <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/calendar/update/2015-09-14/caroline-flint-to-return-to-the-backbenches/">Caroline Flint</a> have opted for life on the backbenches, others (among them <a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9559092/the-humiliation-that-turned-andy-burnham-from-blairite-to-union-man/">one-time Blairite</a> Burnham and Tony Blair’s old flatmate, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/248271.stm">Lord Falconer</a>) have already decided that engagement is the better approach.</p>
<p>Corbyn’s dramatic surge was largely fuelled by a profound dissatisfaction with traditional Westminster politics and a thirst for bolder opposition to the Tory agenda. These issues are much bigger than Labour’s own problems, and demand fresh, daring ideas from anyone who wants to chart a different political course. So if they want to stay relevant, the modernisers may have to modernise in ways they never anticipated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47308/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart McAnulla does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>They were, they thought, the party’s best hope – and they were humiliated. What next for the New Labour believers?Stuart McAnulla, Lecturer in British Politics, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/473812015-09-14T05:27:20Z2015-09-14T05:27:20ZHow to save Corbynomics from itself<p>Jeremy Corbyn’s stunning victory in the Labour leadership election has sparked much gnashing of teeth. Worryingly, it promises a testy political battle in the party at a time when the country needs an effective and viable opposition. </p>
<p>His brand of so-called Corbynomics has attracted a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/dont-be-fooled-by-utopian-corbynomics--it-is-seductive-fiction-10492000.html">fair amount of derision</a> in some quarters and <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/49454d12-4a59-11e5-9b5d-89a026fda5c9.html#axzz3lKKkmFWO">benign tutting in others</a>. Nevertheless, there are some important elements in what he says that we believe are well grounded and which could now offer a clear, distinctive and viable economic programme with which to confront the government. </p>
<h2>Investment case</h2>
<p>Corbyn wants a public investment strategy to rebuild the UK’s economic capacity and ensure we can perform well as a competitive economy, with high wage and high-skilled jobs. This would ultimately be paid for by the long-term improvement in economic performance which investment makes possible, along with the improved tax receipts it generates. </p>
<p>The government would need to decide what balance to strike in using these receipts, between reducing future taxes, paying off national debt and making further investment in future economic capacity. Chancellor George Osborne has committed to prioritising <a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/jeremy-corbyn-vs-george-osborne-162252092.html#VfOU2v2">the first and second of these</a>; Corbyn would give more attention to the third. </p>
<p>Most economists would endorse this commitment to investment. Many, however, expect it to be forthcoming from the private sector, just as soon as the public sector shrinks enough to leave space for private sector initiative. This is also the chancellor’s position. </p>
<p>Corbyn instead follows economists from John Maynard Keynes to <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/mariana-mazzucato-185270">Mariana Mazzucato</a>, in arguing for a strong investment role for government as a condition for private investment to flourish.</p>
<h2>QE too?</h2>
<p>Corbyn has called for a version of “quantitative easing” by the Bank of England, as a means of financing this investment strategy. One attraction for Corbyn is that QE seems to be “costless”; it is just a matter of the bank printing money. This avoids making the deficit in public finances worse and undermining international confidence in the UK economy. </p>
<p>However, his investment strategy should in any case commend itself to the international financial markets, providing it is clearly separated from current account spending. Corbyn’s <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21660599-labours-prospective-next-leader-may-be-partys-hard-left-he-no-radical-jeremy">proposal for a National Development Bank</a> would be one way of doing this, without resorting to QE and without involving the Bank of England. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94492/original/image-20150911-1575-22tvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94492/original/image-20150911-1575-22tvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94492/original/image-20150911-1575-22tvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94492/original/image-20150911-1575-22tvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94492/original/image-20150911-1575-22tvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94492/original/image-20150911-1575-22tvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94492/original/image-20150911-1575-22tvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94492/original/image-20150911-1575-22tvu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Notes and queries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nataliejohnson/398006982/in/photolist-8PY4BV-hHH4en-qJESkB-hHFUYi-BaTBm-74gYSL-fFHJpA-BaTBp-p5WY7b-oeELth-owavWJ-oukqah-fqLDi-oeSyNm-ovTehk-ow8wZh-oxV9LH-93FNvj-93FRfj-93CCFF-93FEnE-93FGyY-93CMq6-93FFQu-93FPcw-pgWGgm-p6cgsN-oy8jxn-owaqF3-owahb7-ownASn-FriYz-pp7nTC-oeSKF1-93CDzn-93CAnT-93FKUd-93FQgu-93CyPX-93CGoR-93CEfH-93CH7X-DG8qi-dFjS11-fFr75F-b3f7X4-4of9ow-jDfgtM-DG83Y-5X2z6S">Natalie</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His argument that QE is “costless” is misleading. The bank prints money (or rather creates it electronically) and uses this to buy government bonds (debt) on the financial markets. The aim is to drive down the general rate of interest, with the aim of stimulating private investment and economic growth. However, the government bonds that the Bank has bought mean that the Treasury still ends up owing it money (unless the Bank writes off the debt, something which would not be welcomed by the financial markets). </p>
<p>QE has already <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/adnan-aldaini/quantitative-easing_b_6692038.html">“cost” £375 billion</a>. Whatever the total outlay, it may have to be repaid in due course from taxation receipts, money which could otherwise be spent on hospitals and public services. </p>
<p>Corbyn may have misunderstood QE as “costless”, but the rest of the UK political class has been no less reticent about acknowledging the real cost of QE for the UK public.</p>
<h2>Tax avoidance</h2>
<p>The costs of QE represent only part of the cost of the financial crash of 2008. There was in addition the cost of bailing out banks such as Northern Rock, RBS and HBOS. The government has taken only modest steps to prevent a repeat of that disaster. It is unsurprising therefore that Corbyn has been able to tap into widespread public anger, with his plans to tackle corporate tax avoidance and banker bonuses. Corbyn cannot expect the UK to mount a successful attack on this front by itself. He would therefore be likely to support EU efforts to tackle these problems, rather than opposing them, as the chancellor has done. </p>
<p>There may also be merit in Corbyn’s wish to re-nationalise the railways. Standard economics allows for a case to be made for some economic activities to be undertaken by the state, where the social benefits of collective provision cannot be effectively realised by other means. <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-case-for-re-nationalising-britains-railways-45963">This may be one such case</a>, and one that can be successfully sold to voters. </p>
<p>Re-nationalisation would presumably however require compensation for investors – and this in turn would likely require higher taxes. That’s a tricky proposition for any government, but there is at least room for debate over where the tax burden should fall.</p>
<h2>‘You didn’t build that’</h2>
<p>Corbyn makes much of the benefits to the corporate sector of public activities, from the provision of roads to the education of tomorrow’s workers. His estimates of the overall value of this contribution <a href="http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-3182368/UK-sclerotic-failing-economy-Jeremy-Corbyn-Prime-Minister-warns-IoD-head.html">have been attacked</a>, but he is surely right that the business world and the public sector are intimately interrelated. This is very different from Osborne’s view that the public sector is a drag on private sector vitality and must accordingly be shrunk. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94489/original/image-20150911-1544-1i9tmtx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94489/original/image-20150911-1544-1i9tmtx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94489/original/image-20150911-1544-1i9tmtx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94489/original/image-20150911-1544-1i9tmtx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94489/original/image-20150911-1544-1i9tmtx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94489/original/image-20150911-1544-1i9tmtx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94489/original/image-20150911-1544-1i9tmtx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94489/original/image-20150911-1544-1i9tmtx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Duel carriageway.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/45393120@N07/14073735004/">Highways England</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rather than decrying the ill-thought out nature of some of Corbyn’s proposals – others have done that already – we have tried to rescue the baby from the bath water and consider what a more workable statement of Corbynomics might involve, and how this might indeed appeal to a wider swathe of the electorate. </p>
<p>We have also sought to show some of the main areas of disagreement with current Conservative policy. This may enable a more balanced debate about the alternative ways forward for British economic policy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47381/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are some important parts of Corbynomics that can offer a clear, distinctive and viable economic programme with which to confront the government.Graham Room, Professor of European Social Policy, University of BathChris Martin, Professor of Economics, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/473142015-09-14T05:27:14Z2015-09-14T05:27:14ZJeremy Corbyn and the economics of the real world<p>As the creator of what has come to be known as <a href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/jeremyforlabour/pages/70/attachments/original/1437556345/TheEconomyIn2020_JeremyCorbyn-220715.pdf?1437556345">Corbynomics</a>, my ideas on what is now known as People’s Quantitative Easing, progressive taxation, tackling the tax gap and other matters caused quite a stir in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/labour-leadership-race">Labour leadership race</a>.</p>
<p>They are all policies that, in my opinion, are at the core of tackling the austerity narrative that has dominated the UK political debate. They are designed to put the country back to work on a fair and level playing field. </p>
<p>It is with this in mind that I am about to start teaching a course entitled <a href="http://www.city.ac.uk/arts-social-sciences/modules/economics-of-the-real-world">Economics of the Real World</a> at City University. I think there is a considerable overlap between the ideas I hope to explore with my students and the reason for Jeremy Corbyn adopting some of my thinking this summer.</p>
<p>I consider myself a political economist. We could argue for some time about where the boundaries between the two disciplines might be, but most can spot it with ease. It is, in my opinion, a sad fact of life that too many macroeconomists now consider research to be focused almost entirely on correcting theoretical aberrations in models of general equilibrium that bear little or no relationship to the real world. As an exercise in theoretical mathematical modelling this process creates academic curiosity, but I have my doubts about what it contributes to the real world.</p>
<h2>What needs exploring</h2>
<p>In the real world of political economy that I wish to explore with my students in due course, there are three big themes. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>What economists choose to measure and how useful it is to measure these things.</p></li>
<li><p>The way those measures are constructed and what they are intended to communicate.</p></li>
<li><p>The role of economists in this process: what is their background or ideology that may influence their behaviour, and what might they have chosen to omit from consideration as a result?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>It is my belief that there is no form of measurement, whether economic or (as importantly) in accounting, that is value-free. The choice of what we measure frames the debates we have. And the tools we use and the options they accept or reject are entirely subjective. </p>
<p>For example, to highlight one of my long-running areas of concern, the fact that companies deliberately use complex financial structures to hide 60% or more of their global trade from view in their financial statements (and enjoy tax breaks as a result) <a href="http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/archivestory.php/aid/670/Transfer_pricing:_Keeping_it_at_arms_length.html">is not by chance</a>. It is instead a deliberate decision to present a particular – and so inherently biased – view of globalisation that has had enormous significance for the structure of both trade and finance. To ask why those choices were made is therefore vital if the reason for seeking an alternative perspective, with all the policy implications that follow, is to be properly appraised.</p>
<p>My point is that it is clear that the economist is not an objective observer. His or her decisions necessarily affect the real world: the very act of measurement itself has an impact.</p>
<h2>Having an impact</h2>
<p>So how does this relate to Jeremy Corbyn? As a newly appointed academic I am all too well aware of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-impact-of-impact-on-the-ref-35636">importance of the “impact”</a> of my forthcoming work. What astonishes me, in that case, is how little work by so many UK academics in the fields of economics, accounting and tax has any chance of achieving that impact. It is not, it seems, ever designed to reach out to those who might have the chance to effect change by making use of it.</p>
<p>It is my hope that this is an issue that a new Labour leader might address. If the Labour leadership campaign has proved anything it is that there is need for a change in economic thinking if those policies to be offered in 2020 by all parties – but most especially those on the left – are to resonate with people anxious for change. </p>
<p>What also seems very obvious, is that politics is not, at present, either the source or repository for that thinking. In that case, the chance for meaningful dialogue between academia and Labour does at this moment appear to be high, and with it the prospect of real, impactful, engagement.</p>
<p>That is why I hope a new Labour leader will reach out to academia and positively invite new ideas, research, thinking, dialogue and so policy formulation. Now is the time for this. The politicians and academics involved all have until 2020 to achieve a result. There is a desperate need for an economics of the real world that is quite deliberately intended to change not just measurement, but reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47314/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Murphy owns and directs Tax Research LLP. He has been funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Friends' Provident Foundation, Joffe Trust and others. He has worked for a number of UK trade unions and has been an economic advisor to Jeremy Corbyn.</span></em></p>The author of Corbynomics makes the case for studying ‘real-world’ economics.Richard Murphy, Professor of Practice in International Political Economy, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/474492015-09-12T11:18:47Z2015-09-12T11:18:47ZJeremy Corbyn wins Labour leadership election – so what next?<p>What began as something beyond the realms of possibility ended as an inevitability. Jeremy Corbyn’s victory in the Labour leadership election represents – depending on one’s perspective – either the rebirth of the party and the final demise of the careerists who led it astray, or, the deepest crisis in its 115-year history.</p>
<p>Corbyn secured 59.5% in the first round of voting, beating the other candidates by a significant margin. Andy Burnham took 19%, Yvette Cooper 17% and Liz Kendall 4.5%.</p>
<p>Importantly, Corbyn won across all categories of eligible voters giving him what the BBC referred to as a “rock-solid mandate”.</p>
<p>Leadership elections can normally be explained in terms of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-corbyn-is-winning-and-how-labours-moderates-can-stop-him-45339">unity, electability and competence</a>, with the winning candidate being the one best able to unite a divided party and/or offer the best chance of electoral victory, while looking like a credible prime-minister-in-waiting.</p>
<p>But this Labour leadership contest was not normal. It was decided on an altogether different basis. The combination of an uninspiring line-up of candidates, <a href="https://theconversation.com/well-labour-this-is-what-happens-when-you-crowdsource-a-leadership-election-45177">new selection rules</a> and the shock of the 2015 general election defeat left Labour open to a left-wing insurgency. It appeared to come out of nowhere but was actually <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11849665/Make-no-mistake-Labour-is-at-war-with-itself.html">five years in the making</a>, with Corbyn its <a href="https://theconversation.com/jeremy-corbyn-the-accidental-labour-leader-47117">unsuspecting beneficiary</a>.</p>
<h2>How he did it</h2>
<p>Ed Miliband’s victory in the 2010 Labour leadership contest, delivered by union votes, marked the start of a new assertiveness in internal Labour affairs by the party’s affiliated trade unions. Since then, <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/1235496/unite-union-threatens-to-pull-labour-support">Unite</a>, under Len McCluskey, has been forthright in demanding a strong Labour platform against austerity. Along with other unions and ginger groups such as the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, Unite has helped create a left-wing narrative against cuts that has taken root within the wider Labour Party.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/well-labour-this-is-what-happens-when-you-crowdsource-a-leadership-election-45177">new selection rules</a> opened the door to this left-wing revolt – though not before moderate Labour MPs, seeking to “widen the debate” in the leadership contest, helped Corbyn pass the nomination threshold of 15% of Labour MPs. Under the new one-member-one-vote rules, individuals could sign up as full members, as affiliated supporters for free via their unions or as registered supporters for just £3. The contest was dogged by controversy, with accusations of left-wing <a href="https://theconversation.com/whoever-wins-the-labour-partys-entryism-panic-will-come-back-to-bite-it-46637">entryism</a> as well as Tory trouble-makers applying to vote, then claims of a <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/08/labour-purging-supporters-jeremy-corbyn">purge</a> of Corbynites.</p>
<p>Once Corbyn was on the ballot, his allies mobilised. The potential electorate increased from under 200,000 in May to 550,000 in September. A coalition of idealistic youngsters, anti-austerity union activists and grizzled left-wingers returning to the party they quit in disgust under Blair has proved to be a large part of that dramatic increase.</p>
<p>They delivered victory to Corbyn against the odds. Much of this victory was achieved online, with Corbyn’s cyber-left supporters spreading his message, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-supporters-accused-of-launching-snpstyle-cyber-attacks-on-labour-leader-rivals-10452587.html">denouncing his opponents</a> and encouraging others to sign up to vote. This contest has been Britain’s first social media leadership election – though in the eyes of Labour moderates, it became a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/06/labour-moderates-leadership-jeremy-corbyn-tony-blair">flash-mob democracy</a>.</p>
<h2>Holding onto power</h2>
<p>During the contest, Corbyn regularly called on registered and affiliated supporters to become full party members – not least because he hopes they will provide a firm base of support now that he is leader. Only as full members will they be able to participate in Labour policy-making and in the selection of parliamentary candidates.</p>
<p>That is vital because Corbyn enjoys very little support among Labour MPs. Several big-hitters, including leadership hopefuls Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall, have already <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11859694/Jeremy-Corbyn-faces-a-dozen-shadow-cabinet-resignations-if-he-wins-Labour-leadership.html">ruled out serving</a> in his shadow cabinet. Within minutes of Corbyn’s victory, Jamie Reed, the shadow health minister, had resigned. Many others are biding their time and waiting for him to fail.</p>
<p>Certainly, Corbyn’s authority would be undermined if, say, he voted against future UK military action in Syria but a majority of his MPs backed it. The EU referendum could have a similar effect. Hence, Corbyn will need to show that he enjoys a wider mandate within the party, perhaps holding conference votes or even membership plebiscites to demonstrate that the grassroots are with him.</p>
<p>In the longer term, he will need to deal with potential threats from Labour MPs. To this end, some have raised the prospect of reintroducing <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/06/tom-watson-corbyn-supporters-mandatory-reselection">mandatory reselection for MPs</a>, harking back to a Bennite-inspired rule from the 1980s that helped left-wing constituency activists to keep moderate MPs in line. Such a move would require a change to Labour’s constitution to be passed by the party conference, but given that the unions – most of which back Corbyn – hold 50% of the votes, it would be possible.</p>
<h2>How long has he got?</h2>
<p>For Labour MPs opposed to Corbyn, the immediate future looks bleak. There’s no formal mechanism to hold a confidence vote in the leader, though an unofficial vote could be held. They would have to wait a year to challenge Corbyn for the leadership, which would require a candidate to be nominated by 20% of Labour MPs.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94565/original/image-20150912-19828-oad5x0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94565/original/image-20150912-19828-oad5x0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94565/original/image-20150912-19828-oad5x0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94565/original/image-20150912-19828-oad5x0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94565/original/image-20150912-19828-oad5x0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94565/original/image-20150912-19828-oad5x0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94565/original/image-20150912-19828-oad5x0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tom Watson has been elected deputy leader.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That could be feasible but under the current selection rules there is no guarantee that the result of the voting among party members would be any different. Moreover, there is no certainty that Corbyn will simply fail and lose support quickly. He will have powerful backers from the unions and among the new members, as well as strategic and managerial input from a committed <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11820890/The-five-pillars-of-Jeremy-Corbyns-bid-to-run-Britain.html">backroom team</a>. Moderates will hope that the newly-elected deputy leader, Tom Watson, will prove a restraining influence.</p>
<h2>Panic on the right</h2>
<p>The Labour right finds itself in the worst situation it has ever been in during the party’s history. It is much worse than the 1980s when <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/932797.stm">Michael Foot</a> was leader. Foot was chosen by the MPs themselves and had served in the Callaghan government. Corbyn is an outsider, an inveterate rebel and a standard-bearer of the far-left. </p>
<p>In the 1980s, a section of the Labour right split away to form the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/26/newsid_2531000/2531151.stm">SDP</a>. The fate of that party is a <a href="http://labourlist.org/2012/03/labour-vs-the-sdp-31-years-on-who-was-right/">cautionary tale</a> for today’s moderates about the potential consequences of a split. But if the left remains in control, Labour’s polling plummets and the moderates find themselves in the cross-hairs of local Corbynistas looking to remove them, some may decide that an SDP-Mark II is the least-worst option.</p>
<p>In the meantime, Corbyn will need to argue his case to voters for left-wing policies that they have hitherto shunned. The government will politicise issues on which Corbyn is on the wrong side of public opinion. Corbyn supports unilateral nuclear disarmament – voters do not. The government wants to find £12 billion in welfare cuts, including reducing the benefit cap. Voters support welfare reform, but Corbyn strongly opposes it. Voters accept the <a href="https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/umkary60am/YG-Archives-Pol-Trackers-Government%2520Cuts-040515.pdf">necessity for cuts</a> to reduce the budget deficit, but Corbyn and his union backers made opposition to austerity a central plank of their campaign. Corbyn favours immigration and a generous approach to asylum-seekers, but voters, despite recent events, prefer a more <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/09/06/no-increase-syrian-refugee-numbers/">restrictive policy</a>. And while a majority supports renationalising the railways, the issue isn’t deciding many votes. If nothing else, the next few years will test to destruction the theory that it’s possible to win an election from the left.</p>
<p>The Conservatives will believe that with Corbyn’s victory, all their Christmases have come at once. David Cameron has already staked a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11858320/David-Cameron-Jeremy-Corbyn-is-unfit-to-lead-the-Labour-Party.html">claim to the centre-ground</a> that Labour looks to be vacating. The Tories will present themselves as the only party that can be trusted to defend the country and manage the economy. They will paint Labour as extreme and unfit to govern, and will be enthusiastically assisted by the Conservative-supporting press.</p>
<p>Labour is entering uncharted waters. Whatever the future holds – a left-right civil war, defections and splits, attempted coups, a return to left-wing street politics of marches and demos – one thing is certain: British politics is changing in a dramatic way.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47449/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Quinn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Left-wing candidate storms to victory in first round of voting.Tom Quinn, Senior Lecturer, Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/472912015-09-11T13:09:54Z2015-09-11T13:09:54ZAs Corbyn wins, the class of 1983 looks set to reshape Labour once again<p>The 1983 general election was a watershed moment in Labour history – but not for the reason it’s usually remembered. This was inarguably post-World War II Labour’s electoral nadir, leaving the party with <a href="http://www.ukpolitical.info/1983.htm">just 209 seats</a> against 397 for Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives.</p>
<p>But the 1983 disaster also saw the election of two MPs who went on to shape and dominate the party and the UK’s political scene for nearly two decades: Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. </p>
<p>They can hardly have imagined that their 1983 classmate Jeremy Corbyn would succeed them at the Labour helm – or that he would do so by proposing to reverse much of the work they did to transform the party.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Those were the days – if not for Labour.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Tony and Gordon</h2>
<p>It was a long road from 1983 to Labour’s <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/basics/4393323.stm">historic 1997 landslide win</a>. After Michael Foot led the party to its cataclysmic defeat, his successor Neil Kinnock began the process of modernising the party. He <a href="http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=191">expelled the party’s hard-left Militant faction</a> and instigated a major policy review. </p>
<p>After he lost the elections of 1987 and 1992, Kinnock was succeeded by <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/remembering-john-smith-20-years-on-what-would-his-government-have-looked-like-9357017.html">John Smith</a>, who had a dogged belief that “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/this-is-how-labour-can-win-can-john-smith-get-to-no-10-to-do-so-he-must-woo-waverers-who-believe-the-party-is-not-for-those-who-want-to-get-on-says-giles-radice-here-he-reveals-results-from-his-own-postelection-survey-1554367.html">one last heave</a>” could get Labour into government. And when Smith <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/12/newsid_2550000/2550803.stm">died suddenly in 1994</a> another 1983-vintage MP, <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/commons/margaret-beckett/328">Margaret Beckett</a>, briefly stood in as leader before Tony Blair was <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/21/newsid_2515000/2515825.stm">elected</a>.</p>
<p>Blair and Brown’s “modernisation” wasted no time. On the face of it, their project was a far cry from the left-wing <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8550425.stm">manifesto</a> on which Brown, Blair, Corbyn and their comrades were elected in 1983 – nationalisation of recently privatised industries, the <a href="http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/labours_alternative_economic_strategy_40_years_on">alternative economic strategy</a>, full withdrawal from what was then the <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/legislativescrutiny/parliament-and-europe/overview/britain-and-eec-to-single-european-act/">European Economic Community</a> and <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/22/newsid_2489000/2489209.stm">unilateral nuclear disarmament</a>.</p>
<p>After 1994, socialism was dropped from the lexicon, “middle Britain” became the electoral target, and the aim of equality of income was replaced by equality of opportunity. The goal was to convince the electorate that Labour was fit to form a government and run the British economy.</p>
<p>Crucially, the party’s <a href="http://www.labourcounts.com/oldclausefour.htm">Clause IV</a>, which committed it to the “common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”, was redrafted. To this day it instead commits to pursue a “community in which the power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few”. </p>
<p>And so was born New Labour.</p>
<h2>The Third Way</h2>
<p>As did Bill Clinton in the US, Blair often spoke about the “<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/458626.stm">third way</a>”, a loose ideology proposing a middle route between state socialism and neoliberalism. Accordingly, New Labour shared some priorities with its 1983 manifesto: it gave the UK a national minimum wage, signed up to the European social chapter, made record state investments in health, education and infrastructure, adult education and training, and tackled social exclusion and child poverty. </p>
<p>But it also moved away from the tax-and-spend model by dealing with low pay through <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3198211.stm">working and child tax credits</a>, and proposed <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk_politics/2002/blair_years/1959867.stm">significant constitutional reforms</a>. </p>
<p>While New Labour sought to ameliorate the excesses of capitalism when in office, its leaders had little intention of transforming the structure of society, and at a fundamental level they subscribed to the neoliberal agenda ushered in during the Thatcher years. </p>
<p>Private companies were allowed to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2000/nov/19/socialcare.policy">bid for contracts</a> in the National Health Service, “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/may/26/what-is-an-academy">academy</a>” schools were introduced, and “<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7923093.stm">top-up fees</a>” were imposed for undergraduates. Low inflation was prioritised above full employment, and the financial sector liberalised; the gap between rich and poor <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8481534.stm">continued to grow</a>, and the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3526917.stm">restrictions placed on trade unions</a> by the Conservatives were kept in place. </p>
<p>Even the Keynesian response to the financial crash in 2008, when Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling pumped money into financial institutions to save them, was arguably less a quasi-socialist big-government intervention and more a last-ditch attempt to save the capitalist banking system.</p>
<h2>Morons and throwbacks</h2>
<p>In his 1997 book <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XdKFQgAACAAJ&dq=%22Fifty+Years+On%22+hattersley&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">Fifty Years On</a>, party veteran Roy Hattersley wrote that “the ideas which had inspired a century of democratic socialists were ruthlessly discredited” as “the prophets of New Labour” took over an “established political party and re-created it in their own image”. </p>
<p>His point still rings true; even after five years of Ed Miliband, Blair and Brown’s thinking still holds sway over key issues including foreign policy, taxation, the role of private enterprise, state ownership, public housing, civil liberties and nuclear disarmament.</p>
<p>Under Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party could start returning to a familiar model: the nationalisation of public utilities, tax-and-spend, defence retrenchment, unilateral nuclear disarmament.</p>
<p>The 1983 election did cement a firm orthodoxy in the party’s thinking: to go into a general election on an avowedly socialist platform, it holds, is a recipe for disaster. But whether he leads the party to disaster or success, Corbyn’s just the latest of Labour’s precious few 1983 incomers to radically transform his party.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47291/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jasper Miles is affiliated with the Labour Party and has been a Member since 2010. </span></em></p>Elected in the party’s biggest ever wipeout, Labour’s 1983 intake of MPs could be about to notch up its third party leader.Jasper Miles, PhD Candidate, Department of Politics, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/473282015-09-11T05:33:32Z2015-09-11T05:33:32ZCorbyn could save Labour from electoral wipeout<p>Tony Blair doesn’t think much of the new leader of the Labour Party. “Your heart is with Jeremy Corbyn? Then get a transplant,” was but the first of various interventions he made during the party’s <a href="http://theconversation.com/ignore-the-mudslinging-corbyn-would-be-a-sound-option-for-labour-45195">protracted leadership campaign</a> – interventions that weren’t just counter-productive, but also rather disingenuous.</p>
<p>A more honest punchline might have gone something like: “Want to win elections? Get yourself a massive electoral bias!” – or even: “Your heart is with Jeremy Corbyn? Great, he’s a better Labour recruiter than even I was!”</p>
<p>Because, make no mistake: the vagaries of both the electoral system and voter registration are crucial to the Labour party’s future. Unless it acknowledges the one and attends now to the other, Labour could struggle even more than it will do anyway to claw its way back into power.</p>
<h2>Fighting the system</h2>
<p>First, the bias. The UK’s first-past-the-post, single-member constituency electoral system is about as proportionally unrepresentative as is democratically feasible. Most notoriously, it <a href="https://theconversation.com/proportional-representation-and-the-2015-general-election-how-the-picture-might-have-looked-41559">discriminates viciously</a> against minor parties with modest but nationwide support. That’s why, in the 2015 general election, the 5m votes for UKIP and the Greens combined earned them one MP each, while the Scottish Nationalists’ 1.5m got them 56.</p>
<p>Governments, though, are mainly decided by the disproportionality or bias between the two major parties. That bias can be huge, but it fluctuates from election to election. The <a href="http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/research/transformations/gis/papers/dannydorling_publication_id1322.pdf">most commonly used measure</a> is the difference between the numbers of MPs each party would have won with an identical share of the vote.</p>
<p>So if, in May 2015, the Conservatives (37%) and Labour (30%) had split the difference and each taken 33.5% of the vote, the Conservatives would have won 301 seats – way short of a 326 Commons majority or their actual 331 – and Labour 254, instead of 232. There was, then, in 2015 a <a href="http://www.crickcentre.org/blog/electoral-bias-in-the-uk-after-the-2015-general-election/">47-seat net bias to the Conservatives</a>.</p>
<p>Now take Blair’s three victories in 1997, 2001 and 2005, with overall majorities of 178, 166 and 65 respectively. An impressive record, certainly, but one greatly inflated, result-changingly in 2005, by systemic pro-Labour biases of 82, 141, and 111.</p>
<p>Blair’s leadership and New Labour policies undoubtedly deserve full credit for those historic Labour wins, but it’s disingenuous and misleading to ignore the part played by the electoral system – and the fact that now, after two decades strongly in Labour’s favour, the systemic bias has been completely reversed.</p>
<p>The causes are several. The Conservative-threatening <a href="https://theconversation.com/lib-dem-rump-in-parliament-can-take-comfort-in-partys-long-record-of-staging-comebacks-41548">Liberal Democrats</a> have been replaced as the main third party by the more Labour-threatening Greens and UKIP. Labour has lost many of its smaller-than-average <a href="https://theconversation.com/could-jeremy-corbyn-resurrect-labour-in-scotland-45129">Scottish</a> and inner-city seats. And all the while the Conservatives have honed an increasingly effective <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11582772/The-23-seats-and-100000-votes-the-Tories-think-will-win-David-Cameron-power.html">target seat strategy</a>.</p>
<p>The upshot, though, is the same: any future Labour leader – even some Frankenstein fusion of Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Blair himself – will be hard-pushed to win even the barest Labour plurality in the May 2020 general election, let alone a majority government.</p>
<h2>Drawing the line</h2>
<p>That’s without the combined impact of the forthcoming Parliamentary Boundary Review and the ongoing transition from the traditional household-based registration system to <a href="http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/faq/voting-and-registration/what-is-individual-electoral-registration">Individual Electoral Registration</a> (IER).</p>
<p>The boundary review and its accompanying cull of 50 of the House of Commons’s members could be expected to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/11593496/New-Commons-boundaries-top-Conservative-government-agenda.html">boost Conservative prospects</a>. IER shouldn’t, yet from the outset Conservative ministers have seemed intent on <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/msye6tmaes708oq/2_3%20Game.pdf?dl=0">manipulating the transition</a> to their partisan advantage.</p>
<p>The politically crucial link between the two projects is that the IER registers will provide the exclusive base for the boundary review. Their completeness or otherwise will determine the electoral sizes and political balance of the 600 new constituencies.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94412/original/image-20150910-27328-u25hfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94412/original/image-20150910-27328-u25hfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94412/original/image-20150910-27328-u25hfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94412/original/image-20150910-27328-u25hfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94412/original/image-20150910-27328-u25hfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94412/original/image-20150910-27328-u25hfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94412/original/image-20150910-27328-u25hfh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Time to sharpen up.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-276428252/stock-photo-london-uk-may-th-the-labour-party-on-a-uk-ballot-paper-for-a-general-election-on-th-may.html?src=9flCJXPGqjZ0bLP1nzSYyw-1-3">chrisdorney via Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>IER was a long time reaching the UK, and even in 2002 it was adopted only in Northern Ireland. It is finally being extended to Great Britain through the Coalition’s 2013 Electoral Registration and Administration (ERA) Act. </p>
<p>Some of the draft Bill’s proposals were later modified, but collectively they clearly suggest a Conservative strategy of prioritising the new IER registers’ accuracy (no false entries) over their completeness (every eligible voter being correctly registered at their current address). </p>
<p>The party’s reasoning would be that the less complete the registers are, the more they will <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/21/individual-voter-registration-conservative-party">exclude predominantly non-Conservative-voting groups</a> – the young and most geographically mobile, <a href="http://www.ukgeographics.co.uk/blog/social-grade-a-b-c1-c2-d-e">social class DE</a>, social housing renters, some black and minority ethnic voters and other hard-to-reach groups. </p>
<p>That would mean not only that fewer constituencies were Labour-winnable, but that there were simply fewer potential Labour supporters registered in 2020.</p>
<h2>Stacking the deck</h2>
<p>The strategy is well underway. First was the ERA Bill’s proposal to change voter registration into a “personal choice”, meaning anyone could opt out <a href="http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/141294/Electoral-Commission-IER-White-Paper-Response-2011-10-14-FINAL.pdf">simply by doing nothing</a>. This shocked even MPs, who feared registration rates would plummet to match the most recent election’s 65% turnout rate – and ministers were eventually persuaded to drop it.</p>
<p>Next, the government proposed saving £74m by scrapping the autumn 2014 full annual door-to-door household canvass, the traditional basis of household registration. Instead, IER forms were mailed to everyone on the February/March 2014 registers – on which the Commission estimated that as many as 7.5m electors may have been <a href="http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/169889/Completeness-and-accuracy-of-the-2014-electoral-registers-in-Great-Britain.pdf">incorrectly registered</a>.</p>
<p>In July 2015, again rejecting the Electoral Commission’s advice, the government tabled a proposal to avoid jeopardising the accuracy of the registers for the Parliamentary Boundary Review by ending the IER transition period in December 2015 – <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/individual-electoral-registration-ending-the-transition">12 months earlier</a> than specified in the ERA Act.</p>
<p>If this happens, it is the registers’ completeness that may be jeopardised. An unknowable number of “carried-forward” household-registered electors who have not yet re-registered individually are still on the registers and are set to be removed; by the Commission’s reckoning, there could be up to <a href="http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/191120/EC-briefing-ERA-Act-2013-Transitional-Provisions-Order-2015.pdf">1.9m of them</a>.</p>
<p>This is where Jeremy Corbyn comes in. In three months, he has helped increase Labour’s full membership by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/23/jeremy-corbyn-understand-labour-new-members-change-party-fortunes">more than Blair managed in three heyday years</a> – and that’s before you count the likely 100,000-plus Corbynite “registered supporters”.</p>
<p>If Corbyn and his team can galvanise their comrades into turning a membership drive into a major voter registration push, Labour’s chances could be genuinely enhanced. It may not win the party the election in 2020, but it could certainly gain or save it some seats.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Game does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If Labour can turn its fiasco of a leadership election into a voter registration drive, it can push back against a rigged system.Chris Game, Honorary Senior Lecturer, Institute of Local Government Studies, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/466262015-09-10T04:19:44Z2015-09-10T04:19:44ZWith or without EU: Jeremy Corbyn and the re-emergence of left-wing Euroscepticism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93839/original/image-20150904-28887-7yeb92.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jeremy Corbyn's anti-austerity, progressive platform has found a large and receptive audience among the UK Labour Party faithful.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Russell Cheyne</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Being in opposition is a hard road. Before you can even begin to engage the government of the day you have to fight for the soul of your own party.</p>
<p>As voting to elect the new leader of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/labour-leadership-race">British Labour Party</a> draws to a close, former leader Tony Blair is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/29/tony-blair-corbynmania-alice-in-wonderland">telling the party faithful</a> that they are on the horns of a dilemma: remain true to the core values of the party or vote for a leader who will make the party electable. </p>
<p>In other words, do you want to be in government ever again or not?</p>
<p>This may be a false dilemma. But the predicament arose due to the surprising support for a – literally – <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/14/labour-leadership-race-jeremy-corbyn-nominations">last-minute entry</a> in the leadership contest. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/has-britains-pissed-off-constituency-found-a-leader-in-jeremy-corbyn-45576">campaign success</a> of veteran left-wing Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn has left pundits shocked and party rivals stunned. </p>
<p>Corbyn initially stood in the British Labour leadership contest to give the party’s left wing a voice in the debate on how to move on from its <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-election-2015-david-cameron-back-in-no-10-as-the-conservatives-win-41409">crushing defeat</a> in May’s general election. But his <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/11/labour-jeremy-corbyn-clear-alternative-tory-austerity-needs-presented">anti-austerity, progressive platform</a> has found a large and receptive audience among the Labour Party faithful.</p>
<p>However, this growth in support was <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11818737/Jeremy-Corbyn-backers-plunge-Labour-into-new-entryism-row.html">criticised</a> for being based upon “entryist” tactics of non-Labour members seeking to destabilise the party as a whole.</p>
<h2>Corbyn and a ‘Brexit’</h2>
<p>Part of Corbyn’s push against austerity manifested in him appearing to advocate for a “Brexit”: a British exit from the European Union (EU).</p>
<p>Corbyn initially <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/07/25/jeremy-corbyn-refuses-to-_n_7870992.html">refused to rule out</a> campaigning for a “No” vote in Britain’s forthcoming <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/11324069/When-is-the-EU-referendum.html">in-out referendum</a> on EU membership. Corbyn accused the EU of being an unaccountable force that <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-corbyn-compares-success-rise-6125946">“destroyed”</a> Greece’s economy. </p>
<p>This is in stark contrast to the views of his rival leadership contestants. The Blairite leadership candidate Liz Kendall said that Labour must be <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liz-kendall-slams-jeremy-corbyn-for-suggesting-labour-could-call-for-eu-exit-under-his-leadership-10448877.html">“unashamedly pro-EU”</a> and that it must fight against a re-emergence of left-wing Euroscepticism within the party. </p>
<p>This push-back had some impact. Corbyn has since <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/jeremy-corbyn-wants-britain-stay-eu">revised his views</a> to say that, although he remains dissatisfied with the EU’s hawkish maintenance of austerity, he would vote to keep Britain in the EU. </p>
<h2>A shift back to the left</h2>
<p>In the <a href="https://theconversation.com/far-right-rises-in-european-parliament-elections-but-is-it-a-euroquake-27157">2014 European elections</a>, Euroscepticism was primarily associated with success of far-right populist political parties such as the UK Independence Party (UKIP), Golden Dawn, Jobbik and Front National. </p>
<p>This right-wing Euroscepticism gained its support almost solely on attributing uncontrolled migration to EU membership while portraying the EU’s evolution as a growing infringement on national identity and sovereignty. </p>
<p>UKIP has become the face of right-wing Euroscepticism within Britain. The party’s 2015 election manifesto <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2015-32318683">focused</a> on linking “uncontrolled” migration to Britain’s EU membership.</p>
<p>However, Euroscepticism is returning to its left-wing roots. Corbyn’s campaign has shifted the spotlight leftwards as part of a broader European movement against austerity. Alongside Corbyn, other left-wing Eurosceptic parties – such as <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/how-greece-put-anti-austerity-anti-capitalist-party-power/">Syriza in Greece</a> and <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/5/25/sinn-fein-recasts-irish-political-image.html">Sinn Fein in Ireland</a> – have campaigned on anti-austerity platforms this year. </p>
<p>Euroscepticism in the Labour Party is not a new phenomenon. Corbyn’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-jeremy-corbyn-stealing-the-show-because-hes-the-only-labour-candidate-saying-anything-at-all-45120">claim</a> to take Labour’s policies back to the 1960s and 1970s era of Harold Wilson fits perfectly with his ambivalence towards Europe.</p>
<p>During <a href="http://www.brugesgroup.com/eu/the-conservative-party-and-europe.htm?xp=paper">this period</a> the British Conservatives were “the party of Europe”; Labour was sceptical. Labour Eurosceptics <a href="http://www.instituteofopinion.com/2012/09/euroscepticism-and-the-left/">of the 1970s</a> feared that the Common Market was a big “capitalist club” that would undo the steps towards British socialism – not everyone thought that was an oxymoron at the time – that Labour had made since the great post-war administration of 1945-51. </p>
<p>When Britain had its <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/01/back-future-britain-s-1975-referendum-europe">first referendum</a> on withdrawal from Europe in 1975, it was not the Conservatives raising questions of sovereignty, identity and democracy. It was Labour.</p>
<p>In the 1980s Labour reconciled its differences with the European Community. With the advent of New Labour after 1994, being pro-European was part of the “modernising” process: a development that coincided with the moment when the Conservatives were tearing themselves apart over the issue. </p>
<p>But in contemporary England, “pro-European” translates as “elitist” and “out of touch”. Labour <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2015-32114191">under Ed Miliband</a> found this out to its detriment, despite the efforts of the so-called “Blue Labour” advisers who sought to address concerns of the white working class – a former Labour core constituency who feel abandoned by their old party and politicians.</p>
<p>The re-emergence of Euroscepticism in British Labour is indicative of a changing dynamic in European politics where both the left and the right are expressing their dissatisfaction with the EU at a time of unprecedented stress. A Corbyn victory would consolidate Euroscepticism across the British political spectrum, throwing the outcome of the forthcoming referendum into even further doubt.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46626/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A Jeremy Corbyn victory would consolidate Euroscepticism across the British political spectrum, throwing the outcome of the forthcoming referendum into even further doubt.Keshia Jacotine, Teaching Associate, Monash UniversityBen Wellings, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/467072015-09-08T05:30:15Z2015-09-08T05:30:15ZFour reasons Jeremy Corbyn’s innovative energy policy is no 80s throwback<p>Have you heard the one about Jeremy Corbyn’s <a href="http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2015/08/07/jeremy-corbyn-interview-nationalise-the-big-six-a-solar-panel-on-every-rooftop-clean-coal/">plans to renationalise</a> the energy system? In an interview with Greenpeace, the Labour MP and leadership candidate said: “I would personally wish that the Big Six were under public ownership, or public control in some form.” </p>
<p>It would be easy to take this quote out of context, add up the market value of the Big Six and suggest the Corbyn campaign wants to spend <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/11789744/Jeremy-Corbyns-plans-to-renationalise-UK-power-sector-could-cost-taxpayer-billions.html">£124 billion</a> renationalising the utilities. Yet, in the next breath however Corbyn added: “But I don’t want to take into public ownership every last local facility because it’s just not efficient and it wouldn’t be a very good way of running things.”</p>
<p>So what does the Corbyn camp suggest instead? The only clear evidence is in his <a href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/jeremyforlabour/pages/119/attachments/original/1438938988/ProtectingOurPlanet_JeremyCorbyn.pdf?1438938988">Protecting Our Planet</a> manifesto, which sets out ten energy pledges and details some key policies. </p>
<p>It’s no aggressive nationalisation plan. What it is, is a manifesto for a more decentralised and democratically accountable system, inspired more by present-day Germany than 1980s Britain. </p>
<p>So does Corbyn’s energy policy look like a throwback or a revolution? There are four reasons to suspect the latter.</p>
<h2>Introducing genuine competition</h2>
<p>“Competition” in the UK energy market has left consumers <a href="https://assets.digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk/media/559fc933ed915d1592000050/EMI_provisional_findings_report.pdf">bamboozled and overcharged</a>. Our choices are like a shopping mall food court: you can have anything you like, as long as it’s fast food. The energy market is similar, most suppliers are operating the same big utility model with the same options; you can have anything you like, so long as it’s a national tariff from a large private utility. </p>
<p>Corbyn’s manifesto cites Germany, which allows consumers the option to buy energy from municipal utilities or co-operatives. Some new consumer options are being seen in the UK. <a href="https://www.openutility.com/">Smarter</a> ways of buying green energy are appearing, and Nottingham City Council has set up its own energy company with a name that sends a clear message: <a href="http://www.nottinghampost.com/City-council-takes-big-plans-launch-new-energy/story-27667881-detail/story.html">Robin Hood Energy</a>. </p>
<p>But while it’s easy enough to build a wind turbine these days – or even a whole wind farm – it’s <a href="https://research.ncl.ac.uk/ibuild/outputs/local_electricity_supply_report_WEB.pdf">significantly harder</a> for innovative new businesses to actually join the market. Corbyn’s manifesto commitment to growing municipal and co-operative models would mean consumers face more meaningful choices.</p>
<h2>Help for smaller energy startups</h2>
<p>The manifesto pledges to create a “route-map into tomorrow’s ‘smart energy’ systems” to “use smart technologies to run localised storage, balancing and distribution mechanisms” and allow customers the “right to have first use of the energy they generate themselves”. But why isn’t this happening already? </p>
<p>It’s useful to think of our electricity system as being like a big swimming pool. Everyone’s electricity has to go into this big pool and a vast amount of market regulation is needed to make sure the pool stays “balanced” at the right level, with all the buying and trading and using of power going on underneath the surface. This means small-scale solutions to generating and using power locally are extremely difficult to set up, as they all incur the costs of trading in the big pool. To stretch the metaphor, this means little fish have to swim in a big pond. </p>
<p>Such a setup creates barriers to innovation and is <a href="https://research.ncl.ac.uk/ibuild/outputs/local_electricity_supply_report_WEB.pdf">holding back new technologies</a>. There is no technical reason why you shouldn’t be able to choose to buy energy from local sources these days – what stands in the way is the requirement that everyone has to swim in the big pool first. By creating <a href="http://www.cornwallenergy.com/News/Press-releases/Creating-local-electricity-markets-A-manifesto-for-change">local energy markets</a>, smaller but still viable businesses can flourish.</p>
<h2>Cheap access to green investment</h2>
<p>The manifesto commits to pursue energy investment through a National Investment Bank. While this model has seen success in Germany, what is less well understood is <a href="http://energytransition.de/2014/01/the-hidden-power-of-local-finance/">how important</a> citizen banks have been in deploying this investment. </p>
<p>The UK <a href="http://b.3cdn.net/nefoundation/e0b3bd2b9423abfec8_pem6i6six.pdf">doesn’t have</a> a citizen banking sector like Germany. This means you can only invest in renewables by either buying shares in a green energy company or investing in a co-operative. However, new models are emerging. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sustainability-case-studies-abundance-generation-democratic-finance">Abundance Generation</a>, an online crowdsourcing platform, allows investors to participate in renewable energy schemes for as little as £5, and <a href="http://www.futuresolent.org.uk/our-programme/hampshire-community-bank/">a German-style local bank</a> is being developed in Hampshire. </p>
<p>While Corbyn’s manifesto sees the benefit of establishing a state investment bank to invest in the energy transition, it will be important to deliver this investment through the right institutions at the right level so citizen investment can complement state finance.</p>
<h2>Democratising the energy sector</h2>
<p>Throughout, the manifesto argues for more citizen influence over the energy system – and not just through supposed consumer “choice”. </p>
<p>It is not only the German system that can be drawn on to change this. Energy decision-making can be brought closer to citizens by, for instance, looking at <a href="http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/igov/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Public-value-energy-governance.pdf">public value energy governance</a> which draws on Danish and North American examples, <a href="http://zedbooks.co.uk/node/20951">direct action</a> to take back ownership of key infrastructure, or <a href="http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/fileadmin/Documents/research/sri/workingpapers/SRIPs-87.pdf">reframing energy as a public good</a>. </p>
<p>It is clear from the manifesto that the energy policies of the Corbyn camp are anything but a throwback to monolithic state utilities. There is potential for more competition through more diverse energy business models, a clear willingness to make space for smart energy innovation, a call for different approaches to energy system finance, and a platform for more plural approaches to energy governance.</p>
<p>Whether or not people agree with these proposals, it should be clear that they are not “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/13/yvette-cooper-jeremy-corbyn-policies-not-credible-labour">old solutions to old problems</a>”, but provocative responses to increasingly urgent challenges.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46707/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Hall is a Research Fellow in Low Carbon Cities at the University of Leeds, School of Earth and Environment. Stephen is funded by two complementary RCUK grant centres. Firstly the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) ‘iBUILD: Infrastructure BUsiness models, valuation and innovation for Local Delivery’ project (Ref.: EP/K012398/1). Secondly by the EPSRC ‘Realising Transition Pathways – Whole Systems Analysis for a UK More Electric Low Carbon Energy Future’ project (Ref.: EP/K005316/1). He is a Labour party member.</span></em></p>His energy manifesto doesn’t present ‘old solutions to old problems’ but provocative responses to increasingly urgent challenges.Stephen Hall, Research Fellow in energy economics and policy, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/460972015-09-01T17:54:59Z2015-09-01T17:54:59ZWhere do the Labour leader contenders stand on immigration?<p>Two stories have dominated the British news agenda this summer – the migration crisis in Europe and the Labour leadership contest. With the vote on the latter fast approaching, it’s worth considering where the candidates stand on the former. </p>
<p>The jury is still out on why Labour failed to appeal to enough of the electorate in the 2015 election. What is certain is that it lost voters to UKIP (as well as the SNP). Again, there are probably many reasons why many traditional Labour voters plumped for UKIP but one of them is plainly that Labour failed to convince this cohort that it had a sound immigration policy. </p>
<p>With public concerns over immigration consistently rising, and neither Labour nor the Tories <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/04/15/health-tops-immigration-second-most-important-issu/">“winning”</a> the debate, it’s becoming clear that no centrist party knows which way to turn.</p>
<p>So what are the candidates in the Labour leadership election offering by way of immigration policies? Can they do better than Ed Miliband?</p>
<h2>Jeremy Corbyn</h2>
<p>Immigration is not among the <a href="http://jeremycorbyn.org.uk/priorities/">11 key policies</a> that front runner Jeremy Corbyn “is standing to deliver”.</p>
<p>In the upcoming EU referendum, free movement will necessarily be a big issue. Corbyn’s position on the UK’s continuing participation in the Union after negotiations is precarious. He sees a need for more trade union involvement and argues that the UK must demand reasonable levels of working rights to seal the deal. But this will not be on the table as David Cameron seeks to <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/26c75976-4fc5-11e5-8642-453585f2cfcd.html">negotiate</a> new terms for the UK.</p>
<p>Corbyn’s support for trade unionism means he is naturally concerned about wages for low skilled work being undercut by immigration. This is similar to Miliband’s views so we might expect Corbyn to propose something akin to Labour’s election promise to tackle the <a href="http://www.labour.org.uk/manifesto/immigration">exploitation of migrant workers</a>.</p>
<p>Nonetheless Corbyn has said that the debate on immigration has been <a href="http://jeremycorbyn.org.uk/articles/m-star-the-poisoned-debate-on-immigration/">“poisoned”</a>, and has criticised his party’s weak defence on the issue. He has campaigned on behalf of asylum seekers, and emphasises the important role that <a href="http://www.labour.org.uk/blog/entry/watch-labour-leadership-hustings">mosques</a> have played in supporting refugees. But this all means he sits awkwardly between being suspicious of internationalism while championing migration and multiculturalism. </p>
<h2>Yvette Cooper</h2>
<p>As the former shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper has more to say on immigration. Her policies are, unsurprisingly, not dissimilar to those touted by Labour in its 2015 campaign.</p>
<p>In her ministerial role, Cooper did a lot of apologising for Labour’s “mistakes” on immigration, and has <a href="http://press.labour.org.uk/post/102953239474/yvette-cooper-speech-labours-approach-to">parroted</a> the need to address the real concerns people have on immigration.</p>
<p>She has said in the past that Labour would call for the EU to provide <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30091574">dedicated funding</a> to help regions cope when their populations rise as a result of immigration. It’s a novel idea but how it would operate in practice remains to be seen. </p>
<p>Like Corbyn, Cooper claims that the challenge is to face up to the exploitation of migrant labour by making it a crime, saying that such exploitation is modern day slavery. Yet like her former leader and her fellow contenders she maintains that EU citizens should not be allowed to claim benefits for at least two years.</p>
<h2>Andy Burnham</h2>
<p>Andy Burnham seems to have the least to say on immigration, although he’s very keen on his catchphrase <a href="http://www.andy4labour.co.uk/andy_s">“freedom to work is not the same as freedom to claim”</a>. Burnham’s statements on immigration are indistinguishable from the 2015 campaign, and in many respects, those put out by the government. </p>
<p>He warns that the EU referendum risks being lost unless there are significant changes to EU migration. And – you guessed it – he also wants to ban EU citizens from claiming welfare benefits until they have worked for two years.</p>
<p>Burnham has mentioned the possibility of EU funding to plug the gap in costs to public services in areas most affected by migration, but this seems to be an afterthought lifted from Cooper. He claims that “people have legitimate concerns about immigration”, and that Labour therefore needs “real answers to these concerns”. As a prospective leader one would think Burnham should be supplying some answers but we are yet to hear what these real solutions are.</p>
<h2>Liz Kendall</h2>
<p>According to Liz Kendall, the final Labour leader contender, the solution is to reintroduce an Australian style points-based system, as people are fed up seeing migrants <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liz-kendall-says-she-wants-an-australianstyle-pointsbased-immigration-system-10328214.html">“scrambling on to lorries from Calais”</a>. Advocating the same policy as <a href="http://www.ukip.org/ukip_launches_immigration_policy">UKIP</a> tells you something about where Kendall sits on this issue. She claims that <a href="http://www.labour.org.uk/blog/entry/watch-labour-leadership-hustings">“terrorism and migration are global challenges”</a> and that we must “get real over controlling immigration”. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"596602886550851584"}"></div></p>
<p>Kendall has also <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11657740/Blairite-Labour-leadership-contender-Liz-Kendall-backs-taking-benefits-away-from-EU-migrants.html">talked about</a> taking tax credits away from new migrant workers, on top of restricting access to benefits and social housing. Despite this, she has repeatedly <a href="http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/06/liz-kendall-offers-tentative-support-for-cutting-benefits-for-eu-migrants/">dodged questions</a> about whether she would support restricting benefits for EU migrants – a seemingly odd move given her fairly clear position on the issue, not to mention <a href="http://www.lizkendall.org/launching-labours-plan/">her endorsement of Miliband’s pledge</a> on this. Apparently she <a href="https://twitter.com/mhallward/status/619246623890259968">hated the mugs</a> though. </p>
<p>All things considered, there is little to separate the immigration policies of the so-called New Labourites in this leadership contest. As on so many other issues, Corbyn stands apart from the pack. But his ideological vision doesn’t lend itself to producing a coherent immigration policy either.</p>
<p>Just as the narrative about Labour causing the recession became fact, with all the contenders claiming they got it wrong on immigration there is little room for any debate. Yet with Labour’s socially conservative <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/08/labour-are-becoming-toxic-brand-warns-jon-cruddas">voters long defected to UKIP</a>, and the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-pledges-to-control-and-reduce-immigration">Tories adopting Miliband’s policies</a> unnoticed, perhaps it is time for a change in tack.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46097/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erica Consterdine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A run down of what each has to say on the top issue of the summer.Erica Consterdine, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Immigration Politics & Policy, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/459632015-08-27T16:32:04Z2015-08-27T16:32:04ZThe case for re-nationalising Britain’s railways<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93194/original/image-20150827-375-10599yb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Labour leadership hopefuls <a href="http://www.jeremyforlabour.com/jeremy_for_public_railways">Jeremy Corbyn</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33780754">Andy Burnham</a> have both spoken of re-nationalising the UK’s railways. National ownership of such a crucial piece of a country’s infrastructure is the source of much debate. But the evidence suggests that integrating the UK’s expensive and fragmented rail network under public ownership could save hundreds of millions and also provide a better service.</p>
<p>At a smaller level, Transport for London <a href="https://theconversation.com/six-things-other-cities-can-learn-from-transport-for-londons-success-42901">shows the success</a> of an integrated network run by the public sector. If a similar model was applied to national rail all profits made in the sector would be reinvested, fares could be cut and government subsidies reduced. This compared to how costly and inefficient privatising the national rail network has been. </p>
<h2>Public support</h2>
<p>The latest two YouGov Surveys indicate majority support for taking rail back into public ownership. Opposition to the idea has fallen from <a href="http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/0877rs0qlh/Results_150310_PublicSector_Wesbite.pdf">March</a> to <a href="https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/537apwugsy/InternalResults_150805_left_right_policies_W.pdf">August</a>. </p>
<p>The overwhelming reason for this is a belief that rail fares would go down as a result. For example a <a href="http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/tspxlzboaz/YG-Archive-140507-%20Rail-Nationalisation.pdf">YouGov Survey of 2014</a> found the top three reasons for re-nationalising the railways were:</p>
<ul>
<li>Railways would be accountable to the taxpayer rather than shareholders.</li>
<li>Rail fares would go down.</li>
<li>It would be more cost effective overall.</li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93200/original/image-20150827-364-a5vtsf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93200/original/image-20150827-364-a5vtsf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93200/original/image-20150827-364-a5vtsf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93200/original/image-20150827-364-a5vtsf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93200/original/image-20150827-364-a5vtsf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93200/original/image-20150827-364-a5vtsf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=636&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93200/original/image-20150827-364-a5vtsf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=636&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93200/original/image-20150827-364-a5vtsf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=636&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Only a third think ticket prices would go up under public ownership. Half think the fares would fall.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Survation - May 2014</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The belief is justified. In 2013, journey prices were <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN06384.pdf">23% higher in real terms than in 1995</a> (the year rail was fully privatised). Research by Transport for Quality of Life indicates creating a unified publicly owned railway could save enough to fund a <a href="https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/TUC%20summary%20TfQL%20analysis%20March%202015_0.pdf">10% cut on regulated fares</a>, which constitute half of all tickets sold, including season and day return tickets. </p>
<p>This month trade union campaigners Action for Rail <a href="http://actionforrail.wpengine.com/rail-fares-have-risen-by-25-per-cent-since-2010-tuc-analysis-reveals/">suggested regulated fares rose 25% between 2010 and 2015</a> alone. Prices have risen fastest on long distances, which are often unregulated. </p>
<h2>A costly experiment</h2>
<p>Today’s part public, part private system is a reflection of the Great British rail privatisation experiment. The <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1993/43/pdfs/ukpga_19930043_en.pdf">1993 Railways Act</a> split responsibility for physical rail infrastructure and the train services. Railtrack, a for-profit company, took on infrastructure and the passenger rail network was split into 25 companies, each to be run by the private sector. </p>
<p>Infrastructure has since been returned to public ownership. After four fatal rail accidents around the millennium exposed Railtrack’s dangerous under-investment in infrastructure and spiralling project costs, Network Rail, was <a href="http://orr.gov.uk/about-orr/who-we-work-with/industry-organisations/network-rail">created</a>, a not-for-dividend company to replace it. Its high dependence on subsidy and government-guaranteed borrowing then required its <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/transport-infrastructure-network-rail">reclassificaion</a> from a non-profit company to a central government body. </p>
<p>Total rail subsidies have increased <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmtran/329/32902.htm">from around £2.75 billion in the late 1980s to around £4 billion today</a>. An integrated network could reduce excessive costs of fragmentation through cooperative working, coordinated planning and knowledge sharing. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92568/original/image-20150820-7216-i323c7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92568/original/image-20150820-7216-i323c7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92568/original/image-20150820-7216-i323c7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92568/original/image-20150820-7216-i323c7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92568/original/image-20150820-7216-i323c7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92568/original/image-20150820-7216-i323c7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92568/original/image-20150820-7216-i323c7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92568/original/image-20150820-7216-i323c7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Total subsidy to the rail network in each financial year. Subsidy include Network Rail and Train Operating Subsidy 1995-2012. Prices shown are 2012 prices.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">House of Commons Transport Committee (2013) Rail 2020 - Seventh Report of Session 2012-13</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There has also been significant growth in Network Rail debt from <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0155998214000416">£9.6 billion</a> in 2003 to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/aug/28/network-rail-piublic-sector-dont-call-it-nationalisation">£34 billion</a> in 2014, which has grown in an effort to upgrade the under-invested infrastructure inherited from Railtrack <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0155998214000416">but also due to debt services</a>. With Network Rail now a central government body it can borrow through the Treasury rather than from the City – which is slightly cheaper. </p>
<h2>Passenger rises</h2>
<p>In terms of the rail network, privatisation was meant to bring “<a href="http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/DoT_WP001.pdf">higher quality of service and better value for money</a>”. But the hope for private sector management efficiency so that the system could run without subsidy has not been fulfilled. </p>
<p>As the graph below shows, not at any point in recent history has the British railway network managed to cover its costs. On average, passenger fares have made up <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0155998214000416">60% of total rail income</a> in the past 25 years – peaking at <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0155998214000416">85%</a>. The <a href="http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/DoT_WP001.pdf">1992 White Paper on rail privatisation</a>, drafted to inform the 1993 Railways Act, recommended that rail infrastructure remain publicly owned as there was no record of profitability. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92563/original/image-20150820-7246-lo406j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92563/original/image-20150820-7246-lo406j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92563/original/image-20150820-7246-lo406j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92563/original/image-20150820-7246-lo406j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92563/original/image-20150820-7246-lo406j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92563/original/image-20150820-7246-lo406j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92563/original/image-20150820-7246-lo406j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92563/original/image-20150820-7246-lo406j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Passenger fare revenue as a percentage of total GB rail system revenue.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">A Bowman (2015) An illusion of success: The consequences of British rail privatisation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Supporters of privatisation point to the growth in passenger numbers as <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11784458/In-2015-Labour-should-not-be-thinking-about-nationalisation.html">evidence for its success</a>. But passenger revenue has not been able to cover costs, despite this significant growth which has <a href="http://www.atoc.org/download/clientfiles/files/ATOC%20Growth%20and%20Prosperity%20report.pdf">outstripped European peers</a>. </p>
<p>Yes, passenger numbers have risen – average annual passenger numbers rose <a href="http://www.atoc.org/download/clientfiles/files/ATOC%20Growth%20and%20Prosperity%20report.pdf">4% between 1997 and 2012 compared to 1.73% between 1982 and 1996</a> and the annual journeys per head rose from <a href="http://www.atoc.org/download/clientfiles/files/ATOC%20Growth%20and%20Prosperity%20report.pdf">14.9 in 1997-98 to 22.4 in 2010-11</a>. But the rise in passenger numbers is arguably symptomatic of <a href="http://www.racfoundation.org/assets/rac_foundation/content/downloadables/on_the_move-le_vine_&_jones-dec2012.pdf">wider trends</a> such as urbanisation, centralisation of employment and non-car lifestyle choices, particularly of millenials, rather than credit to the privatisation of the rail industry. These lifestyle changes are reflected by growth in the frequency of journeys over individual journey distances, as shown below. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92567/original/image-20150820-7228-6k3z1z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92567/original/image-20150820-7228-6k3z1z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92567/original/image-20150820-7228-6k3z1z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92567/original/image-20150820-7228-6k3z1z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92567/original/image-20150820-7228-6k3z1z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92567/original/image-20150820-7228-6k3z1z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92567/original/image-20150820-7228-6k3z1z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92567/original/image-20150820-7228-6k3z1z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Overall gowth in rail passenger travel per person 1995 - 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Le Vine and Jones (2012) On the Move</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The route to nationalisation</h2>
<p>Britain’s railways could be taken back into the public sector one piece at a time, at no cost. As franchises expire, <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/rail/passenger/franchises/futureoffranchising/pdf/report.pdf">contractual break points are reached</a> or franchises under-perform, routes could be taken back into public ownership. By 2020, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/441862/july-2015-rail-franchise-schedule.pdf">eleven current franchises will expire</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92656/original/image-20150821-15939-opqliv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92656/original/image-20150821-15939-opqliv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92656/original/image-20150821-15939-opqliv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92656/original/image-20150821-15939-opqliv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92656/original/image-20150821-15939-opqliv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92656/original/image-20150821-15939-opqliv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92656/original/image-20150821-15939-opqliv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92656/original/image-20150821-15939-opqliv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Source: Department for Transport - Rail Executive (2015) Rail franchise Schedule July 2015</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An integrated rail network could grow as shown in the map below if franchises were taken back under public control as they expire.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92660/original/image-20150821-15935-pap8o3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92660/original/image-20150821-15935-pap8o3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92660/original/image-20150821-15935-pap8o3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92660/original/image-20150821-15935-pap8o3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92660/original/image-20150821-15935-pap8o3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92660/original/image-20150821-15935-pap8o3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92660/original/image-20150821-15935-pap8o3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92660/original/image-20150821-15935-pap8o3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">N Badstuber. Original map: Barry Does (2015) 2015 Great Britain National Rail Passenger Operations - 31st edition. Franchise expiry dates: Department for Transport (2015) Rail Franchise Schedule July 2015</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Savings to be made</h2>
<p>Nationalising the railways has the potential to bring a number of obvious savings to the UK government.</p>
<p><strong>1. Shareholder dividend payments</strong></p>
<p>The latest <a href="https://fame.bvdinfo.com/version-201572/Home.serv?product=fameneo">dividend payments by the train operating companies</a> amounted to approximately £200m a year. Instead of being paid to shareholders this amount could be reinvested into the railway and reduce the taxpayer’s contribution.</p>
<p><strong>2. Subcontrators</strong></p>
<p>Transport for Quality of Life estimates that <a href="https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/TUC%20summary%20TfQL%20analysis%20March%202015_0.pdf">£76m a year could be saved on private subcontractors</a> by creating the staff positions in house. </p>
<p><strong>3. Bidding costs</strong></p>
<p>Under the current system, the various train operating companies bid to run each rail franchise. The problem is, central government ultimately pays for the costs involved in these bids. The train operators are not directly reimbursed for the incurred cost of bidding, they will recoup it by factoring it into the franchise price. So scrapping the bidding process would cut this cost, which was conservatively estimated to be <a href="http://www.atoc.org/download/clientfiles/files/Cost_savings_final.pdf">£15-20m per franchise competition</a> in 2010 (though the competition for Great Western’s services in 2012 cost a total of <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/9840788/Train-firms-furious-over-40m-wasted-on-Great-Western-rail-franchise-bid-costs.html">£40m</a>). </p>
<p>So, if three franchises are up for renewal a year from now until the end of 2019, between £45m and £120m could be saved by scrapping these competitions and managing the rail routes under one umbrella. </p>
<p><strong>4. Administration costs</strong></p>
<p>If the franchising system was abolished, more than £2m a year could be saved on in-house Department for Transport administration costs. Cutting the external consultants and contractors involved in <a href="http://www.nao.org.uk/report/the-department-for-transport-letting-rail-franchises-2005-2007/">franchise specification and procurement</a> would save the department an additional £4m a year. </p>
<p>Additional savings could be reaped from an integrated structure such as getting rid of duplicate senior management and marketing. </p>
<p>Thus, the case for re-nationalising all of Britain’s railways is a strong one. Privatisation has proven extremely costly and an integrated national network would be better value for both consumer and government.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45963/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole works on LSE Cities' New Urban Governance project which is funded by the McArthur Foundation. Nicole's PhD studentship is funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council via the Transforming the Engineering of Cities for Societal and Planetary Wellbeing Research Programme (Liveable Cities). Nicole sits on the London Transport Expert Panel of the Institution of Civil Engineers.</span></em></p>Integrating the UK’s expensive and fragmented rail network under public ownership could save hundreds of millions and also provide a better service.Nicole Badstuber, PhD Researcher and Research Assistant in Transport Policy and Governance at University College London, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/466372015-08-27T13:33:02Z2015-08-27T13:33:02ZWhoever wins, the Labour Party’s ‘entryism’ panic will come back to bite it<p>Labour’s acting leader Harriet Harman is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2015/aug/25/radio-5-live-holds-labour-leadership-hustings-after-charles-clarke-brands-election-a-disaster-politics-live">struggling to squash</a> claims that the party is “purging” supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, the surprise frontrunner in its leadership contest. The claims have poured fuel on a contest that had already reached an unexpected fever pitch, and the row over malicious and extreme joiners shows no sign of abating.</p>
<p>But far from being beyond the pale, the Labour Party might just have fallen victim to one of the oldest rules in modern political thinking. </p>
<p>Robert Michels’s “<a href="http://www.sage-ereference.com/view/governance/n287.xml">Iron Law of Oligarchy</a>”, a century-old core concept in the study of political parties. Michels believed that the “technical and tactical necessities” of party politics made tight party organisation and limited internal democracy not only inevitable, but also desirable. As he put it,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… it is organisation which gives birth to the dominion of the elected over the electors, of the mandatories over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organisation, says oligarchy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In its pure form, this is debatable. Still, it’s not hard to imagine what Michels would have made of the Labour Party’s current difficulties with its new rules for electing the party’s leader: he would surely have considered them overly idealistic in their conception, and borderline incompetent in their execution. And he would have been right. </p>
<h2>Aiming high</h2>
<p>The party and its interim leader Harriet Harman have undeniably made a hash of the election process. but the real flaw was introduced when the party reformed its procedures after the chaos of an apparent selection-rigging attempt in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26026023">Falkirk</a>. The old three-way electoral college was replaced with a new “one-person-one-vote” system in which leadership candidates are elected not just by party members, but also by registered and affiliated supporters. </p>
<p>These changes reflected a desire to revitalise internal party life and reach out to a whole generation of non-aligned but politically aware Britons who were turned off by formal party politics. </p>
<p>The notion of the party primary for candidate selection is <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-election-descends-into-a-circus-with-first-republican-debate-45516">well-established in the US</a>; it has also been used in European countries, among them Spain, where the left-populist Podemos recently <a href="http://www.demotix.com/photo/8127135/pablo-iglesias-presents-team-podemos-primaries">selected all of its candidates</a> via primaries. Even Britain’s Conservative Party has been <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/11163826/Why-open-primaries-make-for-better-MPs.html">experimenting with them</a>.</p>
<p>But Labour’s experiment has gone further, and faster. By extending the franchise beyond the party’s membership, doing so without any qualification period, and allowing individuals to keep registering to vote up to two months after the candidate nominations closed, Labour has opened itself up to meddling from anyone who’s unsympathetic to the party, or who’s simply unhappy with the leadership contest. </p>
<p>The key complaint is that this left the party vulnerable to “entryism” by political opponents – particularly from wider and wilder leftist movements outside parliament.</p>
<h2>Here we go again</h2>
<p>This isn’t in itself a new problem. Labour has endured assorted periods of anxiety in the past about entryism from the left before, both indirectly (via Stalinist and later Trotskyist penetration of trades unions) and directly (through local party organisations). </p>
<p>The most high-profile of these was the concerted attempt by supporters of the Militant newspaper – the so-called <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32913465">Militant Tendency</a> – to take over local party organisations in the 1970s and 1980s. At the high point of Militant success in the early 1980s, the organisation controlled Liverpool City Council and had two MPs: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/jul/01/labour.tradeunions">Terry Fields</a> in Liverpool Broadgreen, and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-23289962">Dave Nellist</a> in Coventry South East. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93177/original/image-20150827-378-8wv.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93177/original/image-20150827-378-8wv.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=150&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93177/original/image-20150827-378-8wv.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=150&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93177/original/image-20150827-378-8wv.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=150&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93177/original/image-20150827-378-8wv.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=189&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93177/original/image-20150827-378-8wv.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=189&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93177/original/image-20150827-378-8wv.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=189&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lest we forget.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Militant.gif">via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other Trotskyist groups, such as the Socialist Workers’ Party, eschewed direct entryism but try to cultivate what Lenin would have called “useful idiots”: fellow travellers on the left at all levels of the party who can be influenced to take particular lines on key issues.</p>
<p>More than 30 years after the heyday of Militant, the phenomenal success of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership campaign has led some to accuse the left of entryism once again. So how credible are these charges? </p>
<p>Given the new rules, and the phenomenal increase in the size of the party electorate that these (and Corbyn’s campaign) have generated, it is inevitable that some Trotskyists, Greens and others will have been able to slip through the net. But it seems implausible that they have done so in sufficient numbers to account for Corbyn’s popularity, let alone to skew the result of the election. </p>
<p>This view is echoed by the veteran Labour activist <a href="http://labourlist.org/author/luke-akehurst/">Luke Akehurst</a>, who is no friend of the wider left but who has dismissed the current panic over entryism. In a July <a href="http://labourlist.org/2015/07/where-is-jeremy-corbyns-support-coming-from/">post</a> on the Labour List site, he attributed Corbyn’s unexpected support to around 80,000 young and idealistic full party members who have joined since April, as well as another 20,000 registered supporters who have paid their £3 fee for the right to vote. </p>
<p>Crucially, as Akehurst points out, most of the new full members joined before Corbyn managed to secure the requisite number of parliamentary nominations just before the deadline on June 15. Clearly, this is not evidence of entryism on a significant scale.</p>
<h2>Heavy hands</h2>
<p>All of this makes the Labour Party’s heavy-handed attempts to vet new members and supporters all the more futile and self-defeating. Not only is the party shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, it has also undermined the legitimacy of its own process. </p>
<p>If Corbyn wins the election, the entryism myth will fester in some elements of the party’s Blairite rump and their supporters in the right-wing media. If Corbyn loses, the left will cry “fix” and a whole generation of young idealists will feel that their candidate’s victory was snatched way by the party machine and the forces that control it. All of this simply to purge a handful of Trotskyists, fellow travellers, and attention-seeking comedians. </p>
<p>As my Australian political scientist colleague Rodney Smith pointed out to me, if the other candidates really want to stop Corbyn, they would do better to co-operate to game the preferential voting system to maximise the chances of one of them beating him on second preferences. Yet even this level of co-ordination seems beyond the party machine at present. </p>
<p>So how is this going to turn out for the Labour Party and in particular for the tight, centre-right, elite that have determined its direction of travel for the last quarter of a century? Returning to the Iron Law of Oligarchy, Michels was very clear that “historical evolution mocks all of the prophylactic measures that have been adopted for the prevention of oligarchy.” </p>
<p>It remains to be seen who will have the last laugh this time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46637/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Lees is a member of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>Chaos over a purported leftist influx is roiling the Labour party – but the worst effects are yet to come.Charles Lees, Professor of Politics, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/464412015-08-21T14:25:51Z2015-08-21T14:25:51ZLabour’s voter ‘purge’ proves moderates can be authoritarians too<p>In a shocking development, it has been revealed that the Labour Party is apparently <a href="http://www.channel4.com/news/labour-supporters-purged-from-leadership-vote">excluding</a> already-registered voters from voting in its leadership election. This includes a large number of students, prominent public figures and long-time party members.</p>
<p>The primary targets seem to be people who paid £3 to become “<a href="http://www.labour.org.uk/w/labour-party-supporters">registered supporters</a>”, some of whom are accusing the party of using non-democratic methods to prevent Jeremy Corbyn from being elected leader. The exclusions are apparently premised on the idea that the party has been “<a href="http://labourlist.org/2015/08/burnham-campaign-raises-concerns-about-tory-infiltration-on-a-large-scale/">infiltrated</a>” by people who do not support Labour’s goals and values – whatever they are.</p>
<p>This follows in the wake of an ongoing campaign by Labour moderates to publicly discredit Corbyn and his supporters, including the threat of a potential political “coup” in the event of his victory. </p>
<h2>Mainstream McCarthyites</h2>
<p>In an official <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11816231/Andy-Burnham-demands-urgent-meeting-over-Tory-infiltrators-in-Labour-leadership-contest.html">statement</a>, Labour said it </p>
<blockquote>
<p>has a robust system to prevent fraudulent or malicious applications. All applications to join the Labour Party as a member, affiliate or supporter are verified and those who are identified by our verification team as being candidates, members or supporters of another political party will be denied a vote.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The so-called “purge” is part of a broader effort by the party, known as “<a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/08/no-really-jeremy-corbyn-going-win-leadership-election">Operation Icepick</a>”, a project to ensure that all those who are voting hold “Labour values” and are not trying to weaken the party from the inside. As one staffer <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/08/labour-purging-supporters-jeremy-corbyn">noted</a>: “we sell Labour membership as being about values and let people forget that they have to sign up to the aims too.” </p>
<p>These concerns are especially prevalent as fears grow that, if Corbyn wins, the losers will mount a legal challenge to have the result ruled illegitimate. </p>
<p>This is widely seen as a direct assault on Corbyn’s supporters, many of whom are new or returning Labour Party members. By allowing anyone who pays £3 to vote, the Labour party has unwittingly opened the door to a serious challenge. A horde of new joiners attracted by Corbyn’s progressive anti-austerity message are now threatening to dramatically recalibrate the trajectory of the party away from its rightward bent of the past two decades. </p>
<p>Labour’s moderates have responded forcefully, and with tellingly scant regard to democratic principles. </p>
<p>At first they restricted their political attacks to mere words, most notably when Tony Blair declared that the party “faces annihilation” if Corbyn wins. But as Corbyn solidified his lead, the moderates’ tactics have become even more desperate. Reports speak darkly of MPs threatening to “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/04/jeremy-corbyn-shrugs-off-coup-risk-in-labour-leadership-battle">stage a coup</a>” if Corbyn wins. The Daily Telegraph <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11805916/Labour-MPs-are-now-preparing-to-go-underground-to-resist-the-Corbyn-regime.html">reported</a> that “Labour MPs are now preparing to go underground to resist the Corbyn regime”.</p>
<p>Yet this most recent strategy has directly crossed the line from democratic to non-democratic. It’s a clear example of a political elite “purging” those who legitimately threaten their power. For this reason, Labour leaders have been called “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11767906/Labour-has-purged-me-from-their-leadership-election.-How-many-more-will-follow.html">Mcarthyites</a>” afraid of democracy.</p>
<p>This is a deeply unedifying spectacle – but it’s also part of problem far bigger than the chaotic leadership election. It sheds light on a deeper democratic deficit at the heart of many of today’s established democracies in Europe and beyond.</p>
<p>Today’s centrist and moderate mainstream political parties and leaders increasingly feel emboldened to smear those they view as politically and economically “irresponsible” – and to do so via whatever means necessary.</p>
<h2>Moderate authoritarians</h2>
<p>Crucially, the spectacle of Labour’s notional “democrats” resorting to strong-arm tactics is not an isolated incident. They are part of a broader anti-democratic trend within established liberal democracies in Europe and beyond. </p>
<p>Such authoritarianism in liberal democracies is nothing new. Europe and the US have a long history of overthrowing elected governments and repressing domestic challenges when it served the interests of national elites. It is part of an ongoing authoritarian “paranoia” that extends from Cold War all the way to the War on Terror.</p>
<p>What makes this different though is the supposed contemporary “right” of centrist politicians to suppress those that threaten their hold on power and conservative pro-market agenda. Specifically, it is a necessary part of “politically disciplining” those individual and groups who dare to challenge accepted free market policies. </p>
<p>This authoritarianism has been on full display throughout the Eurozone crisis, as Germany’s notionally “centre-right” Christian Democrat party demanded that Greece accept austerity conditions – this despite the Greeks people’s decisive vote for the anti-austerity Syriza. </p>
<p>This was nothing short of political authoritarianism. In the words of the German intellectual <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/16/merkel-gambling-away-germanys-reputation-over-greece-says-habermas">Jurgen Habermas</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the outcome is disgraceful because forcing the Greek government to agree to an economically questionable, predominantly symbolic privatisation fund cannot be understood as anything other than an act of punishment against a left-wing government.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This centrist repression is ultimately less about economics and more about politics. It is a clear warning to anyone labelled an “extremist” that mainstream politicians now think it legitimate to go to any lengths to suppress their “enemies” – even if that means being explicitly anti-democratic.</p>
<p>The exclusion of potential Labour voters also illustrates how politically reactionary “moderates” are becoming. As their ideas and credibility come under ever more pressure, they are turning to increasingly repressive measures to fight back.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46441/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Bloom does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If Labour really is turfing “infiltrators” out of its purportedly open leadership election, it’s only proving that moderate centrism is often no such thing.Peter Bloom, Lecturer in Organisation Studies, Department of People and Organisation, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/464182015-08-20T17:03:33Z2015-08-20T17:03:33ZCorbyn may be unelectable — but so are his rivals<p>Labour Party HQ is on red alert. The election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader is seen as a real and dangerous prospect by the majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Countless <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33959130">party grandees</a> have warned members of the dangers of turning Labour into a protest movement and some talk openly of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33873722">suspending the contest</a>, coups and guerrilla tactics in desperate moves to stop Corbynmania.</p>
<p>Corbyn’s supporters say he has energised the leadership contest and attracted thousands of new party members and supporters. His <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11810783/Jeremy-Corbyn-My-Labour-critics-should-be-happy.html">critics</a> say he cannot secure an electoral majority at the 2020 general elections. But it is far from clear that any of the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/08/14/jeremy-corbyn-would-win-more-votes-at-general-election-poll-finds_n_7989800.html">other three contenders</a> can either.</p>
<p>So far, no one has shown that they understood the causes of Labour’s defeat in 2015 and the problems social democracies have had all over the world following the global financial crisis. Instead, they have preferred to talk about micro policy ideas, such as free childcare and sex education policies. None seem to fit into a larger narrative.</p>
<p>The truth of the matter is that the Labour Party is stuck in a very deep hole. <a href="http://www.fabians.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/The-Mountain-to-Climb.pdf">Research</a> from the Fabian Society shows that in order to secure a majority in 2020, Labour needs to gain at least 106 seats in very different parts of the country. Considering the forthcoming constituency <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-reforming-britains-electoral-system-will-be-harder-than-ever-41631">boundary changes</a> and the advent of <a href="https://theconversation.com/2014-the-year-the-old-guard-woke-up-to-multi-party-politics-35775">truly multi-party politics</a>, that task seems like mission impossible.</p>
<p>In order to win, Labour needs to find an electoral formula that attracts Tory voters in the south of England and UKIP voters in the Midlands and north-east of England. In Scotland it needs to attract SNP voters and the south-west and English urban centres cities it needs to pull in Liberal Democrat and Green voters. None of the current contenders to the leadership of the Labour Party has so far shown that they are able to pull off this very difficult electoral trick.</p>
<h2>Reframing the debate</h2>
<p>Andy Burnham, who offers a more personable version of <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2012/07/what-milibandism">Milibandism</a>, lost his position as front runner as a result of Corbymania. Next to Corbyn he looks bland, confused (he attacks Corbyn’s lack of credibility but offers him a role in the shadow cabinet) and at times desperate.</p>
<p>Yvette Cooper looks like safe pair of hands, exudes competence and has the poise to face David Cameron at the dispatch box. But she is far from inspiring or exciting. Her <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/13/yvette-cooper-jeremy-corbyn-policies-not-credible-labour">feminist version</a> of Milibandism (her bid focuses on childcare and on tackling gender inequality and sexism) may sound sensible but it is hardly the stuff that enthuses voters.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GUC4Ux2sfvA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Yvette Cooper interview on Newsnight.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Liz Kendall is the only candidate that offers a break with Milibandism (though many of her flagship ideas come from the party’s 2015 manifesto). But she is seen as inexperienced and is paying a heavy price for her association to the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/politics-blog/11630650/Labours-Blairites-are-rallying-around-Liz-Kendall.html">Blairite wing</a> of the party.</p>
<p>Kendall’s strategy of telling <a href="http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/06/yvette-cooper-and-liz-kendall-put-in-strong-performances-at-fabian-hustings/">“hard truths”</a> to Labour members is not paying off – as her <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/08/10/corbyn-pull-ahead">position in the polls</a> suggests. She is probably the only candidate with the capacity to attract former Conservative voters from the south of England but she could lose the party many votes in the north-east of England and English cities. Worse still, she may have no impact at all in Scotland.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92573/original/image-20150820-7243-1urure5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92573/original/image-20150820-7243-1urure5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92573/original/image-20150820-7243-1urure5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92573/original/image-20150820-7243-1urure5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92573/original/image-20150820-7243-1urure5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92573/original/image-20150820-7243-1urure5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92573/original/image-20150820-7243-1urure5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andy Burnham.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/photographicleigh/6245805143/in/photolist-avVogz-aFmF2n-aFmF7p-aFmFb2-aFnR38-8LkScg-ryDAd9-7VUtGf-5YLUH9-8ojsar-8om7m3-8VYumh-8t3C4c-fr7Edg-6M2X9i-aFsUm2-8ojs7c-8ojrNa-8onvC3-8ojrV6-8ojiPk-8onx8C-8ojrHk-9AfHVk-djgbD8-8nK98T-8onAsS-8onzt7-8ojqgB-8onyvo-8onv8E-aFmF4x-77FGNv-aFqUNx-8LkS2H-8oxK5v-aFqUZZ-aFqUSz-8onyZu-wXfU2x-aFmFea-aFmFhk-7p2Z1J-psS24M-85jp6J-8LoScs-7Tr7e4-7Tr73g-8sMuXp-85ggQT">photographic-leigh/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, Corbyn seems to have understood that there is a growing constituency of citizens that is hungry for a different style of politics and for alternatives to austerity. His problem, however, is that an equally large number of voters reject his ideas.</p>
<p>With slight differences in emphasis, Burnham, Cooper and Kendall like to present their proposals as “grown-up”, credible and in contrast to the “loony-left” politics of Corbyn, which will condemn Labour to eternal opposition. But what none of them can explain is why those supposedly responsible <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2015/aug/13/labour-leadership-candidates-comparison-burnham-cooper-corbyn-kendall">policies</a> have in the past decade condemned European economies to stagnation and European social democratic parties to electoral oblivion.</p>
<p>They seem to accept the narrow confines of the political debate that are set by the right. From the economy to welfare, from immigration to the relationship between state and market, they seem unable to reframe the debate.</p>
<p>None of them have anything specific to say about how they can make democracy relevant in an age of globalisation, though they all promise to “empower citizens”. So they accept that some form of austerity is the only cure for the deficit. They comply with the view that the welfare state has been made unsustainable by the workshy, that migrants are responsible for housing shortages and low pay, and that the only thing Labour can offer is some palliative relief to the inescapable realities of the world. The problem with these allegedly realistic stances is that they are not responsible and, more seriously, make Labour a redundant party.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46418/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Labour Party HQ is on red alert. The election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader is seen as a real and dangerous prospect by the majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Countless party grandees have…Eunice Goes, Associate Professor of Politics, Richmond American International UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/461132015-08-14T10:24:28Z2015-08-14T10:24:28ZBlair’s attacks on Corbyn won’t work while his people are offering nothing<p>Tony Blair has <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/12/even-if-hate-me-dont-take-labour-over-cliff-edge-tony-blair">issued a dramatic warning</a> that Labour faces “annihilation” if Jeremy Corbyn wins the Labour party leadership election.</p>
<p>In his second intervention on the threat posed by the left-wing candidate, the former prime minister said his party is “walking eyes shut, arms outstretched, over the cliff’s edge to the jagged rocks below”. </p>
<p>Despite such hyperbole, Corbyn remains the bookmaker’s favourite to triumph. His response was to say that voters are being turned off by the “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/13/jeremy-corbyn-tony-blair-warning-responds-i-dont-do-personal-i-dont-do-abuse">politics of abuse</a>”. Some of his supporters are already planning a victory celebration in Trafalgar Square to celebrate “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1652743301608371/">winning back the party’s soul</a>”.</p>
<p>This is perhaps not surprising given how <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-jeremy-corbyn-stealing-the-show-because-hes-the-only-labour-candidate-saying-anything-at-all-45120">poorly</a> the other candidates have performed in this leadership campaign.</p>
<p>Many had assumed that following Ed Miliband’s election defeat, the party would be more inclined to move to the right in the hope of emulating New Labour’s success between 1997 and 2010. But even though Liz Kendall attracted Blairite supporters by calling for the party to appeal to aspirational, middle-class voters, she finds herself in <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/08/10/comment-corbyn-extends-lead/">last place</a> in the leadership race.</p>
<p>There are a number of factors that might explain why her campaign is failing to take off, while Corbyn continues on his roll.</p>
<p>Former MP David Miliband spoke for many people when he argued that under his brother’s leadership, Labour had hoped to “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11664202/David-Miliband-Ed-Miliband-victory-would-have-defied-laws-of-political-gravity.html">suspend the laws of political gravity</a>” by moving somewhat to the left, yet continuing to believe victory was still possible.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91828/original/image-20150813-21401-cpupgx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91828/original/image-20150813-21401-cpupgx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91828/original/image-20150813-21401-cpupgx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91828/original/image-20150813-21401-cpupgx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91828/original/image-20150813-21401-cpupgx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91828/original/image-20150813-21401-cpupgx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91828/original/image-20150813-21401-cpupgx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nevermore! Nevermore!</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/worldeconomicforum/3488059767/in/photolist-6jedDv-9CZ4UX-73eBDj-73aDu8-73aCn2-73eCgJ-77hPGV-9D31B7-CAAkh-7huJtN-eZmpPH-4YU8nD-73eCr3-7huJhQ-77mL7w-7ZU4kM-jxoGv-JoRCM-7srAkb-7z1pw4-Yq46c-Yq4K4-Yq3Ep-Yq4wM-bNz7EP-bNz6ov-39utJ-bP96xz-bAdfdj-bzExYs-7z5c9d-bNz1qx-bNz2tZ-bzEjkh-bNyZka-bNz3q6-9bYqFa-bNzfmr-9bYdD2-9c2hAJ-7z1nR8-9bYdTZ-bzEb2o-89PGQV-7z59QA-mWoo6-9bYd5T-fNk3GK-bzEp29-7gAr5n">World Economic Forum</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However he had little to say about the impact smaller parties such as UKIP and, particularly, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/snp">SNP</a>, had in the election. There appeared to be no fixed laws of political gravity when these two took voters from Labour, as the 40 Scottish Labour MPs who lost their seats might attest.</p>
<p>So while the Blairites have provided sketches for winning support from the Conservatives in the south, they have contributed less to the debate on how to win back votes in Labour’s traditional heartlands.</p>
<p>Corbyn’s opponents hoped his history on the hard left of British politics would convince Labour members that he would be unelectable as prime minister. Indeed, it takes a stretch of the imagination to visualise Corbyn winning some of Labour’s target seats but this has caused surprisingly few problems so far.</p>
<p>That is potentially because many now believe a Blairite electoral strategy is unlikely to succeed either. Blair’s success in 1997 relied in party upon the fact that voters on the left had nowhere else to go. They would stick with Labour even if they found some policy changes difficult to stomach.</p>
<p>In the 2015 general election, more than one in five voters were prepared to support non-traditional parties. The question of how Labour can win is therefore a problem for all the leadership candidates, not just a concern to be wheeled out when attacking Corbyn.</p>
<h2>What’s the alternative?</h2>
<p>The right of the Labour party has failed to unite around any single candidate. It is recognised that either Yvette Cooper or Andy Burnham are now best placed to beat Corbyn but many have been underwhelmed by their efforts in the leadership race.</p>
<p>Historic tensions between Blairites and Brownites rumbled on into the early part of the campaign, despite ex-Scottish leader Jim Murphy’s plea to end what he confessed had been a “self-indulgent and self-destructive struggle” between these sections of the party. So when Corbyn surged, they were caught flat-footed.</p>
<p>And while Corbyn has made it clear he will oppose the Conservatives on nearly every issue of significance, it is considerably less clear which elements of the Tory agenda the Blairites wish to see opposed outright.</p>
<p>Many members were dismayed by the party leadership’s decision to abstain on the recent welfare bill, and asked what Labour is for, if not to try to protect vulnerable groups. It is argued that the challenge is not just about Labour winning elections again, but that any political victory must be worth having, based on clear differences from a Tory agenda. The question of exactly what kind of opposition Labour should provide has been rather neglected.</p>
<p>Some members who might otherwise be sceptical of Corbyn as a leader have nonetheless been impressed by the dynamism and energy his campaign has generated. Those on the soft left may sympathise with parts of his agenda, especially on austerity, while perhaps doubting the practicality of other elements.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Blairite attitude towards Corbyn’s supporters has been considered condescending or crudely dismissive. They might argue that the time spent bashing this candidate might have been better spent trying to drum up support for the party as a whole.</p>
<p>As Labour leader in the mid-1990s, Blair stressed that each generation of a political party had to reapply its values afresh to a changing world, as parties that do not change, die. Now the Blairites themselves stand accused of harking back to the glories of 20 years ago and failing to acknowledge just how alienated large sections of the public feel from traditional Westminster politics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46113/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart McAnulla does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Former PM warns of annihilation without offering a way out.Stuart McAnulla, Lecturer in British Politics, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/460582015-08-13T13:24:53Z2015-08-13T13:24:53ZJeremy Corbyn is the only candidate with a distinct arts policy<p>Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn has just published a widely praised <a href="http://www.thestateofthearts.co.uk/2015/08/11/the-arts-are-for-everybody-not-the-few-there-is-creativity-in-all-of-us/">statement</a> on the arts. As in other policy areas, this sets out a pretty clear position that is distinct to the other leadership candidates. This is particularly significant because politicians’ statements on the arts and creative industries are so often bland, generic and interchangeable. </p>
<p>Indeed, it’s hard to think of another policy area in which there has been so little to distinguish what is said by players from the main parties. Take the following statements by way of example:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A. We want this sector to continue to thrive so it’s important that government and industry keep working together to foster the right environment for creative industries to succeed and inspire young people to follow in the footsteps of the many creative heavyweights that Britain has produced.</p>
<p>B. From film to video games, fashion to architecture, our world leading creative industries are a veritable powerhouse. They drive growth and outperform other industries, with employment increasing at around five times the rate of the national average.</p>
<p>C. The success of our creative industries is crucial to Britain’s future jobs and growth and to rebalancing our economy. And the contribution of our arts and culture cannot just be measured in pounds and pence, it enriches, entertains and expands our horizons.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These were written by Conservative Sajid Javid, Liberal Democrat Vince Cable and former Labour leader Ed Miliband. But can you put the name to each statement? (Answers at the end.)</p>
<h2>Bland support</h2>
<p>The same kind of language is used by the Labour leadership hopefuls. All the candidates have made bland statements in support of the arts at various times, often emphasising their vital social, cultural and economic contribution in one form or another. </p>
<p>We know that Liz Kendall likes hip hop, Burnham likes the Courteeners and Jeremy Corbyn likes John Lennon. But we know little about what might define their actual arts and creative industries policy. Andy Burnham’s <a href="http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/themes/558290fc01925b0184000001/attachments/original/1438791117/ANDY_BURNHAM_MANIFESTO.pdf?1438791117">manifesto</a>, for example, doesn’t mention the subject at all (which is, perhaps, surprising considering that he is a former secretary of state for Culture, Media and Sport). </p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.bectu.org.uk/news/2455">asked by BECTU</a>, the trade union for film and television workers, the candidates’ responses were predictably banal. Yvette Cooper, for example, mentions the economic contribution of the creative industries, but argues that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We can’t simply see an economic case for the arts; we must defend the value and contribution the arts make to our lives … I see the arts as a fundamental part of our society and economy, and under my leadership they will be central to the party’s plans for government.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91768/original/image-20150813-21401-huq3db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91768/original/image-20150813-21401-huq3db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91768/original/image-20150813-21401-huq3db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91768/original/image-20150813-21401-huq3db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91768/original/image-20150813-21401-huq3db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91768/original/image-20150813-21401-huq3db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91768/original/image-20150813-21401-huq3db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andy Burnham’s as woolly as the rest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/56675543@N08/14357429974/in/photolist-avVogz-qAE3yE-nSHzJ7-8i8YCr-8i93QB-8iciS5-8ibYCQ-8i8hRn-8ibYm1-p6uSeM-8ic5Z5-8ibUZS-8ibxd7-8ickL7-8i8ghp-7BNVub-5R2Ef5-5ojv1P-nSHzHA-5QXoKg-6z4iZ1-5R2F6o-egL7UU-dRi8UC-9gFBHo-8ibB9L-u9KbHP-8i8x5g-8i8Q9K-8i99yF-8ibSN7-8icezj-8i9yWM-8i8U9H-8i8WjV-8icPyU-8i8kBt-8ibzTw-9uwxVV-8icRxU-7eJpuQ">NHS Confederation/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Andy Burnham focuses on the importance of technical skills, training and education, telling us: “I know how important our creative industries are, not only to the UK economy, but as a vital part of our national identity.” And he has <a href="http://birminghameastside.com/2015/07/03/labours-candidates-highlight-the-importance-of-culture-and-creative-industries-in-birmingham/?isalt=0">elsewhere</a> praised the “the power of art and culture to regenerate people and communities.” So far, so generic.</p>
<p>For Kendall there is none of this touchy-feely community rhetoric: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have superb technical skills in this country. They are in demand across the world. From those working in sound and lighting to our cameramen and women. As Labour’s first woman leader, I will ensure this talent can face the future with the confidence our cultural growth demands they must have.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jeremy Corbyn is the only candidate to talk specifically of the arts and creative industries in a meaningful way. His <a href="http://www.thestateofthearts.co.uk/2015/08/11/the-arts-are-for-everybody-not-the-few-there-is-creativity-in-all-of-us/">statement</a> goes much further than the others, advocating public funding for culture at the community and regional level and tearing into the “callous commercialisation of every sphere of our lives”. Corbyn particularly highlights the arts as sites of political and cultural dissent as something essential to democracy. In contrast: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This government has savaged arts funding with projects increasingly required to justify their artistic and social contributions in the narrow, ruthlessly instrumentalist approach of the Thatcher governments … The arts must never be the preserve of those with privilege but open to all. Access and diversity within the arts must be improved with greater equalisation of those who are able to benefit from public funding as well a more even regional allocation of funding.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is not hard to see how he has won the <a href="http://www.thestateofthearts.co.uk/2015/08/12/art-world-reacts-to-corbyns-anti-cuts-message/">support</a> of figures such as Ken Loach, Maxine Peake and Josie Long.</p>
<h2>The BBC</h2>
<p>The future of the BBC is surely one of the most important things that a future opposition leader will have to contend with in the face of unprecedented Conservative attacks and all the candidates have made public statements in support of it. Trying to get to grips with what direction they might take, then, often comes down to a matter of emphasis and an acknowledgement of their wider politics and priorities. Cooper, for example, ominously <a href="https://www.bectu.org.uk/news/2455">talks</a> of “defending a reformed BBC fit for the future”, while for Burnham, the Tory attacks are simply “wrong”.</p>
<p>Once again, it is Corbyn who presents the most clear and coherent sense of an opposition, saying that he wants “to see the Labour Party at the heart of campaigns to protect the BBC and its license fee”.</p>
<h2>Corbynmania and the arts</h2>
<p>The key theme of the Labour leadership campaign has been the popularity of Jeremy Corbyn’s left-wing politics among grass roots labour supporters and the intense hostility this has provoked in the Parliamentary Labour Party and the media. The big question is whether this popularity can become a movement strong enough to challenge the neo-liberal consensus that has dominated mainstream British politics since the mid-1990s. If it can, then it will certainly also challenge the constricting, conformist dogma that surrounds the creative industries.</p>
<p>This is desperately needed. A space for experimentation with new forms of cultural policy could raise hopes for new kinds participation beyond the metropolitan elite and catalyse a new infusion of politics into art. Most importantly it would create an argument over the respective roles of the state and business in culture. And culture badly needs a new argument.</p>
<p>If it can’t, then we are likely to get more of the same bland, generic conformism from all sides of the house.</p>
<p><em>Answers: a=Vince Cable; b=Sajid Javid; c=Ed Miliband.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46058/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jack Newsinger is registered as a supporter of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>Political discussion about the arts and creative industries is famously woolly ybland, generic and interchangeable. But Corbyn cuts through this.Jack Newsinger, Lecturer in Media and Communication , University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/455762015-08-11T20:34:04Z2015-08-11T20:34:04ZHas Britain’s ‘pissed off’ constituency found a leader in Jeremy Corbyn?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90722/original/image-20150804-15152-1m4427l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The prospect of left-wing frontrunner Jeremy Corbyn becoming Labour Party leader is shaking up Britain's political establishment.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/garryknight/15024926027/in/photolist-oTGF3K-oBHKNz-om7CxS-om7TNa-oEnm5X-oc7qCR-nLHcoA">flickr/Garry Knight</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/shortcodes/images-videos/articles-democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>It looks <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leadership-jeremy-corbyn-set-for-landslide-firstround-victory-with-53-according-to-yougov-poll-10449236.html">increasingly likely</a> that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_(UK)_leadership_election,_2015">in a month’s time</a> a slightly dishevelled figure from the British Labour Party’s long-forgotten “hard left” past, MP <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-jeremy-corbyn-stealing-the-show-because-hes-the-only-labour-candidate-saying-anything-at-all-45120">Jeremy Corbyn</a>, will be elected its next leader. Vague amusement at the prospect has given way to <a href="https://theconversation.com/voters-have-shifted-to-the-left-but-that-doesnt-make-it-the-right-move-for-labour-45193">alarm</a> across the political spectrum.</p>
<p>Commentators sympathetic to Labour have come out almost unanimously to warn party members that such an outcome would equate to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/10/anyone-but-jeremy-corbyn-labour-leader-alastair-campbell">political suicide</a>. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/30/jeremy-corbyn-is-the-world-ready-for-his-socks-and-sandals">The Guardian</a>, normally quite sympathetic to the kind of anti-austerity plain-speaking for which Corbyn is renowned, is full of appeals to its readership (many of them natural Labour sympathisers) to return to their senses.</p>
<p>On the political right, amusement at the direction in which the main rival to the Conservatives is heading is mixed with <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/6540181/Could-Jeremy-Corbyn-be-Labours-next-leader.html">stern warnings</a> about what might happen if, heaven forbid, Corbyn was actually elected prime minister. The chattering classes are rattled.</p>
<p>So far the stakes in this curious episode have aligned along a familiar axis. The problem, it seems, is that Corbyn is an old-fashioned left-winger. He stands for the renationalisation of the rail system, reversing cuts to benefits and welfare, the abolition of university tuition fees and a re-alignment of the UK’s foreign and defence policy.</p>
<p>So far, so predictable. As the commentary insists, such an approach resulted in defeat after defeat for Labour – that is until Tony Blair brought the party to its senses.</p>
<p>Blair’s recipe was simple enough: to win, the party must fall in line with the same neoliberal approach as its Conservative rival – and virtually every mainstream political party across Europe and the advanced democracies. Corbyn rejects this inheritance, but he also rejects its political logic: that to win elections you have to show that you have understood the underpinning axiom of our times: “you cannot buck the market”. Well, he thinks you can.</p>
<h2>Rejecting what politics has become</h2>
<p>There is a constituency out there looking for more than a rather meek acceptance of the “neoliberalism-lite” that social democratic parties have been peddling for three decades. That constituency includes the fabled “hard left”. It also includes many traditionalists within the major trade unions and within the Labour Party itself, particularly in its former heartlands in Wales, Scotland and the post-industrial cities of the north. </p>
<p>Can the rise of Corbyn really be ascribed to this demographic? Perhaps, but there’s more to the story than this. Much more – especially for the young who are flocking, improbably, to Corbyn’s side.</p>
<p>What is becoming clearer is that there is a constituency willing to challenge what politics has become: shallow, pithy, televisual, tedious and disingenuous. This is a politics embodied in toothy, neatly suited, identikit middle-class men and women speaking in a kind of a corporate patois lampooned so successfully in the television show The Office. </p>
<p>It’s a world where unconvincing aspiration (“moving forwards”) and low attainment (“pushing the envelope”) kill initiative and hope for a better future.</p>
<p>A candidate like Corbyn stands apart from his colleagues – <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/31/corbyn-supporters-risk-return-to-labour-splits-of-1980s-says-burnham">Andy Burnham</a>, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/01/liz-kendall-admits-jeremy--corbyn-in-the-lead">Liz Kendall</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/30/scotlands-sole-labour-mp-backs-yvette-cooper-for-party-leadership">Yvette Cooper</a>. But he also stands apart in what he represents: a longing to address the myriad inequalities and injustices of the present in words that everyone can understand.</p>
<p>It is this authenticity that is so troubling at one level and so liberating at another. Corbyn is not just mouthing the words; he means it. So why all the fuss? Why not just accept Corbyn-mania for what it is: the emergence of a somewhat anachronistic figure who seems to be catching the breeze of a certain kind of resentment about the state we are in.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90570/original/image-20150803-5983-jhffsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90570/original/image-20150803-5983-jhffsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=262&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90570/original/image-20150803-5983-jhffsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=262&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90570/original/image-20150803-5983-jhffsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=262&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90570/original/image-20150803-5983-jhffsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90570/original/image-20150803-5983-jhffsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90570/original/image-20150803-5983-jhffsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jeremy Corbyn backs the UK People’s Assembly Against Austerity, which formed in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter Damian</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A candidate for pissed-off Britain</h2>
<p>Context, as usual, explains a great deal. Corbyn is not alone in his desire to combat austerity. Nor is he alone in rejecting the logic of contemporary politics and the deep complicity of political elites in ever-widening inequality, destroying the inheritance of the welfare state and fetishising the market.</p>
<p>But hitherto those seeking to combat the destructive excesses of the present have been found outside the political mainstream: Greece’s <a href="http://theconversation.com/this-is-the-end-of-the-line-for-syriza-44729">Syriza</a> is a rough-and-ready coalition of relatively recent vintage; Podemos emerged out of the street occupations of <a href="http://theconversation.com/postcard-from-spain-where-now-for-the-quiet-revolution-43779">Spain’s 15M</a>; the rise of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/25/spains-indignados-ada-colau-elections-mayor-barcelona">Ada Colau</a>, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/12/madrid-manuela-carmena-deal-socialists-mayor">Manuela Carmena</a>, the Italian <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/55d3242a-2bb2-11e5-8613-e7aedbb7bdb7.html#axzz3hdUMCUt6">Beppe Grillo</a> and the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/pirate-party-surges-in-polls-to-become-biggest-political-party-in-iceland-10222018.html">Icelandic Pirate Party</a> are all instances of outsiders finding ways of getting “inside”.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90572/original/image-20150803-5998-1i910i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90572/original/image-20150803-5998-1i910i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90572/original/image-20150803-5998-1i910i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90572/original/image-20150803-5998-1i910i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90572/original/image-20150803-5998-1i910i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90572/original/image-20150803-5998-1i910i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90572/original/image-20150803-5998-1i910i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90572/original/image-20150803-5998-1i910i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">According to Mirror columnist Kevin Maguire, Jeremy Corbyn’s greatest enemy comes from within Tony Blair’s New Labour.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-corbyns-greatest-enemy-comes-6183685">The Mirror</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Here the “outside” is rapidly becoming the inside – the inside of the Labour Party, as all manner of constituencies join the stampede. All this is highly disruptive to what Labour means, or rather, what it has come to mean under <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Labour">New Labour</a>: an election fighting machine designed to “spin” itself to victory on the basis of the fantasy we have been living with since Thatcher’s victory in 1979 – that the embrace of financialised capitalism will eventually improve the lot of the least well-off.</p>
<p>The fantasy is beginning to wear thin, but Burnham, Cooper and Kendall are happy to maintain the “business as usual” line; Corbyn isn’t. They seek to build on the inheritance of New Labour; Corbyn doesn’t.</p>
<p>Corbyn is not merely the return of the repressed (“the hard left”). Something more is happening here. That something is not just about what policies should be adopted to combat austerity; it is more about what kind of politics people want.</p>
<p>Just as <a href="https://theconversation.com/manifesto-check-the-snps-top-policies-41147">Scottish National Party</a> (SNP) became a proxy for “something has to change” in the last election, so has “Corbyn”. Corbyn’s constituency is not just “the left” – it is also that broader, less-easy-to-read group that seeks a change in the who, how, where and what of politics. Spain has its <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/25/spains-indignados-ada-colau-elections-mayor-barcelona">Indignados</a>, the Italians have the <a href="http://www.neurope.eu/article/beppe-grillo-politics-%E2%80%9Cvaffanculo%E2%80%9D/">“vaffanculo”</a> bunch and now the UK has “the pissed off”.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90727/original/image-20150804-12007-zyphwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90727/original/image-20150804-12007-zyphwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90727/original/image-20150804-12007-zyphwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90727/original/image-20150804-12007-zyphwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90727/original/image-20150804-12007-zyphwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90727/original/image-20150804-12007-zyphwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90727/original/image-20150804-12007-zyphwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90727/original/image-20150804-12007-zyphwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Comedian and sometime political activist Russell Brand at a People’s Assembly Against Austerity rally.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/david0287/16274558456/in/photolist-qN8nes-7oLqCo-hiEKpy-8CVvxg-8KUF6Q-67nNta-pFqc2V-8Kjxzx-qqaXT4-hdq4nC-pFKcWo-bcTAX2-pTqeNs-7VJzzq-cNQTmu-39JxUo-GxcUH-8KRBDv-8KRCyp-8KRC3R-qq15rv-9yQPpJ-9yV352-677nyY-cNQTcN-6iqp9w-6imgZR-7VFjMV-7VFjNp-4oqoYc-9yV34M-9yV34D-9yQPpd-677nM3-aa7ooC-677nHd-jdJWQ4-4TG35g-8x4mx6-rchhg7-2BdUY9-4gtTSJ-rtN2Hg-ji7XKd-6739He-pJ9ty8-677obA-gVnwTj-4TG3L4-gVnwLW">flickr/D.B. Young</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Corbyn” resonates as an antidote to “Westminster”, to a distant elite-driven politics. It seems to speak to that otherwise homeless group who seek affinities and affiliations off the back of concerns aired by the likes of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2015/apr/29/ed-miliband-russell-brand-video-highlights">Russell Brand</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/09/shell-oil-greed-undeterred-by-science-climate-change-bill-mckibben-naomi-klein-annie-leonard">Naomi Klein</a>, to name two obvious figures who argue that our politics is broken and needs to be fixed, “rebooted” and re-imagined along more generous, inclusive, participatory and, yes, more democratic lines.</p>
<p>Hitherto they have had little to hang on to in the UK context beyond sporadic bouts of direct action, climate camps or Facebook “likes”. The Scots had their chance at the last election to join the “post-political” or “anti-political” throng by transforming the SNP from a nationalist party into an approximation of a tartan Podemos. Now everyone else has their chance by joining “the Corbyn insurrection”.</p>
<h2>Where does this leave Labour and politics?</h2>
<p>The discomfort of many elements of the Labour Party is plain to see. It ranges from Blair’s trenchant advice for those thinking of voting with their heart to get <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/11755234/Tony-Blair-if-your-heart-is-with-Corbyn-get-a-transplant.html">“a transplant”</a> to the sniffy dismissal of Corbyn’s politics by the likes of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/23/labour-leadership-contest-jeremy-corbyn">Polly Toynbee</a> and the Guardian grandees. They are clearly perturbed at the spectacle of their sensible “modernising” party becoming a shambolic institutional approximation of Glastonbury: all noise, mud and hangovers. Is this the death of the Labour Party?</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"624089085083168769"}"></div></p>
<p>It might be – but then was not Labour already in its death throes? A once-proud party enjoying the active support of several million members has been reduced to a rump of ageing activists going through the motions “for old time’s sake”. Would it really be the worst thing to re-brand Labour as a party of a different kind: an “outsiders” (anti)party that homes the currently homeless? </p>
<p>15M produced no solace for PSOE (Spain’s social democratic party), but rather a raft of rivals who threaten to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_Spanish_general_election,_2015">eclipse it</a> in the general election. Perhaps it is better to bring the “outside” in, instead of hoping that it will go away.</p>
<p>The purpose of political parties is (usually) to win elections, and winning has been the justification for “modernising”. But does this modernisation diminish Labour’s chance to oppose and overturn the Conservatives?</p>
<p>The evidence is far from clear. The SNP <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-snp-has-blown-british-politics-apart-and-the-uk-must-now-change-if-it-is-to-survive-41507">did well</a> on a “something has to change” ticket, with the details left usefully vague beyond some nod in the direction of increased power for local assemblies and the defence of the welfare state. Spain’s mainstream parties of both left and right have had to confront new political parties with a similar message. Italy endured a political earthquake in 2013 with Grillo’s 5SM party polling the most votes.</p>
<p>The game is changing. Change in the basic co-ordinates of political life is underway. “Corbyn” may or may not be the answer – but it is certainly posing the question.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45576/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Tormey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The emergence of ageing left-winger Jeremy Corbyn as the unlikely frontrunner in the Labour Party leadership contest signals that many British voters reject what politics has become.Simon Tormey, Professor of Political Theory and Head of the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/454482015-08-07T05:29:44Z2015-08-07T05:29:44ZJeremy Corbyn and the welcome return of older politicians<p>Jeremy Corbyn’s candidacy has provided the unexpected element of drama in the 2015 Labour leadership election. But beyond broadening the range of issues up for discussion, the presence of an older politician as a credible contender (Corbyn is 66) marks a long-overdue shift in British electoral politics.</p>
<p>Since Harold Wilson came to power aged 48 in 1964, there has been a general trend away from political leaders older than 60 – Gordon Brown, of course, would have been 10 years younger had he not had to wait for Tony Blair to step down. The recent political scene has been dominated by a succession of “bright young things”. While we’ve not yet seen 20-year-olds taking control of political parties, prime ministers and their political entourages have been <a href="http://constitution-unit.com/2015/06/25/the-age-of-the-new-parliament/">getting gradually younger</a>. </p>
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<p><a href="http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/members-faq-page2/">The average age of MPs elected at the 2015 general election was 50</a>, a figure that’s remained one of the most predictable aspects of British politics over recent elections. On average, Labour MPs <a href="http://parliamentarycandidates.org/news/the-age-of-the-new-parliament/">are slightly younger</a> than Conservatives, but the three leaders of the English political parties in 2015 were demographically – if not ideologically – striking in their similarity. The time could now be ripe for the electorate to reject a politics of sameness. </p>
<p>In recent years the pendulum has swung so far that it has become virtually impossible for anyone not middle class, white, and young-middle-aged to make it to the top of their party. Ming Campbell – hugely respected within his own party – lasted only a year as leader of the Liberal Democrats, stepping down in 2007 to make way for a candidate more amenable to the electorate. Then only 66, Campbell later admitted that the press focus on his age <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11455036/Why-Im-standing-down-from-Parliament-Sir-Menzies-Campbell-MP-for-North-East-Fife.html">had been “bruising”</a>.</p>
<h2>A more mature electorate</h2>
<p>So what’s different now? Corbyn is the same age as Campbell was in 2007, yet his age has gone under the radar amid an avalanche of press inches about his unexpected campaign. Perhaps it’s because Corbyn is different on so many levels from the kind of politician that we’ve become used to seeing. We also know that an ageing population is here to stay, the result of medical advances, falling fertility, and a healthier, more secure nation. Over half the children currently born in much of the developed world today <a href="http://cardiobrief.org/2009/10/01/lancet-review-will-most-babies-born-now-live-to-100/">can expect</a> to live to 100.</p>
<p>With these shifts, we will all have to go on working longer – and probably more flexibly – to sustain our elderly population and to achieve a comfortable retirement. In this sense, that politicians should get older seems unavoidable. Indeed as we are healthier for longer than previous generations, stopping work in our mid-60s seems ever more irrational. <a href="http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/3818/1/Parry_%26_Taylor_2007_final.pdf">Working after state pension age</a> is one of the most <a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/geography/migrated/documents/pfrc0305.pdf">significant shifts in the UK labour market</a> of the early 21st century, and it is supported both by national social policy geared at extending working lives and a global push towards “active ageing”.</p>
<p>Corbyn’s candidacy plays to these themes. That he has emerged from the early part of the leadership campaign as the most ideologically energetic and robust of the candidates strengthens the case for older politicians. Next year we will see an American election, with Hilary Clinton likely to win the Democratic Party nomination. She will be 69 by the time of the election, and is looking as committed as she ever has. </p>
<h2>The experience agenda</h2>
<p>Older politicians have much to offer. A portfolio of experience. A commitment to a range of causes, established over their working lives, adding plausibility to their promises. A contrast to younger politicians who have seemingly shot straight to the front benches. </p>
<p>The term “career politician” is often bandied about as an insult. However, taken more literally, Corbyn has devoted his life to politics having served for 32 years as an MP, and before that working in local politics. His longevity gives his biography a narrative, a connectedness with the events of the past 30 years. And at 66 he is credibly doing it out of conviction, rather than with an eye to future windfalls from speaking gigs on the after-dinner circuit. </p>
<p>MPs are in a relatively privileged position in that, once elected, they can continue working for as long as they are able to convince their constituencies to keep them in post. This is not the case in much of the UK labour market, where organisational norms can make it difficult for workers to carry on in jobs much beyond state pension age. </p>
<p>Politics is inherently a risky business, a profession where you <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-a-sad-day-when-three-limp-flags-are-top-of-the-news-agenda-34550">can lose your job</a> at the drop of a hat. Still, over the past few years we’ve all moved towards an expectation of less linear and more precarious pathways through employment, and amid this perhaps the older politician represents a stability that we lack in our own lives.</p>
<p>Political winds can change notoriously quickly, and Corbyn may yet prove too radical for the Labour Party. But politicians should pay attention to the fact that their electorate is ageing, and that voting is strongly age-related. A <a href="https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3575/How-Britain-voted-in-2015.aspx?view=wide">staggering 78%</a> of those over 65 voted in the 2015 general election, compared to just 43% of those aged 18-25. This issue is not going away, and astute political parties won’t alienate voters by marginalising their older statespeople.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Parry has received funding from research councils and government departments to conduct research. She is a member of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>For the last 30 years, politics has been dominated by a succession of bright young things. Could Corbyn change that?Jane Parry, Lecturer in Gerontology, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/453392015-08-04T05:27:21Z2015-08-04T05:27:21ZWhy Corbyn is winning – and how Labour’s moderates can stop him<p>The Labour leadership election captured people’s attention when a <a href="https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ul79cmahd5/LabourLeadership_150721_day_one_W.pdf">YouGov poll</a> in late-July put Jeremy Corbyn in the lead. Now, he is the most popular candidate among trade unions and grassroots Labour activists, having been endorsed by <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-tops-labour-leadership-vote-of-constituency-groups-10432254.html">162 Labour constituency parties</a> – ahead of Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall – and by six unions, including Labour’s two biggest affiliates, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33707321">Unite and Unison</a>. </p>
<p>Yet Corbyn’s lead is by no means unassailable. If one of the moderate candidates in the race is to deprive the veteran leftist of victory, he or she will need to address Labour’s current electoral fatalism and convince members that the party can still end up in government after the next election, provided that it remains united. </p>
<p>It’s useful to look at the Labour leadership race in the context of research on party leadership contests. One theory, developed by <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Choosing_a_Leader.html?id=Q3OFQgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Leonard Stark</a> and deployed by <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/electing-and-ejecting-party-leaders-in-britain-thomas-quinn/?isb=9780230219618">me and other</a> researchers, assumes that there is a hierarchy of selection criteria that guide the process of choosing a leader, and these criteria match parties’ three fundamental goals: internal unity, winning an election and implementing policy in government. </p>
<p>Selection criteria in leadership contests reflect these goals. If a party is divided, the successful candidate is usually the one who is “acceptable” to the broadest range of party opinion and can unite the party. If disunity isn’t a major problem, the strongest candidate on “electability” should win. If the candidates are indistinguishable on that, the choice will turn on “competence” – mainly in relation to running a government but also leading an opposition. </p>
<h2>Burnham the unifier, but Corbyn still on top</h2>
<p>Thanks to YouGov’s poll, we can put the theory to the test in the current Labour leadership contest. The poll asked electors eligible to vote in the one-member-one-vote ballot to state their principal reasons for supporting their preferred candidate. As the table below shows, clear differences are evident between the supporters of each candidate.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89943/original/image-20150728-9853-15hj6l6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89943/original/image-20150728-9853-15hj6l6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89943/original/image-20150728-9853-15hj6l6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89943/original/image-20150728-9853-15hj6l6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89943/original/image-20150728-9853-15hj6l6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89943/original/image-20150728-9853-15hj6l6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89943/original/image-20150728-9853-15hj6l6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89943/original/image-20150728-9853-15hj6l6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Labour Electors’ Motives for Supporting Each Candidate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/94enqtd1fz/LabourLeadership_150721_day_two_W.pdf">YouGov/The Times. Notes: All figures are percentages except those in parenthesis, which indicate ranking of motives for supporters of four candidates. Supporters of each candidate are those respondents saying they would give their first-preference vote to that candidate. </a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Corbyn’s supporters – who constitute the largest group in the sample – were completely distinct from those of the other candidates. Barely any cited electability (winning in 2020) or acceptability (uniting the party) as reasons to support him. Corbyn appeals to those who want Labour to change direction completely, even if it means short-term disunity and lower electability.</p>
<p>Instead, on these figures, Burnham is the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/31/andy-burnham-interview">unity candidate</a> in the contest, and he also does well on electability and competence. Not far behind is Cooper, and she too appeals on all three selection criteria. In contrast, neither Kendall nor Corbyn is a unifier and both could <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/31/corbyn-supporters-risk-return-to-labour-splits-of-1980s-says-burnham">split their party</a>. Despite being strong on electability, Kendall’s Blairite politics are unacceptable not just to the far left but also to Labour’s soft-left mainstream. Meanwhile, Corbyn would be unacceptable to the overwhelming majority of Labour MPs. </p>
<h2>Fatalism and fresh faces</h2>
<p>So Burnham should be well-placed to win the leadership contest, but it is Corbyn who leads the race. The answer to why this is so lies in a combination of Labour’s new selection system and an incapacitating sense of electoral fatalism. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-political-parties-choose-their-leaders-41534">one-member-one-vote system</a> gives votes to party members, trade unionists who have been signed up by their unions as “affiliated supporters”, and “registered supporters” who have paid a £3 fee and confirmed their agreement with Labour’s values. A surge in membership of 68,000 since the 2015 election – a 35% increase – has brought in large numbers of left-wingers and worked <a href="https://theconversation.com/well-labour-this-is-what-happens-when-you-crowdsource-a-leadership-election-45177">strongly in Corbyn’s favour</a>.</p>
<p>This has combined together with a fatalism that has descended on the party after its May election defeat. Not only was the defeat unexpected but <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-did-labour-lose-and-where-next-for-the-party-41629">so was its scale</a>. There is a feeling among many inside and outside the party that it lost not only the 2015 election but also the 2020 election. </p>
<p>Add to that the sense that none of the contenders in the Labour leadership contest looks to be an obvious general election winner and it becomes understandable why electability appears such a low priority in the contest. Many Corbyn supporters may believe that their man cannot win the 2020 general election – but that neither can any of the other candidates. Voting for Corbyn then becomes a free hit: if Labour cannot become a party of government any time soon, why not make it a more effective party of opposition that takes on the Tories’ austerity agenda and unite it on that basis? </p>
<h2>Not over yet</h2>
<p>For Burnham or Cooper to defeat Corbyn, they would need to challenge this fatalism by arguing that the next election is not already lost. The Conservatives’ majority is only 12 seats. If Labour could win back just 30 of the 87 mainly marginal seats it lost to the Conservatives in 2010 (and largely failed to regain in 2015), not only would the Tories fall short of a majority in 2020, they would struggle to form a minority government. In an era when 80-90 seats are routinely won by smaller parties, including the Scottish National Party, hung parliaments are more likely than they were in the past. </p>
<p>Labour’s moderates would have to argue that it is important for the party to stay in the game in anticipation of another close election result, and not throw it away by choosing a leader who would split the party, lacks prime-ministerial credibility and has a narrow electoral appeal. It is easily forgotten that many Labour left-wingers – including Dennis Skinner – accepted this argument in 2010 when they put electability before ideology in supporting David Miliband.</p>
<p>Unity, electability and competence are the holy trinity of leadership contests. The polls suggest that Burnham is well-positioned on all three, with Cooper not far behind. To make it count, each must show the Labour party that they can unite it, probably on a moderate anti-austerity platform, and convince it that there is still all to play for at the next election. If they can do that, one of them could yet overhaul Corbyn.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45339/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Quinn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If anyone other than Jeremy Corbyn is to become the next Labour leader, they will have to address the party’s fatalism about 2020.Tom Quinn, Senior Lecturer, Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/451952015-07-27T12:35:50Z2015-07-27T12:35:50ZIgnore the mudslinging – Corbyn would be a sound option for Labour<p>The contest for the next leader of the Labour Party is in danger of becoming
interesting. Jeremy Corbyn is increasingly stealing the show – perhaps because he is the only one <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-jeremy-corbyn-stealing-the-show-because-hes-the-only-labour-candidate-saying-anything-at-all-45120">saying anything of substance</a>. The other candidates seem to have been rendered incoherent or inchoate by the carefully manufactured “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/14/george-osborne-big-lie-economy-brace-yourselves-real-cuts">Big Lie</a>” that the Great Recession was caused by a Labour government that spent too much. </p>
<p>It has now got ridiculous: with Andy Burnham, while arguing for “balanced and sustainable public finances”, considering it <a href="https://medium.com/@Andy4Leader/labour-must-be-the-party-that-offers-a-different-future-to-the-british-people-one-where-everyone-910833852026">necessary to reassure</a> us that “Labour spending on education and the health service didn’t cause the global banking crisis”. As if any of the electorate believe that buying books for British school children and drugs for the NHS caused the sub-prime crisis in the US housing market? And, while senior Labour politicians are busily apologising for spending too much in the past, <a href="http://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/must-we-live-with-post-truth-media.html">the Oxford economist, Simon Wren-Lewis, has shown</a> that the argument that the last Labour government seriously mismanaged the nation’s finances is a myth.</p>
<p>The problem when you say something is that you are easily accused of being wrong or, even worse, you are accused of being wrong and saying something that is old. So Corbyn is being accused of regurgitating the failed policies of the past. <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7d242bcc-3126-11e5-8873-775ba7c2ea3d.html#axzz3gnbGPTkV">According to the Financial Times</a>: “his views – higher taxes, mass nationalisation, more welfare, more borrowing – are seen as toxic by New Labour veterans, who prophesy a repeat of Michael Foot’s disastrous leadership in the early 1980s that led to a landslide 1983 election victory for Margaret Thatcher”. Let us ignore the artistic license used by the FT (including ignoring the impact that Falklands war had on the 1983 election) and focus on the economic policies that Corbyn is advocating today.</p>
<h2>Four-pronged strategy</h2>
<p>There are four key elements that can be identified in Corbyn’s economic strategy <a href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/jeremyforlabour/pages/70/attachments/original/1437556345/TheEconomyIn2020_JeremyCorbyn-220715.pdf?1437556345">which he outlined in a speech last week</a>, all of which are grounded on solid economic foundations and which have little in common with Labour’s policies of the early 1980s.</p>
<p>First, is his (expected) rejection of austerity as a coherent macroeconomic strategy. Many have identified the damaging economic and social impacts of austerity. The case for austerity largely rests on the notion that a looser fiscal policy would result in higher interest rates or that would have an adverse impact on business confidence. The reality is different: looser fiscal policy would have little impact on interest rates which are already at their lower bound and which have had to be propped up by quantitative easing (aka printing money) as they could not be cut further. As for the “<a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/cameron-and-the-confidence-fairy-an-update/">confidence fairy</a>”, there is no convincing evidence that austerity improves business or consumer expectations. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89717/original/image-20150726-8468-anz2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89717/original/image-20150726-8468-anz2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89717/original/image-20150726-8468-anz2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89717/original/image-20150726-8468-anz2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89717/original/image-20150726-8468-anz2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89717/original/image-20150726-8468-anz2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89717/original/image-20150726-8468-anz2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89717/original/image-20150726-8468-anz2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How the Daily Telegraph is reporting the leadership race.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Daily Telegraph</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, the popular mantra is that the level of public sector deficits and debts are “not sustainable”: but there are no optimum numbers for these variables; what is important is whether the debt is fundable and what it is used for. In a world of low interest rates, government deficits are easily fundable and remain low by historic standards.</p>
<p>Second, Corbyn argues for increased public investment in infrastructure and the establishment of a National Investment Bank. As <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/units/growthCommission/documents/pdf/LSEGC-Report.pdf">argued by the LSE Growth Commission</a>, investments in infrastructure, such as transport, energy and telecommunications, are essential to raise growth and productivity .</p>
<p>Many of these investments must come from the public sector. The private sector cannot be expected to make investments where the primary beneficiary is the economy as a whole and not an individual firm or collection of firms. Furthermore, many of these investments are large-scale and long-term, requiring government planning, delivery and financing.</p>
<p>Third is the case for protecting welfare, raising the marginal rate of tax on high-earners and clamping down on tax evasion and avoidance. The philosophy of the current government is that the poor need a cut in welfare to make them work; whereas the rich need a cut in taxes to make them work. This asymmetry is based on politics and not on economics. The current policies on welfare will further accelerate inequality and lead to rising child poverty.</p>
<p>Fourth, is the case for regional rebalancing to encourage growth throughout the economy. There have been long-term spatial imbalances in the UK economy which have accelerated since the early 1980s: whereas growth in London has accelerated, growth in much of the rest of the national economy has been slow or stagnant. This is socially undesirable but also economically inefficient. A strong regional policy will improve national economic growth. Sound bites about a “Northern Powerhouse” are not sufficient – what is required are policies of substance – and Corbyn needs to be more explicit in how he would tackle these entrenched imbalances.</p>
<p>The leadership campaign has increasingly been characterised by invective and vitriol. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2015/jul/22/tony-blair-jeremy-corbyn-labour-leadership-video">According to Tony Blair</a>, if your heart’s with Jeremy Corbyn you need to “get a transplant”. Instead, it would be better to use your head to examine his policies: many of which would have a significant impact on long-term prosperity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45195/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Kitson has received funding from the AHRC, ESRC and the EPSRC.</span></em></p>If you ignore the spoiling campaign being run by the press, the left-winger’s campaign platform begins to appear eminently sensible.Michael Kitson, University Senior Lecturer in International Macroeconomics, Cambridge Judge Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/451932015-07-24T16:42:25Z2015-07-24T16:42:25ZVoters have shifted to the left — but that doesn’t make it the right move for Labour<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89670/original/image-20150724-8474-hwt48x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is Corbyn too left?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lewishamdreamer/19621586548/in/photolist-vTTL5m-oqyZkk-4X1et4-88dRYf-vzPTyn-3j3y7Y-3Ls1En-vTTEgN-waRP2f-vTTF7h-om7CxS-om7TNa-3iY8XT-oEnm5X-o7HvAs-oqY7MD-oopmRR-oTGF3K-pLVMtJ-ou7Aqw-8ZatUS-oBHKNz-HihJt-BQk2m-rRyD2L-k6WpFb-oFoHoE-9SZa9Q-9SZ8Wh-9SZ97G-9SWj8a-9SWiYz-9SZ9QU-9SWk3v-9SZ9Z7-9SWjgT-9SWjQ6-9SZ9FW-9SWkKp-3j3uR1-5PMc3y-5PM9LU-5PGSrK-qn5pmX-qZwr3t-hE5oza-sMQpyd-r2iuBC-qZyGVg-7zfT8C">Jasn</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the strongest criticisms levelled at Jeremy Corbyn, the anti-austerity left-winger currently leading in the contest to become the next leader of the Labour party, is that he is <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-pressure-group-claims-jeremy-corbyn-would-destroy-chances-of-electability-as-leader-10382371.html">just not electable</a>.</p>
<p>Former prime minister Tony Blair has waded into the debate to warn against supporting Corbyn, strongly implying that <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33619645">Labour would not win</a> under him. </p>
<p>If Corbyn were to win the leader election, and if he were to shift the party to the left on issues such as public ownership, taxation and welfare. Is there any evidence that such policies would be electorally popular?</p>
<h2>Jez he can</h2>
<p>On the face of it there is some evidence of public support for what might be seen as leftist policies. A <a href="https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/hksp9figen/RedBoxResults_141126_political_issues_Website2.pdf">YouGov poll</a> in November 2014, for example, found 56% of the electorate supported nationalising utilities such as gas and electricity. A full 59% supported nationalising the railways.</p>
<p>There is also some evidence that the public has tired of austerity. A <a href="https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/gtjm0xqimo/InternalResults_150709_budget_W.pdf">poll</a> taken just after the government’s July budget, for example, found that 51% thought limiting public sector pay rises to 1% for the next four years was the “wrong priority”.</p>
<p>There is even some evidence that the left may represent the largest single group in the electorate. In <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/03/22/scotland-are-left-rest-uk-almost-every-issue/">March 2015</a>, 30% of YouGov respondents indicated that they thought of themselves as left of centre, while 24% thought of themselves as on the right.</p>
<h2>No he can’t</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, this rosy view of the electorate, does of course ignore its fundamental ambivalence. For every survey question that implies a leftish electorate, there is another (or indeed more) that provides precisely the opposite impression.</p>
<p>The post-budget poll, for example, also suggested that there was 84% support for the Conservative policy of increasing personal income tax allowances. There was also 54% support for increasing the inheritance tax thresholds and even 46% support for freezing working-age welfare payments.</p>
<p>And while it is true that 30% of YouGov respondents thought of themselves as left of centre, 15% of that 30% indicated that they thought of themselves as only slightly left of centre. In total 50% thought of themselves as centre-left, centrist or centre right (and a further 26% declined to accept any label). The political extremes are occupied by party members, bloggers and political hacks. The political centre is stuffed full of ordinary – voting – people.</p>
<h2>Shifting left and right</h2>
<p>Since it is always possible to cherry pick individual survey items, it is far better to weigh all the evidence. And since the ideological balance of opinion depends on the question that is posed, it is far better to focus on changing responses to the same question over time.</p>
<p>The below graph summarises responses to more than 700 questions and 5,000 observations on a wide range of survey items that are standardised to produce a single estimate of the policy mood – the electorate’s average preferences across all issues – from 1964 to the present day. Higher scores represent a more left-wing electorate, lower scores a more right-wing electorate.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89657/original/image-20150724-8451-ifcd6w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89657/original/image-20150724-8451-ifcd6w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89657/original/image-20150724-8451-ifcd6w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89657/original/image-20150724-8451-ifcd6w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89657/original/image-20150724-8451-ifcd6w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89657/original/image-20150724-8451-ifcd6w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89657/original/image-20150724-8451-ifcd6w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89657/original/image-20150724-8451-ifcd6w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The policy mood.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We can see that the aggregate preferences of the electorate evolve over time. The pattern in the earlier period is a little confused but from 1974 onwards it is clear that the electorate moves right under Labour governments (1974-9 and 1997-2010) and left under Conservative governments (1979-97 and 2010-15).</p>
<p>Focusing on the past five years, it can be seen that the electorate has – and contrary to the pronouncements of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/21/liz-kendall-labour-leadership-election">Liz Kendall</a> and Blair – very definitely moved to the left. Indeed, the electorate is now collectively where it was in 2005 when New Labour won its third successive victory.</p>
<p>But if Labour was to move further to the left it would reduce or eliminate this slowly accumulating advantage. A lurch to the left would open up a space and provide the Liberal Democrats with an opportunity to re-establish itself as a party of the centre left.</p>
<p>A leftward movement would also have consequential impacts on Labour’s reputation for economic competence, in particular further eroding business support for any social democratic programme.</p>
<p>Corbyn’s strategy of moving left has also been tried twice before – in February <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/background/pastelec/ge74feb.shtml">1974</a> and 1983. In both elections, these moves were associated with massive reductions in Labour’s share of the vote and a dramatic rise in support for the parties of the centre.</p>
<p>And in any case, the British political agenda will be dominated by the Conservative party for the next five years. David Cameron and George Osborne have sought – perhaps implausibly – to portray themselves as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/19/george-osborne-labour-welfare-commons-vote">centrists</a> on issues such as welfare reform. They are likely to continue to produce policy proposals designed to embarrass Labour by forcing it to adopt positions supported by minorities.</p>
<p>If Corbyn were able to shift Labour to the left, it may energise a new generation of activists, help break Labour’s association with sleaze and the unpopular Iraq war. But in virtually every other respect, it will be electorally damaging.</p>
<p>The Labour party does not have a right to exist. It can no longer rely on vast reserves of tribal support. Blair’s warning that Labour can only win by occupying the centre is, therefore, a case of right message, wrong messenger.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45193/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Bartle receives funding from the British Academy.</span></em></p>Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of being unelectable as a Labour leader. Could this be true?John Bartle, Reader in Politics, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/451812015-07-24T15:54:25Z2015-07-24T15:54:25ZCorbynomics: a blend of economic reason and political fantasy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89646/original/image-20150724-8461-1coowsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jeremy getting in touch with his pre-Thatcher side.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Garry Knight</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For those expecting a leaky raft of uncosted populist promises, <a href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/jeremyforlabour/pages/70/attachments/original/1437556345/TheEconomyIn2020_JeremyCorbyn-220715.pdf?1437556345">Jeremy Corbyn’s economic programme</a> is shockingly reasonable in tone. It begins by praising wealth creation, and revolves round a commitment to attack the UK budget deficit more effectively than the Conservatives. The veteran “leftist” promises to close the current deficit if George Osborne has not done so by 2020, and not to re-open it.</p>
<p>Corbyn’s main premise, that “faster growth and higher wages must be key to bringing down the deficit”, is hardly controversial. It is only because the UK economy has returned to growth – <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32145954">faster than that of any other big industrial country last year</a> – that most voters (outside Scotland) had the confidence to elect a party planning more welfare cuts for those out of, or in low-paid, work. </p>
<p>Until growth resumed in 2013, deficit reduction had <a href="http://niesr.ac.uk/blog/deficit-falling#.VbEYr_lViko">relied largely on cuts in public investment</a> – an unsustainable approach because it endangers longer-term expansion. The Conservatives have themselves endorsed a <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/summer-budget-2015-chancellors-big-pay-rise-for-britain-9-an-hour-living-wage-10375119.html">substantial rise in minimum wages</a>, recognising this will counter the use of tax credits as a subsidy to lower-paying employers. </p>
<h2>Guilty secret</h2>
<p>Careful emphasis on the current deficit hides the guilty secret of Corbyn’s plan. He is happy for deficits to continue on the capital budget – the money set aside for capital expenditure – enabling a future Labour government to borrow more for public investment. Anglo-Saxon economies have <a href="http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/separate-capital-budget-to-fix.html">long been unique</a> in lumping public capital and current spending together, so that re-stocking the Department of Transport’s canteen is the same kind of “expense” as building a new railway. Corbyn’s plan relies on ending this accounting separation, for which private businesses would be ridiculed but Whitehall has a perennial affection. </p>
<p>The projects that fall to the public sector, because private firms can’t raise the funds or take the risk, are also those that are <a href="http://www.citylab.com/work/2013/07/why-mega-projects-end-costing-way-more-expected/6364/">most likely to go off course and over-budget</a>. So UK governments have stuck to an accounting convention which leaves most investment to private initiative, and calls on private-sector discipline for the few projects that the state still undertakes.</p>
<p>Economists have repeatedly found that the returns to public investment <a href="http://www.epi.org/publication/bp348-public-investments-outside-core-infrastructure/">actually match or exceed those of most private projects</a>, and that it makes sense for the Treasury to undertake them because its borrowing costs are lower than even the most creditworthy corporation. </p>
<p>But at the most recent election, Labour was <a href="http://www.centreforcities.org/blog/why-are-politicians-so-reluctant-to-talk-about-borrowing-to-invest/">no keener than the coalition parties</a> to argue that governments should still borrow for investment. That’s why Corbyn’s stance so upsets the three rival candidates.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89647/original/image-20150724-8465-1dozmmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89647/original/image-20150724-8465-1dozmmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89647/original/image-20150724-8465-1dozmmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89647/original/image-20150724-8465-1dozmmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89647/original/image-20150724-8465-1dozmmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89647/original/image-20150724-8465-1dozmmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89647/original/image-20150724-8465-1dozmmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What are you protesting about Mr Corbyn? ‘What'cha got?’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jasin</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is also much evidence to support Corbyn’s claims that the UK has suffered the <a href="http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/cp422.pdf">longest fall in real wages</a> for more than a century, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/may/23/concerns-health-uk-economy-gdp-growth-ons">“disastrous” investment</a>; and <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21652310-britains-stall-productivity-more-serious-any-rich-world-peer-closer-look">productivity performance</a>, a widening <a href="http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/bop/balance-of-payments/q3-2014/sty-current-account--income-balance-and-net-international-investment-position.html">external payments deficit</a>, and a spread of <a href="http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/poverty-jobs-worklessness-summary.pdf">low-paid and insecure jobs</a>; which means that per capita GDP is still <a href="http://www.primeeconomics.org/dataday/uk-gdp-quarterly-rise-of-03-confirmed-but-gdp-per-person-up-just-01">no higher than in 2008</a>. </p>
<p>His observations on the extent to which the government could close the deficit by curbing the avoidance of taxes, without having to raise them, <a href="http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2015/07/22/a-rare-politician/">are endorsed</a> by the accounting expert behind the widely respected Tax Research UK.</p>
<h2>Thatcher casualty</h2>
<p>For all this conformity with economic data (and with the opinions of many far-from-left-wing economists), Corbyn’s prescriptions will be dismissed as unaffordable and irresponsible. Critics will say, with some reason, that the electorate has heard it all before – in the <a href="http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/labours_alternative_economic_strategy_40_years_on">Alternative Economic Strategy (AES)</a>, which the Labour left devised to restore growth after the worldwide slump of the early 1970s. Most voters dismissed the AES as a Bennite fantasy and reached instead for the free-market remedy proposed by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives.</p>
<p>A key architect of the AES, Wynne Godley, <a href="http://www.amielandmelburn.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/81_07_12.pdf">correctly foresaw</a> the collapse in investment and exports that would result from the Thatcherite programme and was <a href="http://www.levyinstitute.org/publications/wynne-godley">similarly prescient</a> about the global crisis that would eventually result from over-reliance on deregulated markets. But because Labour was in power in 2008, it will <a href="http://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/how-can-labour-say-it-didnt-crash.html">forever be accused of causing the global crash</a>, however unjust that accusation seems to those who crunch the GDP and fiscal-deficit numbers.</p>
<p>Two years ago, UK commentators <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bad-news-for-george-osborne-surprise-as-deficit-rises-despite-uks-growth-momentum-8778037.html">expressed surprise</a> that the way the budget deficit rose as the economy began to grow again. They tended to overlook the equally plausible view that growth had returned because the government relaxed its deficit targets, a backdoor reversion to Plan B. </p>
<p>Ed Balls, though an accomplished economist and journalist, never succeeded in explaining how immediate deficit reduction might defeat itself by causing double-dip recession. Even the <a href="http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2012/02/pdf/c3.pdf">IMF’s warning</a> that premature efforts to borrow less could be self-defeating due to slower growth was unable to dissuade the Treasury from its squeeze on all public spending, or the public from supporting it.</p>
<p>Since he can hardly cite such authorities as allies, Corbyn’s “The Economy in 2020” is destined to be dismissed as a burst of moral outrage that would bust the economy. And if – as he suggests – the present recovery is so unbalanced as to be hitting current account and inflation problems by 2020, the low interest rates and recovering profits that could now make it workable will have gone by the time he could launch it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45181/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Shipman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The frontrunner for the Labour leadership has some good ideas that were rejected by voters when they elected Margaret Thatcher.Alan Shipman, Lecturer in Economics, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/451772015-07-24T15:25:19Z2015-07-24T15:25:19ZWell Labour, this is what happens when you crowdsource a leadership election<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89640/original/image-20150724-7581-dgj8v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The left-wing candidate is drawing support from untapped quarters.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lewishamdreamer/19417134345/in/photolist-vzPTyn-3j3y7Y-3Ls1En-vTTEgN-waRP2f-vTTF7h-om7CxS-om7TNa-3iY8XT-oEnm5X-o7HvAs-oqY7MD-oopmRR-oTGF3K-pLVMtJ-ou7Aqw-8ZatUS-oBHKNz-HihJt-rRyD2L-k6WpFb-oFoHoE-3j3uR1-sMQpyd-r2iuBC-qZyGVg-hE5oza-9SZa9Q-9SZ8Wh-9SZ97G-9SWj8a-9SWiYz-9SZ9QU-9SWk3v-9SZ9Z7-9SWjgT-9SWjQ6-9SZ9FW-9SWkKp-5PMc3y-5PM9LU-5PGSrK-qn5pmX-qZwr3t-qZxhm8-nLBzmg-r2rpvR-rgAdeN-s8dHeh-riLYwD">Jasn</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Labour’s soporific leadership election burst into life with the publication of a <a href="https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ul79cmahd5/LabourLeadership_150721_day_one_W.pdf">YouGov poll</a> for The Times, which put the veteran left-wing candidate Jeremy Corbyn 17 points ahead of his nearest rival, Andy Burnham, on first preferences.</p>
<p>Corbyn’s surge prompted a rare intervention in Labour affairs by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/22/tony-blair-labour-will-not-win-if-it-steps-away-from-centre-ground">Tony Blair</a>, who urged his party to remain in the centre-ground. There has undoubtedly been a shift to the left inside the Labour Party on Corbyn’s principal campaign issue of austerity. Nevertheless, the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/23/labour-leadership-contest-jeremy-corbyn">belief</a> among <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11757373/Labour-is-not-having-a-full-blown-nervous-breakdown.-Yet....html">pundits</a> and bookmakers appears to be that he will eventually be overtaken by either Burnham or Yvette Cooper.</p>
<p>In normal circumstances, I would have readily agreed. My own <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/electing-and-ejecting-party-leaders-in-britain-thomas-quinn/?sf1=barcode&st1=9781137516718">research</a> on leadership elections demonstrates that when parties are divided, they invariably choose leaders who offer unity. The YouGov poll suggests that Burnham is the unity candidate in the current Labour leadership contest.</p>
<p>But Labour’s new selection system makes this election unpredictable. In 2014, the party replaced its old electoral college with a <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-political-parties-choose-their-leaders-41534">one-member-one vote</a> system, albeit one that includes more participants than just individual party members. </p>
<p>In the old system, the votes of MPs, party members and affiliated organisations each made up a third of the college. In the <a href="http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/%7Etquinn/labour_party.htm">2010 Labour leadership election</a>, union members tilted to the left and were decisive in handing victory to Ed Miliband. Union members will again be allowed to participate but this time as “affiliated supporters” with votes equal in weight to those of individual party members.</p>
<p>A new category of “registered supporter” has also been created. Members of the public can pay £3 to confirm their support for Labour’s values, and in return are permitted to vote in leadership elections. To little fanfare, Labour has effectively created an open primary system for selecting its leader.</p>
<p>MPs have lost the voting section they previously had in the electoral college, so their votes are now worth the same as any other individual member, affiliated supporter or registered supporter. However, as a sweetner, they were given greater gate-keeping powers when the system changed. All leadership candidates need to be nominated by 15% of Labour MPs (up from 12.5%) to even stand in the election.</p>
<h2>Asleep on the watch</h2>
<p>If the MPs had taken their gate-keeping duties seriously, Corbyn would not have got his name on the ballot. However, he managed to pass the 15% threshold because some MPs “lent” him their nominations in order to broaden the debate in the party, while having no intention of voting for him.</p>
<p>At least 14 of his nominators fell into this category and it is starting to look like they made a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11756688/Half-of-the-Labour-MPs-who-backed-Jeremy-Corbyn-desert-him.html">disastrous miscalculation</a>.</p>
<p>Everything now rests on the members, affiliated supporters and registered supporters. It is extremely easy for individuals to join one of these categories and participate in the election – it takes no more than a few clicks on Labour’s website and the payment of a very small fee by 12 August at the latest. </p>
<p>The system is so open that the Conservative-supporting <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11741861/How-you-can-help-Jeremy-Corbyn-win-and-destroy-the-Labour-Party.html">Daily Telegraph</a> urged its readers to register and vote for Corbyn, in a bid to “destroy Labour”.</p>
<h2>Voting at £3 a pop</h2>
<p>The greater danger for Labour moderates, however, lies in genuine left-wingers signing up to vote. After Labour’s two election defeats in 2010 and 2015, it paradoxically enjoyed membership surges. Individual <a href="http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN05125/SN05125.pdf">membership rose</a> from 156,000 in 2009 to 193,000 a year later. In the two months since the 2015 election, party membership has increased by 55,000 to about 250,000. Another 50,000 union members may have been signed up as affiliated supporters by the Unite union alone. Unite has formally endorsed Corbyn’s leadership bid.</p>
<p>It might seem strange that a defeated party could appear so appealing but there is a logic to it. After defeat, a party’s direction of travel is up for debate. That is especially true when there is a leadership election, which effectively means the party starts with a blank slate. For many on the left, excluded from influence during the Blair years, a leadership contest is an opportunity to make their case.</p>
<p>Like most major European parties, Labour has suffered a long-term decline in its membership as people’s partisan loyalties have weakened. An extra 55,000 members is just 0.1% of the British electorate, but it is a huge number in a party with a small membership. And such a sudden infusion can have have a transformative effect on a moribund organisation.</p>
<p>YouGov’s poll indicates that those who have joined Labour’s leadership electorate since its 2015 election defeat are significantly more likely to support Corbyn than those who have been long-term members. In a head-to-head, the new electors prefer Corbyn to Burnham by 60-40 whereas pre-2010 members prefer Burnham by 54-46. The affiliated and registered supporters prefer Corbyn by 69-31.</p>
<p>Of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/22/jeremy-corbyn-could-lose-frontbenchers-if-elected-labour-leader">the new members</a>, one third are under the age of 30 and their most common age is 18. Young people can become full members for just £1 per month or simply pay £3 to become registered supporters.</p>
<p>Like many young people, they may be idealistic and looking for a principled leader who will seek to change the world, rather than engage in the routine incrementalism and compromise characteristic of mainstream politics. And whereas in the past, a leadership election would have passed many of these people by, in the age of social media, they can engage with it much more readily.</p>
<p>Not only might they discuss the issues but they can also mobilise for collective action, which becomes more likely as its goal appears more achievable. In no time at all, the word is spread online and a force far beyond the control of Labour MPs is unleashed.</p>
<p>And it’s all been made possible by an open selection system and a nomination fail-safe that was deliberately deactivated by the MPs themselves.</p>
<p>These new members might well become Labour’s cyber-left, comparable to the SNP’s infamous <a href="https://theconversation.com/cybernats-chase-down-no-camp-online-as-scotlands-indyref-approaches-31586">cyber-nats</a>. But questions remain over whether they have signed up to the idea of a reformist Labour Party or are the standard-bearers of a new electronic entryism.</p>
<p>The leadership contest remains up for grabs and Burnham or Cooper may yet pull Corbyn back. But Labour’s new selection system could have a sting in the tail. Affiliated supporters will likely lean to the left and unions such as Unite are continuing to sign up more every day. Having shed its most centrist leader in history just eight years ago, Labour may be about to get its most left-wing helmsman of all time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45177/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Quinn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Labour has made it really easy to vote in this contest, and Jeremy Corbyn is reaping the benefit.Tom Quinn, Senior Lecturer, Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.