7 lessons from 10 years of the Red Train Blog
Today this blog turns ten years old. Whoo! Happy birthday. This blog has lived for ten times longer than the period where we took Nick Clegg seriously.
It’s been exciting (and quite emotionally draining) to write about politics for the last ten years. I have a new appreciation for why “may you live through interesting times” is a curse.
In the ten years of this blog’s existence we have had the London riots, austerity, the student protest movement, the 2015 election, the referendum, the 2017 election, Brexit, the 2019 election, Donald Trump and now the Covid-19 pandemic. Plus hundreds of things that seemed like the biggest thing in the world for one week. Remember Change UK? No, me neither.
Oh, Jeremy Corbyn
To stop this ten years anniversary post being so long that it takes ten years to read, I decided to focus on one thing. From the perspective of a British left-wing politics blog the most significant thing that has happened in the last ten years was Jeremy Corbyn’s time as leader of the Labour Party.
For a little over four years the radical left took over the Labour Party and fought two general elections where, theoretically, the public could have elected a left-wing government. In May 2015 this seemed impossible, but by June 2017 it seemed tantalisingly close.
Ultimately the Corbyn project failed, and I don’t want to relitigate the Corbyn era as a lot of ink has already been spilled about this recent chapter of history (some of it by me). Instead, I want to use this ten year anniversary post to outline seven lessons from the Corbyn years that the left can use going forwards. So, sit back, put some Billy Bragg on the stereo and prepare to reflect.
We cannot fight everyone at once
If we can learn anything from the Corbyn years it’s that the left cannot fight everyone from the soft-left to the far-right at once and win. Corbyn’s constant internal battles in the Labour Party made him look ineffectual and that put off voters (probably more than anything else). One of the strengths of the right is that they band together behind whichever candidate is likely to take down the left (from Trump to Boris Johnson). The left takes any opportunity to fight itself.
This is partly because there are people on the centre left who believe that the radical left must be stopped at all costs (even if that cost is perpetual right-wing rule). I guess you have to admire the conviction of someone who will sacrifice their entire movement for their principled belief that socialism is awful.
I’m not sure what can be done about the fact that most of the people on the left will self-destruct our half of the political spectrum at the slightest hint of the radical left getting near power. All I can say is that the left needs to fight amongst itself less and the radical left needs to remember that it cannot fight everyone and win. Maybe the left needs to collectively go to mediation? It would be better than what we’ve been through.
We need to work on our credibility
Many of the policy ideas that Corbyn included in his manifestos (that the left has been campaigning for for years) are popular. From free broadband, to nationalising the railways, to more taxes on the wealthiest, proper left-wing policies have more support than many on the centre left care to admit. The problem? Voters don’t want these things if they’re offered by Labour.
The Labour brand and (and Corbyn when he was Labour leader) became a spray varnish you could apply to anything to make it less popular. If Labour offered it, voters either didn’t want it or thought that Labour couldn’t deliver it.
Although focus groups showed, if isolated from the Labour brand, these policies were popular. This is why Keir Starmer has focused on improving the Labour brand - although he’s going about it in a completely cack-handed way. Labour and the left have a credibility issue we urgently need to overcome. The left needs to convince the electorate that the things we are offering are possible and that we can be trusted to deliver them.
We need to build up a better pool of talent
Corbyn was a sweet old man who campaigned for social justice his whole life, but he also practiced being disengaged from the work that needed to be done to get a radical left Labour government into power at an Olympic level. If we want power then the left needs to rely on more than a few people who have been on the back benches for 30 years and haven’t run anything more complicated than a Marxist discussion group.
The greatest long term impact of Corbyn might be expanding the left’s pool of talent. The ranks of the left in parliament are stronger now than when Corbyn became Labour leader. There are many promising left-wing MPs from Rebecca Long-Bailey to Dawn Butler.
This also applies to the media as well. Owen Jones can’t be a one man broadcasting system for the left (regardless of how much he’s killing it on YouTube right now). To win power, the left needs people on the insides of key institutions, from parliament to the media. We can’t just sit outside the corridors of power complaining it’s all stacked against us and expect things to change.
We need to talk about the media less
This brings me to another - likely to be unpopular - point: the left needs to complain about the media less. I’m not saying that the huge reach of the right-wing press isn’t a problem for the left, or that the BBC has lived up to its values of being impartial. I am worried that a sense of defeatism is creeping into the left.
People say that we cannot win while the media is against us. Therefore we will never win and we should all go back to our townhouses in Hackney and wait for the end. We need power to change the media. Breaking up the right-wing press barons’ stranglehold on the truth won’t be possible without the power of the state. The left needs to work with the media we have now to get the media we want.
We have done great work building up blogs, YouTube channels, Twitter communities and alternative news sources that inform and educate comrades (and these give me strength in the dark moments where I’m thinking of ending it all and becoming a millennial personal finance YouTuber) however, without using the mainstream media we risk creating a parallel eco-system that doesn’t spread our ideas, is too insular, spreads conspiracy theories and only appeals to people who already share our politics. Yeah the media is a problem. We need to change this and not sulk.
We need to fight the culture war and win
While we’re on the subject of media fights: the left shouldn't be shy about the things we believe, even if they piss people off. We need to be unapologetic in our support of trans rights, better treatment of migrants and equality of all people regardless of race, class, gender identity or anything else.
Starmer’s attempts to avoid Labour being dragged into the culture wars are going about as well as everything else he does. There’s no way around the culture wars to power, only through. Also, perish the thought of the left standing against racial equality or trans rights and winning. We’ll never out-social conservative the Tories, and I wouldn’t want us to.
The right will call us “woke” or “out of touch” but with courage we can make arguments for a more socially just world. The huge change in the status of gay-rights in my life time shows that consensuses can change. What’s unacceptable to one generation is common sense to the next. The culture war is a way to show that the left stands for equality and that everyone else is against it.
We need to get serious about the environment
This is the biggest issue facing the left-right now as it contains all other issues. From the power of big corporations to racial inequality, there is nothing that is not connected to the oncoming environmental catastrophe. The way the climate is changing will make all social and economic problems in our society worse, but the left can lead the charge for a better, greener future.
Young people, i.e. the future of our movement, are not only strongly motivated by this issue but understand how it relates to everything else they care about, from racial equality to global development, to ethical eating. Corbyn’s greatest success was drawing energetic young people into Labour by showing them that radical change is possible. The environment is where this radical change needs to be. The youth know it. The left knows it. Everyone needs to know it.
It’s not too late to save the world from the damage that hundreds of years of greed and ignorance has caused. The left needs to put this issue front and centre to show that left-wing policies are the solutions that the world needs.
We need to talk about how we can make the future better
Related to this is the idea that the left needs to have a positive vision of what the future will be like. What we need to do is show how the world can be greener, fairer, more just, and generally a better place to live, if we enact left-wing policies. Fear is seductive, especially the way the right uses it, but a positive story about a better future will win out.
Corbyn won massively in his two leadership elections not because people thought he was electoral dynamite, the 2010s Tony Blair, but because he embodied the idea that the future could be better than the present. Whereas everyone who stood against him embodied the idea that managed decline was the best Labour could realistically offer. What is Labour’s story about the future now? Buggered if I know.
A positive vision of a better future can convince people. People, young and old, suffering under late capitalism need hope of how the world can be better before they act. Let’s give it to them.
The next ten years
The left came closer to power in 2017 (and in 2019) than I thought possible in early 2015. Millions of people voted for a radical left platform led by an outspoken socialist Labour leader. If you told me this would happen when I started this blog ten years ago, I wouldn’t have believed you.
When I started this blog it was to critique capitalism and outline arguments for socialism and social justice. These critiques and arguments have moved from the fringes to being central to our political discourse in the last ten years. This is an astonishing change that happened very quickly. I can’t begin to imagine what the next ten years will bring.
Things look dark now. Between a global pandemic, resurgent far-right nationalism and a looming climate disaster, the future looks pretty bleak. However, there is also a lot to be hopeful for in the next ten years, from the radicalism of young people, to the spread of left-wing ideas, to the outpouring of collective kindness that the pandemic has brought.
There’s a lot of work to be done, lessons to be learned and campaigning to do, but I believe that a vision of a better, fairer future will win out. It’s been an unbelievable ten years writing this blog. I’m excited (and a little scared) about what the next ten years will bring.
