‘The only thing that can defeat us is ourselves.’ – Denis Healey (1917 – 2015)

Denis Healey and Michael Foot (Credit: LabourList)

Denis Healey, the former Defence Secretary (1964-70) and Chancellor of the Exchequer (1974-79) died on Saturday after a short illness at the age of 98. He had been elected to the seat of Leeds South East in 1952, and Leeds East in 1955, and held the seat until his retirement in 1992. Seen as being on the moderate wing of the party, he backed James Callaghan and then Harold Wilson in the 1963 leadership election that followed Hugh Gaitskell’s death, and Wilson made him Shadow Defence Secretary.

When Harold Wilson eventually resigned thirteen years later, Healey lost out on the leadership to James Callaghan, who was regarded by the party as a less divisive figure. After Michael Foot replaced Callaghan as leader in 1980, Healey put himself forward for the deputy leadership, a contest he won narrowly over Tony Benn. The party split in 1981 and the ‘Gang of Four’ (Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers) left to form the SDP, but Healey refused to join them despite being asked a number of times. He stayed as deputy leader until 1983, and as Shadow Foreign Secretary until 1987.

Healey was a giant of the Labour movement, and by all accounts was a sane and moderate voice during the periods of Labour splits during the 1950s, 1970s and 1980s. Many regard his victory in the deputy leadership race as being a crucial moment in Labour’s eventual electoral recovery through the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1959, he gave a speech to Conference, part of which was being posted on social media yesterday after the news of his death was announced, an excerpt of which is below. Much of it could have been written today:

Hugh Gaitskell was absolutely right when he said yesterday that what gets cheers at this conference does not necessarily get votes at elections. If it did we would have won Devonport [the seat which Michael Foot had just lost]. There are far too many people who… want to luxuriate complacently in moral righteousness in Opposition. But who is going to pay the price for their complacency?

You can take the view that it it better to give up half a loaf if you cannot get the whole loaf, but the point is that it is not we who are giving up the half loaf. In Britain it is the unemployed and old aged pensioners, and outside Britain there are millions of people in Asia and Africa who desperately need a Labour Government in this country to help them. If you take the view that it is all right to stay in Opposition so long as your Socialist heart is pure, you will be ‘all right, Jack’. You will have your TV set, your motor car and your summer holidays on the Continent and still keep your Socialist soul intact. The people who pay the price for your sense of moral satisfaction are the Africans, millions of them, being slowly forced into racial slavery; the Indians and the Indonesians dying of starvation.

We are not just a debating society. We are not just a Socialist Sunday School. We are a great movement that wants to help real people living on this earth at the present time. We shall never be able to help them unless we get power. We shall never get their power unless we close the gap between our active workers and the average voter in the country.

And here he is, giving a speech to Labour Conference in Blackpool in 1977 as Chancellor of the Exchequer, 28 years to the day before his death, warning Labour of the dangers to its electoral prospects of infighting.

Polling roundup

A week since Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, and there have been a few polls published on the initial public reaction to him as leader of his party and to the prospect of him being leader of the country. The initial polling isn’t great, though should probably come with caveats: Corbyn has had a bad start to his time as leader, and as he makes appointments to his team, we might see things settle down. And of course, opinion polls do not have the best reputation for accuracy after the election in May.

Also, since his election last Saturday, the press has been fairly aggressive in exploiting his weaknesses. The public don’t really know him that well yet, and what they do know will have largely been gleaned through the prism of a media that, one might argue, doesn’t like him very much. Might his (well, Labour’s) numbers tick up a bit if he sticks around for a while and the press find something else to focus upon? It’s possible: even Michael Foot achieved double-digit leads over the Tories, albeit over thirty years ago.

This morning, The Independent published some polling by ORB that it said showed that Corbyn’s leadership has lost Labour a fifth of its voters, though this has been refuted by others. But as you can see from the graphic below, there is little evidence of the public regarding him as looking like a prime minister-in-waiting:

Tonight, Opinium have published a poll for The Observer showing a five point lead for the Tories over Labour, which is not disastrous given that the Tories have just won an outright majority, though 51% of those polled said that they did not think Labour could win an election with Jeremy Corbyn as leader. 22% said that they thought Corbyn would make the best prime minister, compared to 41% for Cameron. Meanwhile, ComRes published a poll tonight, also for The Independent, showing the Tories on 42% and Labour on 30%.

YouGov published findings a couple of days ago too, and they showed public expectations for how well Jeremy Corbyn will do to be at a fairly low level with almost half of all voters expecting him to do badly as leader, and a vast majority doubting that Labour will win the next election with him in charge. And, crucially – given that it is historically very difficult for a leader to win when this is the case – many of the public (50%) say that they do not trust him to run the economy.

It will be interesting to see over the coming weeks and months how the polling settles down. Corbyn’s distrust of the media has meant that he has been slow to define himself in the way that you must when you are first elected leader of the opposition, lest your enemies do it for you. We shall have to see whether his numbers improve or stay roughly the same as they are now. If it’s the latter, it will test to destruction the theory that Labour are reluctant to get rid of failing leaders before it is too late.

First few days in the job

At around 10pm on Sunday, after a slew of shadow front bench resignations and a drip-drip-drip of rumours of who would be in the shadow cabinet throughout the day, some actual announcements started to be made from Team Corbyn. Chuka Umunna had resigned mid-evening ‘by mutual consent’, citing concerns over what exactly the party would be campaigning for in the European Referendum later in the parliament. In doing so he joined a substantial group of centrist big-hitters and bright young things – which by now consists of Caroline Flint, Liz Kendall, Emma Reynolds, Dan Jarvis, Yvette Cooper, Chris Leslie, Tristram Hunt, and Rachel Reeves, amongst others – in retreating to the back benches. Some moderates did remain: Andy Burnham was named Shadow Home Secretary, while Hilary Benn remained in post as Shadow Foreign Secretary.

However, the big story was undoubtedly John McDonnell, who was named Shadow Chancellor (interestingly, this was held back, intentionally or not, until after the BBC Ten O’Clock News had gone off the air). There had been suggestions throughout the afternoon that there was a debate going on within Corbyn’s team about whether he should give the job to McDonnell, his long-term ally, or Angela Eagle, former Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury. In the end, the former won out over the latter: a controversial choice, not just for his political views and standing within the party- his appointment left MPs from all wings of Labour furious, according to the New Statesman‘s George Eaton – or because, of the two of them, Eagle was arguably better qualified for the post – but also for the fact that the appointment completed a top team – leader, deputy, Shadow Home Secretary, Shadow Foreign Secretary, and Shadow Chancellor – who were all white and all male.

Ultimately, Corbyn announced a top team who, overall, were more female than not, but he was unable to escape criticism nevertheless, and an excruciating video soon emerged of him refusing to respond to reporters whilst being pursued through the streets of London in the early hours of Monday morning by reporters. One them was Sky’s Darren McCaffrey, who wrote a fascinating account of being holed up all day in parliament trying to glean details of the reshuffle, describing the difficulties Team Corbyn had in securing someone for Shadow Defence (they had wanted Chris Bryant, but he turned it down).

“Andy is IN, Hilary is IN, Angela is IN,” was the line Rosie [Winterton, the re-appointed Opposition Chief Whip] would use in an attempt to win people over and get on board with Jezza’s shadow cabinet.

…

Rosie was back on the phone, we couldn’t tell who with.

“Now, this might be a bit of an outside idea, how do you feel about being shadow defence secretary?”

A pause. “Just, what are your views on Trident?”

A much, much longer pause. “But, are you willing to engage in a debate?”

…

Then a male voice, it sounded like [his advisor] Simon Fletcher.

“We are taking a fair amount of **** out there about women.

“We need to do a Mandelson. Let’s make Angela shadow first minister of state. Like Mandelson was. She can cover PMQs. Tom (Watson) knows about this. Do the Angela bit now.”

Minutes later a text from a Labour source. Angela Eagle was to be shadow first minister of state. She would deputise at Prime Minister’s Question Time.

***

Throughout the days since, there have been plenty of media missteps from the leadership – prevaricating over whether to campaign to stay in the EU in the upcoming referendum, whether to sing the national anthem, whether to kneel for the Queen. The overall impression has been a feeling of disorganisation, which is strange given how long Corbyn’s team has been sure of victory in the leadership election. There have been interesting little tidbits of news inbetween the media onslaught: Corbyn oversaw a somewhat frosty reception at his first PLP meeting (see the picture above that comes via The Guardian and speaks a thousand words… as one opposing MP told a reporter afterwards, ‘ah well, nobody died.’). Significantly, Sam Coates of The Times reported this week that Gloria de Piero and Michael Cashman were elected to the Conference Arrangements Committee, which, he said, was critical in determining what gets voted on by delegates at Conference. Jon Lansman, ‘who wants mandatory reselection of MPs’, got 37,270 votes, while De Piero got 109,888.

Meanwhile, Unison’s General Secretary, Dave Prentis, recalled the words of Neil Kinnock after the last leadership election of 2010, saying that ‘we have our party back… I can see nothing but good for the Labour Party.’ Paul Kenny, the General Secretary of the GMB union, asked whether he expected Corbyn to lead Labour into the next election, said on Radio 4: ‘I’m not sure if Jeremy expects to lead it into the election.’

Enter the wilderness years

We are living in interesting, not to say extraordinary times. Jeremy Corbyn has been elected as leader of the UK Labour Party following its defeat in the 2015 election under Ed Miliband. It was a stunning victory: he is perhaps the most left wing leader the party has ever had, further left than Michael Foot, who took Labour to crushing defeat in 1983. Though I find myself agreeing with much of what he says, there are profound doubts about what the broader electorate will make of him. To give a personal view, it feels as though, in the face of a largely small-c conservative electorate and a hostile press, it is all going to end in tears for both his supporters and all the people in this country who don’t want want a Tory government.

Perhaps this view turns out to be wrong, but yesterday felt like the football club you support appointing the lovable club secretary to taking charge of its Champions’ League campaign and announcing he’s going to deploy some good old-fashioned blood-and-thunder, lump-it-up-to-the-big-man play to overpower its opponents. Labour seems to face a similarly (if not more) daunting challenge as in the early 1980s, when the party split and it took the best part of two decades to recover, and I want to use this blog to follow this journey and examine the issues and challenges political parties in general tend to face in making themselves electable.