Since Jeremy Corbyn gathered enough nominations from the
Parliamentary Labour Party, in order to stand as Leader, the number of
supporters, trade union affiliate members, and party members, has shot up.
Jeremy’s campaign events are packed. An event in Hackney recently saw three
teenagers attempting to climb through a window, just to hear him speak. There
is no doubt that Jeremy’s campaign is moving people.
However, there is an established view: that Labour can only
win a general election by stealing back votes from certain cohorts of Great
Britain, that have turned away from Labour in the recent past, those that lent
their votes to the Conservative Party, the Liberals, UKIP. This is the majority
view of the Parliamentary Labour Party, or at least the shadow cabinet, and
pays no attention to the additional votes that can be achieved by enthusing the
electorate with a new vision, a different vision, Jeremy Corbyn’s vision.
As this is the established view, Jeremy and his campaign is
a worry for many MPs. If Jeremy wins the leadership, can he ever become the
leader of the Nation? The established view, suggests he cannot, as his progressive
brand of anti-austerity politics seeks to ignite new interest in politics, and
work on the untapped resource of the disenfranchised, as opposed to attempting
to draw back those members of the electorate on the centre right of politics. As
this is Jeremy’s clear campaign strategy, and, as the polls suggest he is
likely to win, the Parliamentary Labour Party may well tear him down if he does.
Ed Miliband’s reforms, to the way
Labour elects its leaders, now gives equal weight to the grassroots votes, as
those of the PLP. However, in order to gain nomination in the first place, an
MP must have the support of 15% of the PLP (35 MPs). This may not sound like a
lot but, irrespective of the grassroots support for Jeremy, he would not have
been nominated in the first place, had certain members of the PLP not decided
to lend their support to Jeremy in the name of widening the debate, something
they no doubt wish they had not done in retrospect?
The Majority of the PLP, see
Jeremy as a member of the tolerated. It isn’t hard to imagine a situation where
his parliamentary colleagues, post leadership election, opportunistically rally
against him, for fear he cannot win the general election in 2020. Under current
guidelines, in order to unseat a Labour leader, 20% of the Parliamentary Labour
Party (47 MPs), must approach Labour’s national executive committee, prior to
conference, with prospective replacements. This must be a very real worry for
Corbyn, especially if he wins the leadership by a nose.
Taking a leap of imagination into
the future: If MP’s were to attempt to unseat Corbyn, the Labour Leader, and
trigger another contest, the PLP would not likely make the same mistake again,
in allowing the grassroots their voice through Jeremy; they would not donate
nominations in the direction of any other left wing candidates. Any grassroots
vision, of a change to austerity politics, could potentially be snuffed out for
good, despite Jeremy winning.
This coup has already begun. Yvette
Cooper’s attacks on so called ‘corbynomics’ has been overly aggressive. And,
these are policy ideas that many economists, including Danny Blanchflower,
former member of the monetary policy committee, believe are “mainstream
economics”. According to Richard Murphy, the director of TaxResearch UK, and
the principal architect of Corbyn’s economic prospectus, Cooper’s campaign has
distorted the effect some of the policies may have.
Corbyn’s Peoples QE, Cooper
suggests, “is really bad economics. History
shows it hits your currency, hits investment, pushes up inflation and makes it
harder, not easier, to get the sustainable growth in a global economy we need
to tackle poverty and support our public services.” Richard Murphy
refutes this completely. “Quantitative easing for the people, is not the
same as quantitative easing for the banks,” which according to Murphy - the
kind of that which occurred in the last rounds of QE – served only to offer
costless money to speculators, and benefitted, on the whole, the upper quintile
of earners. The People’s QE, under Corbyn’s policy, would be for a specific
purpose. It would be impossible, says Murphy, for its proceeds to filter up.
Along with People’s QE would be a Bank of England mandate to invest in public
infrastructure projects and housing etc. As for Cooper suggesting QE caused
inflation, Murphy intimates that this is a campaign tactic, a falsehood, and
that inflation is required throughout Europe at this time, a time of low
inflation, in order to aid growth. So to fear, skyrocketing inflation, is
nonsense.
Yvette’s attacks on Corbyn’s (or
should I say, Murphy’s) economic plan, is not one borne out of genuine concern
for the average, or low paid workers of Britain. Yvette may suggest that a rise
in inflation, as a consequence of People’s QE, would hit us all as consumers
and affect the British Economy. She may suggest that ‘corbynomics’ would affect
the low paid negatively but, the truth is that it her views on regaining power
under Labour, sit contrary to adopting any economic prospectus that redistributes
wealth within our society. The Cooper camp would rather see an injection of
spending on infrastructure and housing etc., come from borrowing at incredibly
low interest rates. The difference between these policies, is that Yvette’s has
no effect of redistributing wealth within our society, and Corbyn’s does. By
borrowing to pay for public good, the public bear the cost of servicing the
debt, the public’s tax contributions suffer, the public pay for their infrastructure
and servicing the debt which of course adds to any budget deficit. And, if
Cooper’s camp lacks a redistributive taxation policy (which it does), the poor
public will suffer, either through tax rises at the bottom end of the earning
spectrum, or public service cuts.
Yvette isn’t alone in the
Parliamentary Labour Party, in striving to maintain the status quo. Her
economic ethos or something similar, is the view point shared by the majority
of Labour MPs. Whilst Yvette’s campaign has attempted to undermine Jeremy’s economic
competence, not a single mainstream journalist has put forward a substantive
critique of Cooper’s, or Burnham or Kendal’s, economic prospectus. Additionally,
I haven’t heard a critique of what each economic policy will really for the
poor or average earner in Britain, the Strivers. This is why Jeremy may
struggle, provided he is elected as leader, to retain his title. The PLP, want
him out. But if he isn’t there, inequality will rise, the status quo will
prevail.