Revealed: how Jeremy Corbyn has reshaped the Labour party

[Denzil_DC]

Jeremy Corbyn’s hopes of remoulding Labour have been boosted by a detailed Guardian survey into the party at grassroots level that shows overwhelming support for him, a decisive shift to the left and unhappiness with squabbling among MPs.

The Guardian has interviewed Labour secretaries, chairs, other office holders and members from more than 100 of the 632 constituencies in England, Scotland and Wales. Almost every constituency party across the country we contacted reported doubling, trebling, quadrupling or even quintupling membership, and a revival of branches that had been moribund for years and close to folding.

Party membership figures are a controversial issue, with the former cabinet minister Peter Mandelson, who is opposed to Corbyn, telling a Labour meeting in the Lords last month that “30,000 long-term members have left the party, real members, tens of thousands”.

But the newly released figures undermine his claim, showing a total of 13,860 have left since the general election, some of them having resigned while others have gone as part of natural churn. The increase in membership is continuing, with just under 1,000 having joined since Christmas Eve.

The survey found:

* The rise in membership has been uneven across the country. In contrast with steep rises in London and elsewhere in England and Wales, the rises in Scotland have been relatively modest, ominous for the party’s hopes in May’s Scottish parliamentary election.
* Members, in spite of unhappiness with public splits within the PLP, say there is no appetite for deselection of MPs. But some acknowledge that proposed boundary changes in 2018 could result in de-facto deselection.
* Returning members, who had left Labour mainly in protest over the 2003 Iraq invasion, are making an immediate impact, partly because they are familiar with the rules.
* Both returning members and new ones tend to be mainly leftwing. There are few reports of attempted infiltration from hard-left groups.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/13/revealed-how-jeremy-corbyn-has-reshaped-the-labour-party?CMP=share_btn_tw

I don't have a direct axe to grind here. I'm in Scotland, and the survey's findings about "modest" membership rises there chime with my views - Labour, at least with its current useless leadership personnel in Scotland, is a spent force up here.

The challenge will be to convert a re-energized membership into activism and meaningful electoral votes. I'd be interested to hear how well any of the rest of this survey and its observations fit with your local experiences. My gut feel tells me that the continual ant-Corbynite backbiting and mixed messaging are likely to be much more of a turnoff than any policies proposed or perceived gaffes.

[Bad Dog]

1. Europe is what might make the difference.

I'm a Labour member, but I'm hardly active so I can't comment on any increased militancy in my area. There are two schools of thought, and I really don't know which one is right.

The first one is that Corbyn is just repeating the mistakes of the 1980s, his policies are not in tune with those of the British people and he will never be prime minister.

The second one is that Corbyn will get the disillusioned non voters and the youth galvanised and will be swept to power in a new tide of populism.

I honestly don't know which one is right, but Scotland does show a good example of how to get young people engaged. The referendum got young people engaged in politics, and it's very telling that the Tories do not want to follow Scotland's lead and lower the voting age to 16.

Young people are overwhelmingly pro Europe, they like being able to cross the channel without restrictions and work in Europe, even if it's only a Summer job in Amsterdam or behind the bar in Corfu. They need to be told of the consequences of leaving and that the doddery UKIP supporters, many of whom haven't even been abroad, really don't care about their future, they want to recreate an idealised past where racist jokes are tolerated and gay marriage is banned.

If young people can be persuaded to get out and vote to stay in Europe they're more likely to vote in the next General Election. That's where the battle should be fought, and it's winnable.

[Denzil_DC]

2. Yes, I think you identify an important point in the generational issue.

For instance, in Scotland, polls have shown a consistent successive trend in that the younger generations tend to support Scottish independence far more strongly than the older ones.

How it'll pan out in other political issues UK-wide, I've no idea. It would be nice to think that younger generations become progressively less hidebound and more liberal (to adopt the US framing of the term, rather than the UK one), but I don't know whether that's uniformly the case. I suspect there may be a drive toward greater pragmatism, rather than the strict old tribal paradigms of left and right, which have each failed people in their own ways over the years.

Although the SNP is usually identified as left of centre - certainly to the left of the traditional major UK political parties - I think the key to the party's appeal has been pragmatism in the here and now allied to the presentation of a positive vision of the future, which Labour has been very slow and resistant to cotton on to up here.

The movement attached to Corbyn (which I hope will survive Corbyn whatever his own political future) could maybe tap into that sort of appeal in the rest of the UK (I doubt many would believe the Scottish Labour Party if it tried to encroach on that ground in Scotland - it has a lot of amends to make, and needs wholesale reform, which isn't going to happen under the current leadership, largely to the right of Corbyn), but the main battleground it needs to address first seems to be intra-party. Unless Labour presents a more united and outward-looking face, I can see the new influx of members quickly becoming disillusioned.

[T_i_B]

3. Trouble is, it's the old who vote

And Britain is a country with an ageing population.

The Tories 2015 election triumph is due to them beating Labour handsomely for the OAP vote, and UKIP's platform is designed to appeal squarely to the elderly with no thought given to a working man's concerns.

So like it or not, Labour needs to appeal to the elderly much much more.

I agree about the infighting point though. It's a huge turnoff if a party is preoccupied with fighting itself over fighting for Britain.

[LeftishBrit]

4. There is an obvious way that Labour could attract the elderly away from the Tories...

put far more funding into social care. Social care has long been the Cinderella of public spending, and with the general Tory public spending cuts combined with the ageing of the population, it has become a very serious problem.

The NHS is also an issue that affects the elderly disproportionately, though of course it affects everyone.

[Denzil_DC]

6. Yes, that's certainly been the case.

But a lot of the discussion seems to hinge on poaching those who already vote from other rival parties.

My argument all along is about the need to convert non-voters - who, if they'd formed an electoral bloc, would have been a major force to reckon with in the last general election, possibly even a plurality, if not a majority - into voters. I'm talking about people who disenfranchise themselves, through cynicism, despair, distraction, whatever.



The black shading on that map illustrates a hypothetical showing for the "Apathy Party" in 2010. If they'd all voted, it would have broken down like this:

1. The Apathy Party 438 seats

2. Conservatives 168 seats

3. Lib Dems 27 seats

4. Labour 16 seats

Source: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/general-election-2015-how-uk-9201348

I think Labour has an opportunity to do this. If it doesn't, somebody else will likely beat it to the draw, and as that breakdown shows, it's most vulnerable to this sort of development.

It may come down to relatively simple things (other than cutting out the internal backbiting, which we all seem to agree is disastrous), but probably not so easy to put into practice against traditionalist resistance. I remember my own experiences getting involved in my CLP - it was so ritualized, with points of order, remarks through the chair etc. It was largely modelled on the trades union movement. And that's before we consider the internal politics in branches, which were often quite rancid and sometimes reflected slights and rivalries and often uneasy alliances going back decades. I gritted my teeth and got through it, but it was all quite arcane, and if I hadn't been so committed, I'd have probably bailed out long before I did.

Younger generations and other sectors of society who tend not to turn out for elections may be more open to messages coming from people nearer their own age groups, social background and localities. That could snowball. But it's likely to meet dogged resistance from supporters of the status quo.

[T_i_B]

7. I think it's much easier for politicians to target those who already vote

As opposed to those who haven't got into the habit. Also, if a politician can't persuade you to vote for them, the next best thing for the politician is for you not to vote as that way none of their rivals will benefit from you not voting for them. Hence all the nonsense you hear from politicians about how not voting for their party is a "wasted vote".

I agree that getting involved in political parties needs to be something that is enjoyable and rewarding for grassroots members. Otherwise the party won't be able to compete at a local level. And I do worry that the people who run things in Westminster often don't seem to grasp this point. There's only so far that political parties can go with central control.

You say that it may come down to relatively simple things, and IMHO one major problem for Labour is that for some time they've been doing the basic things badly.

And it's also worth remembering that many of these problems also apply to the Lib Dems, who now face an uphill struggle just to survive as a party.

[Bad Dog]

5. I agree with you all

Social care, (and mental health) are the poor cousins, and it's the old who vote. My point about Europe is that it's a chance to get the young to vote, like in Scotland, and show them they can make a difference.

And none of that will happen until the party shows some bloody unity.