This was an election with one big story and a host of smaller ones. Some of these, such as the results in Scotland, were obviously consequential. Others were harder to interpret and one of the hardest is what happened to Labour’s left.
The most obvious result – and the one that most delighted former Labour members forcibly or voluntarily exiled from their party – was the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North. He now holds the only seat in inner London which is not Labour and you can pick the ironies out of that.
Except briefly following one Survation poll, which showed him behind, it always seemed most likely that Corbyn would win. He had a massive advantage in name recognition, a good reputation as a local MP and with Labour universally predicted to be heading for a landslide, he could be safely supported without the fear of helping the Conservatives.
I’m reasonably sure – not least anecdotally – that the same dynamic held true for many younger voters who felt able to vote Green or for other independents and it was an explicit canvassing argument for activists off to Labour’s left.
I was struck, however, by a tweet on Friday from one of the left’s most ubiquitous public figures, the commentator Grace Blakeley. Summarising the election results, Blakely wrote that “Jeremy Corbyn and four Green MPs won thanks to our movement – which runs on people’s passion, commitment and solidarity alone”. No mention was made of the small handful of Corbynites who were re-elected on the Labour ticket and, more significantly, none of the clutch of independents who won Labour seats in areas with high Muslim populations and ran hard on the issue of Gaza and Muslim grievances.
The socialist left are clearly uncertain what to make of these Gaza independents, some of whom seem not to be terribly socially progressive. They may also have taken note of the defeat of George Galloway, who at the time claimed that his by-election win in Rochdale in February was “for Gaza”. If so, you might ask, who was his defeat at the hands of Labour on Thursday for?
The non-Green Corbynite left did come very close to what would have been its greatest victory – the unseating of Labour’s Wes Streeting in Ilford North by a 23-year-old British-Palestinian woman. They will be more reluctant to cite the example of Chingford where Faiza Shaheen – the former Labour candidate who was forced out by the party – stood as an independent, with the result that Iain Duncan Smith held on to his seat. The left will blame Labour and Labour will blame the left and they’ll both be right.
If you step back a bit you can see that the Corbynite left is now almost entirely outside the party, and that virtually its only mobilising issue currently is Gaza. Meanwhile, the Greens garnered two million votes and four MPs, and the almost inexorable logic should suggest (given that the Gaza war will stop sooner or later) that left-wingers sign up for that party and work for its further electoral success. If you want to seat them, join them.
The biggest Labour scalp won by a candidate to the party’s left was that of Thangam Debbonaire, the woman who would otherwise be the new culture secretary by now. The Greens’ Carla Denyer won a thumping majority and she, rather than Corbyn, will arguably be the standard bearer for the left in parliament.
However, Denyer is one of four elected Greens and you don’t win in seats like North Herefordshire and Waveney by promising a new socialist dawn, or even by promising to be tougher on Israel. You do it by pledging less crud in the rivers and no new pylons carrying power from offshore wind farms. In other words, we don’t really know yet where on the spectrum the Greens will settle.
There will of course be tensions inside Labour on the speed and scale of its ability to improve public services, grow the economy and boost living standards. But these will be practical not ideological questions. Also, one big plank of Labour’s plan to boost growth will be planning reform, and the party now has MPs for some of the most building-averse constituencies in Britain.
So rather than worrying about the old left – which has been weakened, not strengthened in this election – the thing Labour has to be concerned about is what it can deliver for younger voters, who anyway will probably have been the largest group supporting the Greens.
The young have had a rough deal in the last two decades and if that’s not addressed many may yet reject mainstream politics altogether.
David Aaronovitch is a journalist, television presenter and author. He is a former parliamentary sketch writer
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