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A world to win and a planet to save

Alongside building the movement and democratising the party, to mount a successful counter-hegemonic project Labour would also have had to combine the skilful development of international alliances alongside an understanding of the state as a site of class contest itself.

Despite Corbyn’s historic focus on international issues, the rest of the world played a relatively minor role in the project. Two of Corbyn’s most significant interventions as leader were about Britain’s relationship with the rest of the world: his apology on behalf of the Party for the Iraq war and his speech about the failures of British foreign policy following the Manchester Arena terror attack. He gave a wide-ranging speech about 21st century internationalism to the UN in Geneva in December 2017 which went unnoticed by the corporate media, but was praised on the domestic and international left. He also exerted considerable time and energy on the misnamed Party of European Socialists, which brings together the EU’s social democratic parties. However, on international issues, Corbyn was in a minority within a minority. Not only did the overwhelming bulk of Labour’s MPs not share their leader’s anti-imperialist politics, but much of his close team, both in the shadow cabinet and his office, did not either.

Preparations for government were limited in a different way. Plans for legislation were drawn up with the shadow teams, but the exercise was flawed. Despite John McDonnell’s analysis of the need to be “in and against” the state and the ideological impact of Tony Benn, Ralph Miliband and Leo Panitch on some of Corbyn’s team, preparations for government tended to treat the Party programme as something that could be implemented through existing state machinery, without mass mobilisations and with little establishment backlash. One senior member of Corbyn’s team remarked after meetings with senior civil servants about Labour’s 2019 policy programme that the civil service was “genuinely excited” about carrying out Labour’s legislation. Such hopes would have melted on contact with reality had Labour entered government.

A left populist Green New Deal

This critical engagement with Corbynism should not simply be read as an assessment of the project’s missteps and mistakes. While there was plenty that could and should have been done differently, it is important to remember that the terrain of struggle – the objective political situation, balance of forces in society and the party and level of pre-existing political development on the left – was weighted against Corbyn from the start. Those who want to take inspiration from the successes of Corbynism and apply its lessons to new projects ought to look at what could have been done to expand the project’s available set of actions within this hostile context.

One such project is sketched out in left populist terms by Chantal Mouffe in her recent essay for openDemocracy. Mouffe rightly argues that the defeat or relative eclipse of various left populist or left populist adjacent projects does not mean that the systemic crisis of capitalism through which we are living can only be met with techno-liberal solutionism, state neoliberalism, authoritarian nationalism, centre-left managerialism or a return to twentieth century left approaches. If anything, the fracturing neoliberal hegemony, climate breakdown and the fallout from the pandemic both demand and create the conditions for an effective left populist response.

But assessing what this response might look like requires shifting from a narrow focus on communication to a more expansive analysis of all five areas of strategic concern necessary to building a counter-hegemonic project: communication, movement, party, international, state.

When it comes to communications, unfortunately a truly effective left populist approach is not currently a viable option in the UK given the political context. The effectiveness of a left populist communications approach rests on its capacity to shape the field of the political through discourse construction. Labour’s potential to engage in and shape public debate far outweighs that of any other political actor. Despite a few senior figures, such as Ed Miliband, the shadow cabinet member responsible for much of this policy area, being personally committed to economic transformation coupled with environmental protection, plainly, under the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer QC, the Party will not adopt such an approach.

Starmer’s allergy to left populism is violent. His approach to politics, shown by both his time as Shadow Brexit Secretary and as party leader, is firmly within Labour’s traditions of progressive managerialism, parliamentary process, friendly gestures to the establishment and above all seeking a totalising “national interest” – a constant refrain in his public utterances. His method of politics is so traditional and anti-populist as to be parodic. As one satirical observer would have it, Starmer offers a “Prime Ministerial aesthetic, electability as a sort of cosmetic.” Or, as Rory Scothorne elegantly argued in the London Review of Books, “The ‘new management’ has been single-minded in its attempt to return – and be seen to return – the party to ‘loyal opposition’, a supporting role in the maintenance of British order, where the price of the adjective is the meaning of the noun.”

But despite the refusal of Labour’s key spokespeople to advance it, a left populist Green New Deal is far from impossible in the UK. Such an approach could be adopted by the movements and institutions that formed the foundations of the Corbyn project, with the aim of both shifting the ground upon which politics sits and preparing the left for the next upsurge, whatever and whenever that may be.

At the level of communications, such an approach would require the development of the Green New Deal narrative, both to foreground a central antagonism and articulate multiple demands. Naturally, this development must start with the settling on a name. While Labour used the phrase Green Industrial Revolution, as a nod towards the UK’s history as a pioneer of industrialisation and to emphasise the job creating aspects of the programme, it has now been adopted by Boris Johnson and his government. A coalition of activists and organisations without access to the media megaphone will not be able to compete with the government in shaping perceptions of that term.

Mouffe champions Green Democratic Transformation to stress the radical democratic dimension, which she insists upon in her work. However, I would settle on Green New Deal as the most effective term, despite it having greater historical resonance in the US than elsewhere. Not only are “new” and “deal” snappier words than “democratic” and “transformation,” but the Green New Deal formulation both already has some purchase on the international left and is partly already inscribed with a class antagonism by US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s association of it with tax hikes for the rich and big corporations.

It is this class bite to the Green New Deal that needs to be developed most urgently. If the Green New Deal becomes a statist programme for environmental managerial reform, it loses its left populist potential. Rather it must pose itself as a threat to the forces represented by the Few, through attacks on their wealth, power and privileges and a benefit to the Many, through better jobs, health and society. To stand a chance of success, this left populist Green New Deal would require as much of the left as possible – in its grassroots, social movement, trade union and parliamentary forms – to be brought together to champion the narrative and its associated demands.

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