This Dreadful Caricature of Labour MPs has to stop
“She’s bloody good isn’t she”, my friend whispered to me whilst we watched Lisa Nandy castigate the conservatives at a Fabian Society event hosted by the Peoples History Museum in Manchester. She had just demolished the justification for some of the most pernicious cuts by the conservatives under David Cameron and spoken with passion, precision and personality by the bucket load. Not only that but she had just come from a protest already that Saturday morning where she had spoken regarding the closure of Remploy in her constituency and would go on to campaign against its closure vociferously for some time.
The event was a debate around the rehabilitation of the term “socialist” within the Labour party under Ed Miliband in 2013, as part of the relaunch of the Greater Manchester Fabian Society. I and others had helped organise the event and it was attended by speakers including Lisa Nandy, Kate Green and Tony Lloyd. I had seen Nandy speak at a Communication Workers Union question time event a few weeks earlier, I believe with Richard Angell, and again she had made a similar impression on me and the audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpaVTvkVzbk
Many will be surprised to hear that experiences like this with Labour MPs are not unique or rare, but one does have to be willing to disbelieve much of the bile put about regarding them in the current climate. A perfect example was in Wednesdays Labour leadership hustings in which half of the crowd booed and hissed at the mention of some of Labours best female MPs; Lisa Nandy, Kate Green and Jess Phillips.
Owen had been responding to the narrative that many subscribe to that anyone who disagrees with Jeremy cannot be a socialist, cannot be on the left and cannot be a progressive; the conclusion that they reach being that they therefore must be a conservative.
It is this binary analysis based on how “pure” someone is which is behind much of the “Jeremy or no one” brigade and which I believe will potentially destroy the Labour Party. It depends on a belief that Jeremy has some kind of a monopoly on virtue and a monopoly on socialism. That alone would be fantastical enough, but to justify such a view many chose to believe in what is a gross caricature of MPS. Many see them as out for themselves, as insincere and ultimately nothing more then “right wing careerists”. In my experience however, nothing could be further from the truth.
Much of this gross misrepresentation is often put about on twitter or alternative news outlets like Vox Political or The Canary, where scrutiny and facts often go unchallenged. The ultimate end of this being a shameless false narrative which panders to peoples pre-held assumptions. A particularly ridiculous example is below, where Don Valley MP Caroline Flint is referred to as a millionaire.
https://twitter.com/Cameronsporkies/status/765493766341980160
This example is one of the most preposterous I have seen. Not that background is important to the views you hold, but Flints personal story is one of the most compelling. As a child her mother was an alcoholic, she moved house frequently, never knew her father and had two children on her own in her early twenties. She is the last MP the term entitlement could ever be applied to. Not only this but some of the policies she has been involved with, such as the early New Labour strategy to tackle teenage pregnancy, have been some of the most successful and life changing of recent times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRT0n4Yo8hk
The above is clearly an extreme example and is not representative of most of Corbyn supporters, but it is still typical of the types of assumptions many hold about MPs when subscribing to the Corbyn or no one narrative. One only has too look at the twitter feeds of other MPs to see how pervasive this type of character smear has become.
Another example of an MP often smeared in this way for disagreeing with Jeremy is Jess Phillips, with a similarly impressive and inspiring background as a Domestic Violence campaigner. Jess is hardly from a privileged background and her voting record is almost exactly what any Corbyn supporter would look for, but still she has been the victim of vile abuse and baseless smears. Indeed as a result of this she has recently had to upgrade security in her constituency office and also her home upon advice from the police in her constituency. Such is the state of the labour party in these times.
I have had much conversation with people on twitter about this misrepresentation of Labour MPs. I usually emphasise the sacrifices the job entails, living away from your children for most of the week, working 6 day weeks and generally getting abuse online and in in person from people that do not really know or care what you do.
After the death of Jo Cox we all agreed that she worked tirelessly for her constituents and was an example for all MPs to aspire too, but I find it hard to believe that she was unique in applying this tireless attitude to her work for her constituents. Most speak to ordinary people regularly and therefore arguably have a better understanding of the public then many of us arm chair politicos could ever hope to have. The breadth of the public they see is broad; when they canvas, when they hold their surgeries and when they deal with their casework. They see the real life problems their constituents face regarding housing, immigration, benefits and the effects of inequality that many of us have no real lived in experience regarding.
This is the real life of an MP. Dealing with the unsolvable problems many of their constituents face and knowing there is nothing you can do about it if your party does not win an election. It is an intolerable exercise of impunity seeing just how bad things are for many, but knowing just how powerless they are to change it if Labour do not win power.
For me this would be the reason why I disagreed with Jeremy, knowing ultimately after 9 months trailing the conservatives in the polls and countless own goals that you are never going to be able to change anything for your constituents with him at the helm.
For Labour to win something big has to change. Labour needs at least 100 seats, all likely from England, 90 of which are conservative and 2/3 which have majorities over 3000. This sort of change needs a bold strategy to engage with conservative voters and force them to look again at labour and reconsider their perception of us. They need to look at us and not just believe that we have compassion, but also that we are credible enough to trust with their taxes.
I do not see how this is likely or possible under Jeremy. The list of Corbyn own goals is long and is behind much of the negative personal polling he faces. Indeed a significant chunk of Labour voters now prefer Theresa May to Jeremy; just think about that for a moment….
A particularly treacherous example of just how chaotic his leadership is the rail price campaign launched in January. Many activists had got up early on a miserable January day to hold placards outside of their local train stations against the price fare rise in order to attract maximum media attention. Their efforts proved fruitless as Jeremy announced a long briefed reshuffle on the same day and ultimately wasted 100s of activists time.
Labour MPs like those mentioned above have recognised that Jeremy on his current trajectory stands little chance of winning. Their intentions are good and their reasoning credible. Under these circumstances and with the urgency with which they need to be elected to government I see no way in which I would have chose a different path had I been in there shoes.
