Corbyn and Brexit Britain: Is there a way forward for the Left?

In Britain, the political reaction to globalization has followed two separate and perversely interlinked paths. One was a reaction against the impoverishment of former industrial regions of the country, exacerbated by the financial crash of 2007-8, and against the right-wing response to this in the form of drastic cuts to public spending and public services. The other was a reaction against the undemocratic character of the European Union. The reason why a left-wing political reaction to globalization, and to austerity, came so late was that until 2015 the Labour Party was complicit with both. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, its leaders from 1997 to 2010, had emptied it of progressive purpose and democratic energy. They had ruthlessly converted it into a party of business, run from the top in conformity with ‘the new reality’ of global corporate power and American imperial rule. Membership fell and working-class voters stayed at home. But unlike other European socialist parties, Labour was, paradoxically, saved from electoral meltdown by the UK’s archaic first-past-the-post electoral system, which makes it virtually impossible for new alternative parties to win seats unless they are nationalists based in a distinctive region of the country. In a dramatic turn of events an insurgent candidate, Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2016 and Conservative Prime Minister, Teresa May called snap general election in 2017, underestimating the appeal of Labour's new anti-austerity programme. A Labour government under socialist leadership suddenly seemed a realistic possibility. How had this come about? Was it a flash in the pan? The impact of the financial crisis of 2007-8 had clearly altered the electoral calculus, but the predictably relentless demonization of Corbyn by the mainstream media seemed likely to gradually erode his popularity; and the opposition of most Labour MPs to Corbyn’s politics seemed likely to mean that even if Labour were to win the next election, Corbyn’s small team of like-minded MPs would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pass any radical measures. The tasks of government would entangle them in the established institutions of the state, bogging them down in struggles with reluctant civil servants, cutting them off from the party membership and leading to compromises – including those likely to be called for by trade union leaders worried by any policy that might jeopardise members’ jobs – that would empty the project of its radical potential; while the disinclination of investors to either invest or lend would lead to a fall in living standards and drain away popular support. In a word, was there any reason to believe that the idea of a ‘parliamentary road to socialism’ in the UK was any less illusory in 2018 than it had proved to be in the heyday of the ‘new left’ from the 1960s to the 1980s