Taking stock – a further compilation

JVL Introduction

Another selection of articles with interesting and different emphases and perspectives on the causes of our catastrophic defeat.

Mary Kaldor provides a wide-ranging analysis of where we are as a society after four decades of neo-liberalism; grim reading but Kaldor urges Social Democrats in the rest of Europe not to conclude that “Labour lost because it was too left-wing. Labour lost because it was not internationalist and pro-EU enough.”

Graig Gent unpicks the notion of Labour losing its “heartlands” in ”the north”: “The bulk of these towns constitute what should be more appropriately termed England’s mining belt.” Taken for granted by Labour strategists for decades since the defeat of the miners, Brexit rightly or wrongly “offered enough people an antidote to years of feeling defeated and defeatist.”

Dan Jarvis MP’s account of campaigning – successfully – to hold his Barnsley seat shows how “pride in Labour has now in many cases been replaced with apathy and antipathy” – and a visceral anger that could sometimes be barely contained. The account is non-recriminatory; the lesson, hard to implement, is to “rebuild our party, regain trust and ensure it is grounded in communities around the country

John Graham Davies, writing from Liverpool Riverside says “The effect of the media lies and smears has been for a thin layer of disapproving dust, disapproving of Corbyn in person, to settle on a lot of people.” But he doesn’t blame the media so much as those in the party who revelled in the demonisation of Corbyn and those on Corbyn’s side who didn’t take the fight to them. Instead, he argues, the repeated attempts to apologise came over as puzzling and demoralising.

This article was originally published by openDemocracy, Novara Media, Labour List, People and Nature on Thu 19 Dec 2019. Read the original here.