Process-driven Labour

Towards the end of my working life, to describe a person as process-driven was to be critical of the way they approached problems. It suggested that such a person would tackle unexpected problems by endlessly tinkering with existing processes rather than look for new and more pragmatic solutions.

With this in mind I’ve been reading about Clive Lewis and a piece he wrote for the Guardian plugging his attempt to become the next leader of the Labour party. There is nothing more process-driven than Labour.

The truth is that despite his enormous achievements in inspiring a new generation of members, Jeremy Corbyn’s first promise as leader was never fulfilled. The party was never democratised on the scale or to the extent that members were led to expect – they were never empowered to campaign, select candidates or determine policy on the scale that was required. This must now change. We don’t need foot soldiers, we need an army of activists who think critically, treat each other with respect and have a serious democratic stake in the movement. I don’t want to manage the labour movement, I want to unleash it. That is the first route to victory.

Strewth - when did Labour party members treat each other with respect? That was one of the major Corbyn problems which went much wider than antisemitism. Where might the party go from here? Nowhere interesting or useful if Mr Lewis becomes leader, as his seems to be an exceedingly conventional political standpoint in the soft totalitarian mould. 

The truth is that after Jeremy became leader, we fought two elections on an electoral system that massively favours the Conservatives, and their voter base of propertied pensioners. A majority of the British public voted for parties of the left or the liberal centre. But this was in no way reflected in the election result. Labour should have committed itself to changing the voting system decades ago, and we have condemned some parts of our country to 40 years of decline by failing to do so.

Interestingly, in a single paragraph Mr Lewis manages to disparage a substantial part of the electorate as propertied pensioners and suggest that Labour is no longer able to win FPTP elections anyway. The whole piece is worth reading because it is quite odd. Take this appeal to antique politics of the past for example.

Two forces will shape our future, and the context of the next general election: the climate crisis and the ongoing technological revolution. Both can be sources either of despair or hope. We can hide behind platitudes and denial, or we can seize these crises as opportunities to renew our country as it has not been renewed since the 1940s.

How does a reference to the 1940s chime with younger voters? It's a strangely defeatist appeal, as if there are people within the Labour party who expect to become members of a fringe party and would even prefer things that way if only ideological purity can be sustained.