Balls to Abbott
Let me be blunt
I am very concerned that the Grassroots Alliance appears, according to the website, to be supporting Diane Abbott as its preferred leadership candidate. (Update: some clarity on this issue and the relationship between the site and the Allliance constituent members provided below.)
I do not follow, or even understand, all the processes within the Alliance, but I am not aware that there has been any kind of open discussion amongst the Alliance’s contributing organisations about which leadership candidate might be supported as part of the overall ‘slate’, if any.
The LRC (where my individual membership lies) voted to support John McDonnell, via its national committee, but I am not aware that any further meeting has been held following John’s withdrawal (the statement on which, in any case, did not mention Diane Abbott as his preferred ‘successor’).
For my own part, I do not currently consider Diane Abbott to be the most suitable candidate for the support of the Alliance, which has as one of its key areas of work the promotion of democracy within the party.
To date I have not heard or read any statement from Diane Abbott that suggests she takes any great interest in this area; indeed I found a recent email by her, in which she simply says that she ‘is more in touch with the grassroots’ than her rivals, without offering any specific commitment to organisational reform within the party, really quite patronising; she seemed to be suggesting she will use special powers, presumably developed sometime in the 1980s to interpret grassroots sentiment, and that this will be quite sufficient as a mechanism for ensuring that the Labour party gets it right. Doesn’t Silvio Berlusconi also offer that ‘common touch’?
In this respect, I even put both David Miliband, with his promise of some organisational reform (however tokenistic) of the cabinet, ahead of Diane Abbott on my ‘scoresheet’. I may have real doubts about Miliband senior’s ‘community leadership’ initiative (not least as I have tried but failed to get on to it to see what it’s like, and discovered in the process that it may be more handy campaign tool than open programme aimed at real ‘change’), but Miliband is at least trying something new which may have a kernel of usefulness in there somewhere.
More particularly, while I think it stops well short of the radical reversal of power structures that we need, I think Ed Balls has offered the best evidence of thinking through the relevant issues.
In contrast, Diane Abbott appears happy to rely on her reputation as a ‘grassroots’ person, rather than propose anything substantive. That is not good enough to get my vote at this stage, though there is still time for her to win me over, and this poor performance is in addition to disappointing early showings on matters of substantive policy.
I am therefore surprised that Diane Abbott appears, at first sight, to be being awarded the uncritical support of the Alliance, and by extension constituent groups, both in terms of the process for giving that support and the actuality of what she has had to say so far.
ps. Anyone interested that the Alliance’s leaflet promoting its NEC (and NCC) slate gets the name of one its constituent organisations wrong? It’s the Labour Representation Committee, not the Labour Black Representation Committee (bottom of page 2). (Update: some clarity on this issue given below in comments)
Paul, the LBRC is also one of the constituent groups of the Grassroots Alliance – at least according to Wikipedia, which also mentions the LRC in the same context.
As for who to support, I don’t see much difference between the candidates. Diane Abbott has a good pro-choice line, but is completely unconvincing on the structures of Labour and on industrial questions which must necessarily dominate at a time of rising unemployment and Tory cuts.
Balls doesn’t have this either; his answer is less immigration, as I flagged up in a previous article.
W.r.t. the Grassroots’ Alliance selection of a candidate, during my time as a member of Labour and the LRC I never participated in selection of the NEC candidates (which was explained to us here by helpful comments) but I suspect that selection of a leadership candidate works in some analogous fashion.
To be frank, though, is Abbott not the default candidate? I don’t imagine any of them will change anything significant about business in the Labour Party, so I’m not overly concerned anyway – my membership application is not in the post – but isn’t she politically the furthest left of the candidates? Even my articles criticising the gushing approach of Laurie Penny et al admit that, saving John McDonnell.
Re: LBRT, I’m very happy to be corrected. I’m quite new to all this Alliance stuff. However, what then is the position of the LRC, which is not mentioned as one of the constituent groups of the Alliance (or is it just Grassroots Labour now?). Either way, and not for the first time, I’m confused.
On Diane Abbott – no, quite simply she’s not done enough yet to persuade me that she should be even the default candidate. Relying on a) never having been in cabinet b) having been leftwing in the 1980s is simply not enough in itself. I’m not saying she can’t offer more, but time is drawing on.
This isn’t a defence of Balls, who scores 0 on immigration and is therefore low down on my overall scoring at the moment. My comment was specfically about his apparent commitment to more substantive organisational change within the party, which is also a key factor in my scoresheet alongside basic understanding of class-based economics and the fiat money system (no points for him there yet).
This is a very eccentric post to put it mildly. In one of her very first statements, http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/2010/05/31/diane-abbotts-statement/, Diane’s first point is this: “One of the most important issues is reviving internal party democracy. There is no doubt that if internal democracy had not been allowed to wither away under New Labour and if members had had a voice, not only would we have a much more vibrant party, but our Labour Government would have avoided some of its more obvious blunders. If our Government had been listening to the grassroots, we would not have raised pensions by a provocatively tiny eight pence, thus causing unnecessary offence to millions of pensioners. We would not have done away with the 10 pence tax rate. Above all we would not have gone into the illegal war with Iraq. I was there on the huge demonstration against it in 2003. It was the biggest march ever in central London.”
It might be not be “substantive” enough for you but come on, unlike some of the other candidates I suspect she won’t be getting big donations from wealthy businessmen that enable people to work virtually full-time for them and write up statements for them. As for class-based politics, her voting record and speeches in Parliament show that she is clearly on the left (probably in the top 5%), and you don’t need to go back to the 80′s to examine her record.
Matty
I’m not sure it’s eccentric to express my doubts about what Diane Abbott is offered in the way of a campaing to date. As you accept, it seems, saying that internal democracy needs to be strengthened is not enough without some kind of plan to do something about it. It’s quite reasonable to express a demand for that in the hope that she might deliver on it. I’d like to be able to vote for her, and there’s still time, but she’s got to up here game.
I accept that the others have the resource advantage (other, I suspect, than Burnham) but if the left of the party is starting to use that as an excuse at this stage then we’re not going to get very far. The right dominates material resource within the Labour party as elswhere; the left’s job is to develop strategies of common endeavour to compete with that effectively, not to whine about how it’s all so unfair.
Sorry, a voting record as leftwing maverick is not enough. That can be seen as self-serving in its own way. What matters is commitment to organising within and outside parliament. I’m not claiming to be an expert on Diane’s track record here, and she may have more than I think in the last 10 years, but that’s the point – she needs to provide us with the evidence.
Comrades, please read the small print.
Grassroots Labour is (i) a heading on a leaflet (available at http://www.leftfutures.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/NEC-Slate-flyer.pdf since your link appears broken) urging support for 6 nominations to the NEC produced by CLPD and 3 other organisations affiliated to the CLGA (see blow) and (ii) a website (http://www.grassrootslabour.net/) which has existed for a couple of years operated by CLPD in asddition to its own website (http://www.clpd.org.uk/).
The Centre Left Grassroots Alliance (CLGA) is an alliance (with no web presence except a Facebook group with, as yet, no posts) of a number of organisations on the Centre-Left of the Labour Party which has existed for a number of years with a somewhat shifting membership as organisations have been born (like the LRC and Save the Labour Party (STLP)) or died (like the Network of Campaign Groups and Labour Reform).
The CLGA has existed primarily to promote a joint slate for the NEC which we hoope it will do this year too, but which at present has only managed to reduce the number of possible candidates to 8 which is why CLPD and the 3 others decided to produce their own leaflet. I hope it still will agree on 6 names, based on the number of nominations received by the 8 possible candidates.
The choice of heading “Grassroots Labour” I accept has lead to some confusion although it was called that only because it was also the name of the website and not for any sinister reason. It does share only one word with the CLGA, and it is hard to think of any meaningful name for a temporary alliance of organisations which does not include at least one word also used by somebody else – unless you go in for the (rather dubious in my view) one-word conceptual branding favoured by Compass and a number of unions like Progress, Community, Unison etc.
Jon
Thanks for this. Bleeding hell, it’s confusing when you’re just getting used to all this stuff. Believe me, I have been trying to read the small print, but it’s just a bit too small, metaphorically, in places.
The post was really about Diane Abbott and perhaps I shouldn’t have got into this process stuff, though it is a handy way of working it all out. There’s is no very clear route map for the relative outsider. In fact what you’ve just told me is about the clearest I’ve had it.
As I understand it, then, the CLPD and the three others it names on the leaflet (correctly) has gone out on their own and advocated six names, with the two names removed from the CLGA’s ‘longlist’ of 8 being the two LRC nominees Christine Shawcroft and Susan Press.
Now, does that mean that Left Futures, by hosting the leaflet carrying only the 6 names that you link to (for which thanks) is now advocating this 6 over and above asking CLPs to choose 6 from the 8, or am I reading too much into it because Left Futures has no organisational status of its own?
In turn, can I assume that the Grassroots Labour advocacy of Diane Abbott for leader not imply the approval of her by my organisation, the Labour Representation Committee?
And where does the recommendation for Andy Walker for the Local Govt section of the NEC, put up on the Grassroots Labour website today, come from?
I come in peace here. I’m just trying to work it all out.
Good point.
PS – even as a leftie I think arguing for Diane Abbott as a party leader is rather naive. She is a left candidate. But she is appallingly vague about her ideas and hasn’t done anything lately on local grassroots organising. For shame, even Miliband has moved much further on this.
And her most recent interview with Andrew Neil shows that she is in fact terrible at communication. She’s good to have there to push the debate leftwards. But as the party’s candidate? No thanks. T
“the left’s job is to develop strategies of common endeavour to compete with that effectively, not to whine about how it’s all so unfair.” I agree very much but if I was being uncharitable then I could say that writing long articles on the Internet that go nowhere in paricular is a little akin to whining. Part of the left’s job to develop strategies of common endeavour should surely be to maximise the left vote in this leadership election.
By the way, I’ll think you’ll find that the large majority of MP’s who the LRC highlighted as being worthy of support at the election nominated Diane. I saw on TV that Jeremy Corbyn was quite clear in supporting Diane. To dismiss her voting record as being that of a left-wing maverick seems quite extraordinary to me. Diane has been a Campaign Group MP since 1987.
Sunny is an intelligent guy and seems nice enough but his definition of being a lefty can be quite elastic. At present, he seems to be backing Oona King over Ken Livingstone for London Mayor.
Matthew, I agree with your substantive position on Abbott. As Sunny says, she is ridiculously vague, a terrible communicator and all the rest of it – but none of the other four are even vaguely left-wing. I’d rather have a media-luvvie leftie than a hardnosed New Labourite (or even a cuddly one, as Ed Miliband seems to be positioning himself). My point in this debate – and Paul’s too, were he not trying to grapple with other issues at the same time – is that NONE of them have good track records when it comes to party democracy.
Abbott may make a few statements now that the debate has kicked off but I’ve never seen her throw any sort of weight behind the constituency efforts at getting some sort of representational structure restored without the dead hands of the super-centralising NEC or the rest of the party bureaucracy reaching out for it. But she’s better than the others – all of whom were quite happily tailcoating the very people whose mission was to undermine party democracy.
Matthew @8: Yes, it’s a good retort to any avid blogger that what they’re really doing is just having a good whine out loud when they should be doing something more productive instead. In my defence, though, I’m not the one running for the leadership. In the elected positions I have run for in life, I’ve set out my relevant skills, experience and commitments, and while I may look just like a waster of a blogger from where you stand, blogging is not my life. Rather it’s a handy way to help me clarify where I stand on a lot of issues so that I’m in a better position to be productive in my non-blogging life (though there is an icreasing overlap between my blogging and my local political activities). It’s also fun and a good source of relaxation.
Believe me, I’d like to be in a position to give my unconditional support for Diane, but as Sunny @7 says, the recent track record just isn’t there (at least as far as I can see) and the fact that Jeremy Corbyn gives her explicit support is not that persuasive, I’m afraid. The reality is that in some respects other candidates have been more explicit about what they’ll do around party organisation, and Diane needs to start to argue the specifics.
Dave @9: Your condemnation of the other candidates as unsupportable because of their previous record is an area we’ve touched on before. Are they not in a position/able to learn to do it better, or are they damned for all time in your eyes. I think I look at the candidature differently: I want a leader who has organisational skills and who makes commitments to action solid enough that s/he can be held to account against them.
I don’t know if, in the end, I’ll believe what they promise. It may be that my default vote will be Diane Abbott, but her apparent lack of record of political organisation at grassroots level, even though she had the same opportunities for this as John McDonnell, does worry me to the extent that I have to doubt whether I can support her.
Jon @5:
Right, I’ve now had time to look in the right places for the information, and understand the 6/8 issue much better (and also see I was wrong with my speed reading re: who of the 8 had been dropped off the CLPD et al leaflet. No point on carrying this on here, and it’d have been better if I’d not clouded the Diane Abbott bit of the post with this stuff.
The leaflet you mention is not CLPD et al – it is CLPD. End of.
Pete Willsman is now out of the running as he has not been nominated by his own CLP.
FYI the LRC has made an official complaint about the leaflet which is a deliberate attempt at sabotaging mine and Peter Kenyon’s campaigns . Both myself and Peter Kenyon are on the CLGA list of 8 – I hope you will support us and Christine Shawcroft who is the LRC’s other candidate.
You guys misunderstand – I’m not questioning Diane Abbott’s track record or her views, and challenging the view that she’s on the left. I think she is. And I’m glad that socialist MPs have coalesced around one lefty MP, even those who wanted John McDonnell to be on the ballot.
I just question the view that has the capabilities or the long term vision to lead the party. I don’t think she does. Just being on the left doesn’t mean you’re automatically right to lead.
Matthew: Sunny is an intelligent guy and seems nice enough but his definition of being a lefty can be quite elastic. At present, he seems to be backing Oona King over Ken Livingstone for London Mayor.
I’m giving both a fair hearing. Or trying to. At the Libcon conference I invited Ken’s team to give a pitch to London bloggers about their strategy. They did. And so I’m not being hostile to them.
but I’m yet to be convinced he can win against Boris. Though I’m not sure Oona is helping her chances with terrible policy ideas. But I want someone who can win. That is my main priority.
I think supporting Diane Abbott in the leadership contest is a no-brainer, to be honest. Whether everyone is happy about this or not, Diane’s showing in this leadership election will not just be seen as a measure of her support but of the strength of the left in the party, and we need to show that it is strong. I suggest people DO raise their concerns and issues, and try and push Diane into making the sorts of statements that would be more helpful, but we should also be arguing for as many votes for Diane as we can possibly get.
Paul asks: “Now, does that mean that Left Futures, by hosting the leaflet carrying only the 6 names that you link to (for which thanks) is now advocating this 6 over and above asking CLPs to choose 6 from the 8, or am I reading too much into it because Left Futures has no organisational status of its own?”
I think that’s a very pertinent question. It’s one thing to push for a few of the candidates and quite a different thing to push for a 6. To push for 6 is to push against 2, and that seems completely contrary to the spirit of the CLGA and I’m yet to have heard a satisfactory explanation for it.
On the other matter, I’m very disappointed with what’s been going on.