RS

First of all, I think it’s important to say that the Left had very little input into either the outcome or character of the Brexit referendum and the crisis around it. In principle, you could argue for what some people called a “left Brexit,” but that was otherworldly, because the Left wasn’t anywhere in this debate.

It didn’t run either of the campaigns. It wasn’t leading the argument. Nobody heard the arguments for a left exit. The overwhelming argument was, “let’s get the immigrants out, let’s pull up the drawbridge.” It was a very nationalist, parochial, and racist campaign.

In terms of its economic aspiration, you have to come up with some sort of alternative to Europe if you are going to grow British capitalism. Half of the trade of the UK economy is with Europe, so what are you going to do? The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), and the hard right of the Conservative Party, both have an answer to this.

They say, let’s crawl into bed with the United States. If we could, we would join NAFTA. If we could, we’d become the fifty-first state. But let’s, as a first step, get into TTIP and form those connections, and maybe form some client relationships with the former colonies, today’s Commonwealth countries. That’s not a solution that the Left wants to support.

Obviously, the Left is in a very difficult position. Jeremy Corbyn has been criticized since the outcome for not being sufficiently enthusiastic about Europe and therefore undermining the referendum campaign to remain.

If you remember, his position was a critical Remain. It was Remain, but reform. The European Union is flawed: it’s a free-market club and it’s not sufficiently democratic, but we want to stay in to preserve the basic rights that we got and to preserve freedom of movement for labor. These are good things.

The thing about this is that Corbyn was elected on that agenda. He told people that was his position when he stood for the leadership of the Labour Party. But there’s always been a sullen, truculent majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party, probably about four-fifths, about the same number that gave him a no-confidence vote recently, who have been trying to make life difficult for him from the start.

A few weeks before the referendum, I was talking to Labour Party activists up in Middlesbrough. They knew that this coup was coming. They weren’t the first to mention it, but they were the ones who had the most detailed analysis. They knew a coup was coming, no matter what the referendum result was.

I said, “Surely not. That would be mad.” They don’t have a sufficient argument against him; it’s premature. There isn’t a crisis of his leadership. He’s not been doing too badly. But they were right!

The coup, however, has been premature. The plotters don’t have a strategy. They haven’t got a candidate they agree on. They don’t have any policies they’re agreed on. The only thing they’re agreed on is they want to get Corbyn out. They’ve used this argument about Brexit, about Corbyn not being sastifactorily pro-Remain, to justify the coup.

In essence, though, this too is contradictory, because they claimed that Corbyn will not allow them to make critical comments about immigration. If you’re for EU membership, and if you want to say you’re euphoric about the European Union, you cannot come out against immigration, because the whole point of the European Union, or at least one of its major points, is that it is a block in which there is a free movement of capital and a free movement of labor.

You can’t be anti-immigration if you’re in favor of the European Union. The only way you can do it is to be rhetorically anti-immigration, and what that does is it fuels the far right, because it pushes their obsessions and concerns up the agenda. It legitimizes them without doing anything about them. Obviously, that’s contradictory.

Their case against Corbyn doesn’t add up, but that’s essentially what they want. They want to try to woo working-class voters by being a bit more racist. They think that’s what will win them over. Obviously, it hasn’t worked before, they’ve tried it for years. Ed Miliband tried it, the Blairites tried it.

It’s never worked before, because people know when they’re being patronized, and people know when they’re being lied to, and people don’t like it. What they prefer is the real Armani. So if they want racism, they can go to UKIP or they can go to the Tories. They don’t need the Labour Party to offer them that agenda.

Jeremy Corbyn has done the best he could with a very, very weak hand. Like I say, he was propelled to power without there being a very strong left wing surrounding the party, or surrounding him. He’s done the best he could. He’s been surrounded by a belligerent opposition from the start.

He’s now in a situation where the best he can do is to reason it out. To essentially say to the coup plotters, “If you want to get me out, stand somebody. Find a candidate, agree on an agenda, and stand against me, because you’re not going to win.”

That may be complacent, because they might actually find a way to win. They might cause sufficient demoralization and despair among rank-and-file members, and among sections of the soft left, which is already beginning to happen to some extent.

They might do that, but at the moment, all the signs are that they don’t want to stand against him because they’re frightened they’re going to lose, and that’s why they’re in the papers every day, begging him to do the right thing for the party and stand down. As if they might not do the right thing for party and shut the fuck up.