Here’s How

Owen Jones writes:

In my last post, I wrote a suggested strategy for a Corbyn Labour leadership (if he wins — and that still isn’t certain) having to deal with a very challenging political context: lacking support from the Parliamentary Labour Party, faced with a militantly hostile mass media, all while trying to win the public over to a number of policy issues.

Some of my key points were:

• build a formidable grassroots movement in every community;
• democratisation and consultation in both the Parliamentary Labour Party and the wider movement;
• emphasise a coalition of low-income and middle-income/working-class and middle-class Britons;
• park tanks on opponents’ lawns from day one;
• an inclusive, conciliatory and non-personalised leadership approach;
• message discipline;
• rapid rebuttal;
• shutting down potential weaknesses and Achilles’ heels;
• an image of moderation and commonsense; 
• prioritise bread-and-butter issues; know which battles to pick;
• boost economic credibility by recruiting an array of economic experts;
• love-bomb voters who have defected to other parties, including UKIP;
• respond imaginatively to anti-immigration sentiment;
• reach out to older people; and so on.

An accusation (though one posed admittedly by few on both left and right) is that I was basically adopting a New Labour (!) approach.

The logic of this is that socialism is really only about improving the lot of the bottom, say, 15% or 20% — whether that be low-paid workers, disabled people whose support is under attack, those lacking affordable housing, and so on — and winning over the sympathy of everybody else.

But socialism is really a collective attempt to improve the lot of the majority, and create a society based on meeting people’s needs and aspirations rather than profit for a tiny elite.

It is an alliance of low-income and middle-income people — the majority of society — or it is a pressure group for only the most disenfranchised in society.

It’s been said that one of the reasons Labour lost the election was that its policies were too “narrow”: that is, they did not have much to say to people in the broad ‘middle’.

As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, what they offered to those at the bottom of society was actually weak: a £8 minimum wage by 2010 (now outflanked by George Osborne), building 200,000 homes by 2020 (when we need to build around 240,000 homes annually to meet need now), and so on.

But it did have very little to say to a huge chunk of the population.

I wanted to flesh out how an alliance of low-income and middle-income people — and other alliances that bring different parts of society together — could work.

That does not mean abandoning principles in any way.

Winning over middle-income people does not have to mean supporting privatisation, cutting taxes on the rich or advocating cuts to public services and the welfare state.

It just means marrying the interests of low-income and middle-income people.

If you’re a socialist, what really emotionally drives you above all else is a desire to improve the lot of the poorest in society: see how Jeremy Corbyn lights up with passion when he’s talking about homeless people.

But it is possible to build a coalition of low-income and middle-income people that does not mean surrendering to right-wing ideas. 

Here’s how:

A council house building programme and controls on private rents, balanced with support for home ownership (which has all but collapsed among younger people) with, for example, scrapping stamp duty and replacing it (along with council tax) with a land value tax; a public bank that offers ‘people’s mortgages’ to those denied mortgages by current banks; and so on.

 Increasing taxes on big business and a crackdown on their tax avoidance, balanced with support for self-employed people and entrepreneurs by freezing their business rates, offering them social security and rights other workers have, unveiling a public investment bank to offer them loans they’re currently being starved of; and so on.

Support for the young by, for example, scrapping student debt, balanced with support for older people with an all-out war on pensioner poverty, integrating social care, and so on.

Opposition to unjust and disastrous wars balanced with a programme of support for soldiers who are more likely to suffer from homelessness and mental distress, are often being laid off from the army with no secure work as an alternative, and in some cases are having their benefits slashed after having served.

Making a positive case for immigration (economic, cultural, NHS etc) using stories rather than statistics, balanced with promising that communities with higher levels of immigration get the economic benefits (an ‘immigration dividend’); measures to tackle undercutting of wages and conditions by employers; and reversing cuts to nurse training places to reduce the taking of nurses from countries who need them more.

Urging Britain take in more refugees, and at the same time giving extra financial support to communities taking in refugees, as well as demanding oil-rich Gulf allies of Britain agree to take refugees in too (they’re currently taking in none).

Opposing social security cuts (particularly focusing on support for low-paid workers and disabled people), again using stories rather than statistics, balanced with a commitment to reduce spending on social security by bringing down the in-work benefit bill with a living wage and bringing down the housing benefit bill by controlling private rents and building council housing.

New taxes on wealth (like a land value tax to replace regressive council tax etc) balanced with the abolition of inheritance tax, replaced with a tax based on the wealth of the recipient, not the person who dies (as the Greens currently advocate).

A mandatory minimum wage of £10 an hour and collective bargaining to raise the wages of workers (and thus reduce spending on in-work benefits), balanced with real action to skill up the workforce and tackle the nation’s productivity crisis.

Improving the conditions of low-paid workers, balanced with action to support those aspiring to enter the middle-class professions but who are currently locked out — because of unpaid internships and expensive postgraduate degrees, for example. Maybe even a ‘National Aspiration Scheme’ of some sort with paid scholarships for those who are unable to afford entering the media, law, fashion, and so on.

Champion Scotland, balanced with a commitment to a new federal Britain that gives powers to English regions — genuine powers underpinned by redistribution, rather than devolving cuts.

Take on the government’s disastrously failed “war on terror” strategy, balanced with a full-frontal attack to its support for the extremist regime in Saudi Arabia (and Qatar or Kuwait for that matter) that is at the epicentre of international extremism.

Flesh out a genuine alternative to austerity backed up by a number of authoritative economic experts, firmly linked with a commitment to rebalance and modernise Britain’s backward low-skill economy: the hi-tech and renewable energy industries of the better, investing in crucial infrastructure like wi-fi, and so on. (That way it’s not simply “anti-austerity” — it’s pro- something else).

Public ownership of rail should be portrayed as a bread-and-butter issue for middle-class commuters, as well as low-paid Britons currently priced out.

These are just a few ideas.

But my point is this should be a general approach: everything a Corbyn leadership does should be emphasising broad alliances, benefiting the majority in society.

It should never allow itself to be portrayed as the champion of only the poorest — even while offering a radically inspiring vision for low-paid workers, etc — but offering a programme that will transform the lot of middle-income and low-income people alike.