Britain: Brown grabs labour leadership without election – McDonnell kept off ballot

Labour Party members and affiliated trade unionists will be waking up to the grim news today (Thursday) that Gordon Brown, the so-called "architect of New Labour" will become the next leader of the Labour Party and therefore Prime Minister without any form of election taking place. The only other candidate, John McDonnell, will be kept off the ballot paper by virtue of failing to have got the nominations of 45 Labour MPs. Having built up the leadership election over the last few weeks (complete with websites and souvenir merchandise!) the Labour Party organisation is now presenting us with a leadership "election"... without an election. Having spent the last ten years bombing and invading countries on the pretext that they had undemocratic leaders, we are now being offered a leader who no one has voted for!

Who is to blame? Many will now be asking this question and discussing what should be done about it. Certainly no blame should be attached to John McDonnell and the john4leader campaign. They have spent the last 10 months going to party members, branches, GCs, conferences and to affiliated organisations, raising the issues and listening to what the rank and file have to say. Meanwhile the Brown camp continued to speak just to the people they think mattered - the City of London, the CBI and the newspaper barons.

There was clearly a mood growing not only inside the Labour Party but especially inside the trade unions for a clear challenge to Brown once Blair handed in his cards. This was reflected in the support John McDonnell got from union executives and Broad Lefts as well as from many branches and councils. Unions such as ASLEF, the FBU and the RMT came out clearly in support of John McDonnell. The problem with the FBU and RMT is that they are not affiliated to the Labour Party. They broke with the Labour Party, angered at the way Blair had treated them. But their place should be inside the Labour Party, fighting for a Left leadership. One alarming recent development for the right-wing leadership of the Labour Party must have been the fact that Unison in Scotland had come out in support of John McDonnell. This must have set the alarm bells ringing, and surely must have added to the efforts to stop John getting the required MPs nominations.

The fact is that during this period the MPs have remained aloof and out of touch. Just as they have - barring a few rebellions where the government had to rely on the Tories to get things through - supported without a whimper the neo-conservative agenda of Blair and the New Labour project. The rule of leadership nominations only being valid if you get a certain percentage of MPs nominations was brought in to stop the rank and file having any real say in who they could vote for in a leadership election. It is a disgrace that there is no means for GCs or affiliated organisations to nominate irrespective of the MPs. So much for One Member One Vote - we now have been given One Member No Vote or rather One Chancellor One Vote.

All that we are left with now is a non-contest for the meaningless position of Deputy Leader. There is nothing politically to separate the six candidates for this mighty office - it is like going into a shop and having just the choice of a range of identical T-shirts decked out in different shades of blue. Some trade unionists have pushed forward the name of John Cruddas - who has come from a union background - as a good choice. But although he is raising important organisational questions there is no difference between him and the rest on the real political issues. This election has been turned into some sort of beauty contest where we get to choose which candidate has the best personality. It is hardly the stuff of serious politics.

After last weekend when Brown debated with McDonnell and the stop-McDonnell-candidate Meacher - who pulled out on Tuesday - the party machine spun into action with a vengeance to ensure that MPs did not nominate McDonnell. Yet Brown had said that he welcomed a contest.

Well, it appears not. For months the Brown camp had been agonising over what to do about the challenge from the Left. If they blocked the nomination, Brown ran the risk of being seen as a leader who no one had voted for - which is what has now happened. But if they let McDonnell onto the ballot paper they faced the even greater risk of having to debate with the Left at hustings meetings, on the TV and in the pages of the press for the best part of a month. It was clearly decided that the Brown camp could not cope with that. The idea of having to defend the right-wing policies of the Blair years under pressure was just too much for them.

It is particularly ironic that John McDonnell was standing on a position of supporting democratically decided party policies whereas Brown would be standing on a position of ignoring them. They also feared how much of a vote McDonnell might actually get in the ballot. Although there was little fear of losing the vote, the Brown camp had been made aware that McDonnell enjoyed more support inside the party ranks than they would wish to admit to. Some had even raised the possibility of McDonnell getting a majority of votes from the trade union section of the electoral college. This would have left Brown somewhat weakened and also would have nailed the New Labour project once and for all as being a dead loss. So McDonnell had to be kept off, hence the nobbling of MPs to put self-interest before the interests of the movement.

So where do we go from here? The last ten months cannot be rewound or wiped away. John McDonnell has laid down a marker that the Left in the Labour Party are fighting back. This needs to be built on, particularly inside the unions. It is especially regrettable that the Trade Union leaders proved to be so reticent in converting the stated support of their organisations for McDonnell into practical action - not least with regards to those Labour MPs they sponsor. Had the likes of the TGWU, Amicus and Unison gone to their MPs and demanded that they support the candidate who best reflected their union policies and aims then McDonnell would have shot past the 45 barrier. But they did not. In reality many of the Trade Union leaders are wedded to the idea of a "sweetheart deal" with Brown and are no doubt most relieved today to not have to decide between Brown and McDonnell.

So the fight must go on and what has been achieved must be built on. A campaign must be launched to look at the role of those who represent Labour in parliament. They must be called to account and made to explain why they have denied party members and trade unionists a clear vote and a clear choice. MPs can be selected and they can also be deselected. The trade unions - even on their own ‑ have it within their power to start the process of replacing those who sit at Westminster with the sole aim of advancing their careers with people who will stand up for those who elected them in the first place.

The Brown premiership will be a continuation of the same downward spiral that has characterised the Blair years - a decade of Tory policies, lost votes and disillusionment. The last three elections were won for Labour on the basis that most people thought less of the Tories than they did of Labour. So although the Labour vote fell, the Tory vote fell more.

The real danger is now that the Labour vote will pass the Tory one on the way down ushering in a Tory government come the next election. This will be a government set to take its revenge on organised labour and the working class for the humiliation of three election defeats. It seems that things can only get worse.

Therefore the key question can be postponed no longer. We need to reclaim our organisations and our party from the Blair/Brown clique and the army of ex-SDP careerists who have sustained it. We need a party armed with a fighting leadership, acting in the interests of the working class, and a socialist programme that will address the real issues facing people today. Over the next few months those inside the john4leader campaign, the LRC and the Campaign Group as well as the many party members and trade unionists who are feeling rather angry today, need to sit down and discuss how the campaign should now proceed and what measures should now be taken. The supporters of Marxism fully intend to contribute to this discussion.

The fact that John McDonnell has failed to get the MPs nominations is not the end of the campaign. Gordon Brown is being sold to many in the labour movement as somehow better than Blair. This has been used by some of the key trade union leaders of this country to push the idea that Brown will "look after" the interests of working people. Nothing could be further from the truth. Brown will continue from where Blair has left off.

Because of this, any illusions that may still exist in Brown will disappear in the coming months. This will leave a gaping hole in the labour and trade union movement. Labour Party activists, trade union members and loyal Labour voters will be asking themselves why the massive vote of 1997 has been allowed to dwindle to the point where the Tories could get in.

In these conditions a strong left wing in the Labour Party would become a point of reference. The campaign generated around John McDonnell could become the basis for building such a left. Although support for John has been minimal in the Parliamentary Labour Party, that is not the case within the wider movement. If he had been allowed to stand the real strength of the left would have become apparent, especially inside the ranks of the trade unions.

Therefore, rather than allowing oneself to become disheartened, now is the time to step up the campaign around John McDonnell with a view to preparing for the future developments inside the Labour Party. The task is to build support in every constituency and ward, in every union, to campaign for Labour MPs who reflect the interests of the people who campaign for them and who elect them.

Blairism is finished and the events in the coming period will put the last nails in its coffin. But we have to prepare for the future. The Tories have come back many times after periods of Labour government. It happened in 1970 with Heath and in 1979 with Thatcher. The workers paid a heavy price as a consequence. But so long as we do not learn the lessons of those experiences we will repeat the same mistakes. The role of the Left in the Labour Party is to organise support, change the policies and the leadership of the party, so that we can put an end to this seemingly never-ending cycle.

Originally published on www.socialist.net