Labour's identity crisis will come to the fore at leadership vote this weekend
Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock weighs in on the future of a bitterly divided party
"The only fitting mindset for a socialist is pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will." That's the code the former British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock says he's lived by in a political career that has spanned more than three decades and in 1992 came close to putting him in the driving seat at No.10 Downing Street.
The quote comes courtesy of the Italian writer Antonio Gramsci, a founding member of the Italian communist party who was jailed by Benito Mussolini in the 1920s and 30s and didn't survive it.
Kinnock has pulled it out and dusted it off during a discussion about the decline and potential fall of the once great British Labour Party. If ever the British Left needed a little "optimism of the will," it's now.
This Saturday, the party is expected to re-elect the hard-left, anti-establishment figure of Jeremy Corbyn for the second time in a year, despite the howls of a majority of Labour MPs who triggered a non-confidence vote against him this summer and persistent opinion polls that continue to cast him as unelectable.
'He cannot do the job'
I met Kinnock over a cup of coffee at the Red Lion Pub just opposite Downing Street, where photos and paintings of past British prime ministers decorate the walls. If there's one thing Kinnock says he's sure of, it is that Corbyn will never be among them.
"[It is] a task which he simply is not up to. It is as straightforward as that. I've watched him for 12 months. He cannot do the job," he said.
Kinnock himself holds the dubious title of having been the longest-serving leader of the opposition in the United Kingdom, narrowly losing out to John Major in an election he was expected to win in 1992.
But Corbyn isn't up to the job of an effective opposition leader, let alone prime minister, according to Kinnock, who describes him as incompetent and feeble.
In 33 years in the House of Commons, there is no Corbyn private member's bill. There is no memorable speech. There is no piercing question.- Neil Kinnock, former leader of British Labour Party
"In 33 years in the House of Commons, there is no Corbyn private member's bill. There is no memorable speech. There is no piercing question," he said. "There is no evidence at all of distinguished contributions in standing committee, on legislation, or on select committees to undertake specialist examination of issues of significance to the public and to the country."
Kinnock's sentiments to the contrary, Corbyn is expected to easily sail past his leadership challenger, Owen Smith, when results of an internal party ballot are announced at the annual Labour conference over the weekend.
Corbyn has been a member of Parliament for one of Labour's solid London ridings since 1983, a back-bencher often at odds with the party's official line. He wants to make Britain non-nuclear, re-nationalize the railways and utilities and would likely pull Britain out of the NATO military alliance if he could.
He was a supporter of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, earning him the nickname "Jez" and his supporters the moniker "Corbynistas." He barely got enough signatures for his nomination papers, but at the age of 67, Corbyn stunned party stalwarts when he was elected leader, taking advantage of social media and new party rules that allowed anybody to vote if they signed up and paid £3 ($5).
300,000 new members since 2015
Corbyn supporters have swelled the ranks of the party, with 300,000 new members joining the party since 2015. Many are young and idealistic, like those who supported Bernie Sanders against Hillary Clinton in the United States, saying they want to see honesty brought back into politics. Corbyn also opposed Tony Blair's entry into the Iraq War, a major stain on the Labour Party these days.
"I think we need to look after each other, and I think that's really what Jeremy Corbyn does," said 19-year old Isobel Scanlan, volunteering at a Corbyn phone bank earlier this week.
"I just think that the country is so ready for someone like him to step in and work magic. And that's what I am really excited for."
The new memberships have made Labour the largest political party in Europe. You'd think that might be a recipe for success and a strong opposition for the United Kingdom at a time of great upheaval and uncertainty as the country prepares to leave the European Union. Not so much.
If anything, it's just highlighted Labour's perpetual identity crisis between traditional leftists, who argue the party should stay true to its original values, and those who say a more centrist policy is the only way to fight the governing Conservative Party.
And Corbyn's year at the helm has alienated 172 of his 230 MPS, his shadow cabinet a revolving door of resignations. Long-term Labourites accuse him of encouraging "entryism," where members of the hard-left expelled in the past have been allowed back in to the party to try and wrest its agenda away from the centrists.
Corbyn's record on Brexit could hurt him
Kinnock describes Corbyn's Momentum movement as "a kind of parallel group that has got a parasitic relationship with the Labour Party."
Corbyn supporters have also been accused of running ugly trolling campaigns against MPs who don't back him, allegations of anti-Semitism being allowed to fester in the party have dogged his leadership and so, too, have allegations of sexism.
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Particularly unctuous to Labour supporters who do not back Corbyn is what they describe as a lack-lustre performance in the referendum on EU membership.
Labour's official policy was to support the Remain camp, but few felt Corbyn's heart was really in it, said Kinnock.
"Any leader who in the middle of a referendum campaign can take a holiday and then say when he's asked, 'How committed are you to remaining in the European Union?' say, I use his words … '7 out of 10' is not a root and branch, tooth and claw, bone marrow pro-Remainer," he said.
The unedifying battle between the party's two flanks in all its bitter ferocity was televised in the lead-up to tomorrow's vote when Corbyn's right-hand man and shadow chancellor John McDonnell went head to head with Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former spin doctor.
We're trying to restore honesty and confidence in politics that you destroyed.- John McDonnell, Labour Party shadow chancellor, on BBC's Question Time
"I care about the Labour Party," Campbell said. "I really care about the Labour Party, and I worry that you and yours are destroying it,"
Campbell pointed out that Blair's Labour Party had won three general elections and referred to the Corbyn phenomenon as "revolutionary posh-boy madness" taking over the party.
"You're the person above all else who actually created a political environment where no one believed a word a politician said," countered McDonnell. "We're trying to restore honesty and confidence in politics that you destroyed."
Losing the working class
With friends like those, who needs enemies? That's why some in this country are actually predicting the eventual split of the Labour Party. It happened once before in the 1980s, though with little success.
But how else to house such divergent views in one political party? Kinnock points out that the Labour of today is committed to a parliamentary route to socialism. It was enshrined in the party constitution in 1918, and it implies holding power.
Critics say in their zeal to be elected, politicians, including Kinnock and Blair, have alienated some core supporters.
Oliver Heath, an academic at Royal Holloway, University of London, is the author of a study that found that a lack of working class Labour MPs is one reason why Labour has lost support in recent years.
"I think they're in a very difficult position at the moment because the electoral strategy was to try and increase their appeal amongst more middle class voters to win elections," Heath said. "And they were sort of successful in doing that but in the process have almost moved too far in that direction, and so the traditional working class voters become disillusioned, disengaged."
Strong opposition absent when it's needed most
Kinnock was himself the son of a coal miner and a district nurse and says he benefited from the fruits of their hard toil.
"All of my antecedents are indisputably proletarian," he said. "I got the chance. I was the first in my family to go to university in the 1960s."
For his part, Kinnock refuses to believe Labour will split, although he accepts there will likely be a long period in the political wilderness. He also bemoans the lack of a strong opposition when Britain and the European Union seem to be entering a dark period. The post-Brexit spike in hate crime is particularly worrying, he says.
"I'm now more pessimistic than I've been throughout my adult life," he said at the end of our interview, saying that was in part because of the murder of the British Labour MP Jo Cox in the days before the Brexit vote.
"I think that the mood of popular and populist simplicity — that there is an easy answer for everything, put up a wall, pull up the drawbridge, exclude people, suppress people — is now stronger in Western democracies than it's been since the 1930s, and I consciously refer to that period of mayhem and murder."
That, no doubt, is the pessimism of the intellect coming to the fore. Seeing things for what they are. That, Kinnock, says, is the best way to work toward positive change in society. For him, Jeremy Corbyn is not the man to do it.
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