Jeremy Corbyn, wikimedia
The basic problem is how Labour can win the 2020 election, or at least gain some more seats in it, but do so from a political standpoint that it will take a generation to make hegemonic.
The limited scope for left policies in a highly-indebted country
We must begin by recognising that there are severe limits to the progressive policies which global capital will tolerate. As many analysts have concluded, and Wolfgang Streek has most conclusively shown, in the globalised capitalist economy the real arbiters of policy in all highly-indebted nation-states (such as the UK) are the owners of large sums of investible capital.[1] Global ‘investors’ (read: money lenders) in effect constitute parallel electorates to the registered voters; governments of all parties must constantly retain their ‘confidence’ by not adopting policies they think might lose them money. The alternative is revealed in exceptional times: if ‘investors’ decide that their interest requires it they don’t hesitate to render elected governments impotent, as in Greece in 2015 (or even have them overthrown, as threatened by an un-named British general if Corbyn becomes prime minister).[2] But in normal times, depending on the size and nature of the national economy concerned, its trade relationships and strategic importance, etc, an elected national government normally has some leeway. Elections bestow some political legitimacy, which makes for political stability, and stability is of some concern to ‘investors’. But the leeway enjoyed by a newly-elected social democratic government is never very wide, and in the case of the UK it is especially narrow, for two reasons:
