Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Photo: Scott Heppell / PA Wire/Press Association ImageThe conflict between the so-called 'corbynistas', and those affiliated with Labour’s centre, right and Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) is to an enormous extent underpinned by issues of class and poverty; but few address these issues in anything but the most off-the-cuff and pejorative terms.
The most obvious example, most frequently circulated and from the Corbyn camp, is that Labour’s centre is effectively 'red tory'; out of touch with the issues of inequality and precarious livelihoods that now blight the UK. The second example I encounter most frequently is levelled more personally at Corbyn. His middle class background and status – shared by some of his loudest supporters – allows him and his supporters to be pinned as people kept alive by trust funds or inherited wealth, granting them the luxury of a jolly in the politics of socialism. Helpfully or unhelpfully, (depending on how polarised we have become), there is truth in both sides of the argument.
In picking through the dogma, the first thing it seems necessary to establish is that poverty and its precarity are both a form of trauma and a form of minority-status. It is traumatic because it robs you of even the most modest and rightful comforts of a life, and because it places serious obstacles of time, space and resources between you and the future you might have wanted for yourself. In doing so, it blinds you to those opportunities and attributes you do still possess, and it robs you of peace of mind, and of a timeline that extends long enough in front of you for you to plan your own best interests. Life leaves your control. The state of high emotion – anger, resentment, despair, numbness – that this induces (and corbynism is seen by many as an antidote to) can eclipse your ability to make pragmatic decisions. Indeed, this is arguably one of its key features. But any to the right of Labour’s internal spat who would use this instability as evidence that their 'safe hands' should guide the party are glibly underestimating the injustice at the heart of the mood. It is also, crucially, quite possible to have irrational reactions as part of a response to very deep and totally rational grievances.
