Left for Dead?: The Strange Death and Rebirth of the Labour Party

Left for Dead?: The Strange Death and Rebirth of the Labour Party
Lewis Goodall

A timely and provocative account of the fall of New Labour, the rise of Corbyn, and what it means for the left in Britain.‘Lewis Goodall is one of the most exciting voices in British politics right now’ Emily Maitlis‘Hugely illuminating, thought-provoking and moving in its seriousness and optimism’ Lord Andrew AdonisIn the 21st Century the Labour Party has undergone the most extraordinary transformation in its history. After more than a decade of political dominance, the party lost two consecutive general elections and found its leadership usurped by the obscure far-left MP Jeremy Corbyn. As Britain voted to leave the EU, Labour seemed destined for long term irrelevance.But then it all changed. Far from being the death of the party as many had predicted, at one fell stroke the general election of 2017 heralded its strange and unexpected rebirth. Against all the odds, Corbyn became the first Labour leader since 1997 to gain the party seats, and was simultaneously hailed as the saviour of the British Left and a harbinger of doom for its New Labour elite.In Left for Dead? journalist Lewis Goodall tells the full story of this political revolution with unprecedented access to all its key players, from Blair to Corbyn. Weaving together personal memoir, exclusive interviews, juicy gossip and incisive critique, he travels from the streets of his childhood in the shadow of the Birmingham Rover factory to the corridors of power in Westminster, tracing the journey of the party from the twilight of the ‘Third Way’ to the tumult of the financial crisis to the ravages of Brexit and Corbynism.Because one thing is for certain – while the left in Britain might not be dead, the traditional social democratic centre-left which we have known since the war is barely twitching in the road. But what has replaced it? Where has it come from? And what does it mean for the long-term future of the Labour Party?

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Copyright (#u758cd1e6-ecf1-5fdb-9c94-2e999d8bfbbb)

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2018

Copyright © Lewis Goodall 2018

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Lewis Goodall author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Graphs redrawn by Martin Brown

Image here (#litres_trial_promo) by In Pictures Ltd/Corbis via Getty Images

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008226695

Ebook Edition © September 2018 ISBN: 9780008226701

Version: 2018-08-28

Dedication (#u758cd1e6-ecf1-5fdb-9c94-2e999d8bfbbb)

For Grandad, for teaching me

Contents

Cover (#u0589f297-4b06-5634-8207-d06800bf223d)

Title Page (#u6dff065f-52cf-5a0d-b2f9-dd191d9f658f)

Copyright (#u9bce126e-aff6-59fd-9d7f-be68f1ecb234)

Dedication (#u57b813d5-6560-5c3c-9461-c67928d3d397)

Acknowledgements (#u49dc0d1d-7259-557d-ae04-f5674a44cd96)

Prologue: Longbridge (#uc8dd47dd-61cb-5333-949d-26d19a889d9d)

1 What Went Before: New Labour and the Left (#u0b456329-78c1-508a-af74-e237a1e86bd5)

2 The Curious Case of Jeremy Corbyn (#ucadafca5-158c-56e1-839c-b47c062728f5)

3 What is Corbynism? (#litres_trial_promo)

4 The ‘A-Word’ (#litres_trial_promo)

5 Corbyn the Culture Warrior (#litres_trial_promo)

6 A Class Apart (#litres_trial_promo)

7 The Takeover (#litres_trial_promo)

8 Fear and Loathing in the Labour Party (#litres_trial_promo)

9 The Night Everything Changed: The 2017 General Election (#litres_trial_promo)

10 What Comes After: The Next Election and the Future of the Left (#litres_trial_promo)

Postscript: Grandad (#litres_trial_promo)

Notes (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#u758cd1e6-ecf1-5fdb-9c94-2e999d8bfbbb)

I work in a profession in which my working days are essentially a series of sugar hits. In TV news, our deadlines are short, our working days long but our time horizons truncated. While most people’s jobs and projects can spread out for weeks, if not months at a time, in ours the complications, the highs, the lows, the screw-ups are compressed into a single day. For us, a week is a long-term gig. As a consequence my brain has been rewired by a thousand two-minute lives, three hundred three-minute packages, ten score of online instant analyses.

Writing a book then, all 130,000 words of it, has been a major challenge, the ultimate slow burn. And then, every time I was able to concentrate for long enough, everything would change. In the time I’ve been writing, Jeremy Corbyn has gone from zero to hero (and some would say back again). Every time I thought I understood what was happening, political life would find a way of making me reach for the delete button, once again. In three years, the Labour Party has moved from extinction to the precipice of government, and therefore this book, its premise and its contours have fluctuated almost as much as Corbyn’s reputation. What began as an obituary became a living history of rebirth. At the same time, and to my surprise, it became infused with my own history. For this I am indebted, principally to my family, especially my mum and dad, for giving more political insights and wit and wisdom than I could glean from a lifetime in Westminster. I also have to say an enormous thank you to Tom Killingbeck, my editor, for encouraging me to strike out beyond my working life, beyond Westminster and the corridors of power, and for encouraging me to explore my own story – and how both were mutually reinforcing. I owe him special gratitude for his patience – especially given he inherited the book from his colleague Joe Zigmond, to whom I am very grateful for believing in the idea in the first place. The same is true of my agent Claudia Young – she took half an idea, in the Newsnight green room, and helped develop it into the book you’re holding. Iain Hunt, also of William Collins, handled the final stages of the edit brilliantly. I’d also like to thank the dozens of people, politicians, journalists, aides, activists and the rest, who spared the time to be interviewed. I hope they feel everyone, of every opinion within the Labour Party and without, has had a fair shake.

Special thanks must go to my employers, Sky News, especially the former head of politics Esme Wren, for giving me the space and time to write the book – and so many opportunities more generally, many of which have fed into the contents of these pages. In that vein I’m also grateful to the whole of the senior Sky News management team, especially Esme’s successor Dan Williams, Jonathan Levy, head of newsgathering, and John Ryley, the head of Sky News, for their interest and willingness to throw me new challenges. My colleagues, too, in the Millbank bureau are too many to mention, but are a never-ending source of inspiration, humour and fun. They make me, in so innumerable ways, a better journalist. After eighteen months at Sky News, I can say without hesitation that I am extremely proud to work for an organisation which reports politics without fear or favour and which, in my entirely impartial opinion, has the best political team in Westminster. In particular, my colleague and best friend in TV, Zach Brown, has worked with me since the beginning at Newsnight and now Sky. My best work – especially on matters Labour – has been with him. Long may it continue.

I’m grateful too to my friends, many of whom have contributed ideas to the book – apologies in advance if I’ve stolen them. In particular I’d like to thank Marc Kidson and James Stafford, two brilliant minds, who over the years since our Oxford days have helped shape my thinking on so many things. If you read something here that makes you think, chances are one of them had a hand in it.

As you wade through these pages, there is one man who looms large. My dear grandad, Alan. It is no exaggeration to say that without him there would be no pages. A more thorough tribute is reserved for him at the end – but it would still be remiss not to mention him here. His imprint, his essence, is in every bit of what you’re about to read. I only wish he could read them for himself. With his no longer being here, I will have to leave that to his darling wife, my beloved nan. My dearest, this book is for him.

And to my darling girl – my imp, my Cherie, the cleverest person I’ve met, the one who has had to hear all my stupid thoughts again and again and then read them in print and still be kind about them – I can’t give all those evenings and holidays back but I promise, no matter what happens to the Labour Party, this is my last word on the subject.