Under Tony Blair, Labour’s managerial structure shifted from a pluralist system to a centrally directed one. Eric Shaw explains that this structure of control has now unravelled and power is dispersed among a range of institutions which are resistant to Jeremy Corbyn’s rule – and so Labour at times verges on the ungovernable.
Labour is facing a crisis of party management. As a leadership function, party management has as its objective the preserving of internal order and cohesion, as well as the maximising of the party’s ability to harness its energies to respond swiftly and effectively to external challenge. It is an indispensable function, but the way it is discharged can vary. Under Tony Blair, Labour shifted from a pluralist system of party management, characterised by complex patterns of bargaining and accommodation, to one that was much more tightly-run and centrally directed. Though imposing in its rigour, reach, and sophistication, Blairite party management did not long survive the ending of New Labour hegemony. Now, under Jeremy Corbyn, a fractured Labour party verges on the unmanageable.
How could this have happened? The catapulting of Corbyn into power owed less to a radical left upsurge than to a backlash against ‘New Labour’ or ‘Blairism’: a programme, a strategic orientation and, not least, a technique of party management.
Blairite party management has been analysed in compelling and convincing detail by Lewis Minkin in his magisterial study The Blair Supremacy. Minkin records how the New Labour elite breached established rules, norms and practices to install a hierarchically-ordered, centralised and elite-controlled managerial regime through a process that he labels a ‘rolling managerial coup’. Countervailing forces were undermined, checks and balances dismantled and ‘a comprehensive interlocking managerial machine operating under the guidance of the Leader’s Office and headquarters’ erected.
All this was part of a wider political project. New Labour sought, through transforming the party’s organisation and culture, to convert it into an ‘electoral-professional party’, with a centrist political ideology and powerful, free-floating leadership free from internal party restraints.
But the problem with the New Labour ‘project’ was that it lacked popular consent. The way New Labourites sought to surmount this was through the organisation and engineering of consent through what was in effect a system of managed democracy. Thus, none of New Labour’s policy innovations – for example the promotion of public service marketisation, the Private Finance Initiative, and university top-up fee – were debated and endorsed by the party’s policy-making process. In each case, approval was manufactured.
The management of consent, as chronicled by Minkin, took a variety of forms including agenda manipulation, arm-twisting, circumvention of procedures and even deception. For Blairite managers, in a common catchphrase, ‘what mattered was what worked’ and ‘what worked’ was ‘delivering for Tony.’
As long as Labour was electorally successful many were prepared to tolerate Blairite managerial methods. But discontent fermented and resentment steadily mounted against what was soon dubbed ‘spin’ and ‘control freakery.’ The legacy – and this only became evident after the 2015 election as the Right sought to recapture the party – was accumulating suspicion, resentment and alienation amongst the rank and file against the New Labour elite.
In short, a backlash against Blairism was a major reason for Corbyn’s unexpected (and destabilising) triumph. Labour is divided over multiple issues but such divisions are inevitable within political parties – what is crucial is that are able to regulate and reconcile them through robust conflict resolution mechanisms. These, in turn, can only be effective to the extent that a modicum of trust exists amongst protagonists: a willingness to accept that one’s opponents are negotiating in good faith and will abide by any agreements reached.
It is doubtful whether this modicum of trust exists in today’s Labour party. Since the 2015 defeat a process of polarisation has been underway in which control over debate has been largely commandeered by two factions: right-wing Blairites and hard-left Corbynistas – neither representative of mainstream opinion in the party. Ironically, despite their intense mutual animosity, they share a number of characteristics.
Both are, in their different ways, ‘vanguardist’ in outlook: imbued by a sense that they possess a monopoly of virtue and wisdom, disparaging of the legitimacy of their opponents and convinced of their own entitlement to rule. Minkin recounts how New Labourites’ belief that they were the ‘culture carriers of modernisation’, and hence uniquely qualified to revive Labour’s fortunes, imparted to them ‘a militant sense of moral justification.’ Radical left Corbynistas equally see themselves as uniquely occupying the moral high ground, the undisputed custodians of integrity in a party where so many (unlike themselves) have sacrificed principle for expediency. Both factions share a stultifying sense of self-regard, coupled with a reluctance to concede that those who disagree with them can do so for valid or ethical reasons.
To be fair, some within the Corbyn entourage have come to recognise that the only sustainable form of governance within the Labour party is on the basis of deal-making, compromise, and mutual adjustment – in short, a pluralist approach to party management. But Corbyn has not followed this path with consistency and determination. For example, he threated to crackdown on critics within the Shadow Cabinet through a ‘revenge reshuffle’, but then retreated. He has been emollient on some issues but has appeared unrelenting on others, and there have been numerous managerial and presentational ‘mis-steps’. The net result is that he has failed to exercise a steady, calming influence or broaden his basis of support within the party.
Racked by internal disputes and with key institutions apparently trapped into mutual mistrust, Labour at times verges on the ungovernable. All this is compounded by another legacy of the Blairite era: a crumbling consensus over the structures of authority and decision-making within the party, and a revival of old clashes over the proper location of power and legitimacy.
A party can only be effectively run to the extent that its leadership has the capacity to mobilse, co-ordinate and deploy its resource to promote its collective ends. This requires some agglomeration of power at the centre – which Corbyn notably lacks. He presides over a party in which the structure of managerial control as developed by Blair has unravelled, and where power is dispersed among a range of institutions, two of which (the shadow cabinet and the PLP) are resistant to his rule. Leading a deeply disunited party, without the confidence of key players, operating in an intensely hostile media environment, with consistently poor personal ratings and with authority draining away from the centre, the managerial problems confronting Corbyn seem formidable indeed.
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Note: the above draws on the author’s article in Political Studies Review.
Eric Shaw is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Stirling.
Interesting pieces, many true aspects to it. But it underestimates Corbyn’s inherent, humble, knowledgeable ‘everyman’ appeal. In 2015, he was one of just a handful of MPs touting social justice and anti-austerity, investment etc. Due to Corbyn’s election, it’s now part of the mainstream.
The anti Corbyn propaganda has done a real number on Corbyn. But, I think most people not blinded by their bias would admit this: before the character assassination, the majority of the UK would have been very receptive to Corbyn. Hence why all anti-JC sides are viciously going for character assassination, not policy assignation before he even has a chance to stand for a general election
Put Corbyn in a room against May, and let them talk politics together – no bias, no partisan steering, just a unbiased hustings of sorts. My money would be on Corbyn coming out on top.
“Hard-left Corbynistas – neither representative of mainstream opinion in the party” – apart from the 59% who preferred Corbyn to the hapless figurehead of the business-as-usual right, who are evidently not “mainstream”. Are we all “hard-left”, then?
I don’t share your view that Blairites are “moderate”. They began the process of dismantling the Welfare State and Blair’s anti – democratic, hierarchical party structure is at odds with the traditional Labour principle that all in the party are equal and should have an equal voice.
Corbyn does not advocate state ownership of all the means of production but wants a resilient mixed economy with state ownership and control of key services: education, health and transport. His vision is social democracy.
“Right wing” and “Left” would be more accurate classifications.
I had to stop reading at “after the 2015 election as the Right sought to recapture the party”. One candidate of four was recognisably Blairite. This is a silly thing to say, and entirely undermines the credibility of the rest of you piece.
The Blairite centralisation is why I left the Labour Party.. I was a branch and constituency chair and it was so apparent even before 1997 that constituencies were simply minions and heaven help you if you were in a labour Safe Seat.. meant you were viewed as pretty much worthless. I am also very disillusioned by the lack of women in leadership within the Labour Party and Trade Union movement. The left must become more representational and less “chattering classes of NW London” or in the case of TUs centred on male dominated work culture from the 1930s.
phew!
You’re may be making the mistake of ‘periodization’ – taking one small period to develop an argument, without looking at the whole. Because if you look at the long history of the Labour Movement (not just the period you’re describing), then the problem is something else entirely, in my opinion.
The real problem is not management of the party – or leadership – but how the Labour Party relates to the wider movement, i.e. the grassroots of the Labour movement. That is, what are the links between the grassroots and the elite, what is the balance of power between these two entities? Clearly, the Blair project was an elite project from the start – but somehow succeeded in convincing people otherwise, thereby contributing to the generalised mistrust of politicians of all stripes. And the issue of relations between the grassroots and the elites stretches way further back than Blair, or even Kinnock.
By only focusing on party elites in the recent period, you limit the scope of your inquiry, and its usefulness.
the takeover was ruthless with many LP officials sacked a true place coup, guilty ca mpbell mandelson and frank fields
with the backing of gundercover services
I think what this analysis misses is the key point that New Labour formed as a result of needing to conform to eu economic policy and more importantly was to reconstitute Labour to become simply managers of eu policy as per the Treaty of the Functioning of the EU. Hence the New Labour backlash was in reality a backlash to the required managerial role that eu policy demands. This same backlash is evident within the Tory party too.
In this respect, the new function of british democracy is to choose who next manages eu policy and eu treaties in particular. Thus both the crisis within the Labour party and the Conservative party originate from this new managerial role that has been enforced on british democracy through continued eu membership. The same can be said to be true of politics right across eu member states. Therefore the eu is not only causing a social, economic and an environmental crisis but also a political crisis too.