Michael Foot brandishes Labour's manifesto at a meeting ahead of the general election in May 1983 (Photo by Hilaria McCarthy/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
![](https://unherd.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/david-kogan-100x100.jpg)
June and July were supposed to be quiet months for the Labour Party: the Conservatives would be busy electing a party leader, so it could sit back and let Brexit grind on, hoping no one would pay it undue attention until the party conference in September. The lessons of last summer, when the political agenda was swamped by the repeated accusations of Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-Semitism, were supposed to have been learned. This summer would be characterised by restraint and calm.
It was never to be. There have been repeated lurches into the political mire, characterised best by Len McCluskey on the Andrew Marr Show defending the Labour leadership’s then position on Brexit by morphing into Corporal Jones. His desperate pleas of “Don’t Panic” to Labour MPs sounded a lot like a Dad’s Army rerun on BBC2. He conjured the unfortunate image of Jeremy Corbyn as Captain Mainwaring, John McDonnell as Sergeant Wilson and Tom Watson as private Frazer – muttering “we’re doomed, doomed”.
This wasn’t the only recent echo from the 1970s. Corbyn, apparently, is reading up on Harold Wilson for inspiration over Brexit.Which is remarkable because Wilson was the subject of constant attack from the Left during his time as Labour Party leader and prime minister. He was party leader for 13 years (1963-76), fought five general elections (defeating the Conservatives in four) and held the party together in a time of huge and competing political egos on both the Left and the Right.
For the centre-Right of the Party, Europe was the issue – crystallised by Roy Jenkins leading 69 Labour MPs to vote for entry into the EEC against the Party whip in 1971 and the creation of the breakaway Social Democratic Party ten years later. For the Left, led by Tony Benn, it was the fight for a radical economic agenda and departure from Europe.
Wilson was accused by both sides of lacking ideology and being merely a “master tactician”. He held both wings together by leadership skills that are not recognised in today’s Labour Party: compromise, non-ideological responses to problems (often characterised as mere opportunism), and the ability to read the electorate and exploit the weakness of Labour’s opponents.
It’s hard to see Corbyn acting in the same ways. In the past two years his leadership has been dominated by rigidity over both Brexit and antisemitism that has turned both into full blown crises. It is the opposite of the way Wilson addressed the issues of his day. It is also reflective of the lessons learned by the Left that have been carried from 1979 into today’s politics of the Labour Party.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeI have just read, David Kogan’s, “Why the Labour Left is doomed.” and it was not until I got to, “Everything will depend on a good result when the general election takes place, and the real fear is what happens if the Left is not up to the job of winning that election.” that I began to wonder why I had even started to do so.
I say that because in close to the 1,800 words David Kogan wrote in “Why the Labour Left is doomed.” I saw absolutely no mention that the 2019 election was without doubt the foulest example of collective media bigotry and vindictive personalised hatred aimed directly at the destruction of Jeremy Corbyn. That, aided by an absolute campaign of weaponised anti-Semitism resulted in the defeat of the Labour Party and little else. Perhaps David Kogan would care to offer an alternative reasoning.