Ten Years In the Death of the Labour Party by Tom Harris

Author:Tom Harris [Tom Harris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785903755
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2018-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘STRONG MESSAGE HERE’

It was all over weeks before the announcement on Saturday 12 September. As the audience of party members, journalists and MPs gathered to hear the result at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, a stone’s throw from the Palace of Westminster, news filtered through that Corbyn had won on the first round with 60 per cent of the vote. Standing at the back of the room, or engaged in some of the many and sometimes petty tasks expected of them, party staff members maintained sullen expressions. Many of them wore black – ties, dresses, suits – partly in ironic jest about the wake today’s announcement would presage for the party, and partly as a genuine act of mourning. While the party’s general secretary Iain McNicol had been appointed under the leadership of Ed Miliband and could not be described as a Blairite, most of the rest of the senior staff were exactly that – professionals who had dedicated their lives to serving a Labour government. Many of them had been appointed under either Blair or Brown. And they viewed the day’s unfolding events with an undisguised mixture of horror and disgust.

Attention turned briefly to the results of the deputy leadership contest, which was announced first, and in which Tom Watson, he of the ‘Curry House Coup’ against Blair in 2006 and a union fixer in his own right, prevailed in a five-way contest after three rounds of voting.

Watson, although resented by many on the Blairite wing of the party, had nonetheless benefited from their support. Sensing the way the main contest was going, there were plenty of members and MPs willing to swallow any reservations they had about Watson’s penchant for political manoeuvring, in fact to make the most of it. By putting Watson in the No. 2 spot in the party, Corbyn’s opponents hoped to have helped undermine him even before he was formally announced as winner. This consideration, it should be pointed out, played only a very minor role in Watson’s victory: the West Bromwich East MP had built up a broad base of support from across the party, thanks to his various high-profile campaigns, including against the left’s traditional pantomime villain, Rupert Murdoch, and in support of press regulation following the News of the World hacking scandal in 2011, and his vocal support for the party’s link with the trade unions (he was a former political officer with the AEEU, one of the predecessor organisations to Unite; he was also a friend and former flatmate of McCluskey’s).

At noon, the results in the leadership ballot were announced. Corbyn had secured 251,417 votes (59.5 per cent), Burnham 80,462 (19 per cent), Cooper 71,928 (17 per cent) and Kendall 18,857 (4.5 per cent).

The former 100–1 outsider took to the stage to give the speech he never imagined he would have to make. In rambling but nonetheless heartfelt comments, Corbyn told conference that people were ‘fed up with the injustice and the inequality’ that prevailed in the country. ‘The media … simply didn’t understand the views of young people in our country.

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