Dear Jeremy
As your remarkable leadership of the Labour Party draws to a close, few things seem certain about the perilous future that awaits us all. But one of them is that yours was the most impacting and influential leadership of any opposition in modern memory. Even before Covid-19 reared its ugly head, you succeeded in forcing a reckless Tory government to put the brakes on a generation of brutal austerity, steered it clear of yet more military misadventures in the Middle East, and presided over a mass democratic movement that served as a beacon of hope to progressives around the world.
Perhaps the most vivid illustration of your effectiveness was the relentless and ruthless propaganda offensive waged against you. Just as history has already proved you right on so many things — from the Iraq War disaster to a disastrously underfunded NHS, it will in time expose the real reasons why Labour lost in 2019: not because you were a weak leader, but because you were strong enough to call out the injustices of global capitalism, strong enough to take on the most powerful interests that make up the media military industrial complex; not because of ‘Brexit’, but because you tried to draw attention to the reality of inequality and social deprivation that Brexit overshadowed; and not because you were too radical, but precisely because the policies and ideas you stood for were increasingly mainstream, backed by both expert and popular consensus.
Another certainty that will surely reverberate throughout the post-Corbyn era is this: whatever the socialist roots of the Labour Party, it is fundamentally a party of vested interests. It was these interests above all that sowed the seeds of your demonization by the press and the de-legitimisation of the mass movement that supported you. They succeeded in establishing a regime of imposed truth based on an outrageous lie: that you or the vast majority of your supporters are anything but committed anti-racists, disgusted by bigotry against anyone and in any form.
Some say the energy and the hope you generated will dissipate and that socialism will once again retreat to the political wilderness for another generation or more, just as it did in the 1980s. But back then, as you know more than most, the Labour movement was deeply entwined with the unions and deeply embedded with the corporatist paradigm. Today it is much more networked, decentralised and less bound by institutional loyalty, which is a source of both great strength as well as weakness.
It seems to me that the majority of your supporters were far more committed to the ideas you gave voice to than the Labour Party itself. Many of them joined or re-joined the party solely because of your leadership. No doubt many of them are poised to leave, some have already, and more will be forced out. After all, the vested interests that worked so hard to undermine your leadership will no doubt also learn lessons from the last five years.
Jeremy, you have spent all your political life as a member of the Labour Party staying true to your political values. No one could doubt that in itself is an epic achievement as great as it is rare. It would be easy to understand why the thought of ever leaving the party that gave us the NHS, and to which you have dedicated nearly four decades of your life, is unthinkable.
But is this not the time for the unthinkable? Just two months ago no one could have imagined that an emboldened Tory government would be forced under any circumstances to do what it has just done; to offer the kind of safety net to workers that has only ever existed within the realm of the impossible.
Some say leaving the party denies our movement of the resource and status that comes with being the official opposition. But surely your most burning legacy can be summed up in one simple question: what good is an opposition without a leader willing to actually oppose endless austerity and war? What good is an opposition without a leader willing to challenge the system of injustice that is wreaking havoc on our communities and climate?
And one more certainty: where-ever you go, hundreds of thousands will follow. Only they can provide both the resource and the fuel to re-energise and revitalise the real Labour movement. Only they can provide the well of potential new leadership our movement so desperately needs: working class women; women from ethnic minorities; women who, like you, are unafraid to confront establishment power and to fight at every turn for gender justice, media justice, social justice and climate justice.
I hugely respect the decision of anyone who chooses to continue the struggle from within the Labour Party ranks. And I hope you take this letter for what it is: first and foremost, a heartfelt thank you. For standing with us, for standing by us, and for standing up for us, against all odds and in the face of such ubiquitous hostility.
And second, an admittedly and perhaps hopelessly naïve plea to do the unthinkable. To establish a new barricade from which to build on your monumental achievements as leader of the Labour Party; a new political home untainted by internal factionalism and sectarianism and uncorrupted by vested interests; to reject the handbooks, the rules, the ‘special advice’ of the professional class and political commentariat; at a time when that infamous call of the Situationists seems to echo with ever more volume and clarity: be realistic, demand the impossible.
