Owen Jones, Farage of the left?

[IvanV]

Owen Jones is a very personable young man, and his boyish appearance belies his 39 years on this earth. He is clearly exceedingly clever, and has a way with words. He has now left the Labour Party due to disgust with Starmer's rightward swing. Some people are suggesting he will now act as a kind of Farage which will pull Labour back to the left, to avoid loss of votes, in the same way that UKIP, Reclaim, etc are pulling the Tories rightward to avoid loss of votes to them.

Historically, I'm not aware of "further left" parties having much impact on Labour. They never seemed frightened of losing votes to them, and they never did. They didn't seem to pull them to the left, they were quite good at doing that from their own internal forces. And, like the Conservatives have their internal right-wing groups, such as the ERG and a whole panoply of new ones of late, so Labour has had Militant and more recently Momentum which have been internally effective in pulling Labour leftward from time to time, until they got sat on. I was reading a little while ago that that Momentum and Momentum-like groups were still quite active in local Labour politics, despite Starmerisation of the parliamentary party, but I don't know how that stands today.

Maybe the political landscape is changing. But when I think of "further left" parties, I somehow can't imagine them getting much traction in the way Farage and Reclaim have. Maybe I don't have the imagination to think of one with people like Owen Jones rather than Arthur Scargill. But I wonder whether Jones would have retained more traction inside the Labour Party. Once the Labour party is in power, then left wing forces will have much more power to pull Labour back to the left, just as the ERG pulled the Tories to the right, when they were in power.

There is a narrative going around that if Labour come into power, and, in an imitation of the early years of the Blair administration, don't vary much from the Tories' plans, then in a couple of years time Britain will still be just as sh.t as it was when they took power. There'll still be failing public services, high inequality, and so forth. And the voters will get exceedingly pissed off, and who knows where that leads.

I understand perfectly that you can hardly mend Britain from this starting point in 2 years, or even 5 years. But if you are to give voters confidence that you are serious about it, I think you have to start early. I think it would be good to have people inside the Labour party reminding Starmer of that.

[Tristan]

A friend of mine wrote an article about Jones in the Sunday Times this week: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/owen ... -5f6pt73k8

I think people were surprised he was still in Labour to be honest. By all accounts Chavs was a good book, and his early writing on domestic politics was good. But the Jones of the last few years is very different. I've no time for him.

When it comes to foreign affairs he's always been a prick though. Journalist Oz Katerji summed it up with this list about OJ:

16 years old - defended Serbian dictatorship
19yo - edited Wiki to say Jewish ethnicity was a lie
30yo - endorsed the Venezuelan regime
32yo - opposed action against Assad's chemical weapons use
34yo - opposed action to protect the Kurds and Yazidis from ISIS genocide
36yo - defended Corbyn's Labour from charges of institutional antisemitism
38yo - defended STWC on Ukraine, saying Ukrainse should have been turned into a buffer zone

Then there's is online behaviour, regularly starting pile-ons of people he dislikes, more often than not women.

He's a prick. His leaving Labour is a good thing for the party.

[noggins]

Whats Jones’ Brexit?

ie the issue that isnt simply too radical, but actually completely contradicts social-democratic orthodoxy.

[El Pollo Diablo]

What's interesting about Jones's points in terms of his reasons for leaving Labour are that few people are actually disagreeing with them as reasons he might want to leave. Starmer did say that Israel has the right to cut off food, water and electricity to Gaza, and Emily Thornberry backed him up. Neither has apologised. And Starmer did basically lie in order to get elected leader, stating he would do one set of things to get the backing from the membership and then pivoting to another position, dropping most of those pledges along the way.

And fair enough, for Jones clearly the Gaza comments are the red line there, though he's been unhappy about Starmer as leader for four years now and griping the entire time. I sympathise with where he's coming from, but for me (a) regardless of Labour's policy positions, I'd rather have them in government than the Tories, and so I'm going to vote that way and (b) Starmer &Thornberry saying the right things on Gaza back in October would make bugger all difference to the potential genocide that's been going on there. A lot of the responses have just been "I hate him" tribalism with very little meaningful content.

I'm not excited about Labour in government, in fact I'm worried that they'll be basically a milquetoast non-entity that achieves almost nothing and potentially encourages the election a hard-right Tory government at the end of the decade. But I'll still drink myself into a stupor on the election night if it looks like they'll win a landslide.

And Ivan is right, his idea about voting for other people will not make any difference. It's a stupid idea. It might have legs if the hard left didn't tend to fracture into the Judean People's Front/People's Front of Judea groups all the bl..dy time, but they do.

[Woodchopper]

On the possibility of a left wing campaign with a equivalent political success to Farage's campaign to leave the EU.

Ideologically, there probably is potential support for more economically left wing policies. Notably, a lot of Conservative or what are now Reform voters might be open to arguments in favour of higher government spending on health, education, pensions etc. Though in terms of progressive social values, that would be more difficult.

F6T4jjJWYAAJXok j.jpg (315.75 KiB) Viewed 1098 times

So perhaps a campaign to, say, raise UK government share of GDP from 45% to 55% and mainly spend the money on public services like healthcare, housing and education might have a good chance of success. Fifty-five per cent might sound a lot but its still lower than France, and while France has its problems its still has a functioning economy and government, and overall its a nice place to live. Support for the campaign could come from Labour voters, but also the Reform and Conservative supporters who also worry about their health, housing or their kids' education. So the electoral maths look promising.

But as any student of Mao or Lenin knows, ideology is one part of the picture. What distinguishes a successful radical movement is also their ability to organize and get support from the population. Farage is a c.nt, but he and his colleagues were effective campaigners. They spent decades focusing relentlessly on an issue that up until the mid-2000s wasn't a high priority for the electorate, and they were good at crafting messages that appealed to a narrow majority of the general population.

If someone were to be a leftwing Farage who achieved radical change on a single issue they'd need to display that kind of single minded determination over decades. The problem is that the UK left, like many other places, is perennially criticized for prioritizing infighting with other lefties, promoting a smorgasbord of issues, and being contemptuous of potential supporters who had previously voted for the Conservatives or whatever the Faragists call themselves.

[Edited syntax]

[lpm]

Farage had the tabloids and BBC to give support, day after day, year after year.

[bjn]

It's also the nature of the message, "55% of GDP for public services!", is a more complex and harder sell than "It's all the EU's fault!". It needs to be boiled down into a handful of clear messages about the change that is needed.

[bjn]

Farage had the tabloids and BBC to give support, day after day, year after year.

There is that as well. When did the SWP get as much exposure?

[Woodchopper]

Farage had the tabloids and BBC to give support, day after day, year after year.

True, that would make it more difficult for a left wing campaigner. Though perhaps not as much as in earlier decades given declining readership of the newspapers.

[Woodchopper]

It's also the nature of the message, "55% of GDP for public services!", is a more complex and harder sell than "It's all the EU's fault!". It needs to be boiled down into a handful of clear messages about the change that is needed.

Absolutely, and I'm definitely not the person to formulate the messages. But I still think it would be possible to formulate messages focused upon a dramatic improvement in public services, and relentlessly stick to those messages.

[IvanV]

If someone were to be a leftwing Farage who achieved radical change on a single issue they'd need to display that kind of single minded determination over decades. The problem is that the UK left, like many other places, is perennially criticized for prioritizing infighting with other lefties, promoting a smorgasbord of issues, and being contemptuous of potential supporters who had previously voted for the Conservatives or whatever the Faragists call themselves.

Interesting analysis.

The rightists are not exactly a cuddly single movement either. There's Reform as well as Reclaim, and I think a bunch of other ones. And several different rightist factions within the Tory party - ERG, the Poptarts, etc. When the Tories refused to join the centre right grouping in the EU Parliament, they found themselves with a very diverse group of rightist parties from around Europe, with distinctly diverse views that the Tories were a bit embarrassed about. But Farage somehow managed to sit outside that. Even though UKIP members who won elections, etc, often covered themselves in discredit, as did the party when they the odd local council. So they aren't so very different from the factionalised further left.

But maybe Farage was able to sit apart from it because he had a single big issue to campaign on. Is there a narrow area for the left to campaign on that closes down those issues? Corbyn was an effective campaigner, but then a disaster when as leader of the labour party he had to address a wider range of issues.

I am very much in line with what EPD says. As a package, I don't find Jones attractive at all. But I am aware many other people do, and maybe he can be quite effective. And, as with EPD, I agree with quite a lot of the specific things he has been complaining about of late. And I really want a Labour government to be addressing public services and inequality, and they sound like they will hardly be trying. As for the horrors of Gaza, well saying stuff is pretty much gesture politics for all the difference it will make, and leads only to massive disagreements. So perhaps let's just agree to differ and realise that it is the future of the UK that is the important thing in UK politics.

[Woodchopper]

If someone were to be a leftwing Farage who achieved radical change on a single issue they'd need to display that kind of single minded determination over decades. The problem is that the UK left, like many other places, is perennially criticized for prioritizing infighting with other lefties, promoting a smorgasbord of issues, and being contemptuous of potential supporters who had previously voted for the Conservatives or whatever the Faragists call themselves.

Interesting analysis.

The rightists are not exactly a cuddly single movement either. There's Reform as well as Reclaim, and I think a bunch of other ones. And several different rightist factions within the Tory party - ERG, the Poptarts, etc. When the Tories refused to join the centre right grouping in the EU Parliament, they found themselves with a very diverse group of rightist parties from around Europe, with distinctly diverse views that the Tories were a bit embarrassed about. But Farage somehow managed to sit outside that. Even though UKIP members who won elections, etc, often covered themselves in discredit, as did the party when they the odd local council. So they aren't so very different from the factionalised further left.

But maybe Farage was able to sit apart from it because he had a single big issue to campaign on. Is there a narrow area for the left to campaign on that closes down those issues? Corbyn was an effective campaigner, but then a disaster when as leader of the labour party he had to address a wider range of issues.

I agree Ivan. The right is also full of backstabbers. But as you write, they were able to single mindedly coalesce around a single political project for decades, a cause which they supported in spite of conflict between different parties and factions within the Tory party.

I think it would also be possible for a group of people on the left to do something of similar magnitude, and if you look at British social history there are examples of when that did happen. But it wouldn't be easy, it would take a group of people with excellent organizational and media skills who were willing to devote their lives to the cause [ETA by that I mean that they'd probably miss out on the rewards of being a party apparatchik or alternative careers outside of politics].

[Woodchopper]

Farage had the tabloids and BBC to give support, day after day, year after year.

True, that would make it more difficult for a left wing campaigner. Though perhaps not as much as in earlier decades given declining readership of the newspapers.

Thinking on this, Brexit may have led to a structural obstacle. Many different British political parties and movements such as the faragists, nationalists and greens were able to use getting someone elected to the EU Parliament as a means to secure funding and have a platform.

[Sciolus]

As for the horrors of Gaza, well saying stuff is pretty much gesture politics for all the difference it will make, and leads only to massive disagreements. So perhaps let's just agree to differ and realise that it is the future of the UK that is the important thing in UK politics.

I agree with much of your post. With regard to the quoted bit, I agree that no-one really cares about votes in Parliament which make no difference to anything. But there are people who think that the UK should at least take action to avoid being actively complicit in genocide.

[noggins]

Brexit was a reversal of 40+ years of 'normal' conservative economic and foreign policy. Its the fissure between capitalism and nationalism.

What issue will facture the socialist - social democrat alliance that is the Labour party? I don't think argument %ages of tax and expenditure are quite enough.

[IvanV]

As for the horrors of Gaza, well saying stuff is pretty much gesture politics for all the difference it will make, and leads only to massive disagreements. So perhaps let's just agree to differ and realise that it is the future of the UK that is the important thing in UK politics.

I agree with much of your post. With regard to the quoted bit, I agree that no-one really cares about votes in Parliament which make no difference to anything. But there are people who think that the UK should at least take action to avoid being actively complicit in genocide.

And if it was up to me, I would go further than that. But this is a democracy, which is about the art of the possible. And the election that is coming up, and the policy program which follows, should be mostly about the future of this country.

I tend to think of these people who say they are left wing but cuddle up to places like Russia and Venezuela, and approve of what goes on there, must be some kind of crypto-rightwinger. For these are extreme right wing states, and they are approving of their right wing actions. And maybe they look at Venezuela and see how those rulers got that position by hiding as socialists. So maybe they think that's the clever thing to do.

Maybe Tristan is right and the best way to conceive of this is to be pleased to say good-bye to him. There is still a question of whether he will now be influential, or has in fact thrown his toys out of the pram.

[TopBadger]

Not a fan of his piece today either...

Britain’s defence policy is more like one big declaration of war

Apparently we should be investing less in actual defense and more in de-escalation (which he leaves undefined).

[Woodchopper]

Not a fan of his piece today either...

Britain’s defence policy is more like one big declaration of war

Apparently we should be investing less in actual defense and more in de-escalation (which he leaves undefined).

The article contains a slight of hand.

His second point is:

we must prevent a repetition of the calamitous 21st-century wars of “intervention”, which – in addition to destabilising Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and others – killed 636 British service personnel (in Iraq and Afghanistan) and made us less safe.

That's a fair point. He also points out the massive cost of the British nuclear forces, something which is also a fair point.

But then he goes on to write:

Britain should pare back defence spending so it means just that: defence, or protection from invasion, assistance for humanitarian disasters, and international peacekeeping operations. As Richard Reeve, coordinator of the thinktank Rethinking Security, puts it, other “middle powers” – think Japan, Germany, Italy, Canada – don’t have global military pretensions. “Why do we believe we have a right and responsibility to act globally,” he says, “despite our resource constraints and legal norms?”

That doesn’t mean producing only weapons for repelling hypothetical invasions: for example, supporting Ukraine’s defence against Russia’s brutal invasion is a legitimate example of arms exports, whereas the Saudi-led war on Yemen is not. That means producing significantly fewer weapons.

[...]

It is true that Nato membership calls for arms spending of at least 2% of GDP, but in practice most states flout that. The real threats faced by Britain include pandemics – as you’ll probably recall – and cyber-attacks. Helping to stoke an arms race, and resigning ourselves to a future global conflagration, will hardly prove an effective means to protect our national security if it culminates in nuclear extermination. Focusing on actual threats, and ensuring we have a defence sector that can stave off a theoretical invasion, would be a more rational approach. What a tragedy that our political culture makes this almost impossible.

What is missing in the article is consideration of how much Britain should spend in order to support allies such as Estonia or Finland. In between rejecting wars in Africa or Asia and defence of the British Isles lies the large commitment to help Britain's European allies and neighbors. He briefly mentions support for Ukraine and mentions that the NATO 2% goal isn't mandatory, but beyond that there isn't any analysis of how much Britain needs to spend if it is to take seriously its commitments to allies. Those commitments could involve far more spending than at present. If Jones believes that Britain shouldn't prepare to defend them then he should state that explicitly rather than mostly ignoring the issue.

[headshot]

How does he propose avoiding nuclear extermination without a deterrent to prevent other countries chucking nukes at us?

[dyqik]

How does he propose avoiding nuclear extermination without a deterrent to prevent other countries chucking nukes at us?

A deterrent doesn't really stop them, it just makes them wish they hadn't done it.

[headshot]

How does he propose avoiding nuclear extermination without a deterrent to prevent other countries chucking nukes at us?

A deterrent doesn't really stop them, it just makes them wish they hadn't done it.

True, but it's a deterrent that's worked everyday since 9th August 1945.

[lpm]

You could equally say not having nukes is a deterrent that's worked every day since 9th August 1945.

[Sciolus]

His second point is:

we must prevent a repetition of the calamitous 21st-century wars of “intervention”, which – in addition to destabilising Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and others – killed 636 British service personnel (in Iraq and Afghanistan) and made us less safe.

That's a fair point.

It's not a fair point, it's cherry-picking. If you make a chart of The West Did/Did Not Intervene against Things Went Well/Things Went To sh.t (as I did on Another Forum), you will find points in all four quadrants of the chart. You should include, for example, Sierra Leone (intervened, went well), Syria (did not intervene, went to sh.t), Ukraine (intervened half-heartedly, went less to sh.t than if we did nothing), and Gaza (intervened on the wrong side, went to sh.t). It's also doubtful that the West's intervention in Libya made it any more sh.t than it would have been anyway.

[Tristan]

Oz Katerji going in studs up at this clusterf.ck of an article: https://x.com/ozkaterji/status/17810400 ... iksLglQFYQ

I do like Oz.

[IvanV]

Britain should pare back defence spending so it means just that: defence, or protection from invasion, assistance for humanitarian disasters, and international peacekeeping operations. As Richard Reeve, coordinator of the thinktank Rethinking Security, puts it, other “middle powers” – think Japan, Germany, Italy, Canada – don’t have global military pretensions. “Why do we believe we have a right and responsibility to act globally,” he says, “despite our resource constraints and legal norms?”

That doesn’t mean producing only weapons for repelling hypothetical invasions: for example, supporting Ukraine’s defence against Russia’s brutal invasion is a legitimate example of arms exports, whereas the Saudi-led war on Yemen is not. That means producing significantly fewer weapons.

[...]

It is true that Nato membership calls for arms spending of at least 2% of GDP, but in practice most states flout that. The real threats faced by Britain include pandemics – as you’ll probably recall – and cyber-attacks. Helping to stoke an arms race, and resigning ourselves to a future global conflagration, will hardly prove an effective means to protect our national security if it culminates in nuclear extermination. Focusing on actual threats, and ensuring we have a defence sector that can stave off a theoretical invasion, would be a more rational approach. What a tragedy that our political culture makes this almost impossible.

What is missing in the article is consideration of how much Britain should spend in order to support allies such as Estonia or Finland. In between rejecting wars in Africa or Asia and defence of the British Isles lies the large commitment to help Britain's European allies and neighbors. He briefly mentions support for Ukraine and mentions that the NATO 2% goal isn't mandatory, but beyond that there isn't any analysis of how much Britain needs to spend if it is to take seriously its commitments to allies. Those commitments could involve far more spending than at present. If Jones believes that Britain shouldn't prepare to defend them then he should state that explicitly rather than mostly ignoring the issue.

Russia has a substantially larger production of (conventional) arms than all of the rest of Europe put together, despite the latter having something like 10 times the GDP of Russia. If Britain and our allies are to produce arms on a scale to support Ukraine and other nations potentially threatened by Russia, I think we probably need to spend at least 2%.

Spending 2% is a NATO obligation, and the countries that flout it considerably annoy those that don't, especially the US. So I fear that Jones is stoking the collapse of NATO here, perhaps because he is one of those people that hate the US and perversely cuddle up to much nastier places. Biden goes relatively quietly on the flouters, preferring to promote the unity of NATO. But Trump is threatening to make flouting a really big deal.

Jones' idea that spending 2% encourages an arms race is ridiculous - Russia and China are already spending far more regardless of what we spend.