The new hard left run protest movement Enough Is Enough (EIE) held its first rally tonight in London. People were apparently queuing around the block. One young man said: “This is the most hopeful I’ve felt since the early days of Jeremy Corbyn.” No one, it seems, thought to ask him how he felt when Corbyn led Labour to its worst general election defeat since 1935. But this doesn’t matter to the comrades. It’s not about winning elections: it’s about building a movement. Trouble is that these movements always end up like a bowel movement.
First up is Dave Ward from the CWU. He warns Labour, which isn’t running this campaign, that, “This campaign goes on with or without Labour.” Well, yes. And he adds that 400,000 people have signed up. “It’s taken us all by surprise,” he toots. Just another 67 million people to get on board and we’ll have the whole country behind the campaign.
Next, some bloke called Kwajo gets up. Says something about housing. Seems reasonable. But he’s playing to this hard left crowd of middle class luvvies. He points out: “The MPs are all off on their holidays, they’re on the beaches and having barbecues. It’s not just the Tories. Keir Starmer is just as bad.” Woah. Hang on. Starmer has had his first holiday in three years, a week in Majorca with his wife and two children. And Kwajo, mate: he’s the leader of the opposition. He has almost single-handedly brought Labour back from the heap of rubble Corbyn left it in.
After a crowd-pleaser from writer Michael Rosen, up comes someone called Jo Grady of the University and College Union. Tellingly, she says: “We’re not mourning the Labour Party. We’re celebrating the rebirth of our movement.” In a nutshell, she makes my earlier point that it’s not about winning elections or gaining power: it’s about building a movement. She gains fanatical applause from the crowd. All they want is a movement too.
One of EIE’s so called stars is up next, Zarah Sultana, the Labour MP for Coventry South, a constituency with a majority of 401, where under Tony Blair in 1997 Labour had a majority of nearly 11,000. She gets up to announce that “politics is a bit shit” to mass laughter from the crowd, which doesn’t point out to her that she’s one of the main reasons why Labour has been a lot shit. She soon gets into her stride, proclaiming that “People in my party need to learn this: it’s workers versus bosses. Pick your side.” In your party, Ms Sultana? It’s not your party. It is the political party formed to achieve parliamentary representation for working class people. Remind me what you have done to help achieve that? Ah yes: supporting Jeremy Corbyn, without whom Boris Johnson would surely not have won a landslide victory in 2019. Granted there are lots of shit bosses and there always will be under a Tory government. Ever thought of campaigning for a Labour government? Nah. It’s that movement shit again.
Top of the bill is RMT leader Mick Lynch who, to his credit, has performed admirably during the recent rail strikes. Cool, calm, collected and on top of his brief. Until tonight. “We never started off as a political movement”. The country made it one. They did? All 68 million of us? Maybe maths isn’t Mick’s strongest suit. But the hard left Tory Brexit supporter, who is very flakey on Putin’s war against Ukraine hadn’t finished. “This is a class war… it’s being done to us by Etonians and people from Winchester. the one who’s going to win it is from Westworld or wherever they make robots.” He has a point about the robotic Mary O’Leary (Liz Truss), but he soon moves on to his real enemy: Labour. He puts the boot into Thanggam Debonaire – “she didn’t even know what public ownership was’ – he shouts. “Keir Starmer has no idea it might appeal to the working class of this country.” Nice slogan, Mick but have you given it a single thought of how much it would cost the taxpayer to nationalise everything now, what with the economy going down the dinky at a rapid rate of knots? But Lynch gets his standing ovation. Of course he does. He’s supporting a new movement. Remember: 400,000 people have given online support.
Gushing hard left Guardian hack Aditya Chakrabortty is caught up in the mood. He tweets: “A few weeks ago, mick lunch (sic) spoke to tiny rooms of RMT members, now he tops the bill at concert halls. Much of his success stems from his toreadoring of dumb tv interviewers, but he has also caught a moment and walked into unclaimed political territory.” I’ll give my view here and now: no he hasn’t.
Mick Lynch, or lunch as Aditya calls him, has worked the media well. He has put his members’ case very well indeed and rightly gained respect for his work. But to say he has “caught a moment and walked into unclaimed political territory” represents the gushings of someone from the chattering middle classes who has literally no idea what’s going on outside his little bubble. For all Lynch’s savvy media interviews, and for all the fairness and reasonableness of the RMT campaign, the campaign is going nowhere. There have been four strikes so far from the RMT with two further efforts tomorrow and Saturday. And the effect they are having on the government is negligible. Lynch boasts that strikes can go on “for months” and if the best he can do is the odd one day strike here and there, they will go on for years. Let’s see if he catches the moment with his own members if he fesses up and admits that they will have to go on all out indefinite unpaid strike if they are to have any chance of moving the government.
The hundreds who stood to applaud Sultana, Lynch et al will almost certainly be the same people who used to sing “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn”, the elderly crank who led Labour to disaster, who believe doing exactly the same thing over and over again will eventually yield different results.
Sure, enough is enough. This is a terrible government led by the worst PM of all time who is likely to be succeeded by someone who is even worse. The Tories will not be defeated by a movement. They will be defeated at the ballot box and not by empty slogans and rhetoric. And Labour only wins when it embraces the centre ground. To pretend otherwise is delusional.
When utility bills start dropping through letter boxes and people can’t afford to eat, they will not want to hear the likes of Sultana saying “politics is a bit shit” or some minor union baron celebrating “the rebirth of our movement.” They will want action, not words, and without power Labour has just words.
Attacking Labour, as so many comrades did tonight, benefits only the Tories, but many of these middle class luvvies don’t care. They quite fancy a hard left Labour government but it doesn’t really bother them if Labour loses. They might have to cut back on an overseas cricket tours or have one less skiing holiday but they won’t have a problem putting bread on the table. The trendy wine bar and the craft ale pub still awaits. It’s them and us but not as we know it.
