by Kevin Meagher
1. The butler did it…Or perhaps he didn’t
So who leaked it? Who benefits from Labour’s policy commitments spilling out over the evening news bulletins in one big, tangled heap? No-one, is the answer. It’s unlikely too many of Jeremy Corbyn’s internal opponents (is ‘enemies’ too strong?) would have been privy to the working draft and just as unlikely they would deliberately sabotage the campaign. The mood on the right of the party is ‘let Corbyn fail on his own terms.’
Did someone in his team think it was a useful tactical ruse? Perhaps to strong arm critics who would prefer a more hard-headed manifesto with fewer uncosted commitments? (The idea being that if they’re in the public domain there can be no rowing back in today’s Clause V meeting of party grandees that agrees the final cut). Again, what we see doesn’t bear that out. The contents are, frankly, much less swivel-eyed than many expected.
Was the document leaked to cover-up something more damaging? Again, that doesn’t ring true. There was nothing going do disastrously wrong yesterday that warranted slapping the proverbial ‘dead cat’ on the table. Indeed, Jeremy Corbyn’s cancelled appearance at a poster launch this morning, gives the clear impression the leadership knew nothing of the leak.
As ever, never overlook bog-standard, garden variety incompetence, either because it’s innate to a surprisingly large number of people working in politics, or, quite possibly, through fatigue. In his book on the 1997 election, ‘The Unfinished Revolution’ the late Philip Gould recounts leaving a set of poster designs in Euston station before catching a train. When the horror of what he’d done dawned on him, a party staffer was hurriedly despatched to retrieve them. Luckily, they were still where he’d left them. Sometimes in politics you’re lucky and your mistakes aren’t realised. And sometimes you’re not.
2. Whisper it, it’s not that mad
The 2017 Labour campaign will go down as Ed Miliband’s pledges wrapped up in Tony Blair’s ‘For the many, not the few’ slogan.
The leaked manifesto has the usual riffs. Abolishing tuition fees (why not reduce the unit cost of a degree by making them two-year courses rather than three?) Making zero-hours contracts illegal (good). Building 100,000 new council houses a year (good, but it’s not just about councils). Borrowing £250bn to invest in infrastructure (again, good, interest rates are low and this is less radical than it sounds). With a reversal of recent corporation and inheritance-tax cuts to pay for it all (fair enough, but it won’t cover all those commitments). There’s also Labour’s regular hobby horse: renationalising the railways, which, as I’ve argued before, is completely unnecessary and about as fruitful as nationalising, well, a hobby horse.
The reason the policy platform is not as maverick as many expected is because the Corbynista influence on policy has not really been felt so far, with more radical positions not having yet made it through internal policy-making processes. I wonder what Labour’s manifesto would look like if this was May 2020?
3. They cost money, you know
The fact the manifesto presses the buttons of many Labour activists will help galvanise the party’s grassroots. The quid pro quo is that frontbenchers need to brush-up on how their pledges will be afforded, implemented and what effects they will have.
It’s becoming an excruciating daily ritual listening to shadow ministers corpse it trying to answer staggeringly obvious questions about how their commitments will be financed. All of which, adds to the impression that Labour are the well-meaning nice guys who aren’t, to coin a phrase, ‘strong and stable.’
Kevin Meagher is associate editor of Uncut