Labour Party – Michal Rozworski

Looking to the UK, it definitely feels like a series of those weeks where decades happen. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour narrowly lost but really won the election, its vote share up by the most since 1945. Corbyn himself looks more like the Prime-Minister-in-waiting than leader-of-the-opposition; “Jeremy Corbyn is Prime Minister” is now a popular dig at mainstream pundits on Twitter. This week’s two great guests explain it all: how and why Corbyn won, why his economic program was so important and where Labour goes from here.

First I speak with Beth Foster-Ogg, a prominent activist with Momentum, the group created to support Corbyn’s first leadership bid and now a major force both within and outside the Labour Party. Beth is currently the membership coordinator and spoke with me about Momentum’s role in the election campaign, and where it is headed next. My second guest is Nick Srnicek. Nick is the author of Platform Capitalism and Inventing the Future, a stellar and influential book co-written with Alex Williams, one he spoke about on this podcast last year. He is a Lecturer in the International Politics Department at the City University London and one of number of intellectuals who have supported the rise of Corbynism.

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My podcast interview with Richard Seymour on the roots and prospects of Corbynism appeared in Jacobin last week.

While the United Kingdom has been reeling from political crisis to political crisis in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, Jeremy Corbyn has never looked stronger. He showed his principles in apologizing for a war he opposed from the very beginning, he has consistently made an argument for an anti-austerity, antiracist politics that can fight for all sections of the working class, and he so far appears to have survived a coup attempton his leadership.

In fact, Jeremy Corbyn, a survivor of “lifeboat socialism,” now finds himself at the helm of what is likely Europe’s largest social-democratic party. Several hundred thousand new members have joined Labour in the past two weeks, largely to support Corbyn against the on-again, off-again coup effort led by a powerful faction centered within Labour’s parliamentary caucus. Yet despite these efforts, Corbyn is one of the few party leaders left standing after the referendum.

I recently sat down with Richard Seymour to talk about his new book, Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics. Situating the acute short-term crisis, he provides both a background to the Corbyn phenomenon and looks at its long-term chances of success.

Michal Rozworski: I’ve been meaning to interview you about your new book on Jeremy Corbyn for a while and in the meantime, a lot has happened. Before we get to the latest news, quickly lay out the main argument of your book. How do you see the Corbyn phenomenon, and its chances for success?

Richard Seymour: Okay, well the question that the book starts out with is: how can it be that the Labour Party has, for the first time in its history, a radical socialist leader, when it has never had that before, even when the Left has been in a much stronger position.

Right now, the Left is historically weak. The labor movement is historically weak. Strike rates are at an all-time low and union density falls year by year. The membership of left-wing organizations has been falling for decades. The evidence for dramatically increased left-wing militancy is nil.

Yet Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership by attracting hundreds of thousands of new members to the Labour Party, both full members and supporters, by attracting the support of all the major union leaders, or at least most of them, by getting just enough nominations from the parliamentary party, and by attracting a raft of celebrity support.

When I talk about celebrity support, I’m not talking about the types of people who turn up at left-wing events. I’m talking about Daniel Radcliffe, the guy who played Harry Potter, people like that. It’s quite a strange range of people.

Basically, there was a unique kind of moment: a feeling that Labour had not done the job against the Conservatives, and it needed to do something radical and different.