What now for Momentum? The grassroots organisation has had extraordinary success over the last few years, not least in shoring up Jeremy Corbyn’s position as Labour leader. The World Transformed, Momentum’s event down the road from the party’s main conference in Liverpool, is a testament to the group’s growing influence: in its three years of existence, it has morphed into a lively, well-organised festival. Even if you think some of the speakers are barmy, the febrile atmosphere could not be more different from the stale feeling on the Tory fringes. Yet this isn’t a time for celebration for Momentum. Far from it. Indeed the organisation is finding that with clout comes responsibility – and its founder, Jon Lansman, is under pressure.
The problem is that many of those on the Labour far-left are unhappy about the failure to push through changes to the way MPs are selected and, possibly, reselected. Corbyn’s staunchest supporters wanted mandatory reselection for MPs to be the norm. But the plan put through by the National Executive Committee, on which Lansman sits, is – as with the party’s stance on a second referendum – something of a fudge. At a TWT fringe event last night, activists were not happy – with one Labour member heckling Lansman on stage and calling on him directly to ‘name names’ of those who had blocked the changes wanted by some of the more radical elements in the party. Lansman demurred, saying that he thought that recriminations were not the way to go (a lesson, perhaps, that some of his comrades could do well learning). But the sense at last night’s talk, ‘From Below: A Party Fit for the 21st Century?’, is that the patience of many who have longed all their lives for a far-left takeover of the Labour party is running out. On the main stage at conference yesterday, when one delegate suggested that it was worth at least weighing up the potential risk of ousting a good MP doing their job simply because of their place on the political spectrum, it was clear from the reaction on the conference floor that this isn’t a sentiment widely shared among Corbyn’s louder supporters.
The proposed shake-up doesn’t only affect MPs; it also means changes to the way that Labour leaders will be picked in future. Currently, MPs need the support of at least one in ten of their fellow parliamentarians to stand for the position. The party’s democracy review has resulted in a change where this policy remains in place, but places more power in the hands of local activists. Now, MPs will also need the support of five per cent of their local parties or five per cent of trade union affiliate members, too. But again for many Momentum members this doesn’t go far enough, and the question now for Corbyn’s supporters is how they can push through further changes while their grip on the levers of power in Labour ranks remains strong.
Some of the disappointment in Momentum circles stems from a feeling that this is the far left’s moment and that time is running out. A failure to make the most of their dominance now could come back to bite later down the line. Lansman made it clear that, while he sees Momentum as an organisation that is autonomous on a local level, at a national level its members should come together with a clear purpose in mind: to cement Jeremy Corbyn’s position. Lansman and his allies know that, at some point, Jeremy Corbyn will go. And Lansman reminded the audience (many of whom would be too young to remember) of the misery of being politically homeless within the Labour party when Tony Blair took control. One of the lessons from New Labour, he said, was that even for a figure as powerful as Blair was in his heyday, it took a decade to unravel the party’s structure and properly impose his way of doing things. His message was not only that shaking up the Labour party’s rule book is important for now, but that every change that is made is something of an insurance police against a return to the old Blairite status quo. If it took Blair, a decade, Lansman and his allies’ plan is that it would take anyone seeking to follow in Blair’s footsteps much longer than that to undo the changes being made under Corbyn.
While Corbyn’s enemies in the Parliamentary Labour party might cling to the knowledge that, one day, Corbyn will be gone, his supporters are determined to learn from the Blair era and ensure that, this time, their legacy in the Labour party is a permanent one.
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