‘Integrity and strategy matter – lessons from the Corbyn years’

There are a number of things that stands out for me from the Corbyn years but the one that automatically springs to mind is the missed opportunity. Without doubt he managed to bring a new generation of members to the Party and should be congratulated for that.

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However, a substantial increase of membership brings a substantial flow of income. This should have been invested in training and upskilling campaigning techniques. Here was a whole new generation of hungry activists who could and should have benefited from greater investment in social media, digital, Campaign Lab style techniques. Instead what seemed to happen was rallies, more rallies (remember Glastonbury and  “Oh Jeremy Corbyn”?) and more motions being submitted at CLPs up and down the country than I could shake a stick at.

I have nothing against motions but then they have to go somewhere. I’m not sure what happened to the National Policy Forum  (NPF)  during these years but I don’t remember anything substantive coming from the NPF or indeed from Regional Boards.

This was all compounded by a lack of understanding of campaign techniques to be used at local and national level. I am an unashamed fan of targeting and twinning seats. Sorry, but it worked to some tune from 1997 onwards – John Grogan always maintains we held Selby in 2005 because Sheffield was twinned with Selby. Both 2017 and 2019 had piles of activists going to the wrong seats, quite often seats we were going to win comfortably. Where was the national strategy for both elections?

There were a lot of self taught campaigners, and those have stayed with us, but it was a missed opportunity to talent spot to feed the pipeline of activists.

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The second is more personal and something I have already written about for LabourList. The 2017 general election was a snap election and therefore, whether you like it or not, parliamentary candidates often got imposed on CLPs. The time scale allowed little else sadly. In the case of Sheffield Hallam – one of the last seats to get a candidate – we were given Jared O’Mara.

I’m not going over the details of what happened next as it’s well documented. Only to say within an hour of being informed (as the then Chair of the CLP) I raised considerable, and documented evidence, of why this selection was wrong. As I said in the previous article “we must select with integrity “ It is not appropriate or fair to throw a candidate in at the deep end (which is what happens with a by-election or snap election) without making an assessment and review of needs. To throw someone like Jared into a general election campaign without taking account of his needs and fragilities was cavalier and highly irresponsible.”

This could have been avoided. As it was, a young vulnerable man ended up in prison, and the good people of Sheffield Hallam did not have a functioning MP. OK, I know what people in Clacton may be saying right now but the Labour party must always act with integrity and must have due diligence at its core.

It is a lack of attention to details like this that can derail a political party, and due diligence is something that, now I’m on the NEC, I take seriously.

I see that Jeremy Corbyn has now got his own political party. I wish him well but unless he gets to grips with the mechanics of what that entails and the hard graft of campaigning and modern campaigning techniques then history may well repeat itself.

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