Stella Tsantekidou column: ‘What are we to make of the Labour Together scandal?’

I have a simple question for my comrades, and the traitors posing as comrades. Does the aim always justify the means?

Is there a parallel universe of black and white moral absolutes where Morgan McSweeney is a hero? Sure, in a universe where Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour tradition he represents needed to be rooted out of the party.

Or one where Paul Holden, author of The Fraud, a book highly critical of McSweeney and Labour Together – the organisation he previously ran, which has been accused of attempts to smear both Holden and Gabriel Pogrund of the Sunday Times as – among other things – Russian assets.

The good thing with the Paul Holden book is that it’s very long, and most people are lazy, or have a life, so won’t read it. I am an anxious obsessive, so have been poring over it. Assessing the damage, warming up for the mental jiu-jitsu I will have to perform when I am back on telly to explain away the boys’ willy-waving in my party’s name.

READ MORE: Stella Tsantekidou column: ‘You can just do things!’

Holden is a serious journalist doing God’s work, uncovering global corruption. Corbyn is a man who devoted his life to fighting for the underdog. A flawed but principled man. He wasn’t always a patriot, but he was a comrade. The mass movement he inspired was real. If you believe Labour is arrogant to ignore the appeal of someone like Nigel Farage but see nothing wrong with dismissing the appeal of Jeremy Corbyn, then you are the problem and have no place in a party that, at least in historical intention, is a party of the left.

That universe would also require that the project that McSweeney conjured up had a convincing vision. We can now admit, it didn’t.

In that universe, maybe we could excuse Labour Together’s being accused of in the same way we might excuse guerrilla warfare in 19th century liberation movements, before we developed an aversion to violence. Call the witch-hunt for lefty purist members collateral. You can’t make omelette without breaking eggs etc. In that scenario, McSweeney still resigns disgracefully, but his hagiography outlives him.

In our universe, however, where we are presented with irrefutable evidence of McSweeney’s moral failings while running Labour Together, we need atonement to save the party from drowning in moral nihilism and electoral oblivion.

The first step is to drain the swamp. The purge taking place at No. 10 is necessary. It is a sacred rule of politics that staffers should not carry the brunt of their boss’s ultimate decisions. The exception is when there are at least four books written by top journalists in which said staffers have claimed intellectual ownership of their boss’s career. 

Simply resigning is not enough for some figures. We should have made an example of Peter Mandelson the first chance we got back in November. He used Labour for long enough to enrich himself. He tarnished us with the stench of corrupt pedophiles, and now stands accused of selling out his compatriots to American bankers as our own Labour Prime Minister was trying to save the country from financial ruin. He repeatedly made our great Labour women feel small. It is time he sacrificed something too. And if I had my way, it would be his freedom – for the rest of his life.

The second step is saving what is salvageable. If in the process of removing a cancer you also remove the vital organ that hosted it your patient dies. If in the process of removing our pound shop Machiavellis we also completely delegitimise all the Labour MPs who were primed by them then we will be left with a barren PLP. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

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McSweeney would have been a Labour hero if only he believed the things he said to convince the left and the soft left to put down their weapons back in 2019.  Referring to our three traditions, Labour Unionism, Radical Socialism and Reforming Social Democracy, he said:

“Sometimes, some people seem to make it their mission to try and kill off the traditions that are not theirs. But you can’t do that, because these traditions are always with us. They’re like our souls. When those three souls stand together is when our party comes to life.”

Beautiful. Couldn’t have said it better myself, and I am a factional orphan. Sadly, even those factions are a delusion. As far as I can see, there are only two factions in the Labour Party:

1. Pathetic Losers
2. Evil Sociopaths

As much as I pray to God to give me the guts to become the latter, my bleeding heart means I am stuck in the former.  

I will not name the Labour talent I believe we should not sacrifice to quench the lobby’s hunger for revenge, because they won’t thank me. It’s not just the obvious names. What I know is that in these scandals, the big dogs know to leave before the lid blows off. The little ones are left behind, and the Labour Together back room sure was a puppy mill.

Morgan’s project filled a need in the party. The need for strategic electoral planning and the need for funding. Corbyn’s project also filled a need, the need for earnest political vision and moral clarity (coherent with his own vision). He embarked on movement-building but fell short. Both projects neglected serious policy development.

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Morgan was right to sing Labour kumbaya, despite the now obvious fact he was faking it. If we get the pathetics and the evils to work together, we will be unbeatable. We just need to be brutally realistic about everyone’s strengths and what political programme the country cries out for in every era.

But first, we need to stop by the vet. How many times does a dog have to bite you before you realise it is rabid? Put it down. 

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