How to lose Respect and influence over people

CRASH! Late last night – Saturday, 14th July – the news broke. Abjol Miah has joined the Liberal-Democrats!

This is Bastille Day – the day, in 1789, when the people stormed the Bastille prison, attempting to release political prisoners. This major part of the French Revolution is marked with a national holiday. From now on, it will mark the Great Surrender of a former figure of the left.

Across the world, there are two classes of people: the many – who have to sell their labour to make a living; and the few – who buy the labour power of the many and profit from it. Around the world, political parties reflect that divide. In the UK, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party reminds us of where it stands on that universal divide in its main slogan – for the many, not the few. And Theresa May’s party tries to represent the “few” (but can’t agree quite how best to do it).

Into the great battle between capital and labour come, occasionally, the befuddled – who try to find a third way. They hope to tame capital so that the workers can have it a bit easier – while usually trying to tame labour at the same time.

In the UK, the great deluded Third Way brigade are the Liberal Democrats (aka the Lib-Dims, architects of the Con-Dem Coalition Government on 2010 which removed Labour from Downing Street).

They are themselves a coalition: a hasty shackling together with nowhere else to go. They are made up of the UK Liberal Party – formerly a major party of past centuries, it had shrunk to a tiny rump, hanging around in case anyone wanted to do a coalition or was half a dozen MPs short of an overall majority.

The other part of the Lib-Dems are the Social Democrats. They feared Labour was becoming too left wing in the 1970s and formed a separate party in 1982 – mainly on the basis of votes for individual members rather than affiliated trade unions and, ironically, on support for the EU. (Today’s Parliamentary Labour Party rebels are following in their footsteps, doggedly determined not to learn any lessons from history.)

The Social Democrats were launched in our very own Limehouse – and went on to split the Labour vote in the 1983 and 1987 General Elections, helping to keep the Tories in government and Labour out of it, while not winning significant parliamentary representation themselves.

It is no wonder, then, that they grasped the chance of Coalition Government in 2010, when the Conservatives were 20 seats short of an overall majority. It was the chance of a lifetime, to get the ministerial cars and red boxes. Prime Minister Cameron gave them a few crumbs – a referendum on proportional representation (safely kicked out the water); and a pupil premium element in education funding (which didn’t make up for the mainstream cuts in funding to schools). He didn’t give them university tuition fees – and once the Lib-Dems had voted for fees (to keep their hands on a superficial slice of government), they were toast.

With Labour and the Tories taking care of the interests of labour and capital, the Lib-Dems have no central guiding ideology to embrace and to guide them as a party. With the different backgrounds of the two founding wings of the party, and the varied range of those who have joined since, it is impossible for them to find a plausible reason to exist – other than to have a bit of a tidy up after the other parties.

Read Abjol Miah’s statement: In his own words

Nor have the Lib-Dems fared better locally, in Tower Hamlets. Seven Liberal councillors were elected in 1982 – all in what are now the two Bow wards. In the 1986 elections, some disgruntled Labour types feared Labour was becoming too left wing (how history repeats itself – the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, and the third time in Tower Hamlets) and stood as “Independent Labour”. None of them was elected, but they split the Labour vote and the Lib-Dems found themselves running the Council.

The Lib-Dems retained control of the Council in 1990, before losing it to the famous Labour landslide in 1994. They dwindled away, with their connivance with the Tories in national government finally sealing their Tower Hamlets political coffin. Just one Lib-Dem was elected in 2010. None were elected in 2014 – but they gained a councillor in 2015 after a defection from Labour (over disagreements about the EU). He didn’t stand for re-election, and the Party is once more at zero councillors.

Abjol Miah arrived in this deluded sect via the scenic route. He was once the Chair of George Galloway’s Respect Party (admittedly from 2011, when the Party was already in decline) and Respect’s parliamentary candidate, standing against Rushanara Ali. He joined Tower Hamlets First, the group of councillors who supported Mayor Lutfur Rahman. After Lutfur Rahman was removed as mayor by the courts, he neither stayed with Tower Hamlets First nor joined the breakaway PATH group – but became an independent Independent Councillor.

There was gossip – entirely unproven – that he had bromanced John Biggs, in the hope of being given a path (no pun intended) into the Labour Party. That never materialised. In the elections in May 2018 he took an eleventh hour decision to stand as a PATH candidate, but was not elected.

Miah joins the Lib-Dems not as a councillor but as an ordinary member – so it is not as if he is going to give the party any input on the council. In his public statement, Miah claims he was attracted to the Lib-Dems by their clear policy on Brexit. Indeed, their policy is clear – they just have no means of implementing it. He is also pleased that they tabled a parliamentary Bill banning up-skirting. He glossed over their support for university tuition fees and claims that they have “more other great policies” which he will “highlight soon”. Good luck on that hunt, Abjol.

You can’t just choose your political party like you used to weigh out your pic-‘n’-mix at Woolworths: they all have a record and a strategy. During 1986-1994, a number of Tower Hamlets residents joined the Lib-Dems, including residents of Bangladeshi heritage. These were largely opportunist recruits, using the Party as a means to their own ends. Today’s Tower Hamlets Lib-Dems will be delighted that they have recruited a Bangladeshi name: but the battle in the borough at the moment is a battle about what Labour will become, and it is far too soon to jump from the Labour ship and build an alternative.

Just as Miah can bring little to the Lib-Dems, so they cannot guarantee him a platform where he can express himself or have any good chance of regaining his individual high profile. They are not a plausible route to any individual seeking re-election.

The Lib-Dems chose to put the Tories into government in 2010. If Ajol Miah wants to join them after that, he is not breaking the mould – he is a lost cause.

•Read more about it:
Abjol Miah elected national Chair of Respect
Is this the way to staunch extremism?