A Free Left Blog

Privileges and patronage are wired into the party's institutions. Falkirk is merely the latest example. This article was first published in a slightly different form on the New Statesman Staggers blog on 4th July 2013. Labour’s troubles in Falkirk are just one symptom of a bureaucratic culture that doesn’t merely tolerate the practice of fixing by insiders and groups but institutionalises it. In Falkirk, Unite stands accused of signing up its members to Labour without them even knowing about it, in order to get its favoured candidate, Karie Murphy, selected as the prospective MP. There have also been claims that the union plotted to get the seat declared as an all-women's shortlist in order to exclude a male rival. As I have found since I joined Labour in 2010, these sorts of practices are not exceptional. They are standard, and not exclusive to the unions by any means. Of the New Labour years, former party general secretary Peter Watt  has said : "Th...

In a survey last year by Netmums , just one in seven of the British women questioned described themselves as ‘feminist’. The report concluded, “modern women feel traditional Feminism is no longer a label they feel proud to wear - it is seen as aggressive, divisive and doesn't take into account their personal circumstances”. Meanwhile, over at Huff Post UK, Lucy Sheriff has said: “ As much as I hate to admit, this is still a man's world. But I don't think feminism is going to change it . “ It's no longer a dirty word, it's the punchline of a joke .” What Lucy described as ‘feminism’ is surely more a reflection of what I called in Part 1 : “ the particularly strident, strict and aggressive brand of feminist politics that has taken over: almost exclusively confined to the Left of course ”. Feminism is much broader and richer than this, but as with most things, those people who get the best hearing tend to be those who shout the loudest and offer the m...

This article was first published on Labour Uncut on 13th March 2012. Originally written as the first in a two-part series on identity politics, it was edited down heavily and given the specific focus on All Women Shortlists in the Labour Party. (And, just to clarify, I have no problem with that - though I have made a few small changes to the published text). “White people love playing ‘divide & rule’ We should not play their game”. These words, tweeted by Diane Abbott, ignited a storm of accusations and denials of racism, while opening a window into the complexities of identity politics. While it is doubtful that many white people were properly offended by the tweet, it does expose Abbott’s assumption that black and white people should be divided, and that they have different (and opposing) interests. The “divide and rule” agenda that Abbott talked about in fact applies more to her in this instance. She was clearly trying to draw a racial drawbridge between black ...