Jean-Luc Mélenchon

MARSEILLE, FRANCE Р2022/03/27: Jean-Luc Melenchon on stage during his political meeting. Jean-Luc M̩lenchon far left candidate for the presidential election of the party La France Insoumise (LFI) had a public meeting in Marseille. The first round of the French presidential election is due to take place on April 10, 2022, the second on April 24. (Photo by Gerard Bottino/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Jean-Luc Mélenchon (1951-) is a French politician. Politically active for 50 years, his sharply anti-neoliberal and anti-austerity positions have placed him firmly on the political Left, often with further descriptions of his politics as “far-left” or “left-populist”, the latter of which Melenchon embraces. Known for his fiery personality, and razor-sharp tongue, Melenchon’s prominence in contemporary French politics comes from the discontent produdced by austerity in France – itself a consequence of the 2008 financial crisis, and loss of political legitimacy of the Socialist Party (PS) with frustrations towards it as a ruling party overseeing austerity, as well as the perception reality of their degeneration from its founding social-democratic politics left a space for a more forthright left-wing electoral platform.

Born in Morocco when it was still a French colony to a postmaster of Spanish descent and primary school teacher of Italian descent, Melenchon grew in Morocco until his family moved to France in 1962. He was educated at a state school and received his degree in philosophy from the University of Franche-Comte, and would later work as a teacher for some time before entering politics. He was a member of the Trotskyist Internationalist Communist Organisation in the early 1970s, before eventually joining the Socialist Party in 1976, quickly acquiring a position as secratary for the local branch in Montiagu and running a party newspaper – with its platform advocating an alliance between the Socialist Party and the Communist Party of France (PCF). He would eventually become the private secretary of Claude Germon – the mayor of Massy in Essonne – a municipality in northern France. Mélenchon became a prominent advocate of “Mitterandism” – concentrated around the radical left politics of Francois Mitterand, in opposition to the “second left” represented by Michel Rocard, and the left-nationalism of Jean-Pierre Chevenement. Mélenchon became senator in 1986 – at 35 years old, he was the youngest person to be elected in the Senate at the time. However, Melenchon remained an otherwise marginal figure – at least until 2008, when he broke from the Socialist Party, which by then had succumbed to the “Third Way” heyday which captured centre-left party across Western Europe. He co-founded the Left Party – a mass party coalition of other parties and organisations from the socialist, ecological and republican movements – with Marc Dolez in 2009. The party in collaboration with the Communist Party of France, set up an ‘anti-liberal front’ and campained for a Social Europe, and in opposition to the Lisbon Treaty. In the following general election in 2012, Mélenchon represented the Left Party and came fourth – behind Francoise Hollande, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Marine Le Pen – receiving 11.1% of the vote. Melenchon ran for President again in 2017 after launching another platform called La France Insoumise (“Unbowed France”), and only received 19% of the vote, coming fourth – and being excluded from reaching the second round of voting. Later that year, he becmae a member of the National Assembly, representing the constituency of Bouches du-Rhone. He was the subject of notoriety for his vociferous opposition to worker flexibilisation, and for receiving a suspended prison sentence for an altercation with police as they served a warrant to La France Insoumise headquarters in Paris. In 2022, he ran again for President – coming third with 22%, behind Emmunuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, who narrowly edged out second.

With the formation of the New Ecological and Social People’s Union (NUPES) on May 1st 2022 (May Day 2022) – a red-green political alliance formed for the 2022 legislative election, Mélenchon assumed leadership of the alliance, and prevented Macron’s liberal political coalition Ensemble from acheiving a majority, but only receiving 22% of the vote.

While he is no longer a Trotskyist, Melenchon nonetheless still describes himself as a historical materialist – albeit his “left-populism” is heavily inspired by post-Marxist theorist Chantal Mouffe and of the ‘republican socialist’ Jean Jaures. The narrative that fuels this populism is the demand for a new national narrative for France – a “left-nationalism” or even a “progressive patriotism” if you will, though the cynic in me calls it “social-chauvinism”. This leads to Mélenchon taking standard positions on the Left, such as opposition to neoliberalism and its institutional avatars – such as the EU and the IMF, a demand for the withdrawal of France from NATO, a radically redistributive income, and for the security of worker’s rights. The nationalist aspects of his positions come in regarding his praise for the French spirit of republicanism – to the point of demanding the creation of a ‘Sixth Republic’, his embrace of France’s ‘creolisation’ (multiculturalism). This nationalism is also rather problematic in several aspects – notably his refusal to acknowledge continuing French imperialism, accusations of alleged baiting of Islamophobia (though it should be noted that he has a better track record of defending the rights of Muslims as citizens than most of the major politicians in France today – including and especially, Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour – the latter calling him an “Islamo-leftist”, though given the institutional racism that Muslims often experience in France, it isn’t saying much), and his instistence on acknowledging the role of ‘Republican’ France in World War II and not that of Vichy France – which not only collaborated with Nazi Germany, but also took part in the Holocaust, criticizing Emmanuel Macron for apologizing for France’s role during the Vichy period in the Holocaust*. On this occasion, he should have kept his mouth shut.

Such is his disdain for neoliberalism, especially then-recent austerity measures imposed on Greece, his campaign team created a video game called “Fiscal Kombat”, where his character gets to shake down then IMF director Christine Lagarde for the people’s money.

The current relevance of Mélenchon serves as a case study on the various strategies employed by democratic socialists in a post-GFC world. Melenchon went with an unabashed and self-described ‘left-populism’ held together by a nationalist narrative. The prominence of globalisation and its assertion of a supposed ‘trans-nationalist’ modernity has led to a view, especially in the European left, that a reassertion of national sovereignty is an effective means of combatting it via its institutions. However, what Ellen Menikins Wood reminds us is that globalisation cannot exist without the participation of the advanced capitalist nations – especially if they stand to benefit from it. Socialists of any stripe** should be conscious of this before embracing any politician who struggles to admit his country’s complicity in this process.

Notes:

*- All of the now ‘democratic’ countries who allied with the Nazis in Europe have all but refused to properly acknowledge their roles and apologize for their atrocities during World War II. Even the process of purging elements of fascism and bringing to justice prominent war criminal has been less than satisfactory and all the more so when the capitalist powers decided that having unrepentant fascists would be great in the struggle against communism. Germany itself has not only done so, but had set up various memorials dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust and the Nazi regime, alongside giving reparations to the Allied forces (most notably the Soviet Union, and even then – all of that was from East Germany) as well as the victims of Holocaust. However, the extent of Germany’s commitment to atoning for its acts is much more complicated than it initially seems, and is the source of controversy that affected everything from its political composition in the aftermath of World War II, the very political formation(s) of Germany and territorial claims, as well as the composition of institutional structures – much of which was complicated by the Cold War. In spite of the show of justice meted out to the Nazi leadership via the Numenberg trials, many former prominent Nazis found themselves well-placed in administrative positions in civil-political structures of both West and East Germany – albeit the former was much more lax, even conscious of their integration, and the latter were far more thoroughgoing in having them purged (the reasons for both should be obvious by now). Nevertheless, the furore around “denazification” and the degree it was pursued within West Germany (whether it was too punitive or whether it was too lax) as well as whether a clean break was truly made had reverberated throughout its history even after reunification – the reaction of the West German New Left in the 1960s as well as recent scandals regarding revelations around underground Neo-Nazi networks, and the signifant presence of former Nazis in the intelligence services.

**- Of note are the democratic socialists, who sometimes have a tendency to overlook the more problematic aspects of a popular leader’s politics, or in recent terms explore the contradictions formed within so-called ‘left-populism’ as viable route to socialism, even if it apparently falls short of its more universalist precepts.

See also:

  • French left
  • Francois Mitterand
  • Democratic socialism
  • ‘progressive patriotism’
  • ‘left-populism’
    • Chantal Mouffe – influenced his current political positions
  • Jeremy Corbyn
  • anti-austerity movement of the 2010s

The 2019 Election Anniversary – A(n Emotional) Retrospective

For a large segment of the British left, today is a sombre commemoration – it is the 3rd anniversary of the 2019 general election which saw a Conservative Party led by Boris Johnson comprehensively defeat the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn, and consolidate a 80-seat majority – owing largely to the collapse of traditionally held Labour seats, the so-called ‘red wall’, as the Conservatives seized them. There are many reasons as to why this election went the way it did – and some of them are down to the Labour Party and even Jeremy Corbyn, and others within his inner circle. I don’t think that I’ll talk so much about how it was that Labour came to lose than go over what the entire experience was like for myself, and how I’ve come to terms with what had come afterwards.

In pretty much most of my life, I didn’t have very much – or rather, what I had didn’t feel as much as what my peers had. And once I had to take responsibility for own finances – it always felt precarious and fleeting. 2019 was no different. I’d left the second and so far – last job with a contract with the company on my 28th birthday – health issues, various engagements, and ironically enough – finances, made continued employment unworkable, and I partially suspect that there were attempts to get rid of me at the workplace anyway. While I was an enthusiastic supporter of the Corbyn project, the reality of the precarity was keenly felt, and it affected my involvement in the local Labour Party’s various activities – and even ones that weren’t local. This wasn’t entirely new for me – after all there were various points during the nine years that I was a party member – when I did canvassing without a penny to my name. There were even runs that I attempted to join that most would probably try to reach by bus, but I decided to walk there to see if I could find them. Was it all to see a left-winger actually win? To see a different social arrangement than the one I was used to? The emotional need to feel like a part of something amazing? I don’t know – it could be any one of those things, none, or all of them. But by late November, with my favourite uncle passed away, my therapy sessions long over, and the benefits and personal earnings from my job drying up, I got sick of it all.

There were a lot of left-wing commentators online or otherwise around the UK who talk about how excited and energised young people were to see themselves represented in Corbyn and trying to fight for it. By November 2019, I wasn’t one of them. And it had nothing specifically to do with Corbyn, McDonnell, or any of them. What it had more to do with, is seeing people around you who you called ‘comrade’ in two-hour long canvassing sessions get to go home to their cozy middle-class lives – and plan their holidays, while I every day received headaches either from not eating enough, or trying to figure out how I’m going to manage using the 20 quid in my wallet over the week for food and transport. It was this maudlin, saccharine tripe – the sloganeering, of ‘getting tough’, that I once parrotted – that began to weigh on me. I was getting blamed for my own financial hardship by people who are supposed to help me. It was shit. Even as I signalled solidarity for the social media to see. When I discovered that yet again, I had no money in my account near the end of the month – I had reached my limit. I had decided that days weren’t going to get any better so I might as well try to act normal and have it as good as possible, because it was going to be my last. I don’t know how it happened, but on my way to Croydon – I received messages from an old friend. I think that my nerves were pretty fried, so didn’t feel joy – but told him of my intent to end my life. I think that he phoned me to distract me and at the time, I wish that he didn’t because I got scared of the passing cars again. When he hung up, I got upset – because I realised that I wanted to live, even with everything as painful as it was. It was then that I called my other friend and told him about what had happened, sobbing as I did. I said that I’ll wait at the nearby McDonald’s and that he was coming over.

Somehow, I was still able to engage in ‘political mode’ in my head, even as it was coloured by my depression. I expressed scepticism that so much of what was promised could really change – more so, that I could feel it change – and he agreed. I think at that moment, I felt recognised in a way that I didn’t from my other fellow members. There was another fallout from Croydon Council that we were still reeling from that was also personal – but that might be for another story for another – likely distant, time. In any case, I am grateful, that he came when he did.

I think that it was about a week until in a lot of respects I was back to activism mode. I even went to a Stop the War rally the week before the election, even getting a People’s Assembly T-shirt. Throughout that week, I leafleted – even in the rain, and canvassed the doors of Central Croydon. One memorable evening canvassing session had me forgo the advice I was given (not by a campain organiser – who in Croydon, was likely to feel strongly about it) to not talk about Brexit, and discuss housing and public services – only to learn that this was what all anyone on that street would go on about – one have out with its line about how he wouldn’t vote Corbyn because “[he didn’t look] strong” like he used to in his birth country. Eventually, it became simply about getting the party’s supporters out to vote – the televised backdrop is Labour MPs such as Jonathan Ashworth causing stirs with openly antagonistic statements towards the Corbyn leadership for the voyeuristic press to chew on. Another one with Rebecca Long-Bailey explaining the free broadband scheme with a vast fiberoptic infrastructure concentrated in the deindustrialised north, was given the caption: “Broadband communism?” by the BBC, demonstrating that infamous impartial reporting of Auntie Beeb. I was very much burnt out at this point, and commented on feeling like a cog in a machine, and I was consoled by mostly fellow activists – many of whom have since left.

The final day was spent doing one last canvass run, and completing a proxy vote for another friend and his wife, and getting soaked in the process. With the final evening run, by the time everything was finished, it had taken me more than an hour to walk back to Ruskin House in South Croydon. I went there with the belief that we probably lost, but at least gave a good showing. When I walked into the building, it was so much worse than I imagined. A large fella, who I number met before clasped his hands onto my shoulders something indeterminable – but I sensed it was bad. As I walked into the bar room, I mused that whatever it was, it couldn’t possibly be that horri-holy fuck! Is that the results on the screen!? I saw that the Tories had roughly a hundred more seats than Labour. I was baffled, how could our failure be so complete? Weren’t we going to take Boris Johnson’s Toxteth seat from him? Wasn’t he a blatantly dishonest and cowardly politician? So why did this happen? Another room – titled the Nelson Mandela room in which I enter, full of Labour activists with wistful and sour expressions, even though Croydon North and Central were secure – MP Sarah Jones had even increased her share (though MP Steve Reed’s clear majority fell by a third from the prior election).

Apparently, the country never believed in the change that Corbyn represented, for varying reasons – but I suspect that what it broadly comes down to, is that he challenged so many comfortable certainties. Certainties like “will my property value raise?”, “will I get paid by that private firm that wants a stake in the NHS?”, “Will my shares I have in this company raise in value?”, “Will I finally get the peerage or title I’ve been aching for years under this?”, that sort of thing. The kind of worries poor little boys who roll in worn-out jackets can’t imagine. The irony is that a lot of those things would still would happen, and as for stock – well – it’s actually hilarious how emotions like fear and anxiety from capitalists, can so easily affect the markets, which tells me all I need to care about financialisation as a good. The other problem comes with nostalgia – used and abused alike by both sides of the insipid Brexit screaming match which allowed people to take leave of their senses. I concluded that Britain is governed by a deep, self-indulgent pessimism emanating from segments of the propertied class, and the embourgeoised – this malaise is highly infectious and difficult to control, but it robs any emergent possibilities, which is the tragedy experienced by those living and working precariously.

Aftermath

Some time later in the following year, during the election post-mortem in the Momentum meeting, I got given an officer position. Not sure if I deserved it, or did a lot with it – certainly not as much as I wanted to. But I did canvass like a motherfucker, so I took it. Some time later, the mission was to save Corbynism by supporting Rebecca Long-Bailey and Richard Burgon, which I threw myself into, to the point of getting heckled outside the Indian YMCA. Even as I went further into it, I wondered if it really was the final days that I got engaged with social democracy. All the Croydon nominations were stage-managed farces, but beyond my frustration around them, I came to realise that from hearing Starmer’s supporters, that Labourites use the term “socialism” in a very weird way. Both those on the Left and Right seem to believe that it’s – to reference Richard Wolff, “when the government does stuff”. Starmer did win, and I ignored social media for three days – lest I bitch out all of Croydon Labour, especially the councillors I was convinced voted for him. The reality was I’d be painted as a divisive, marginal asshole, so I stayed largely silent – if somewhat snarky. It was the pandemic, and lockdown nearly everywhere, so it’s not like I was going to do anything else.

I did attend nearly every meeting Momentum had that year, and I think co-hosted one, though by the end of 2020, any enthusiasm that I had for Labour snapped like a twig after Jeremy Corbyn was suspended. Mentally, the only thing that I wanted to give left to Momentum was my prescence, a few stuff that I planned to either finish or put forth to them (like stuff involving political education and presentations), and would pop my head up for stuff that piqued my interest, like housing, or democratisation of the party. By 2021, I was done with all of it, and left. I was going to hop off the boat anyway, but the straw that broke the camel’s back, was hearing how malicious locally the Labour right bureaucrats and jobsworths could be.

So that’s that. I think that I will accept a marker of my politics as “disgruntled post-Corbynite” or something, even though it did admittedly take a while to get into it and came in later than most. What else can you call me after writing so much on Labour? I don’t think that had Corbyn won, it would be all sunshine and rainbows. In fact, I was expecting to for him to compromise on many things in his program, and for our role to change to push for a commitment to it. I’m now unsure that given the revelations around the 2017 campaign of the dirty tricks from the Labour apparatus, not even from the Tories – that such a government would not be allowed to last very long. Whether it’s backbench rebellions, recalcitrant civil servants, a rabidly hostile media, even foreign intervention (not in the Latin America-kind, just the kind where ‘Atlanticism’ is revealed to be a one-sided relationship), or Civil Assistance-style plots, these were the possibilities of a Corbyn government.

Other Corbynites, ‘post’ or otherwise, seem to suggest that it would lead to the beginnings of the creation of ‘New Jerusalem’ or something, but I kinda think that this is the kind of melodramatic mush the Labour left have been prone to. I don’t believe that anything close to the story of how Corbyn’s Labour came to lose the 2019 election has been told, and what has been given is this shallow narrative for media pundits, and Social Review-style wonks to tell: that he was incompetent, or some kind of Assadist maniac who will run Jewish people out of the country, or the most personally irritating – that just as Blair went too far to the right, Corbyn went too far to the left, conspicuously leaving out any discussion around the Party apparatus, its functionality, and even whether it worked towards the same agenda as the LOTO office. I think that there are questions to had around whether Corbyn’s personal demeanour was suitable for the pressures of leadership (and it appeared that he mostly led a pack of fucking jackals), or around whether there was a serious commitment to the deepening of party democracy, or a serious attempt to incorporate dying Labour strongholds, instead of what appeared to be a purely electoral strategy which focused heavily on comms, centralised management, and backroom dealing.

For myself, I’m not really emotionally attached to those questions anymore. I don’t think ‘exposing betrayal’ would be as emotionally satisfying as it was two years ago. As I like to tell myself, I’ve bypassed the Labour Party, and don’t imagine joining back in the forseeable future. Out of all the quotes the laconic Tony Benn gave, the “toughen up” one is one of my least favourite ones. Toughen up for what? So I can get fucked by petit-boug bully boys for some dream of a fleeting settlement? Nah, that doesn’t enthuse me at all. Given the narrowing of horizons, we should in etching out new possibilities not measure ourselves by our tolerance of abuse and suffering – especially from those that are, ostensibly, ‘on the same side’; we should instead measure our capacity to embrace other, to show understanding, to feel love, and to have solidarity – for those would be the foundations upon what the new society will be built on. If anything else, although it was funneled into a parliamentary program, it was indeed many of those features that did emerge in the Corbyn project – it’s a reason to be wistful, but also an inspiration to build in another, more expansive form.

See also

The Directly Elected Mayor Referendum in Croydon

On 7 October 2021, a referendum was held in Croydon on the option to change its local governance from the cabinet model aka the “strong leader” model, or that of a directly elected mayor. Turnout was 58,897 – 21% of eligible voters , of which 47,165 (80%) voted for the change to a directly elected mayor, with 20% opposed. The switch is due to take place in May 2022. This post while it is focused on the events that led up to referendum, has an additional importance greater than a decision of governance in a major town, but the story of what appears to be the beginning of the end of the Labour Party’s control of Croydon Council, and the decline of Croydon Labour itself.

Background

The Labour Party first gained control of Croydon Council in the council elections of 2014, with Woodside councillor Tony Newman as the Leader of Croydon Council. This was the era of austerity delivered by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, and coupled with the restrictions on spending imposed on local authorities constistent with the Local Government Act 2000, and the Localism Act 2011, leaving the newly Labour-controlled Croydon Council without many opportunities to provide services effectively without running into financial strain or for new local projects – its response to these problems was initially was limited to the “mundane” purview of many councils such as the raising of council tax of its residents – to scheming various manners of property speculation. Croydon is also the site of the Home Office Asylum and Intake Unit at Lunar House – many of whom require some form of housing even if the accomodation is temporary – having to meet a particularly high intake of unaccompanied asylum seeking children (UASC), alongside demands to provide shelter to the homeless – particularly those from neighboring boroughs. The latter requires an article on its own to describe the reality of just how messed up it actually is.

When the schemes went well in Croydon Council, they went really well – such as allowing the creation of Croydon Boxpark. However, when they bad it went catastrophically – such as the plans for a new Westfield shopping mall after three years going belly up, the in-house property development company Brick by Brick (BxB), and the purchase of the Croydon Park Hotel with the intention of raking in £1million a year for the council blowing up in their face when the companies they partnered with withdrew – forcing the hotel into administration and turned into a temporary accomodation for the homeless. Whatever benefits that came from the rejuvenation of Fairfield Halls was negated by the coronavirus pandemic, and news of the £12 million cost to refurbish the arts centre soon followed. Soon after Croydon Council successfully secured a £2.5million grant, it laid off 400 staff – all of whom the celebrated “frontline workers” of the pandemic to meet a £65million shortfall. Croydon UNISON led a protest against the cuts, citing the staff workers were overworked and underpaid.

Mismanagement, corruption and cronyism were common accusations thrown towards Croydon Council, which a culture of opaqueness in its decision-making did not help. Unbeknownst to most of the Croydon residents were the attempts within Croydon Labour to push for a culture of transparency and a change to collective decision-making within the Council, using the Labour Party Democracy Review as a jump-off for this initiative. Within the meetings, the significant members of the Labour Group displayed a, shall we say…intransigent reaction to the proposals made during the Working Groups generated from the Review. Beyond a pamphlet and an internal report, very little of significance came about from these meetings – and as a result of the leadership change from Jeremy Corbyn to Keir Starmer – nothing came of ‘expanding local democracy’ or transparency ever again. This was problematic for the Labour administration, particularly when taking into account how these events led to the current crisis, and gave another campaign its running legs – ceding the rhetoric of ‘local democracy’ to its most prominent political nemesis.

The Road to DEMOC

Taken from chrisphilp.com

The Directly Elected Mayor Of Croydon (DEMOC) campaign had been bubbling since July 2019, advanced by a coterie of local businesses – particularly the Whitgift Foundation, and residents’ associations. The Croydon Conservative Party – who advanced it in the hopes that they regain control of the council from Labour. The Croydon South MP Chris Philp had advertised the campaign on his personal website, and the Croydon Conservative webpage also advertises the campaign. Despite this, the DEMOC campaign was able to pitch itself as an non-party affiliated position, particularly with the presence of Labour Party notables – the former Secretary of Croydon South CLP Stella Nabukeera and the former Chair of Croydon Central CLP Joyce Reid appeared in DEMOC’s photo material, and the Bensham Manor councillor Jamie Audsley was not only quoted in this reading material, but outright led a separate campaign Labour for a Directly Elected Mayor in favour of the change, and to promote himself.

The DEMOC campaign appealed to the disgruntled residents’ associations frustrated with Croydon Council, with various grievances such as the raising of rates, planning property building in green spaces and Brick by Brick house-building plans in the south (read:affluent part) of the borough to adapt to the borough’s demographic shifts. Initially, it got off to a very poor start – with DEMOC’s crowdfunding attempt failing miserably and falling far short of its expected goal. However, what was perceived as a laughably marginal and astroturfed campaign appealing to the nimbyist elements of Croydon became very serious as a result of the biggest crisis the Council had ever faced.

The Hole

By late 2020, it was understood that the £1.4bn Westfield shopping mall scheme had failed, and Brick by Brick not being the housing golden goose that it was believed that it was going to be, with £200million poured in to the developer without receiving dividends. On 12 October 2020, Tony Newman gave a brief statement on Twitter announcing his resignation as the Leader of Croydon Council following the resignation of the Council Member for Finance Simon Hall. Newman had previously told local party activists that austerity had been the cause of the council’s problems, however the mood among them was, at best, a mood of disenchantment and at worst, apoplexy.

Newman was succeeded by the Broad Green Cllr Hamida Ali – becoming the council’s first BAME leader, and Hall was replaced by Thornton Heath Cllr Callton Young. Barrier-breaking celebrations over Ali’s selection as council leader were clouded by the inauspicious circumstances of her rise, which worsened once Croydon Council filed a section 114 notice on November 11, 2020 – halting all public spending save for essential services – an admittance that Croydon Council could not meet the demands of a balanced budget required of it: effectively declaring bankruptcy. The Section 114 meant to stave off the audit commissioners taking control, Croydon Council had to reorganize its expenditure, including the closure or selling off of parks, and the closure of libraries. Croydon Council Leader Ali launched Q&A’s to Croydon Labour on the direction of the council and addressing rumours of council cuts to “non-essential” services. Ali also insisted in interviews that the pandemic had worsened Croydon Council’s situation leading to the section 114, which was held in place until March 2021. The independent audit report into Croydon Council’s expenditure revealed that for at least three years the council would overspend its allocated budget.

The nail-in-the-coffin came when ITV News exposed the derelict conditions of flats located in Regina Road, South Norwood, with residents claiming they “weren’t fit for human habitation”, and earning the ignominous title of “the worst council flats in Britain”. The news could not have been more embarassing for the Council, which let out a public statement in response, and hurriedly placed the residents in Regina Road into new (temporary) accomodation. Now many Croydon residents, mindful of the ignominious reputation the Council received over its failures would not show mercy or understanding to a Council which appeared to them to be amoral, hopelessly corrupt and incompetent.

We didn’t start the fire…

By September 2020, the DEMOC campaign acquired the 20,000 signatures in its petition to hold directly-elected mayor referendum in the following year, which Cllr Hamida Ali accepted – and scheduled for 6 May 2021. On January 2021, it was announced that the referendum would take place in the autumn.

The DEMOC campaign had become quite influential, and been granted several boons from the Council’s many misfortunes. However, some elements of resistance to the campaign emerged to try to halt the DEMOC advance. “Croydon Says No” was launched as an anti-DEMOC campaign in early June 2021. Croydon Says No later set up a Facebook and Twitter account to accompany its blog, though the latter appears to have not been particularly active – only posting two tweets overall. On the 12th June 2021, they posted an interview with Croydon North MP Steve Reed, who expressed his firm opposition to a DEM effectively saying that it was a Tory plot and saying it would cost the taxpayer money. For months, the DEMOC campaign had maintained an internet ad campaign – and so it was decided that Croydon Labour Party in response had to launch its own. But there was a problem, and that was the lack of accountability from central figures in Croydon Council’s woes.

Following their resignations, Tony Newman and Simon Hall had both continued to attend CLP meetings – most notably on the November 2020 meeting to oppose the no-confidence motion on Keir Starmer for the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn, until their own suspensions from the Labour Party in February 2021. Local activists would complain that the councillors wouldn’t even admit that the council was bankrupt, and Steve Reed himself also seemed to run on this silent policy of not admitting wrongdoing, basing the social media anti-DEMOC campaign on this. Curiously, Reed did not throw his weight behind Croydon Says No, opting instead to launch “No to a Directly Elected Mayor” before the referendum was due to be held, with his Croydon Central counterpart Sarah Jones, and lead the anti-DEMOC campaign as they would a Labour Party one, with Labour Party leaflets and mail distributed to supporters of the party to encourage them to vote. The Labour Group had already decided collectively to oppose the campaign for a directly-elected mayor, in June 2021 motions to oppose the campaign were passed both in Croydon North CLP and Croydon Central CLP, making it official Croydon Labour Party policy. The “No to a Directly Elected Mayor” was an outgrowth of Croydon Labour’s stance, and so the campaign reflected a typical Labour Party campaign, blaming the Conservative Party for cuts to councils, and denying that the council was bankrupt. The leaflets distributed by Labour Party canvassers were coloured in Labour’s traditional red – and infamously had pictures of burning £20 notes to illustrate the claim that the office of a directly-elected mayor would cost a million pounds, accusing the Conservative Party of seeking to waste money.

Steve Reed and Sarah Jones had effectively turned the anti-DEMOC position into a Labour position and treated them as they would the Conservatives, trying to pull off the DEMOC campaign’s veil of plausible deniability. However, there was a thorn in the side of the anti-DEMOC campaign in Croydon North. Cllr Jamie Audsley as mentioned before had supported the campaign for a directly-elected mayor even to the point of independently campaigning “Labour for a Directly Elected Mayor” in May 2021. The anti-DEMOC campaign advanced by the Croydon North and Central Labour Parties was close to the councillor candidate selection process, which Audsley suddenly would himself deselected – ostensibly for breaking the Nolan Principles by not declaring that he had campaigned for a directly-elected mayor. Cllr Audsley filed an appeal against the decision to deselect him, which he lost.

He claimed that his deselection was politically motivated, and the outrage from his deselection prompted the Bensham Manor Branch of the Labour Party to write a letter inquiring about the selection process. Other allegations that prospective candidates were similarly blocked for various reasons including appearing at the South Norword library protest. The allegations implied that Steve Reed or prominent members of the Labour Group had interfered with the selection process to allow for candidates more closely aligned with them. Nevertheless, Reed faced outwardly and launched a social media campaign e-mailing the Labour Party members of his constituency, explaining his opposition to the directly elected mayor proposal.

Reed later hired an agency line to launch an aggressive social media campaign, and it was here that things took a turn for the farcical. Steve Reed’s social media campaign saw the use of internet memes displayed on his Facebook page, and that of other councillors in his constituency also from prominent supporters and allies. The memes featured the Simpsons character Mr. Burns, cabinet members of Ronald Reagan presidency sharing a laugh, US dollar notes flushed down the toilet, and the “change my mind” meme featuring Canadian far-right internet personality Steven Crowder. It is unknown whether this strategy was independently arrived or had drawn influence from “Croydon Says No”, which had also used internet memes in their blog posts. Reportedly, it was deployed with the estimated cost of £15,000 in campaign funds paid to the agency. That’s right. A social media agency allegedly received £15,000 to produce this:

The only answer that could make sense of the strategy behind the social media campaign was if Reed and Jones – particularly Reed, were banking on the ‘tribal’ allegiance to the Labour Party within Croydon, and especially the perception of themselves as popular within their local constituencies. At best, the campaign was incredibly insular, and the memes brought bemusement rather than amusement. The campaign continued to insist that Croydon wasn’t bankrupt, that Croydon Labour was doing a good job even in hard times – claiming the Labour-run council “kept the libraries open”, and that the Conservatives were failing nationally with the fuel crisis. Such was the strength of Croydon Labour’s opposition that the “No to a Directly Elected Mayor” campaign referred to a hypothetical directly-elected mayor as a “fat cat [politician]”. The social media videos asked “Would you spend £1million on a Conservative politician?”. On Friday 8th October 2021, they received their answer.

Conclusion

A cold and miserable Thursday saw 58,897 people to a polling station in Croydon, and in the early hours of Friday 8th October, an announcement of the results confirmed the referendum proposition passing with 47,165 votes – a landslide. Chris Philp – the Conservative MP for Croydon South wasted no attempt to baske in the glory on Twitter. MP Steve Reed’s response to the result was sheepish, saying that Croydon can “learn from the best Labour mayors in other boroughs”, and hope that Croydon Council will make sure funds are not diverted from public services.

Local mayoral candidate selections are now underway for the Mayoral election in May 2022. A candidate from the Conservative Party – which they have confirmed to be Cllr Jason Perry of South Croydon Ward. Whoever becomes the mayor will have to see through the cuts recommended by the auditors which is likely to spell curtains from several of Croydon’s libraries, and the almost certainty of Croydon Council refusing to take any more USACs. As this blog points out, the newly Directly Elected Mayor of Croydon will have seven months until the Croydon 2023 launch – pressures that the Labour-run Croydon Council under a cabinet system were struggling to meet. An Extraordinary Council Meeting following the results of the referendum is due to take place today.

Ultimately, this is not a story about a referendum, but about the rise and fall of the Labour Party in Croydon. The saga of the Labour administrations in Croydon Council is a Greek tragedy – an unlikely rise to power in 2014, and an eventual dominance of Croydon politics – forcing the Conservative Party to bank its electoral chances on a long shot directly-electoral mayor campaign exploiting the trifecta of disillusionment with the Council and with local Labour Party politicians, nimbyism and rising council tax rates.

Croydon Council under Newman (and Ali) and indeed before faced the pressures of all councils in England and Wales thanks to the decade-long austerity, and the clamp on local government expenditure enforced by central government to ensure that the events of the rate-capping rebellion never happens again. What this did, is severely limit what local authorities could do, in delivering services for its residents, and constrained its avenues to generate local investment. As is often remarked on the consequences of austerity measures to local goverments, councils are forced “to do more with less”. And from this pressure, it’s easy to see how they arrived at the Westfield shopping-mall gamble, Brick by Brick, and the Croydon Park Hotel purchase. For what it’s worth, Croydon Council did make up for the Stanley Halls closure by refurbishing the arts centre, it also launched the “climate emergency” campaign to make Croydon a sustainable borough by 2025 – allowing for a local committee supported by the New Economics Foundation to run and address local obstacles and climate-conscious strategies to appeal to homeowners, unfortunately cut short by the coronavirus pandemic – forcing a report on a series of recommendations to a Council that is now almost certainly unlikely to fulfill them. There were a variety of issues that were indeed outside Croydon Council’s control, however there were many decisions that the Council definitely took that were very bad, and even excluding the BxB stuff – it did have a predilection for encouraging massive skyscrapers, often at the cost of small businesses.

This leads to the heart of the issue that the council seemed to struggle coming to terms with: accountability. Croydon Council felt itself unable to even properly admit its mistakes, or level with concerned party members, much less the wider residents of Croydon even at the face of political oblivion – a Newman at political death’s door citing anything from the pandemic to austerity comes too little, too late – as his administration spent six years trying to square the circle of a tight-belted local authority with various schemes, such was his influence that he could go without informing much of even the Cabinet of his decisions, and he often didn’t. Even Hamida Ali’s leadership had the pall of Newman, and local outlets felt her administration to be an insufficient break from the previous regime. Adding to the feeling of unaccountability was a culture not just within the council and the Labour Group, but also embedded in Croydon’s Labour Parties of an inflexibly hostile attitude to an expansion of democracy, and fierce factionalism in the latter – ironically citing the need to appeal to the wider borough than just the Labour Party. Indeed, their response to austerity is contrasted with that of Labour councils in Ealing, Bradford, Southampton and more – even Labour Groups remaining in opposition to Tory councils, yet found the time to state firm and vociferous opposition to Tory cuts. Had Croydon Council and the Labour Group did more to be honest and trust the reaction of the people it represented – the DEMOC campaign would have been dead in the water, and Tony Newman may still have been council leader until at least 2022.

The directly elected mayor campaign was not a victory for democracy. It was probably one of the most grotesque displays of power jockeying by the nakedly opportunistic and ambitious sorts who had the gall to call themselves local representatives brought before the eyes of the people of Croydon, soon to be succeeded by the actual mayoral election. No great expansion of democracy or accountability will come from the directly-elected mayor – because the DEM is accountable to no-one, not even the council.

What could have been the last-ditch effort to make the case for a continued Labour-run council, to show humility and ask the forgiveness of the boroughs residents, and a golden opportunity for all sides of the Labour Parties of Croydon North and Central to unite, and even form coalitions with local parties and organisations against a transparent democratically-elected mayor campaign run by Croydon Conservatives – had instead turned into an absurdist double act mandating the Labour Group to ensure that members vote the right way. A potential redemption arc squandered, scrapped, and undermined by a perilous gamble to bank the north-south borough divide, and local Labour loyalties on an easy victory – and returning with absolutely nothing. Literally nothing. Every single ward – even in “safe Labour” Croydon North voted for the DEM once Steve Reed and Sarah Jones turned it into a referendum on Labour in Croydon, and lost badly. The very culture of unaccountability had become Croydon Labour’s undoing – leaving saner heads out of the anti-DEMOC campaign, and allowing it be blighted by embarrassing accusations of cronyism and control freakery, utterly unnecessary for an attempt to prevent a potential governance shift – yet wholly consistent with the motivations of politicians prioritizing threats to their power in Croydon over the health of their local party.

Never again shall I hear Steve Reed bark “worst result since 1935”, at least not without a hearty chuckle. Since this ridiculous man allowed himself to be convinced that his own personal popularity was what gave him his majority, which played into his decision to launch a deeply cretinous social media campaign followed by a very ambitious, yet highly credulous posse – which predictably did nothing for him but display his own vanity: the memes in particular were virtually incomprehensible to his own base. To feed his vanity, he shamelessly rifled through campaign funds with the motivation of preventing even the possibility of an emergence of a power – even within the Labour Party, that could eclipse his. This is embarrassing and should in a sane and sensible world bring questions over his position given how blatant his liability to Croydon Labour is. But it won’t. For I do not exist in a sane world, but in a pocket dimension called Croydon.

In this pocket dimension, MPs who allegedly squander the local party’s campaign funds to call the very prospect of directly-elected mayor a fat cat in a blatant attempt to secure his position, have people seriously discussing whether he’ll run (and presumably vote for him in spite of his callousness). In this dimension, MPs can give shout outs to Stormzy and Krept & Konan, while supporting the very policies that would have prevented their rise to fame and certainly the launch of a restaurant were they in force. And in this dimension, bankruptcy is denied until the local representatives are blue in the face, because even after national news coverage, it is admitting it before party members that makes them look bad.

The losers in this story are not Steve Reed or Sarah Jones; or Croydon Labour; or the residents’ associations in the deluded belief that a future Croydon DEM will prevent develop planning (though they will suffer as well). It is the refugee children likely to be turned away from the borough, and the people whose libraries are at risk of closure. That’s who really loses.

See also:

  • Directly-elected mayor
  • Steve Reed
  • Sarah Jones
  • Chris Philp
  • Croydon Council