Binary Rigidity

I made the point on Twitter recently that the debate around trans rights in the Labour Party has started to display parallels with the famous antisemitism flap of 2016-19. For example, the claim that MPs with broad access to the media were being shouted down and even physically threatened by the feral left; the suggestion that there was a particular strain of misogyny that arose from a leftwing milieu and expressed itself through intolerant criticism of the gender-critical (GC); and the demand that the party leadership condemn this misogyny unreservedly and take steps to discipline members guilty of it. There are some differences though. In this scenario, the target of the manoeuvre is not the leadership but its support for trans rights, and in particular support for the reform of the Gender Recognition Act (2004) to allow self-identification and bringing the Equalities Act (2010) in line with that, which could affect the single-sex exemptions of the latter. Behind the lurid GC tales of men claiming to be women so they can hang around female changing rooms is a more fundamental struggle over who gets to define the interests of women. 

Given that trans women are only ever likely to be a tiny proportion of all women, this might appear inconsequential, but for the middle-class women who have long dominated the discourse over womens' rights, often to the disadvantage of working-class or minority ethnic women, this is the thin end of a wedge that potentially undermines their privilege. While the majority of feminists (indeed, the majority of people) are supportive of trans rights and self-identification, the gender-critical enjoy significant press coverage and sympathy, reflecting their disproportionate presence among newspaper columnists and politicians, which in turn reflects the professional, middle-class milieu and the dominance of second wave feminism within it (trans rights being a dividing line for many third wave feminists). That this does not reflect the views of wider society does not cause any pause for thought. As with the Jewish community's widely-reported fear of a Corbyn government, the mere existence of the concern is sufficient to justify its salience in the media. But this is where another difference arises. 

Most people were unable to gauge how credible the Corbyn "threat" to Jews was, not because they suspected he was an antisemite but because they weren't Jews themselves. To dismiss the fears of the Jewish community as overblown or paranoid was to risk displaying a callous disregard for the feelings of others. In contrast, the claim that trans women are a threat to natal women is one that half the population can judge to its own satisfaction. As a result, the "trans threat" has increasingly been framed as an issue of misogyny, which in turn has escalated gender-critical language into blunt transphobia and led to the bizarre sight of reactionary men "GC-washing" their actual misogyny by claiming to be defending womens' rights. As the modern (for which read: young, third wave, intersectional) left tends to be pro-trans rights, that cause has come to be associated not only with leftism but with a particularly disrespectful strain whose emblematic form is a shitposter taking the piss out of Suzanne Moore on Twitter. More troubling than this parallel with the antisemitism flap is the tendency of some on the left to take gender-critical terminology at face-value.

For example, the Labour MP Rosie Duffield claimed she was avoiding the Labour Party conference this year because of threats. Sonia Sodha interpreted that as "left misogyny", despite Duffield having offered no evidence that those threats were both misogynistic and from the left (none were detailed in the Sunday Times article). My observation that Sodha's use of "left misogyny" was a strawman resulted in some people upbraiding me for downplaying misogyny or claiming that it cannot be found on the left. This response echoed the charge of denial when anybody questioned the prevalence of antisemitism on the left during the Corbyn years. Many left commentators - keen to avoid the binary rigidity of "its a problem" / "it's not a problem" - tied themselves in knots in their attempts to balance the acknowledgment of the seriousness of antisemitism with criticism of the amplification of it for factional reasons. As no balance is possible, because the other side is simply not arguing in good faith, this approach proved futile. It is now an article of (bad) faith that there was no exaggeration, hence the continued suspension of the whip from Jeremy Corbyn, while all the comment pieces by Owen Jones and others will be exhumed solely to confirm that the left acknowledges it has a problem with antisemitism.

This is what happens when you allow the debate to take place within the framework of liberal virtue. Jones's behaviour can be excused as the result of being a liberal media careerist, but it is still striking that many on the left appear to be ignorant of the history of this manoeuvre, with the result that they fall for it repeatedly. If you think the reason why Rosie Duffield has decided to skip this year's party conference is leftwing misogyny then you are being played, both by her and the Murdoch press. If you take the bait and seek to bracket left misogyny ("No one is denying there is a problem, of course misogyny is bad" etc) in order to shift the debate towards the substantive issue of her transphobia, you will not only be permanently apologising for left misogyny but you will have accepted the premise that there is a misogyny peculiar to the left. Before you know it, you are conceding "the left has a problem with misogyny" which eventually morphs into "leftism is inherently misogynistic because it valorises a male working class", which is the functional equivalent of "leftism is inherently antisemitic because it arises from vulgar anticapitalism". The only way out of this thicket is to reject the binary of "You're either vocally against X or you are secretly in favour of X".

Though the gender-critical movement is borrowing much from the anti-Corbyn movement's strategy, there are two important tactical differences. First, there is an exclusive focus on the politico-media bubble rather than street politics. There won't be any high-profile demonstrations as there isn't a willing resource such as the Jewish community to provide numbers, and because any counter-demonstration would probably not only be larger but would have the advantage of being positive ("Trans women are women") rather than negative ("It's a scam"). Second, the aim is not to use control of the party bureaucracy to undermine the leadership but rather to leverage the leadership's determination to minimise the role of party members in formulating policy to advance gender-critical positions. Which brings us neatly on to the question: what is Starmer up to? The proposed changes to party rules, including the return of the electoral college in place of one member one vote (OMOV), are clearly intended to insulate Labour against the possibility of another leftwing candidate securing the leadership, but this is clearly just one part of a wider programme.

Starmer's claim that the electoral college is needed to reinforce the influence of trade unions is simple dissembling (were he a more subtle operator, I'd even think it evidence of a sense of humour), coming only weeks after his office celebrated the election of Sharon Graham as Unite General Secretary on the grounds that she would focus on industrial matters rather than the internal politics of the Labour Party. In the event, it looks like the left-leaning unions aren't going to support this, which means that Starmer will need to get his way by first dividing the unions on the matter and hoping that the purges have swung the constituency representatives in his favour. Whatever else this initiative indicates, the manner of its launch and the casual disregard for the unions does not suggest a leader's office in touch with the wider party, and has even dismayed erstwhile Starmer supporters. It's possible this is simply a dead cat manoeuvre, intended to distract from other rule changes, notably making deselection more difficult and minimising conference's say in policy, but that still seems a crass approach. The changes to the thresholds for trigger ballots will please the right of the PLP, but even this looks an unnecessary over-reaction given their limited use in 2019 and the subsequent decline of the left, whether purged or simply disheartened, in many CLPs.

It is sometimes argued that MPs should not be subject to deselection by party members because they are accountable to their constituents: if the electorate think the MP is doing a bad job, they'll be voted out at the next election. This is obviously disingenuous as most electors vote along party lines. Only in exceptional cases will they turf out an underperforming MP, so taking the risk of damaging their preferred party's chances nationally in order to punish the individual, just as they'll rarely vote in an independent. Oddly enough, people who advocate this line - that the MP is a delegate of the constituency - also tend to echo the contradictory Burkean line that an MP should in fact be a trustee, with autonomy of action. They also seem remarkably sanguine about MPs who have failed at the ballot box being promoted to the House of Lords. Unsurprisingly, they tend to be particularly keen on the idea that MPs should have absolute authority when it comes to the selection of party leaders. In reality, MPs can only be made accountable in one of two ways: either by the threat of the withdrawal of the whip in Parliament, or by party members in the constituency deselecting them. The one is accountability to the leadership, the other to the membership. It should be obvious by his actions which Starmer prefers.

The language employed in Starmer's proposal for the NEC refers to MPs as "representatives of the public in Parliament", as distinct from members who are "fee paying supporters of the party". This diminution of the member to a mere supporter is perhaps more significant in revealing Starmer's thinking than the traditional defence of MPs against the membership by appeal to the democratic legitimacy bestowed by the wider electorate. It once more suggests a determination to redefine the membership as a passive resource (here essentially just a financial one) and to rule activism illegitimate. This is characteristic of the cartel party in which the membership is subordinate to the bureaucracy and that in turn is subordinate to the leader. While the opposition to this has coalesced around the vote to confirm David Evans as General Secretary, the chief architect of this shift is clearly Starmer himself. This should give the lie to the somewhat conspiratorial claims that he is a political naif who has been captured by more cunning operators on the party right, and that the reversion to an electoral college is in anticipation of a leadership challenge ahead of the next general election. 

This looks far more like the latest stage of a systematic programme to reverse the halting steps towards greater party democracy undertaken since 2010. But the aim is not to return to the horse-trading between unions, party members and different factions of the PLP that characterised the postwar party, and which was briefly revived under Ed Miliband. Nor is it simply to return to the Praetorian party of the New Labour years, in which the rank and file grew increasingly disillusioned as debate was limited to a gilded circle of advisors and the inner court. More profoundly, Starmer appears determined to end the history of Labour as a mass movement. With the unions marginalised, the membership neutered, and much of the PLP itself disempowered as policy and campaigning are increasingly outsourced, the party begins to look more than ever like a fixture of the establishment. If the membership's push for greater democracy has always been a prefiguration of a wider reform of society, then Starmer's adoption of the cartel model and Evans's disciplinary regime suggests a future of rigid authoritarianism and managed democracy. In that light, the gender-critical have good reason to suppose that their binary rigidity will soon find favour.