Labour conference: Corbynism is about controlling Labour, not the country

In his conference speech yesterday, John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, promised that Labour under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn would offer a radical alternative to austerity. But what he actually proposed—a review of the role of the Treasury, an inquiry into the running of HMRC—is unlikely to have set Corbynite pulses racing. Indeed, one prominent Corbyn supporter, the Marxist academic Alex Callinicos, was soon grumbling on Twitter about McDonnell’s “concessions” on, among other things, the independence of the Bank of the England.

There was also talk of concessions in the press room in Brighton today before the leader’s speech. McDonnell, someone pointed out, had failed to mention either the “Robin Hood Tax” or “People’s Quantitative Easing,” both policies he’d discussed several times since becoming Shadow Chancellor earlier this month. For all the talk of a “new politics,” McDonnell was caught in a very old political dilemma—satisfying supporters in the conference hall is one thing; telling a clear and coherent story to a sceptical electorate (or at least those bothering to watch on television) is quite another.

This afternoon, in his first conference speech as Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn evaded that dilemma by largely ignoring it. Corbyn said he wanted to “speak to everyone in Britain about the tasks Labour has now turned to” and then spent five minutes thanking various members of the Labour Party for their work during the leadership campaign. You could put this down to the fact that this was an appallingly structured speech (is the notion that a set-piece political speech should have a discernible narrative arc irredeemably "old politics?"), but I’m not so sure. As Marxists almost used to say, it is no accident that Corbyn spent more time talking about how policy is made in the Labour Party than he did addressing the country. For Corbynism is a strategy not for winning power at Westminster, but for seizing control of the Labour Party.

And here Corbyn and his lieutenants are playing a long game. At a fringe meeting this lunchtime, Maurice Glasman, the Labour peer and former adviser to Ed Miliband, said that there was a “weird atmosphere” at conference this year. It’s like a “superannuated student union" he said. "[These people] have stayed in the student union for a lifetime.” He was referring to the veterans of the battles for “Labour Party democracy” in the 1980s who helped propel Corbyn to victory this summer. But in truth, they are thin on the ground in Brighton. As one former special advisor to a New Labour minister pointed out to me, most of the delegates here registered long before it became clear that Corbyn would win the leadership. And so, for the moment, a kind of uneasy peace reigns. But next year, when the new members Corbyn welcomed in his speech will be present in much greater numbers, the phony war will be over.