In the drink? (1984)

From the June 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the drink? If the opinion polls are to be believed, Neil Kinnock’s popularity, although he is nowhere near passing through the doors of Number Ten, is on the wane. The newspapers are beginning to tell us that since he became Labour leader he has been on a honeymoon with the voters which is now at an end. This news can only make the Labour Party even more worried; they may well be wondering now whether anyone, or anything, will ever be able to beat Thatcher.

Kinnock was supposed to be able to do this because of his youth, because he has something called charisma, an attractive wife and an ability to provide good copy for media like when he fell into the sea at Brighton. He also comes from Wales, which is supposed to give him an instant understanding of poverty and a fluent tongue. And of course he was a left winger. In spite of that episode on the beach at Brighton, perhaps he was the man to turn the Tory tide.

In fact there is nothing new about Kinnock. It is an established Labour Party tradition that their leaders come up on the left wing, which causes a lot of excitement among the punch-drunk membership about the dawn of the revolution. As the new leader adjusts to the realities of their position the excitement dies as the membership perceives, through the tangles of the grass roots, that their hero is moving to the right.

This was what happened with Wilson and Foot, who both had the problem of keeping their hold on the support they had built up on their way to the top. For a long time, Wilson was slickly clever at this trick but Foot made a bumbling hash of it. Kinnock's popularity may well depend on what sort of a job he makes of it, on how effectively he reconciles the irreconcilable.

This typical history illustrates the messy impotence of capitalism's leaders who, far from controlling the system, can only stumble from one crisis to another. Whatever hopes now rest on Kinnock's head must in the end be disappointed for, if he ever gets to Number Ten, he will have no choice but to run capitalism as it must be run — against the interests of the working class who elect him to power.

There is an alternative to this which is neither messy nor impotent but which cannot be written up by the media in terms of heroic charisma — and it is the more effective for that.