Jeremy Corbyn’s democratic challenge

What will Jeremy Corbyn’s stunning victory in Labour’s leadership election mean for us in Wales? What are the chances he can mobilise progressive forces across the political spectrum and provide leadership for a real change of direction for the economy away from austerity?

He has certainly galvanized ordinary members to mount an insurgency against the tired economic thinking of their party at Westminster. But can he continue the momentum to reach out to the nations beyond London and to those outside his party? A lot hangs on the answer to that question. If he gets sucked into political infighting within the Labour Party at Westminster, as the right wing media would love him to do, he will be lost.

During the campaign Caroline Lucas the Greens’ sole MP at Westminster gave him some sound advice. She observed that it was a hardly a coincidence that the first truly democratic leadership election in Labour’s history was producing such a resurgence of optimism. However, she was disappointed that Corbyn was giving so little emphasis to democracy more widely: “If you do win this contest I believe you should take this opportunity – and the huge amount of momentum behind you – to call a constitutional convention to allow people across the country to have a say in remodelling Britain for the future,” she wrote in The Independent on 13 September. “A convention has the potential to energise even more people than your leadership campaign, or the Green surge, and to inspire the kind of feeling across the UK that swept Scotland in 2014.”

I have looked for what Jeremy Corbin has said on this during his campaign, and found very little, save one interview he gave the online Novara TV website on 30 July. In it he said he was in favour of the additional member proportional system that operates for the Welsh Assembly to be used for the House of Commons and also for PR for a directly elected House of Lords. And he continued: “I want to see a constitutional convention set up now in Opposition that would look at the issues of electoral representation, the voting age, the voting system… We also want to look at the question of the different powers and financing of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the operation of the Barnett formula and whether or not it wouldn’t be better based on levels of poverty in Scotland rather than more generally on population and area, and at the question of English regional government.”

This is fine as far as it goes. But these ideas can hardly be said to be central to Jeremy Corbyn’s thinking. Otherwise they would have featured much more widely than on an obscure online current affairs website early in the campaign. Certainly he has said little, if anything, on this score during the first few days since being elected as leader. Nonetheless, this agenda will be a litmus test for whether Jeremy Corbyn is interested in creating an effective coalition for progressive politics beyond the narrow confines of his own party.