Why Momentum's victory in Haringey leaves Corbyn exposed

If you want to see what a Corbyn government might look like, keep an eye on Haringey. The north London borough is set to be taken over by the hard-left Momentum faction, after moderate Labour councillors were deselected in a bitter dispute over housing.

The respected and long-standing council leader, Claire Kober, has said that she won’t be contesting her seat again in May – probably forfeiting her own place on the council to another representative of the Corbyn fan club. She’s also effectively pulled the plug on her £2bn housing initiative – known as the Haringey Development Vehicle or HDV – by saying that the incoming administration can make the final decision on whether it proceeds.

Part of the pressure on Kober came from the extraordinary decision of Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee to weigh in on the issue. Thankfully, their intervention provoked a backlash from outraged councillors right around the country. Whatever they thought of the specific model for housing proposed in Haringey, they knew that the councillors should be accountable to local electors for their action, rather than ideologically-driven party officials.

Why was this HDV so controversial anyway? It involved a partnership between local government and the private sector and that’s something which is anathema to Momentum, which claims the UK has been subjected to a ‘neo-liberal’ experiment by Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and their successors.

Corbyn himself - in his appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions after the Carillion collapse – effectively implied that any public service should be delivered by people who are directly employed by the government.

His shadow ministers laughably talked about taking the firm’s projects ‘in house’, even when there is no in-house capacity to do it.  

School meals or prison maintenance maybe. But large-scale construction and infrastructure projects? When has the British state ever directly employed the people involved in the actual building work? My grandfather was a camouflage officer in the Second World War. Even during that period of essential state control, he would award contracts to the private sector for the painting and building work needed on airfields.

There are two things that are critical to an understanding of Corbyn and consequently Momentum.

The first is that all decisions are driven by ideology rather than pragmatism or objective analysis. If thousands of people were to end up in better homes through the HDV and were guaranteed to pay the same rent they paid before, it would still be wrong simply by virtue of the private-sector involvement in the project. Public is good and private is bad. This is a religious mantra which can never be challenged.

The second critical point is that these far-left activists know what they’re against, but only have the vaguest idea of what they’re for.  

Corbyn and McDonnell have spent a lifetime opposing things. In the 1980s, they were against ‘Tory cuts’, which is now given a 21^st-century makeover as ‘austerity’. They are against capitalism and war and nuclear weapons and racism and America and Israel. And they will usually back anyone who shares their opposition to these things, even if they end up giving succour to desperately unsavoury regimes in Tehran or Caracas or Damascus or Moscow.

In the past, it didn’t really matter that these people had nothing concrete to offer. They opposed Labour governments. They opposed Tory governments. They opposed the Labour leaderships fighting the Tory governments.

Now, they are close to taking power in Haringey and – with the collapse of the Tories under May’s disastrous leadership and the pressures of Brexit – they are even level pegging in the national polls. We might rightly expect them to offer something concrete at this stage.

So, when Kober’s plan for the HDV is ripped up, watch out and see what happens next.

Will there be an ambitious alternative scheme that delivers on the same scale? I very much doubt it. We will almost certainly see the posturing, profligacy and conflict which characterised the so-called ‘loony left’ London boroughs three decades ago. There will be promises of jam tomorrow when Jez is elected to government. Middle-class activists will be celebrating their ideological purity, while working-class communities put up with sub-standard housing.

And what you see in Haringey will be shape of things to come if the Momentum Party were ever trusted with power nationally. Pull up a seat and settle in. It’s popcorn time.