Rise: How Jeremy Corbyn inspired the young to create a New Socialism. Liam Young. Published by Simon & Schuster. £12.99.
This book must have seemed like a good idea when it was commissioned. The author, Liam Young, is a youthful activist who was involved in the so-called “youthquake” of 2017. He has a platform as a writer and contacts in the Labour leadership. The New Statesman and the Independent have published his work. Who better than Liam Young to explain the turnout surge and support for the Corbynite politics of the far left among younger voters.
“The real winners of the last election,” says Young “were the young.” He speaks of the “incredible number” of young voters who came out to vote. For a while this was the accepted explanation of the election result. Youthquake – meaning an awakening of millennials, and a surge in youth turnout – was even chosen by the Oxford English Dictionary as its word of the year, last year.
But that was last year, and this is this year. Fashion, as the middle aged learn painfully, has a way of making fools of its adherents. Just before this book appeared, the existence of the “youthquake” was dismissed by psephologists. In January the respected British Election Study announced there was no surge in youth turnout. The turnout number was roughly the same as in 2015, that is between 40% and 50% in both years. There may even have been a slight decrease.
Labour did do better among those young voters who voted, but it did better among all age groups up to the age of 70. The result – Labour losing, while removing the Tory majority – seems to have been down to other factors, such as Theresa May, perceptions of Tory arrogance, and the power of Corbyn’s message about funding public services.
Rise will have gone to the printers by the time this became apparent, and I can imagine the groans and subsequent discussions at publisher Simon & Schuster’s London office when the British Election Study landed.
Of course, there was and is a surge of sorts, and it is easy to understand why excited activists closely involved should overstate its significance. The wave of young members joining Labour was real. The surge in SNP membership was real too, but as is shown by that party’s difficult experience since 2015 (it humiliatingly lost a chunk of seats in 2017) the emergence of a new mass membership does not guarantee forward momentum, with a small m, a year or so later.
With the “youthquake” premise of the book somewhat knackered, or overtaken by the facts, the reader looks forward to the definition of this New Socialism that has been promised. Disappointment awaits curious taxpayers.
There is a section on economic policy but it is so threadbare as to be silly. There exists a coherent new analysis on the British left. I disagree with it, as a pro-market person, but a writer such as Paul Mason is intellectually challenging and always interesting. Young offers nothing comparable.
“Perhaps the greatest lie told by politicians is that we do not have enough money,” Young says. Theresa May’s claim during the election that there is no “magic money tree” is mocked. He says the government should print a lot more money – as much money as it wants? – and spend it on investment. No attempt is made to examine the complexities of QE, which was deployed to rescue the system and seems to have gone on too long. The assumption seems to be that you can spew out new money with no implications for inflation or growth. On the subject of borrowing, it is odd that the Corbynite left hates the financial markets and investors while wanting to borrow much more. Who do they think is doing the lending? Or will it all be taken care of by printing all that new money to make everything free? We know how that ends.
The moderate Labour MP Yvette Cooper, he notes, dismissed the Corbynite endless money-printing approach as economically illiterate. “Economist Richard Murphy disagreed,” says Young. Well, of course he did. That is because Yvette Cooper knows what she’s talking about and has been a Treasury Minister in the last Labour government. Richard Murphy is Richard Murphy, for goodness sake. I wouldn’t, in the words of my Paisley grandmother, “send him for a loaf.”
Just when we think we are about to get that promised definition and detail on the “New Socialism,” the book pivots back to a weak plea for people to get involved in Momentum, Labour and the US Socialist movement. The US Socialists did really well in 2016, Young claims, apart from the whole Donald Trump winning the presidency thing, obviously.
The call for more involvement seems to be about trying to recapture the energy and excitement that obviously made such an impact on young Labour activists last year. But get involved now to what end? Win power to do what exactly? Beyond some boilerplate stuff about saving the planet, ill-defined notions of fairness, a jumbled section on Brexit, and a standard recitation of the UK’s serious housing problems, the difficult questions are not posed, never mind answered, convincingly. Even the now derided Tony Blair was much clearer in 1997.
We know what it is John McDonnell, the real brain in the Corbyn project, seeks to do. That is to bring about the destruction of the market system, the end of capitalism. He was very clear on all this for decade after decade until he became Shadow Chancellor in 2015. If Young shares the core Marxist analysis that is McDonnell’s bread and butter he does not explain what it would mean. How far will nationalisation go? Where will profit be permitted in the economy? Rail, not. In food supply and supermarkets? Air travel? Clothing?
I read this book searching for the promised definition of a New Socialism, and it looks, troublingly, as though it is going to be whatever Corbyn, McDonnell, Milne and Murray, deem it to be on any given day. If anyone has any doubts, presumably we need only to cherish the energy of the movement.
I do not mean to be cruel. Writing books is a pain in the neck of a process. Bad reviews hurt, no matter what we authors claim.
There certainly is a book for someone to write that explains the “New Socialism” that awaits poor old Britain if this gang of Marxist chancers ever do get into power, but Rise is not that book.