The latest YouGov poll indicates that Jeremy Corbyn has doubled his lead in the Labour leadership contest, suggesting that he is currently polling at around 53%, some 32 points ahead of his closest rival Andy Burnham. Moreover, YouGov president Peter Kellner says he would be “astonished” if Corbyn was not now elected leader. Even allowing for the mess the polling companies made at the last General Election, you have to believe that there may be something in this.
Labour’s slightly complicated “alternative vote” system, where second and third choices are taken into account until such time that one candidate secures over 50% of the overall vote would be rendered irrelevant because Corbyn is set to win, by a landslide, in the first round.
Whilst not a single vote has yet been cast, it is surely undeniable that the Corbyn campaign has a clear momentum. His retro, back to the 1980s, vision of Britain has clearly been attractive to a large number of left-leaning younger people and even more attractive to those of the far left like Derek Hatton, Tony Mulhearn, Mark Serwotka and “Gorgeous” George Galloway who have thrown their weight behind Corbyn. Yes, that’s the same Hatton and Mulhearn who, in the words of Neil Kinnock, were responsible for “the grotesque chaos of a Labour council – a Labour council! – hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers”, Serwotka who has all but bankrupted the far left dominated PCS and Galloway? What serious politician would welcome the support of Saddam’s best friend?
But this is the reality. If Labour elects Corbyn, the entire direction will change, the power base will shift. I would sincerely hope that we would not return to the finger-wagging aggression and intolerance that represented the Tony Benn years of the 1980s, but judging from the kind of people who are making a comeback to Labour, I wouldn’t bet against it. When you hand over an organisation, lock, stock and barrel, to the hard left, it is very hard to return it to the mainstream and in the case of Serwotka’s PCS it is literally and practically impossible.
If Labour opts for the hard left option of Corbyn, then the party will have to live with it. It will be because of Ed Miliband’s farcical leadership election rules and the decisions of MPs like David Lammy, Frank Field and Margaret Beckett who put him on the ballot paper in the first place, even though they didn’t actually support him.
Having just rejoined the Labour Party, 12 years on from the invasion of Iraq that caused me to leave it, I would not particularly want to hang around to pay money to a led by Corbyn and Tom Watson. I have long had enough of the political fight against the might of the far left in the civil service union, the CPSA, which later merged with another union to become PCS. I certainly wouldn’t want to go through that all over again. I’ve seen enough of Mark Serwotka at close hand to last a lifetime and when it comes to finger-wagging intolerance, he and his ilk are unsurpassed.
In supporting Corbyn, those on the far left seek political purity. PCS has long given up on being a serious trade union, focusing far more on the politics of protest than representing members. Rather than negotiating seriously with management, PCS makes take it or leave it demands. There is no room for compromise. It’s my way or the highway. So then management imposes its settlement. Some union representation, eh? No wonder members have left PCS in droves and despite an enormous campaign to sign members up to pay subscriptions by direct debits, huge numbers have simply not bothered.
It was all I could do to remain in PCS in the last few years. A union man for all my working life, I had felt for years that I was paying out my hard-earned cash to a branch of the Socialist Party (AKA Militant). It remains on the road to oblivion, virtually bankrupt of cash and effective leadership and it talks a very better game than it actually plays.
Labour will be on the same road under Corbyn, although I understand he is a far nicer man than some of those who support him. The electorate did not reject Labour because they were too right wing back in May: it rejected Labour because they didn’t see it as a credible, competent government in waiting. The suggestion that Labour now needs to lurch to the outer fringes of the hard left is absurd.
There are certainly people out there who would rather Labour lost on a hard left platform than won with a manifesto that reached out to the aspirant middle classes. I have a problem with this since I am not, nor have I have ever been, of the hard left. Labour has always represented a “broad church” of left wing views, so I would ask this: am I not allowed an opinion, too within Labour? I am prepared to compromise in order to attract the biggest possible coalition of views within the Labour Party which in turn, I would hope, would reach out to the biggest possible coalition of views in the country at large. If Labour goes to the country with a purely hard left agenda that even the centre left in the party cannot honestly support, how on earth do people think that section of the electorate Labour needs to enthuse will react?
Oh for a powerful, unifying figure like John Smith, around whom we could all unite. A man so inherently decent and honest, without doubt that best prime minister we never had. I would not describe Corbyn as a divisive figure, unlike many of those big beasts from the past who have come back out of the closet to support him, but he is certainly not a man who could unite the Labour Party never mind the country.
Actually, I do think Corbyn as Labour leader would unite the country, behind George Osborne. In order to improve the lives of the people it purports to care about, then Labour needs to win. I am certain that Labour could not win under Corbyn and fairly sure that the result of the 2015 election would look like a huge victory compared to what will happen in 2020. And condemn us to one party politics for a generation.
