If you are a mainstream Labour Party member or supporter, as opposed to the disciples of a relic from the 1980s offering yesterday’s failed solutions to today’s complex problems, don’t worry about today’s High Court ruling that now allows over 120,000 new members to the party’s electorate for the forthcoming leadership election. It will probably change the margin of victory, but it won’t change the result. Jeremy Corbyn was always going to be re-elected as the Labour leader over his challenger Owen Smith. Most of us who consider ourselves as part of the mainstream left of the party have been resigned to the inevitability of Corbyn’s pyrrhic victory right from the start.
For me, it has always been a matter of pretty well anyone other than Corbyn. Owen Smith doesn’t impress me a great deal but then I know next to nothing about him. At least he has clear policies, which is certainly more than Corbyn who merely has positions and general slogans, but let’s be honest: he’s only this year’s candidate. There will be plenty more of these contests, probably on an annual basis until Corbyn is finally defeated (very unlikely) or the Labour Party is destroyed forever as a credible political party (very likely, almost certain).
There is one thing that Corbyn is very good at and that is campaigning for his own leadership. Forget his woeful ineptitude in leading the parliamentary party or his pitiful inability to even challenge the government on matters of policy which, in many areas, are hugely detrimental to the very people for whom he cries his crocodile tears. Corbyn is in Bristol tonight and will bathe in the adulation of a large crowd cheering his name and wildly applauding every empty slogan. Imagine how it must feel to an elderly man who has spent his entire career on the backbenches, pausing only to speak at public meetings and with terrorists from all over the world, unknown to everyone in the land. He will know himself what a terrible public speaker he is so to hear him lauded to the heavens must be a huge boost to the ego. But the point is he is talking to people who already agree with him.
Over the weekend, he made a token pitch to Tory voters which was in stark contrast to many of his comrades on the far left like Paul Mason and George Galloway who totally reject the idea of seeking to attract so called “swing” voters. But token it was. As ever with Corbyn, it was political positions and no substance. Tory supporters are not suddenly going to be persuaded by this. But neither are many Labour voters. And this is a far bigger issue.
Most people do not obsess with politics, left or right. They have lives, they have families, they have jobs. There are other things to obsess about. There are those of us who habitually vote Labour or Tory and those who can’t face the idea of voting Tory in some areas and Labour in others vote Lib Dem or, increasingly in post industrial Britain Ukip. Over nine million people voted Labour last time under a less than stellar leader, Ed Miliband. Is there a guarantee that replacing Miliband with someone as hopeless Jeremy Corbyn will magically transform Labour’s chances? Well, yes, actually. But not in a way you’d like it to.
Owen Smith’s less than riveting leadership campaign might as well not be happening. For all the perceived media hostility to Corbyn, the truth is that he gets all the publicity and the myth is created that somehow he is marching towards an inevitable victory at the next election. Well, he is, but the only election he will win is the Labour leadership.
The leadership election might as well not have happened. Smith at least had the guts to make a stand (and get heckled by the comrades for opposing anti-semitism – a good look for the Labour Party, don’t you think?) and I’ll be voting for him. He will get obliterated in the poll though, as will the Labour Party in all the elections that will follow.
For me, it’s Labour or it’s nothing. I’ll remain a member for as long as I can stomach it, for as long as there is something worth fighting for. When Corbyn, the worst leader in the history of the Labour Party by some distance, is returned as leader we’ll find out soon enough if there is.
