I’ve worked it out now. I now understand why so many Labour MPs voted to abstain in the vote that imposed terrible cuts on the working poor. They did so because their acting leader, Harriet Harman, made a terrible judgement call. Instead of announcing that Labour would oppose the reforms – that means cuts to you and I – she decided that it would be better if MPs sat on the fence. The leadership candidates were then faced with a choice: vote against the party, and thus have to resign from the shadow cabinet or,in the case of Jeremy Corbyn, just do what you want, continuing his record of voting against his own party on 25% of all votes.
Emotionally, I think I would have voted against the cuts, but I see the value of loyalty too. I heard Andy Burnham speak recently and he emphasised the need for loyalty and cabinet responsibility, both of which he had shown over the years. I’ll bet he never thought he’d be involved in a mess like this.
This is a crisis caused by two things: the cunning tactics and positioning of George Osborne, setting an elephant trap for Labour, and by the current vacuum at the top of the Labour Party. Harman, for all her qualities, did not become full time Labour leader without reason. The next leader will need to do much, much better than this.
The Murdoch press, especially the saucy, soaraway Times, is positively gleeful about Labour’s woes, as well it might be. And it is excited that the growing possibility that Labour’s next leadership team could be Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Watson. The Champagne corks would be popping all across Fleet Street – and of course at Conservative Party HQ – if that happened and if the polls are right, it will happen.
Obviously, I cannot get inside the minds of those who have decided that Corbyn is the answer. I am sure many of them are sincere, not just Tories engaging in what Donald Segretti described in “All The President’s Men” as “rat fucking”.
A certain strand of the left within the Labour Party will always lean towards political purity. Winning is never enough if there is any compromise from a a hard left socialist agenda. Now given the way the electorate works, this is the way to ensure opposition at best and political oblivion at worst. Tony Blair, now much reviled by the left for his travails in Iraq, nonetheless knew this, reaching out to the political middle ground where – like it or not – elections are won and lost. Blair was not everyone’s cup of tea, but I maintain that he was the only man who could have won like he did in 1997, and then again in 2001 and 2005. The first two election wins were landslide wins. This cannot be ignored.
Labour’s years in government were not transformative enough but they still made this country much better. Labour reduced poverty, living standards, until the worldwide crash of 2008, rose. Schools were improved, the NHS saved and improved. The achievements were manifold, although the positions of privilege were never really challenged and equality improved only marginally. I would argue that after 1997, Labour should have gone much further in terms of equality and fairness but they decided that what wasn’t broken didn’t need fixing. I would die for a Blair-type government today.
There is no glory in opposition. Those for whom it does not personally matter who wins the election, the affluent middle classes who admirably still hold to their socialist principles for example, argue for pure socialism from the start and Jeremy Corbyn floats their boat. And many party activists see Corbyn as the only candidate with ‘Old’ Labour policies. I’ll say he has. The sort of policies that ensured that Labour not only lost, but the people who needed Labour most were saddled with long years of misery under Margaret Thatcher. I accept that, in many ways, Blair was a less harsh successor, but nonetheless he did not extinguish her pernicious legacy. He was far from perfect, that’s for sure.
But Blair was a once in a generation politician, he is not yesterday’s man and not even the day before yesterday’s man. He’s not coming back and to be honest I am glad about that.
Corbyn is miles ahead in the leadership contest and according to You Gov is set to become the new Labour leader, with Tom Watson as his deputy. The poll is so strikingly clear that there is no room for error and if those projections are turned into real votes, Corbyn will be facing David Cameron at the dispatch box come the autumn. And there is a simple truth: a political party always gets the leader it deserves, so if a navel-gazing, badly split, still traumatised Labour Party selects Corbyn it will also deserve what it has coming.
Let me be honest. Even I, a lifelong Labour supporter, and member until Blair took us into Iraq, would struggle to vote for, let alone support, Jeremy Corbyn. I read today that 43% of Labour members support him as leader, leaving 57% who don’t. Add to that 57% a huge number of swing voters who hugely influence general elections and I see Labour as the third largest party in the House of Commons, way behind the official opposition, the SNP, or Ukip if Scotland leave the union by then (as it might if the UK votes to leave the UK). You might view my analysis as unduly pessimistic, but I see them not as possible, but likely if Labour decides to commit electoral suicide.
The new leader, whoever she or he is, must quickly stamp their authority on the party. The shambles of the welfare vote can be explained and quickly put behind the party if the will is there and then the real work of persuading the country that Labour can be a viable alternative to the Tories can begin.
I am not convinced that Corbyn actually expected to be in the lead to become the new leader. He only got on the ballot paper thanks to idiots like Frank Field who decided that we needed to have a far left candidate to add to the debate, even though he disagreed with almost everything he said. I sense he might be thinking, “What the hell am I doing here? I didn’t expect this to happen”. But he is there and stands on the brink of leading the Labour Party, the only question being to where? I think it’s either nowhere or oblivion. Not much of a choice really, is it?
