The Tory Party conference is not exactly at the top of my list of must sees. At the best of times, the crude, right wing triumphalism is repulsive to watch, but at the worst of times, five months after a humiliating general election defeat for Labour, it’s almost, no, it is, unbearable.
They can’t help themselves, can they? The richest man in the cabinet, Jeremy Hunt, says that those on tax credits lack self-respect. Yes, that’s right. Those on the minimum wage, working full time – the hard working people the Tories pretend to support – are accused of having no self-respect. Theresa May makes a borderline racist and xenophobic attack on immigrants, Iain Duncan Smith once again misleads the country by pretending that the working poor will be better off when their incomes are reduced but above all, George Osborne pitches his political tent in the centre ground, if you believe his rhetoric, or on the far right if you actually listen to what he is saying.
The silver rinse brigade lap up the right wing hang ’em and flog ’em sloganism, the right wing press dutifully reports the good news, as they see it, and completely ignoring the mass rally addressed by Jeremy Corbyn. I do not accept Osborne’s nonsensical claim that the Tories are there for the many and Labour are there for the few – the exact opposite is the truth – and I do not accept that whilst Labour is lurching left, the Tories are capturing the centre ground. Although it is true that Labour has taken an enormous lurch to the left, the Tories have been marching the other way. We have heard quiet soothing words from the Tory leadership, especially from Osborne, the master short term tactician, but look at the actual words behind the headlines.
The numbers attending Corbyn’s rally were huge, certainly by comparison to the Tory conference and there is no doubt that he has changed the political landscape. I say that on the basis that he has changed the political landscape that is viewed by those who are actively interested in politics. I remain to be convinced he has broken out to the wider electorate and very much doubt that he ever will but we need to give him that chance, not least on the basis of his mandate. It is not his fault that his speech was ignored by the media because it is a fact that Labour politicians are always ignored by the media, unless there is something bad to report, but then Corbyn was back where he has always been: talking to people who agree with him, albeit a good few thousand more than he is used to having listen to him.
Even though we are nearly five years out from the general election, the Tories are positioning themselves in such a way that they want to destroy Labour once and for all. I am not making this up, either, given the way they are strangling the party’s funding and castrating the trade unions. Corbyn need not panic just yet, but soon he will need to speak to the wider electorate, beyond the thousands who hang on his every word. He needs to convince those who voted Labour in 1997, 2001 and 2005 to return to the fold, not to mention the voters in the swing constituencies. In other words, it is fine to speak to the converted for now but Labour cannot and must not become a protest meeting and nothing more.
Osborne certainly represents the old politics of cynicism and tactical positioning. Corbyn does not need to just rise above it, he needs something better. I’m not writing him off after three weeks, for sure, but sooner or later he will need to talk to those who aren’t his normal supporters.
