It’s been a good day for Tarquin and Miranda and their friends in Momentum. Despite having minimal support in the parliamentary Labour Party – and Diane Abbott: that can’t help – Jeremy Corbyn is still hanging on in there.
Labour’s accidental leader is finished in almost every sense of the word. The only problem with the previous sentence is the word almost. Everyone knows he has been a disaster as leader because he can’t lead. Corbyn is a career backbencher who has held one serious position in all of his life which was chairman of Islington Council’s Housing Committee back in the 1970s. That is sudden rise to power has come as a surprise to the public is nothing: imagine how it has come to him.
In a political life, Corbyn has done what the hell he liked. Not for him the awkward bits in politics, like running a government department, or even living by cabinet responsibility. Corbyn sat on the back benches, voting more often against Labour than David Cameron and speaking at political events where people agreed with him. And then, thanks to Ed Miliband’s idiotic new system for electing a new Labour leader and the stupid MPs who put Corbyn on the ballot paper in order to have a debate, we ended up in the mess we are today.
Corbyn is the assistant youth team coach driver at Dagenham and Redbridge who has been appointed Arsenal manager. Hopelessly out of his depth, dishing out team talks to people who know infinitely more than he does. It was always going to end like this.
I don’t buy the “decent and principled man” argument. Who is so decent and principled that they talk peace, on behalf of no one but themselves, to active IRA members who were murdering innocent people in cold blood? Or drink tea with the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah, referring to them as “friends”? But even if he is decent and principled, he’s still useless. A terrible public speaker, lacking in charisma and personality and devoid of policies but full of positions. He does not represent new politics. His is the tired old politics of the 1980s, when having a protest was far more important than winning an election.
Far from the kinder, gentler politics promised by Corbyn, the hard left has returned us to the nasty politics of the 1980s. With Ken Livingstone and co reminding us that there is an unpleasant anti-semitic side to some on the left, the awful sexist abuse doled out to female Labour MPs who must not have a different opinion to the comrades and the attacks on news organisations, like the BBC, who should not even dare to say a critical word about the blessed Jeremy because if they do, a petition will be set up to have journalists sacked, especially if they happen to be both female and Jewish. My God: we can’t be having that.
Today, PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka proclaims his union supports Corbyn. I’m pretty sure many of his members don’t, especially in the MOD given that Labour’s “leader” is a pacifist. But what makes this even more bizarre is that PCS is controlled by the Socialist Party (AKA Militant AKA the Revolutionary Socialist League), the SWP and various other components of the 57 varieties of Trotskyism. Given that Serwotka has taken PCS to the brink of bankruptcy, that the union is rightly regarded as a joke in the labour movement and that for all the time he has been in charge it has preferred to play politics than protect its members, I suppose he is an ideal cheerleader for the worst Labour leader in living memory.
What is happening now in the Labour Party is a tragedy. Corbyn, the accidental leader, clings to power because power is all that matters to the comrades. Surrounded by the tired old allies of Tony Benn who took Labour close to oblivion back in the 1980s, he says he will stay so as not to betray the Labour Party members who voted for him as leader.
The real betrayal will be to the working class people who need a Labour government, not to Tarquin and Miranda and their hipster friends who just fancy one, the middle class revolutionaries in their trendy London houses, telling the lower orders what is good for them. The Bullingdon boys and girls of the far left.
Labour needs a leader who can command the support of the whole party and so the country. It is not all about Corbyn’s politics which, in some areas, resonate with most of us on the left, it’s about the bleeding obvious: that he’s not up to the job. He probably knows this full well and the likes of Seumas Milne and John McDonnell will know it too.
Corbyn should put his personal feelings to one side and do the right thing, which is to resign. This is not a battle he will win, but if he carries on it will be the very people he says he support who will suffer. Is he in politics to promote the interests of working people or is he there for himself? By remaining, the answer is obvious.
Anyway, there is a place the friends of Jeremy can go: the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), a front organisation for the Socialist Party (Militant). All he needs to do is have a quiet word with his pal Mark Serwotka who will put him touch with them straight away. You see, they are the very same people who have destroyed PCS. Labour’s leader would feel quite at home in the TUSC because he would be speaking solely to people who agree with him, which is all he is good for. Tarquin and Miranda wouldn’t have it any other way.
