“Private polling in the Labour Party suggests that Jeremy Corbyn is the frontrunner in the current leadership election”, says Newsnight. And, all the way from yesterday appears Ken Livingstone who supports his candidature. Could it really get any worse?
It all went wrong, or rather even more wrong, when some bright spark decided that for £3 you could vote in the leadership ballot, regardless of whether you were a Labour Party member. Then things went completely mad when the likes of Frank Field decided it would be a good idea to nominate someone they didn’t support, or agree with in any way, shape or form, to ensure they got on the ballot paper. Two novel ideas there, then. Pay money and vote for an organisation to which you don’t belong or even believe in and then nominate someone you know full well would be such an electoral liability. This is the politics of the madhouse. This is Labour.
I’ve made up my own mind. I am voting for Andy Burnham as leader. The fact that the Sun hates his guts and is currently attacking him for legitimately claiming £39 in expenses over four years can only firm up my resolve. I could live with Yvette Cooper as leader, I could tolerate Liz Kendall too, but Jeremy Corbyn? Please.
Honestly, I believe Corbyn as leader would sound the death knell on Labour. To win, Labour needs to attract the votes of a broad church of opinion. It needs to reach out and reach out a long way. There are two distinct choices.
The first is that Labour reaches out to the centre ground of politics. Like it or not, Tony Blair did just that. It wasn’t socialism as we know it, but it was a form of Labour that, largely speaking, did more good than harm. It didn’t change Britain, it didn’t challenge the rich and powerful, it did little to help social mobility. But it was better than the Tories by a long way. As I have said before, Blair’s big failing – Labour’s big failing – was to stick with what they had. The New Labour that convinced the electorate should have gone further, made the argument for the very things Labour stands for. These are not controversial in themselves, but they need to be explained. If you are going to make Britain a more equal country, you need evolution not revolution. Labour did neither. It was a monumental mistake given the majorities in the Blair/Brown years. The second is voting for Corbyn.
And now we are back to square one. Labour failed to nail the Tory lie that Labour called the worldwide financial crash by spending too much on hospitals and schools. That’s now embedded in the national psyche. It’s not true, of course, but enough people believe it. Labour starts not from a Labour Party reformed by Neil Kinnock and restored to electoral credibility by John Smith, but by a party beaten by the Tories,the SNP and, to an extent, Ukip. In short, Labour is in a similar place to where it was in 1983, a party riven by division, dominated by the far left and its spiritual leader Tony Benn, on a highway to political hell. It is hard to over-emphasise the pernicious effect Benn had on Labour. He always said how much he hated personality politics but that was exactly what he represented: a simplistic set of slogans along with empty rhetoric. In 1983, you had to be there to see the tomfoolery of Benn. And Corbyn? He is no Benn, but he is a pound shop version.
The truth is there is no glory in opposition, but for the likes of Corbyn, Benn, Militant and all the rest of the 57 varieties of Trotskyism it suits them perfectly. Whoever wins the election, Corbyn will retain his safe seat and be able to turn up at his “Stop the war” rallies, calling for the revolution. But I worry far more about those who will be affected if Labour loses. Already, with a slim majority, Cameron acts like Thatcher with a landslide, trying to get rid of our human rights, calling on the EU to allow us to ditch employment rights, castrating trade unions and beginning to dismantle institutions like the NHS and the BBC. Labour might think it can enjoy political purity, but the country can’t.
A Corbyn led Labour Party would kill it is as a political force, assuming it’s not dead already. I would go so far as to say I, a lifelong Labour member and supporter, would struggle to vote for, never mind support, a party led by Corbyn.
Yes, I want to change the country but it will take time, a long time after what Cameron and co are planning on doing. The point is that Labour must first win. I am not convinced that Labour can win at the moment, but governments lose elections, oppositions rarely win them. Cameron and his anointed successor Osborne appear to own the future but things happen that change everything.
To win, Labour must not elect Corbyn. If we want to reverse what this Tory Party is up to, we need something better to offer the electorate. Corbyn is a dinosaur from the Bennite led Labour days and if we want to hasten the end of Labour, and quickly, he’s your man.
A few years ago, the Tory right elected Iain Duncan Smith to lead their party because he represented the true blue, far right, strand of opinion, but soon they realised that, despite his politics, they knew the public hated his guts and would never vote for him. I am not sure that the public knows a great deal about Corbyn, but I am as sure as sure can be that he would “lead” Labour to a defeat so bad they would never recover.
