Jeremy Corbyn’s media outriders perform an important role for Labour’s wretched leader. Whilst the old boy can barely walk and chew gum at the same time, the likes of Aaron Bastani, Owen Jones and Matt Zarb Cousin do his dirty work in the media and in cyberspace. They say what he means but does not dare say in public.
As a Corbynista, the only thing that matters is political purity. You either support the hard left, which now controls the Labour Party at national level, or you are, in their words, a right winger or, even worse in their eyes, a Blairite. Always placing political opponents into boxes.
Real life, as the musician Jay Ferguson (Jo Jo Gunne) once put it, ain’t that way. Whilst I do see much of the world as being black and white, politics is more nuanced. I would definitely call myself a socialist, or maybe a social democrat; definitely left of centre. My politics is not so much Labour or Tory (although I joined Labour as a teenager), but more for the things that Labour supports, or rather supported. And since I have been able to vote, Labour has only won three general elections. The Labour leaders were Tony Blair, Tony Blair and Tony Blair. Now, for some, the very name Tony Blair is regarded as a swear word.
Prior to Blair’s elevation to the Labour leadership and the invention of New Labour, I had perhaps followed the old ideology. But years of opposition, as Margaret Thatcher trampled over and almost destroyed the country I loved so much, I gradually came to the conclusion that Labour needed to make an offer to not just left leaning voters, the traditional blue collar working classes, but also to the aspirational, probably more affluent middle classes who perhaps did not fit the perceived demography represented by the People’s Party. Not only that, I came to realise that only a Blair type revolution could win a general election. If the NHS was to be saved, if poverty was to be reduced, if homelessness was to be virtually eliminated, it could only happen if Labour won. New Labour could be said to have been a compromise with the electorate. I rather believe Blair believed in it, as did I.
Labour today has stepped back in time, re-adopting the failed rhetoric and slogans of the 1980s, when the party collapsed to near irrelevance. Indeed, the leaders of ‘Old’ Labour are still here. The millionaire owner of the ‘Momentum’ organisation, which is basically a political party within Labour, is Jon Lansman, a close ally of the late Tony Benn who led Labour to near oblivion. Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott are all old age pensioners now (nothing wrong with that) and they have not had a new idea between them in 40 years. Lansman, who along with UNITE boss Len McCluskey and the de facto leader of the Labour Party Seumus Milne, dictate the direction of Labour. Lansman has said the party can never return to the values of Blair and New Labour. Political purity is paramount. You are either ‘one of us’, which is part of the so called Corbyn project, or you are not welcome in Labour. It really is as simple as that.
In this version of Labour, there can be no compromise. Their perceived political purity matters more than winning. If the affluent, aspirational middle classes will not support Labour, they are not wanted. And when Labour loses, the comrades can live with it because a) they retained their purity and b) they’re wealthy enough to afford the ravages of a Tory government anyway.
Which brings me back to where this is all heading. A political party ceases to be relevant if it remains in opposition. It is all very well to make an offer to a small part of the electorate but what good is it if that small part of the electorate have to suffer the slings and arrows of a hard right Tory government? Contrary to the bizarre beliefs of Corbyn’s outriders, Labour actually lost in the 2017 general election. Which means that the very poorest continue to suffer most. The sick and disabled, the increasing numbers of homeless people, people on poverty wages. They benefit nothing when the smug, affluent, privately educated, university educated comrades steer Labour to opposition.
The country in the early 2000s was a better, fairer, more equal and happier place. This is because New Labour governed for all, not just one group or another. The poor were lifted out of poverty, the middle classes were, for once, not treated as the enemy by Labour. Greed was not good, but aspiration was. It was not perfect but my God it was better by far than anything we have now.
Every time you mention Tony Blair, some wag will raise the issue of Iraq, but can’t we look beyond that? Quite apart from the fact that Saddam was a genocidal maniac who would eventually have had to have been put back in his box or taken out, remember how things were in the early to mid 2000s and look at how they are now. Of course, Brexit has added a toxic element to life in Britain today, but it’s more than that. New Labour, for a good few years, had something for nearly everyone. Now we are led by a divided and out of control Tory party and the opposition – if you can call it that – is represented by the voices and the empty rhetoric from the past. No one is interested in uniting the country, no one in front-line politics even wants to.
Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour hates you if you do not adhere strictly to what Seumas Milne tells you. In the unlikely event, Corbyn ever gained power, it would govern for the few, not the many. The comrades do not want anyone other than ‘true believers’ to join the party so why would they want ordinary punters to vote for them? The truth is that despite the slogans, Labour is, in the eyes of those who now own and control it, nothing more than a ‘political movement’.
Only a Labour Party that looks beyond its traditional demographic can win. The current model has no interest in reaching out because of its obsession with so-called purity. Improving the lives of the people should be the overwhelming motivation of the Labour Party. It isn’t, though. And I’ll never vote for it whilst it is in the hands of people like Corbyn and the comrades.
