The Labour Party is dying, but not as I expected it to die. The disastrous election as leader of Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 and his equally disastrous re-election in 2016 were the poison arrows. I did not need today’s Fabian Society report to tell me what I already knew: that Labour has “virtually no chance of winning the next election” and is likely to end up with 150 MPs. I’d be amazed if it was that many.
The election of someone so devoid of any leadership skills has a variety of effects. Corbyn excelled only at campaigning for his own election by speaking to people who already agreed with him, essentially a cult following who somehow saw this elderly relic from the disastrous Benn era of the 1980s as representing something new. The saddest part of Corbyn’s Labour is that it now represents nothing at all.
Labour only occasionally makes the news. It is not all because of Rupert Murdoch and Paul Dacre, although neither of these hate-merchants help matters. It is mainly because with Corbyn and the comrades, there are no policies, just positions. Corbyn does not have the first idea how to oppose this most right wing Tory government and he plainly doesn’t see it as his duty. Even his positions, many of which are a million miles away from party policy, are hare-brained and ill thought out, almost entirely bereft of detail. In other words, Labour is being ignored by the electorate because it has nothing to say to them.
Labour’s civil war last year certainly gained plenty of column inches and at least showed the party was alive. Since Corbyn renewed his mandate (to do what?) and the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) has admitted defeat and left Corbyn and his allies to it. As they knew better than anyone, when they exited stage right (as the comrades would have it) no one was up to filling the breach. The likes of Corbyn, McDonnell and Abbott (I mean really: Abbott) are supposedly the big hitters on the Labour front bench, but it is very obvious why they have spent most of their lives on the back benches. It’s the very limit of their ambitions and abilities.
The Fabian Society suggests forging alliances with the Lib Dems and the SNP. Why would Labour want to do that? The Lib Dems showed their true colours by taking jobs in a right wing Tory government and the talk left, walk right SNP are just a bunch of opportunists with just one aim, the consequences of which would be permanent Tory rule in England.
It is no longer fashionable to refer to Tony Blair in a positive way, but what the hell? Blair understood that in order for Labour to win, the party would need to assemble the broadest possible coalition of voters, especially the relatively affluent and aspirational middle classes who want a fairer society that won’t stop them getting on. Ignore these people and what is the point of Labour? Corbyn does even worse by ignoring virtually everyone except the hipsters and chattering classes in the big cities, the majority of whom don’t need a Labour government.
The report says Corbyn has “little idea how to win back the four million who voted Labour in 2015 but have now walked away”. No. They have no idea and what’s worse is they don’t care. For the comrades, this is not about winning pesky elections, it’s about building a social movement which to the vast majority of voters means nothing at all.
Ironically, Labour has more members than almost any other party in Europe, far more than the Conservatives whose membership still declines, but who is more likely – certain, I’d say – to win the next election?
Corbyn cannot now claim the PLP has obstructed and opposed him since he was re-elected. They’ve let him get on with it and he has shown – yet again – that he is wholly unsuited to leadership. The comrades want to re-launch him as a populist left winger leader, but how do you re-launch someone who is very unpopular as a populist?
A man truly dedicated to improving the lives of ordinary working people, as Theresa May calls us, would see the writing on the wall and resign. Corbyn will know better than anyone that he is out of his depth as leader and cannot win. Trade Union fixer Len McCluskey says Corbyn is not an egomaniac who wants to cling on no matter what. Well, if he isn’t, then what is he? The Labour Party is dying and Corbyn is killing it.
