Do you know what’s killing the Labour Party? Jeremy Corbyn’s woeful (lack of) leadership? That nasty Tory press? MI5? No. According to someone who is replying to my comments on twitter it’s “triangulation and depoliticised managerialism”. It’s not an expression you hear in my village on a regular basis and it is certainly not something that would appeal on the doorstep when you’re knocking on doors trying to encourage people to vote Labour. But then, if this person believes that deeply in the cult of Corbyn, then he plainly doesn’t believe in getting people to vote Labour. It really is that simple.
I watched tonight’s debate between Corbyn and his challenger Owen Smith. I am not wildly enthusiastic about Smith but he was a world statesman compared to his vague and waffling opponent. Corbyn’s vacuous rhetoric seemed to play out well with his cult following in the audience who cheered his every word, even when he threw Ukraine under the bus by saying that as prime minister – I know: that takes some imagining – he wouldn’t lift a finger to help them if they were invaded by Putin’s Russia. Instead, he wants to go around the world demanding peace, unless of course the people he is talking to are IRA terrorists, islamic fascists in the Middle East or Russia in which cased they can just get on with whatever they like.
And Corbyn’s cult following seems to be very specific: it’s middle class, university educated and overwhelmingly white. The younger ones are probably new to politics, enthused by this elderly man who appears to be offering fresh ideas and principles, even though they are nothing more than the failed politics of the 1980s that saw Labour condemned to opposition for a generation. The older ones, the returners, are the ones who resented the New Labour era – you know: the one that saw us have three Labour governments in a row – and buggered off elsewhere, but now see the opportunity to take Labour back to where it was when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.
The insults come thick and fast from the comrades and tonight represented the first occasion on which I was called a Smithite. I am guessing a Smithite is a bad thing, even though I have no idea what it means. Unlike the Corbyn cult following, I am far more interested in policies and in seeing a Labour government than I am in personality politics. How ironic is that? In the days when Tony Benn was wrecking the Labour Party and making it unelectable, he accused others of personality politics. There has been no greater personality cult with Labour than Corbyn’s.
Owen Smith was very good tonight, even though he was roundly booed by the comrades every time he said something remotely unkind (and true) about The Great Leader. And those same comrades showed their respect for the Labour Party by booing Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish Labour leader, whenever Smith mentioned her name. With Labour stuffed in Scotland anyway, that will help, then. And did Corbyn object? Of course he didn’t. His “kinder, gentler politics” are just wind and piss. The kinder, gentler politics of the man who took money from Iranian State TV when it was executing over 1000 of its people.
The most absurd part of the debate was when both Corbyn and Smith agreed on something. The audience cheered Corbyn and then booed Smith. No cult following? Really?
Still, I am looking forward to the hustings and the next general election from my chattering classes friends on Facebook. “What do we want? An end to triangulation and depoliticised managerialism. When do we want it? Well, you’d best ask Seumas Milne and John McDonnell about that one.”
These people, the comrades, really don’t want to win an election. They want a social movement that will eventually rise up and defeat the bourgeoisie, probably sometime after dinner. “Just another Claret, Rupert, before we start the revolution.” They are happy in their little world, but the rest of us should be very fearful. Whilst Corbyn is messing about, telling lies about having to sit on the floor of a train it turns out wasn’t crowded, the Tories are setting about scrapping the Human Rights Act and slashing NHS spending. Here, now, today.
A vote for Corbyn as Labour leader is a vote for Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and every other Tory who wants to destroy everything which we hold dear. The Corbyn experiment is over. It’s been a disaster and if Labour re-elects him, as I expect it to do, and you were the person who voted him back in, it will be your fault.
