So it’s all over, bar the enthusiastic shouting of Corbyn
supporters towards the end of September.
We can wait for the fat lady to sing, but let’s not kid
ourselves that her tune is going to sound anything other than the death of the
Labour Party.
The latest YouGov polling gives Corbyn a massive lead over
his challenger Owen Smith. And YouGov has a pretty good track record in
internal party elections. The figures may be arguable, but I fear the result
isn’t.
When you read the small print of the survey, there are some
truly astonishing things to take on board. Smith, for instance, is ahead by a large
margin among long-standing members. But Corbyn is the choice of the people
who’ve flooded in since September 2015, specifically to support him.
This is political contest as game show.
The red team tries to sign up more people than the pink
team. And the pink team tries to confuse existing red team members by
pretending that pink is really red. As a result, some contestants may run over
to the wrong side of the political assault course.
Both the teams have a joker to play. Unfortunately, in each
case, it happens to be their respective candidate.
Of course, it’s relatively easy for Corbynistas to round up
the flotsam and jetsam of the British left with a rallying cry of ‘vote for
Jez’. Rather less easy for sensible types to persuade their friends to sign up
for Smith. After all, who wants to buy a ticket to board the Titanic when the
iceberg has been sighted and you’ve already done some back-of-an-envelope
calculations on the life-boat situation?
There’s another snippet from the YouGov poll worth
reflecting on. A substantial minority of people voting for Corbyn admit that he
is not competent.
Whoa!
Hold your horses just a second. Let’s spell that out in S L
O W motion.
Around 40% of the people who say they’re voting for Jezza know him to be incompetent, but are voting for him anyway.
This is beyond crazy.
Support for the man is tribal, irrational and doing
irreparable damage, not only to the Labour Party but also to the overall health
of British democracy. And, no, I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. Let’s face
it. If there is no effective opposition
in a two-party system, you are left with a one-party system.
The more the madness continues, the more parallels I see
with the Trump phenomenon in the United States.
Many supporters of the US presidential hopeful – when confronted by
their candidate’s gaffes, extremist opinions and lack of grasp of reality –
simply shrug their shoulders. They’re
going to vote for the guy anyway.
Why?
Because he’s Trump.
And for Trump, read Jez. While as personalities and
politicians, they may well be poles apart, their supporters adhere to the same
essential principles:
Don’t trust the media. They’re out to get us.
Don’t worry that the political establishment is against us.
They would be.
Don’t worry that we have no coherent programme. We know what
we’re against and that’s all that
matters.
Don’t let them attack our man. He is a visionary and we are
going to vote for him anyway.
Jez and Trump are insurgents who prosper from the alienation
and anomie created by globalisation. Bizarrely, they have much more in common
than you could ever imagine, including an irrational loyalist fan base, very
thick skins and a complete lack of concern for what people think of them. Not
to mention a love of merchandise.
But Jez is the poor relation.
He is dime-store Trump without the charisma, without the
money, without the popular support.
Where are we headed? It’s difficult at the moment to tell.
British and American politics are fracturing left and right in unpredictable
and dangerous ways.
Ed Balls and Liz Kendall – representatives of the Brownite
and Blairite wings of New Labour respectively – have both said that moderates
must stay and fight after a second Corbyn victory. But their voices will be
swamped, Jez’s position entrenched and then reprisals will quickly ensue.
The only answer will be creation of a new, credible
centre-left party. More on that soon.
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