Any hope that Theresa May’s surprise general election would
drag Jeremy Corbyn into the real world was cruelly dashed within a few short
days. His major launch speech was a spectacular retreat into his predictable
comfort zone. To say that the Labour Leader’s fiery socialist rhetoric preached
to the choir probably insults the more intelligent of the choristers.
One of the funniest moments was when the
prep-school-lad-made-bad listed all the people who should be afraid of him.
Philip Green is apparently cowering, along with the bosses of Southern Rail. Tax-dodging
CEOs pray at night that they are spared the wrath of Jez’s incoming
administration.
The reality, of course, is that no one is remotely scared.
First of all, Corbyn isn’t going to get within 100 miles of
Downing Street. And even if he did, he would be so out of his depth that
wealthy and powerful interests would run rings around him.
It’s true that civil servants have to go through the motion
of preparing for a potential transition. They were instructed to start talking
to Jez’s team about the curtain measurements for Downing Street. But some wag
on Twitter pointed out this was broadly akin to the host of 80s gameshow Bullseye, Jim Bowen, showing contestants
the speedboat they could have won.
The only question in this election is how badly Labour loses.
My hunch is spectacularly badly.
Here are the five factors that will almost certainly lead to
a disastrous result on 8th June.
THE LEADERSHIP ISSUE
The first and most obvious issue is Corbyn himself. There’s
no point in rehearsing all his extraordinary gaffes of the past two years or
his complete detachment from the world of 2017. His sheer awfulness has become
common currency. Historians of this period will look back with bemusement that
anyone ever thought him credible and will point to the instrumental role he
played in shaping the disastrous Brexit result and a period of lengthy Tory
rule.
It’s weird, incidentally, how history’s losers can often
have a pivotal role in momentous events. Look at Ed Miliband blocking military
action against Syria, for instance. His fateful decision (motivated by a desire
to distance himself from Tony Blair and New Labour) led to Barack Obama’s
embarrassing deal with Moscow. Assad was let off the hook, his murderous regime
was emboldened and a vacuum was created which allowed IS to thrive.
Corbyn’s leadership – or lack of it – will be right at the
heart of the campaign. He is being presented as the man at the centre of a ‘coalition
of chaos’, involving maybe the Lib Dems and the SNP. This will be just as
damaging as the accusation that the more competent Ed Miliband was in the
pocket of Alex Salmond.
TRUST ON THE ECONOMY
The second reason Labour will suffer a historic defeat is a
complete lack of confidence in their ability to manage the economy. This is
somewhat unfair, as Blair and Brown had a very credible record prior to the
financial crisis of 2008. But the Jezuits have disowned their predecessors’
legacy and never talk about any of the New Labour achievements in the
management of the economy or investment in public services.
So, in 2017, we are left with an extraordinary wish list of
policies. Renationalisation of the railways and those parts of the health
service which are deemed to be privatised. The restoration of NHS bursaries. Free
school meals for every child. An end to university tuition fees. An increase in
the carer’s allowance. Ending the freeze on public-sector pay.
There is talk of spending half a trillion pounds. While some borrowing is actually economically
very sensible right now, as we can do it at historically low rates, the sheer
scale of what Labour is proposing plays right into the hands of their Tory
opponents. Most members of the public will want borrowing to be limited, taxes
to be kept down and spending to be sensibly controlled. All ideas that are
anathema to Corbyn and McDonnell.
BREXIT
The third problem for Labour isn’t entirely of its own
making. It’s true that Corbyn’s lacklustre campaigning in the EU referendum
was, sadly, probably enough to tip the balance of the vote the wrong way. We might assume Labour voters would have come
out in greater numbers for Remain if Andy Burnham, Liz Kendall or Yvette Cooper
had won the leadership contest in 2015, rather than a man who had spent his
whole political life opposing the EU. Once the referendum had been decided,
however, Labour was caught in an impossible position.
Although the majority of Labour voters supported Remain, a
substantial minority didn’t. And these Brexiters are disproportionately
concentrated in Labour’s heartland seats. Labour will be too pro-Europe for the
Brexiters and too pro-Brexit for the diehard Remainers. A completely impossible
bind.
Corbyn’s solution is not to talk about Brexit. The trouble
is that the Conservatives are determined to make this a Brexit election. And so
are the Lib Dems. And probably the Scottish Nationalists and Plaid Cymru. Last night, the rambling Labour Leader actually
tweeted about rambling. I am not making this up.
DEFENCE AND SECURITY
This hasn’t really featured as an issue in British general
elections since 1987, as both parties seemed broadly credible on defence from
1992 onwards. Under Corbyn’s leadership, Labour has become associated once
again with appeasement, pacifism and defeatism.
The British public will never accept as Prime Minister
someone who believes we could renew Trident nuclear submarines without the
warheads. Or keep the warheads and tell people we would never use them. This
argument was categorically lost three decades ago, but Jez didn’t get the memo.
For the record, I do not believe there is any military
action by British forces that Corbyn has ever supported in his career. And that
includes the intervention to stop ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. According to
his fans, this puts him on the ‘right side of history’, although the great
British public will respectfully disagree.
THE VISION THING
Right at the heart of Labour’s failure to connect with
voters is the dismal picture they paint of the UK.
Make no mistake, this is a country with far too much poverty
and inequality and Labour’s raison d’être must be to address this. Otherwise
what is the party for? At the same time, Britain is still a very prosperous
country and many people have some kind of stake in that prosperity, however
tenuous. It goes without saying that a good number of them need to vote Labour if the
party is to achieve power.
Right now, Labour is full of vitriol about a world of
zero-hours contracts and welfare cuts and NHS crises and failing public
transport. Like many other people, I want to see stronger employment laws,
protection for the most vulnerable, a properly funded public health service and
trains that run on time. But I don’t think we are defined as a nation just by
our current failings.
The language Labour uses is relentlessly negative and for
all the talk of ‘new politics’ under Corbyn, there is absolutely no sense of
what British society might be like under his leadership. The overall impression
communicated is one of decay and decline. Blair in 1997, by contrast, offered
hope, confidence and cautious optimism about the future.
It seems, sadly, as if a cataclysm at the polls is the only
way in which the arrogance of Labour’s current leadership and the naivety of
its supporters can be shattered. The
tragedy is that it is the people Labour exists to represent who will be hardest
hit by the sheer madness of the last two years.
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