Two things scare supporters of Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn
more than anything else.
The first is that their guru will be found out. That a
penny will drop among voters – particularly the first-timers who came out in
June – that he is maybe not the man they imagined him to be. The second is that a
new centre-ground politics will emerge to fill the void now vacated by Labour
and that the electorate may, by the time of the next election, have a better
choice than May and Jez.
Both scenarios are absolutely devastating for the hard-left
project and they know it. This is why they are fighting such a vicious rearguard
action in the media against their critics.
One of fascinating things for someone my age about the
general election two months ago was the fact that Corbyn’s history counted for
nothing. This was a man whose links with extremists repulse many people over
the age of, say, 45. But to a younger generation, who have no real memory of
the IRA bombing campaign or the antics of the ‘loony left’ in the 1980s, his
track record seemed fairly irrelevant.
Many Labour activists and politicians – myself included –
misjudged this.
I have to admit this is partly a product of old age. When
you’ve lived through something before and you see it happening again, you
assume that the next generation will be better prepared. They’ll heed your
warning. But history moves with frightening regularity from tragedy to farce
and back again.
Since the election though, there have been a number of
signals of Corbyn’s entrenched ideological positions in the here and now. It’s
possible to see, for instance, that he and John McDonnell have no fundamental
objection to Brexit and indeed welcome the break with the capitalist EU.
Veterans knew it already. Others are now coming to
appreciate it for the first time.
The manipulation of the Grenfell tragedy to fit the far-left
political agenda (Clive Lewis attacking ‘neo-liberalism’ on Twitter and McDonnell’s
references to Engels and the concept of ‘social murder’) were another strong
clue that we are dealing with ideologues. No surprise to anyone who lived
through the rhetoric and local government administrations of the far left in
the 1980s. But a wake-up call to people of a more moderate disposition in 2017.
There’s a more everyday example of how out touch Corbyn’s
Labour really is with the younger generation they’ve co-opted. What about their
opposition to disruptive platforms such as Uber? Last month, the Shadow
Business Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey argued the use of the app-based taxi
service was not ‘morally acceptable’, which might have come as quite a shock to
Labour’s younger middle-class fans, who probably use it regularly in cities
such as London and Manchester.
Believe me, Wrong-Daily’s pronouncements will prove the tip
of the iceberg. At every stage, Corbyn is going to be confronted by events. And
these events will test his ideological stance on terrorism, defence and
security, Brexit, economic policy and a whole host of other issues.
The terrifying
thing for the far left is that Corbyn’s promise of an election re-run shows no sign
of materialising just yet, so there could be years of exposure. In the
meantime, a new centre-ground party could emerge to offer voters a real choice.
The attacks on ‘centrists’ are therefore a quite deliberate
attempt to undermine the politics of moderation and the middle ground.
Corbynism can only thrive on polarisation. A man who previously enjoyed a level
of unpopularity that interested researchers at The Guinness Book of Records enjoyed an upward streak because the alternative of Theresa May’s kamikaze
Tories seemed so extreme itself.
In the early 1980s, Michael Foot enjoyed strong poll
ratings when his Labour Party was the only credible replacement to Thatcher’s
free-market experiment. When the SDP came along and teamed up with the Liberal
Party, his popularity was quickly revealed as a mirage. When given a choice, a
sizeable number of people wanted neither Foot nor Thatcher.
The absurdity and vitriolic nature of the attacks on ‘centrism’
from the likes of Owen Jones, Paul Mason, Laurie Penny of the New Statesman should come as no surprise.
They know very well that if there were a party established which incorporated
the moderate wing of Labour – Chuka Umunna, Liz Kendall and others – it would transport
votes away from Corbyn more instantly and efficiently than the Uber app his
team condemns.
Of course, the contemptible targeting of people with
middle-ground views (and the outrageous claim from Penny that they defend
Nazis) is intellectual gibberish and designed to sow confusion.
The essential premise is that the so-called Overton Window
has suddenly and inexplicably shifted to the left in the UK. Corbyn apparently
is the new centre ground and his policies wouldn’t be out of place in continental
Europe – a claim that will come as somewhat of a surprise to Merkel and Macron
and even more of shock to those who were telling themselves they’d voted for a
radical left party in June.
But what’s the reality? In that general election, the
Tories actually got a higher share of the popular vote than at any time since
1983. All that’s actually happened is that Britain has polarised in a profoundly
unhealthy way that we haven’t seen for over 35 years.
I have my doubts that the planned launch of the Democrats in
September will disrupt the current political scene hugely if the new party is
focused obsessively around Brexit and is essentially a party of pro-European
Tories. If it did, however, widen its mission and managed to bring in elements
from the moderate wing of the Labour Party, that might be a game changer. And a
prospect that makes the British far left very nervous and aggressive.
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