Sea Change

It must be a very confusing time to be a follower of the bizarre Corbyn cult. Dissonance is rife and the reasons are pretty obvious. Momentum was built out of the leadership campaign for Jez and, for the first couple of years, things were very simple. The only thing Momentum members and fellow travellers had to do was to believe whatever Corbyn believed. If Jez claimed that Blair was a ‘neo-liberal’, so did they. When the veteran leftist argued that you can borrow and spend your way to economic prosperity, all you had to do was nod in agreement. Marrows are easier to grow on an allotment than turnips? If the Gardener of the People says so, it must be true. But what happens when the pronouncements of the guru start conflict with common sense or deep-seated belief systems? The Russians should decide on whether the nerve agent used in Salisbury was theirs. Err… yes, Jez. Of course. Membership of the single market? Completely impossible outside the EU....

The last few years in the British Labour Party have been full of terrible misjudgements and mistimings. Those last-minute charity nominations for Corbyn in the summer of 2015. The sullen acquiescence of the PLP after Jez was first elected leader, providing him with breathing space to consolidate his position. The coup that kept on being deferred in 2016. It would be in the new year. It would be after the council elections. It would have to wait until after the EU referendum. The eventual launch of Angela Eagle’s bid to replace Corbyn. The sidelining of Eagle in favour of Owen Smith, who then ran a campaign in which he claimed to share the left-wing politics of the man he aimed to replace. The offer to Jez of a position as spiritual leader. The sullen acquiescence of the PLP after Jez’s second win in September 2016. The cloak of respectability given to Corbyn by people who should know far better. Tom Watson. Emily Thornberry. Keir Starmer. The complete coll...

When Jeremy Corbyn recently attacked Theresa May for her close ties with Saudi Arabia, her defence was that the UK needed to maintain the relationship in order to be able to influence the regime in Riyadh.   The exchanges in the House of Commons were tetchy.   You might be forgiven for thinking that the Labour Leader (beloved by his supporters for supposedly being on the ‘right side of history’) had taken the moral high ground here. But actually there’s no moral high ground with the far left when it comes to defence, security and foreign affairs. We can see this in Corbyn’s latest interview with the BBC, in which he was asked about UK ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Here is his reply: “Would I do business with Putin? Sure. And I’d challenge him on human rights in Russia, challenge him on these issues and challenge him on that whole basis of that relationship. You have to deal with people who are in the position they are as head of state…” To be fair to Jez...

We hear a great deal about how many deaths have stemmed from the Iraq War in 2003. This is often numbered in hundreds of thousands. Some people claim as many as a million, although of course the vast majority of the tragic fatalities have nothing directly to do with the actions of American, British or allied troops. In making the calculations, opponents of the war count every death they believe stems from that war and the destabilisation it ultimately caused. This is the logic that allows the more hysterical sections of the left to claim that Tony Blair is a ‘war criminal’ or ‘mass murderer’. Quite when deaths in the region will no longer be attributed to the Iraq War is anyone’s guess. The relationship seems to be pretty indefinite, which is clearly illogical and completely ahistorical. A little like saying that everything happening in America now is the result of 9/11 or blaming the Luftwaffe for deaths in London in the early 1960s. So there are many reasons to dispute the...

A constant refrain from Corbynistas is that their new model Labour Party is thriving, while other social democratic parties in Europe are in terminal decline. This argument was wheeled out once again after the recent elections in Italy, which saw a big boost for the eccentric Five Star movement in the south and the right-wing Lega in the north. As with all Jezuit ideology, the thought process is pretty muddled. Corbyn achieved a 40% share of the vote in the general election last June, having scored a much lower percentage in the local government polls just weeks beforehand. It was certainly unexpected and I would be the first to admit that I was badly caught out. But does it really signal that left-wing parties would do better at the polls across the EU? The first thing to point out is that in many European countries, there are electoral systems which are far more proportional than the one in the UK. Of course, they vary considerably and Italy has changed its model rece...

It’s always heartbreaking when besties fall out. The Corbynite left is in a tizz over the battle to replace Iain McNicol as General Secretary of the Labour Party. Essentially, the disagreement is between those who believe that the position should be fixed in the traditional way behind closed doors and others who want it thrown open – at least in the future – to some kind of democratic vote of the ‘movement’. The two personalities at the heart of the current dispute are Jennie Formby of the Unite union and veteran activist Jon Lansman, who runs the hard-left Momentum organisation forged out of Corbyn’s original leadership campaign. Moderate MPs are so worried at the prospect of either of these figures taking over the party’s administration that they are pleading for some kind of hustings at Westminster. This would supposedly be an opportunity to seek guarantees that the lawmakers will not be subject to vilification and deselection in the future. There hasn’t been a wor...