In 2019, Corbyn’s got 1.6 million voters more than Gordon Brown in
2010 and 1 million more than Ed Miliband in 2015.
No, I won’t be talking about how great Corbyn is and how Labour
should stick with him. That’s not my point.
Less than 19% of the people who could have voted for him chose
Gordon Brown as PM in 2010. Less than 19%. How many of them were straightforward,
hardline, Tories? Half, maybe?
So, look, the centrist (yes, I will use that word) fury at the
failed Corbyn project really sticks pretty hard in the throat today.
Any vote which wasn’t for Labour in 2010 and 2015 was, explicitly,
for this, this present we have right here. The Tories have done nothing
unexpected or out-of-character since then. This is who they are. This was the
inevitable consequence of all those self-indulgent “they’re all the same anyway”
votes.
So you liked the way Nick Faceclegg looked down the camera with his
sincere eyes and said someone’s name when they asked him a question? Cool, well
done. You thought Ed Miliband spoke a bit funny? Cool, stay at home then.
I’m not a Corbynista. I didn’t register to vote for him in the
2015 leadership election, nor would I have done, if I had registered. To me
Gordon Brown is the one great British politician of my lifetime, a highly intelligent,
forceful, moral presence who (yes, I know he made some significant errors too)
has a list of tangible positive achievements to his name that outstrips anyone
else by a country mile. But did you vote for him, you 81%?
Labour moved to the left in 2015 because it felt it had to, not
because it was a credulous cult.
The Labour centre had failed, in some places ethically, on a
profound level, and then, over a significant period of time, electorally.
In 2010 and 2015, it put up talented, intelligent PM candidates
from the centre-left who tried to appeal across the board and convinced nowhere
near enough people
Corbyn became leader because he was the right/wrong person at the
right/wrong time, not because everyone on the left lost their mind and fell in
love with him. Yes, there are zealots and fools and antisemites amongst the 10+
million that voted for him in 2017 and 2019 but the vast majority are simply
leftists, leftists who can see how screwed and grotesque the alternative is,
and, while they attempted to register their protests along the way at some of
the less palatable elements, in the end recognised that the electoral
alternative was devastating.
What should Labour have done in 2015 after two crushing election
defeats?
Begged Tony Blair to come back? Or David Miliband, the king over
the sea? Do one.
So spare the outrage at “the Corbyn project”. If you cannot see
that the main reason this has happened is that right-wing campaigners are able,
with social media, to control the message more than ever before, then that’s
your call. So VoteLeave and the Conservatives spend millions on sanctioned, provenly
false, targeted ads to vulnerable voters, but, no, that’s not an important
factor, is it? 88% false. Think about that. 88%. They wouldn’t be telling lies if
it wasn’t the lies that work.
Yes, Corbyn was toxic on the doorstep … he can take his own share
of the blame for that, but you think it’s patronising and out-of-touch to take
Dominic Cummings at his word when he explained exactly how his targeted
methodology of falsehood worked its magic?
With a historically hostile right-wing Murdoch-led media in uneasy
alliance with a newly hostile centre-left media, of course Labour and its inexperienced
outriders have got it badly wrong at times.
I will breathe a big sigh of relief when Corbyn is no longer
leader. I pray someone will come in who can just say “Look, we messed up really
badly on antisemitism, really badly. I realise that trust is gone and may never
come back, but we’ll try”.
But stop bleating about the centre. The centre didn’t hold. It
stopped holding a long time ago. The centre remains completely oblivious to the
largest dangers facing us and will spend the next few years patting itself on
the back despairingly about how right it’s been, while the world burns.
Oh yes, and Corbyn didn’t cause Brexit, that’s classic
double-think bollocks. Half the people are now saying Labour’ve lost because
they didn’t back remain soon enough, half because they ended up backing a
second referendum.
Who cares what his personal feelings on the matter were? He campaigned
for remain, Labour voters largely backed remain (did people somehow think if he
suddenly starting saying how much he loved Juncker, the Labour remain vote
would swing from 65 to 90%), his policy was to respect the result but block a hard
Brexit, which he did, often in a pretty frustrating way, I do admit, but the
virtue of that caution is being shown in abundance today. He eventually put a
second referendum on the ballot. Seems about fair enough, but I’m sure I’m
missing something …
Anyway, I can’t think of anything I could have written which would
go down less well, I’m basically slagging off most of my friends and family!
Woohoo, have a good day …
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