The Labour Party leadership contestants in the current race\nmay speak much about \u201cthe party having a conversation with itself\u201d, or \u201cneeding\nto reconnect with its voters\u201d, or \u201cfinding a vision and a purpose\u201d, or many\nother such vague and vapid soundbites. This sort of waffle \u2013 always employed in\nthe leadership contests of defeated parties \u2013 is calibrated precisely to\ndemonstrate that the candidate has what it takes to lead the party back into\ncontention, whilst also being precisely calibrated to avoid the necessary\ndetail that any road map to power must sooner or later include. For this is the\nvery detail which is likely to alienate a significant portion of the membership\nbase upon which his or her leadership bid will depend. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The current debate going on within Labour, however, is\nfatally confused over this very detail; so much so that the party may yet be\ncondemned to ten years in the wilderness. This is because the analysis of\nLabour\u2019s failure allows the party faithful the luxury to be in denial about the\nelectoral viability of hard-left socialism. There are three reasons given for\nLabour suffering its most crushing defeat since 1935, against what had only\nmonths earlier seemed a fatally split and moribund Tory governing party that\nhad presided over ten years of crises. And of these three reasons, the\nexistence of the first two allows the party membership to fool itself about the\nthird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first was Corbyn himself. Some in Labour blame the way\nhe was caricatured in the media, unable seemingly to realise that there will\nnever be another prism through which voters view politicians. Most, however,\nrecognise that he was toxic on the doorsteps of the voters in the Red Wall,\nthat battleground upon which Labour was routed. The North London identity\npolitics, the open sympathies with extremist organisations, the pronouncement\nthat the police should not have shot dead a terrorist wearing a suicide vest on\nLondon Bridge, and so many more actions and words of the man turned the\npatriotic centre ground of the British working class away from the party that\nis meant to be there to serve it. There was the anti-Semitism thing which he\njust could not shake off. There was also, less visibly to the public, the\nchronic indecisiveness and lack of grip Corbyn displayed in his role as leader,\nwhich meant that the front bench ended up adopting contradictory positions over\npolicy, and the manifesto was so stuffed with the unrealistic demands of\ninsider pressure groups and party factions that it became, as Blair cabinet\nheavyweight Jack Straw put it, \u201cincontinent\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then, of course, there was Brexit. Partly as a result of\nCorbyn\u2019s weakness as a party boss, the biggest contradiction that clearly\nemerged was over this issue. And for all their cries about how the evil Tories\nwere going to sell the NHS to Trump, Labour were never going to be able to move\nthe electoral campaign away from Brexit. Of course, Labour was always going to\nhave difficulty straddling the gap between its southern, middle class remainers\nand its northern, working class leavers. Yet they were hardly more divided in\nthis way than the Conservatives. What emerged was a ridiculous fudge which not\nonly discredited their previous 2017 manifesto pledge to honour the result of\nthe 2016 referendum, but which also offered no way out, no way back, and no way\nforward. Had I opened my door to find someone with a red rosette telling me\nthat they were pledging another open-ended re-negotiation with Brussels,\nfollowed by another referendum in which they pledged to campaign for or against\ntheir own deal depending how it had worked out, I would have been thoroughly\nbamboozled. Given this nonsense, it is hardly surprising that Dominic Cummings\u2019\nmessage cut through for the Tories \u2013 Get Brexit Done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So those are the reasons why Labour were hammered: Brexit\nand Corbyn. Right? Yes, if you are a party member who loved the hard-left\nmanifesto that was being peddled beneath the Brexit furore. That is exactly\nwhat you believe, because you believe what you want to. This dual analysis\nperfectly suits your confirmation bias. You do not want to believe that the\ncentre ground of British politics rejected socialism. Your mind actively\ncolludes in masking the third, and probably the most profound, cause of your\nabject electoral failure. You believe that your millennial socialism, your big\nand intrusive state and the identity politics of your \u201crace and faith manifesto\u201d\nneed only one more push, without the contamination of Corbyn and Brexit, to win\na landslide. You do not want to face the truth that the public saw through your\nabsurd spending pledges, that they detected the divisiveness of your agenda,\nthat they were convinced by the One Nation Conservatism that so successfully\nflanked you on social issues simply by dealing with them more realistically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This means that when the membership vote on who they wish to\nlead the party, they may be blind to the necessity for Labour to chart a course\nback into the centre ground of British politics, and to the necessity of\nmounting a counter-attack in Scotland, where they have been almost completely\nusurped on the left by the SNP, and where the Conservatives have become the\nmain rallying point for unionism, thus denying this status to Labour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If I am right, and they plump for Rebecca Long-Bailey, they\nwill remain out of power. She is young, and a woman, a single mother and\nworking class (other than the corporate law thing) the Labour loyalists crow,\nunaware that they are conveying just the sort of identity politics that is such\na turn-off for the voters who just deserted them. When another election comes \u2013\nand it may come before 2025 \u2013 Johnson\u2019s Tories will slaughter Long-Bailey. The\nleader they need is Sir Keir Starmer.ve Okay, he\u2019s from London and he\u2019s a\nposh-ish middle-aged bloke, but Johnson was all that and more, and he romped\nhome. Starmer has gravitas, intellect, and a proven professional and political\nrecord. And above all he is from the sensible wing of his party. He would be a\nformidable leader of the Opposition, and by the next election the public would\nhave clocked that. But if the membership of Labour remains in denial, he will\nnot be the leader that they get.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"