Corbyn’s election as leader will destroy the Labour party

Corbyn, Red Len and the child Owen Jones 650

To understand what is going to happen we first need to look at a bit of history.

The lefty Wilson and Callaghan governments of the 1970s trashed both British society and the British economy, leading ultimately to the Winter of Discontent. In 1978/9 an incredible 29,474,000 working days were lost to industrial action. Hospitals were picketed to prevent patients getting in, dead bodies were unburied and were stored in shipping containers. Britain was in a downwards spiral to oblivion. British voters reacted by rejecting socialism and embracing Thatcherism at the 1979 General Election.

Margaret Thatcher was so popular and socialism was so unpopular that she won two more General Elections with huge majorities. Labour were in the wilderness. In 1979 Callaghan lost, in 1983 Foot lost and in 1987 and 1992 Kinnoch lost. Then along came the charismatic Tony Blair who made Labour electable again by rejecting the leftism of the Winter of Discontent and with him came Gordon Brown who promised to continue the economic policies of the Conservatives with no tax rises. This was a winning formula, in 1997, 2001 and 2005. Then Gordon Brown became PM and lost control of the economy with his fiscal incontinence. So once more Labour became unelectable, losing in 2010 and 2015.

Tony Blair was leader of the Labour party from 21 July 1994 till 24 June 2007. For 13 years he remodeled it as a modern Social Democratic party. Virtually all the MPs, officials, activists and supporters were Blairites, only a small cadre of lefties remained. This cadre was so small that Jeremy Corbyn couldn’t get even 35 MPs to support him as a candidate in the recent leadership election until some Blairites nominated him so as to make the debate interesting. How they must be kicking themselves now.

Corbyn has been swept to power because of the votes of three kinds of people. Firstly the unreconstructed lefties from the 1970s who have not learned the lessons of history and who want to return us to those terrible times. They are driven by class warfare and envy, both of which are irrelevant in modern society. Secondly large numbers of young people who don’t remember the Winter of Discontent and who don’t understand simple economics. They are attracted to Corbyn’s idealistic spend, spend, spend policies, not realising that they are utterly impossible to implement and would cause real damage to Great Britain. Thirdly there are tens of thousands of mischievous Conservative voters who paid £3 each to help to destroy the Labour party and who look like succeeding in doing so.

So now we have an interesting situation. The Labour party is split into three separate tribes who have utterly different beliefs. The vast majority of Labour’s 232 MPs are Blairite as are most Councillors in local government, most MSPs and most MEPs. Also most officials and most experienced activists are too. The second tribe is the membership who voted Corbyn in. Many of these think that Corbyn is not left wing enough, they want to re-nationalise everything without compensation (theft) and to punish the successful rich people (more theft). The third tribe is the trade unions, they own the party financially and they own Tom Watson, the Labour deputy leader. They do not want a single one of their members to lose a job, no matter how unnecessary that job is and they want all their members to be paid far more than they are worth. They will force through policies that ensure this regardless of whether these policies are Blairite or lefty.

At Westminster the Labour lefty MPs are such a minority that Corbyn had difficulty putting a shadow cabinet together and ended up with some very dodgy people in it. But the majority of Blairite Labour MPs are in very big trouble indeed. Firstly in the opinion polls Corbyn is the most unpopular new party leader in history and voting intentions will see Labour obliterated in 2020. Secondly moves are afoot to deselect all the Blairite MPs and to replace them with lefty candidates at the next election. So either way most Labour MPs are looking at the probability of being unemployed in four and a half years time. This is focussing their attention.

There is much talk of a coup to unseat Corbyn and replace him with someone with leadership qualities who is electable. Alan Johnson, for instance. No Labour MPs have jumped ship yet because they are plotting for this. Some are hoping for the return of David Miliband, the sensible and less incompetent brother. But these options just are not going to happen unless Corbyn utterly destroys his own position. The membership and the unions are completely behind him.

So the only option available to these MPs is to desert their party. They could do this one at a time, in dribs and drabs as they each raised enough courage. Or they could all bail out together in one block. But where would they go?

  • They could form a new Social Democratic party which would have most existing Labour MPs, Councillors, MSPs and MEPs. But they would have the minority of supporters and no trade unions, so no money. This would take real leadership to pull off and would involve lots of plotting. Such a mass exodus would leave Corbyn with a small rump of MPs. But last time a similar feat was tried, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981, it ultimately failed.
  • They could join the Conservatives, which is already the best party for the working man and which is what most voters prefer. Although the ideological leap would in reality be very small for most Labour MPs the tribal warfare of British politics makes it look bigger than it really is.
  • They could join the Liberal Democrats, which have just lurched leftwards with their new leader, Tim Farron. This has the advantage of an existing party machine. But the Labour deserters would vastly outnumber the existing LibDem politicians, so it would end up being a takeover, which might not go down well.
  • They could join UKIP, a populist party which targets the less well educated working man, Labour’s traditional voters. This actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it and take a look at the psephology. UKIP came second in a lot of seats in the recent General Election.
  • The one Scottish MP could join the Scottish National Party. The SNP stands for sleaze, lies, thuggery and incompetent governance, so a Labour MP would feel right at home with them.
  • The Green party is a joke, even nuttier and more disconnected from reality than Corbyn. This could appeal to some Labour MPs.
  • Welsh Labour MPs could join Plaid Cymru, but it is an unpopular party so they would still probably lose their seats at the next election.

So the Labour party is dead man walking. It is a matter of when, not if and it is a matter of how. It can be destroyed by the voters in 2020. Or it can be destroyed by most of its politicians leaving it. Or maybe by a combination of these. Either way Corbyn’s election as leader will surely result in destroying it.

(Highlighted text is links to further articles, analysis and supporting facts).

Corbyn popularity 650

 

10 Comments


  1. Most of the damage suffered from Brown’s “fiscal incompetence” came before he was PM when as Chancellor he wasted all-time record tax revenues by increasing annual public expenditure from 2000 to 2008 (+70% versus compound inflation 15%) to no noticeable benefit to the tax payer. He also memorably cut 2P from the basic rate in his 2007 budget while scrapping the 10P tax band, thereby kicking three million working poor in the teeth – The very people who traditionally looked to Labour for a helping hand.

    Reply

  2. From a popular forum:
    The problem is that Corbyn is a ‘proper’ Labour man and most of the Labour party (including the shadow cabinet) aren’t actually true ‘Labour’ at all – they’re more centrist than that. The voters rejected the left-of-centre politics that Miliband brought and heading further left is only going to hurt them all the more.

    What they need to do is split. Leave Labour to the unions and other idiots – they’ll make some noise but will die eventually and will never see power. A new party holding the more central ground would actually be something of a challenge to the Tories; most of the Labour voters would follow them (rather than Old Labour) and they’d be likely to pinch a large chunk of any disillusioned left-leaning Tories. They would also, finally, be free of the ridiculous union tentacles and control.

    However, as they stand Labour are wholly unelectable and long may that continue. The only shame is that a competent Opposition is an important part of the process to provide checks and balances and Labour will – and are – failing at that too.

    An utter disaster and a shambles of a party run by and filled with morons.

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  3. I really enjoyed from articles, i would like to have a conversation with u.
    Pls leave your email in reply or send me a email. tnx

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  4. Dear readers, this serves as a friendly reminder that extremist right wing people have a long history indeed of lying and cheating in their propaganda to make their hateful and inhumane views more suitable for the general public. So anything and everything you read on this page should be consumed with great amounts of scepticism and, if possible, only while checking on the actual facts at the same time.

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  5. There is just one slight problem with this analysis, is that Corbyn’s position on rather a lot is popular with the general public, who do not want privatisation, outsourcing, offshoring, obsessive obedience to the EU or Washington, zero hour contracts, low pay, high housing costs and control of the political system by multinationals.

    Corbyn’s downfall will be none of this, which are highly popular policies. Where he will fall down will be on immigration, the North London political correctness and the perception he does not care about the nation state, anti monarchy and is weak on defence (which is somewhat mitigated by the cuts to the armed forces by the Tories). And his rivals bar maybe Burnham are the same old liberal bunch who hate the nation state and want free movement, so they would be no different.

    There is a massive chunk of people who agree with Corbyn broadly on economics and UKIP on social issues. The question is which is more important to them, and it will depend on what is impacting on their own life or what the current issues are come the 2020 election, and indeed how the EU referendum has gone. Thatcher could win votes off this group due to her patriotism and strength of character. Osborne however reaks of being a corporate lobbyist, and a profoundly unpleasant man.

    The idea however that the public are all globalist neoliberals who want corporate rule and public services provided by foreign governments or cretinous firms like G4S is a complete misnomer which Tories fail to understand, in the same way the idea that they want the end of nation states, political correctness and more immigration is something that various parts of the left cannot accept.

    Peter Hitchens perhaps more accurately sums up the small c-conservatism of the British people, and it is notable he has no time for corporatism, and has endorsed positions similar to both Corbyn and UKIP.

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  6. Bruce, you might want to look at that pyramid of reply you use so much.

    Reply

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