So schools out and so we are heading towards the time of year when some silly stories appear in newspapers desperate to fill column inches – well at least that was the case up until we all went digital. It also helps if the silly season story pander to your reader’s fears, phobias etc which brings us to the latest rash of Jeremy Corbyn will win stories.
Before I go on I think it is only reasonable to declare that I am not a member of the Labour Party and so have no say in whether Jeremy Corbyn is selected. However, I do have an interest in a functioning parliamentary system and the longer we have no real opposition the quicker the whole thing falls into disrepute. So I have no say but a great deal of interest in the outcome. From everything I have seen I suspect that Jeremy Corbyn is a decent enough man who has tried to make the world just a little better. This does not make him a potential future Prime Minister nor does it address the huge problems the Labour Party has. What an awful lot of the party faithful seem to have forgotten is that they were completely humiliated at the polls, not just a little bit but a lot. How they overcome this by selecting someone who has never held any position of power or responsibility is not clear? At least Ed Miliband could point to the fact that he was at the centre of much of the New Labour Government, although for reasons best known to himself he didn’t like to remind people of this. Yet he was roundly rejected as a potential Prime Minister. What chance Jeremy Corbyn?
Now of course it can be argued that politics should be about policies not personalities and this in theory is correct. However, politics is personal and how you come across to the voters is important. In fact I don’t think there has ever been a time when politics was really about policies but rather about the overgrown egos of those who want to play the game and rise up the greasy poll. The easy part is to stand on the sideline and carp (I recognise the irony) and this to a greater degree has been Jeremy Corbyn’s political career.
I have heard the argument being put forward that the Labour leader should appeal to what the party members want and once this has been done then the party will be able to move forward as one (I hope I’m not paraphrasing Diane Abbott too much). This is true but only so far and the limits are very quickly reached when considering just how is the Labour Party going to win in England again? I’m sorry to say this to both Wales and Scotland but they don’t really count in this arithmetic. If Labour cannot win in England then they are lost and there is no sign yet of them being able to come remotely close to that.
This is not an endorsement of any of the other candidates but rather hopefully point to the painful truth – at the moment Labour is nowhere in England and should the current drift continue then they will get further from winning England. This is very bad because there is a need for real opposition to what any Government is doing and this current iteration is no different. We are facing a crises of government over the next 2 years as slowly but surely the Conservative party destroys itself over Europe and should the referendum vote to stay in Europe it will collapse from the weight of cries of treachery aimed at David Cameron. No wonder he is leaving shortly afterwards. Will the Labour party be in any fit state to take advantage of this in 2017? Well the chance are slim but with Jeremy Corbyn as leader they are even less likely.
If a week is a long time in politics then five years is an eternity and this is how I suspect it will feel to many Labour supporters. But they can argue that five years of the policies put forward by Jeremy Corbyn will lead them to victory if only because of the Robert Peel like probable collapse of the Conservative party. I think this is a faint hope at best but then again as I have repeatedly writtern on this blog…what the hell do I know?
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