Politics is the art of the possible. You can have all the best policies, but if the electorate doesn’t like you, then you will never have the chance to implement them. This is something the followers of Jeremy Corbyn fail to realise. Not everyone would agree that their policies ARE the best, but I’m not addressing this to those who are anti-socialism anyway.
Eleven months ago, Jeremy Corbyn agreed to a general election that resulted in Labour getting the worst result since the nineteen-thirties. We can argue about the reasons for that, but that would be fruitless. The fact is, it happened. And if Jeremy Corbyn were to lead Labour into another election it would happen again.
The establishment were terrified of the prospect of a Corbyn-led administration, but they were not even remotely afraid of it happening. Even if the entire media circus had not been bent on a concerted attack on the MP for Islington North, he did not have sufficient charisma to lead Labour into government. For sure, there were (and still are) thousands devoted to him, but it is very likely the entire Corbyn-loving population of the UK amounted to a few thousand. The rest of the Labour voting electorate put up with him. I voted Labour, not because of any love for Jeremy Corbyn, but because any Labour Government is better than any Conservative one in my view.
I will not go into the reasons why Corbyn is not viewed kindly by people like me and I will not go into the genuine fear my many Jewish friends had of a Labour government led by him. There are arguments for and against, but the fact is Corbyn failed to inspire the electorate to return him to government and instead elected one of the most incompetent Conservative administrations we have ever seen. Not only that, they did it twice. He did better than many thought he would in 2017, but that was more by luck than judgement. Theresa May ran an awful campaign and any half decent opposition would have made mincemeat of her. The Corbyn followers on Twitter and Facebook argue that he was only a few thousand votes away from forming an administration. That supposes the Lib Dems and the Nationalists would be prepared to put him into office. The latter might have done, but their asking price would be very steep, but the Lib Dems would not have allowed a Corbyn government in a million years. Even if you subscribe to the theory that their lack of principles would have led them to backing him, they would have hamstrung his favoured policies to the point it would have neutered him. And that’s the point: policies.
The point Labour needs to get to is being regarded by the electorate as worth a shot in government. That is why Kinnock did not quite make it and Blair did. Love him or loathe him, Blair was a winner and as a consequence he was able to implement a raft of policies that made the lives of everyone better. There were lots of policy initiatives I disagreed with in the Blair years – he was not perfect – no-one is, but he got a hundred percent more done than Corbyn did.
Now we have Keir Starmer in the hot seat. He has moved Labour from twenty points behind the Conservative Party to level pegging and we still have four years to win the hearts and minds of the electorate. The best way NOT to do that is to keep hammering away at Starmer and acting as a drag on his popularity. You do not have to love him, you do not even have to trust him, but you do have to understand that he will implement policies that will make the lives of everyone in the country better. And a I would like to remind you that Starmer has not changed one solitary policy from the Corbyn manifesto.
In simple terms, you may want it all it all and want it now, but you are not going to get it. Ever. Take what you can and when we have a Labour government, we can argue about all the extra bits then. Any Labour government is better than any Conservative government.
It’s the policies that matter. The power struggles in which the unions and the left are engaged right now are both futile and childish. Get Labour elected, take forward the policy initiatives you can get, and argue about the rest later.
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