Jeremy Corbyn

No, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Leadership Candidacy Is Not A Disaster

Samuel Hooper9 Comments

 

It’s encouraging to see the Telegraph’s Rupert Myers echo this blog’s view that the presence of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership contest is a good thing, and not the unmitigated disaster that conventional wisdom and repetitious Labourite talking heads continue to say it is.

From Myers’ column today:

A Corbyn victory would allow the free democratic choice not between two shades of middle, but between what could properly be definied as the left and the right. Angry voices calling for true, radical alternatives to capitalism would (we can pray) be silenced for a generation (or at least a few months) if Jeremy had the chance to present a bold, socialist agenda for Britain. Floating voters would have the opportunity not to pick between politicians with similar manifestos, but to decide a political battle waged in technicolour. The Corbyn ultimatum would bring the far left from out of the shadows of a Labour HQ intent on fussing about how to win elections, and test the rhetoric of a legion of angry young socialists against the wisdom of the electorate.

Voters like a real, solid, discernable choice. If Labour pick Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Watson to head their efforts between now and 2020, I predict a renaissance of political engagement. Rather than spend the next five years arguing about the threshold of tax allowances, we could argue the merits of state ownership of the railways, banks, fast food industry, and the Premier League.

Instead of bureaucratic tinkering with foreign aid, we’d be debating whether to drop our borders to allow the unrestricted movement of people. PMQs could be a discussion on how to cap pay to the level of tube drivers, to be set at £200,000 a year. New Labour might not like the image which emerges, but at least Corbyn would turn the contrast button up to full and then rip it off the set.

Absolutely. It’s long past time we had a proper political debate in this country again, instead of these interminable, finickity squabbles about negligible ideological differences.

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The Opportunity Labour Is Failing To Grasp

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Tristram Hunt - Labour Leadership - Labour Party

 

As their uninspiring leadership contest rumbles on, the Labour Party is in the process of missing a massive opportunity, an existential moment which could very well determine whether the party of Keir Hardie exists at all in fifty years time.

Tristram Hunt – one of the real intellectual and political heavyweights who realised that Labour’s renewal could not be completed in time for the 2020 election, and decided to keep their powder dry for the next leadership contest – admits as much in a revealing interview with the Guardian today.

From the piece, entitled “Labour needs a summer of hard truths“:

Rather than developing detailed policy on childcare, housing, or education, Labour’s debate should be about how government can help people to tackle massive economic, technological and social change.

“The party should be arguing for a progressive and interventionist state to support citizens and communities in confronting the challenges of globalisation. What are we for? We are for giving people the capacity to deal with a period of incredible socio-economic change and the advent of digital technology, migration flows, global capital flows.”

As the Tories trim back the state, they fail to address such questions. “Representing Stoke-on-Trent, you see the seismic change of the last 30 years. It is almost anthropological in terms of the taking away of traditional systems. The role of a Labour party and social democratic parties is to help communities get through that and thrive on the back of it.”

Here, in a nutshell, is the leadership contest which the Labour Party should be having, but is not. Watch any of the hustings or listen to the bickering between the candidates and their badly behaved proxies and you will soon see that (with the partial exceptions of Liz Kendall and Jeremy Corbyn respectively), and you will be struck by two facts about the conversation taking place in the party:

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Why Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Leadership Candidacy Matters

Samuel Hooper9 Comments

Jeremy Corbyn - Labour Leadership - Dan Hodges - Tories4JeremyCorbyn - 1

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You don’t have to agree with Jeremy Corbyn to welcome his presence in the Labour leadership contest

It is a pity that the inclusion of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership race is pretty much only being discussed in the context of the growing #Tories4Corbyn movement.

CapX explains the phenomena:

Putting Corbyn on the ballot paper does have one unintended consequence, which is amusing the Conservatives greatly. Suddenly, there is great interest from senior Tories in helping Labour to elect Corbyn, because they think, rightly, that it would equal oblivion for Labour and a generation of Tory rule.

There is a practical way Tory voters can help, the Conservatives have realised. For just £3 anyone can sign up as a Labour supporter and a get a vote in the party’s leadership contest. On Twitter, Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, has already described getting the chance to help make the completely unelectable Jeremy Corbyn Labour leader as a notable bargain.

This Tories4JeremyCorbyn movement could take off. How long before someone establishes a website and Twitter account explaining how Tory voters can win it for Jeremy?

This is all well and good, but it is also a distraction, the type of fun Westminster parlour games that the political class like to play to entertain themselves, leaving the vast majority of Britons either oblivious or turned off. Meddling in the other side’s leadership election might elicit smirks and chuckles in the Westminster Arms, but it hardly does anything to improve the reputation of a political class seen as totally cut off from the people.

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