RUDE AWAKENING

If you are a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn and have not stopped celebrating since Saturday morning read on at your own peril, you will not like what I have to say. If this does not describe you, these are my first thoughts on his election as Labour Leader.
 

The good news first, at least for those, like me, kept awake by apocalyptic visions of the death of the Labour Party, we’ve been here before. From 1932 to 1935 the Labour Party was led by anti-war pacifist George Lansbury, he was ousted by the Trade Union movement who in those days took opposing fascism seriously. Lansbury later took to meeting Hitler and supported the Munich agreement. Lansbury was an idealist, who believed that you could negotiate with fascists and Nazi’s, -indeed he met Hitler and Mussolini, later providing naïve descriptions of these encounters.
Lansbury in 1936


"I would close every recruiting station, disband the Army and disarm the Air Force. I would abolish the whole dreadful equipment of war and say to the world: "Do your worst"

- George Lansbury, leader of the Labour Party, message to the voters in the Fulham East by-election, June 1933.
 (I don’t think even Corbyn has gone that far, though I await the trawl through his past quotes, - from the perspective of the right Corbyn and chums are the gift that keeps on giving).

Lansbury had an honourable career in the Labour Party, amongst other things championing woman’s suffrage, being imprisoned twice for his beliefs. So any comparison with Lansbury would flatter Corbyn. I make no such comparison, other than the fact that Lansbury’s views also rendered the Labour Party unelectable.

So the bad news is that as things stand the Labour Party is now unelectable. I perhaps should say that the core of Corbyn’s domestic agenda makes sense and his critique of the fallacy of austerity correct;  and there may be an earthquake, the political culture of the country may alter beyond recognition in the next 53 months. There might be a mass revolt against the Tories, now feeling themselves unrestrained, whose programme of austerity might stretch the fabric of political consent to breaking point, creating the possibility of a Labour Breakthrough. I would like to think so, though this would not alter my view of a Corbyn premiership.
 For like Lansbury Corbyn is a natural appeaser. Though unlike Lansbury his dislike of violence is somewhat selective. The kind of violence he dislikes is any involving NATO, Britain or the US, whether humanitarian or in defence of western interests. The violence of Hamas, Hezbollah, Putin or the Iranian Revolutionary guards he understands.
Corbyn openly espouses leaving NATO and is ambivalent about the EU, he would negotiate/appease Islamists and Putin. He would make the world a less safe place for liberalism and social democracy. For these reasons Corbyn must be opposed.
The fact that the Tories, using the economic collapse of 2008 as cover for a cynical ideological driven move to shrink the state, see Corbyn’s election creating the possibility to move more quickly with this agenda, is a tragedy.[1] 

As I say the Tories might be wrong, Cameron after all has often shown himself to be stupid, but I suspect in this instance they may be calling it correctly.


During the leadership elections Corbyn supporters enjoyed great freedom to criticize, never themselves having held responsibility for anything. So to all those professional oppositionists, who have yapped for years like petulant terriers around the ankles of those engaged in the mucky business of actually making hard decisions, if you imagine that people like me are now just going to say fair cop, games up, and go away, they are in for a rude awakening.

[1] Unlike Bin Laden’s assassination which was an important triumph. 

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