POLITICAL pundits have expressed surprise at the swell of support for Jeremy Corbyn, one of the four candidates standing for the leadership of the Labour Party. Those from the Right have been delighted, believing that Jeremy Corbyn is the man to lead the Labour Party to political oblivion and those from the Left dismayed because they agree.
Successful sound bite politicians are history
I don’t see why anybody should be shocked by the enthusiasm shown for Jeremy.
We live in a time where a clown, Beppe Grillo, has formed a successful party in Italy, the Five Star Movement; Syriza, the party of Marxist economic professors, have taken control of the Greek government; whilst there is an upsurge of support for Podemos in Spain. Golden Dawn in Greece and the National Front in France amongst other parties are ugly mirror images on the extreme Right.
We live in an age of distrust of politicians and the political process itself. The Centre is splitting asunder. The real surprise is not that the United Kingdom shares political traits with its continental neighbours, but that the three candidates opposed to Jeremy Corbyn: Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendal, have not met Frank Field’s expectation that they would defeat him in debate.
This requires some explanation; that three Oxbridge educated senior politicians, two with lengthy Cabinet experience, are losing out to an old Lefty.
The first reason is obvious: Jeremy answers questions directly, no prevarication, no ambiguity and occasionally an appealing admission that he doesn’t know the answer. This contrasts sharply with the hedging and triangulation particularly from Andy and Yvette and the contrary ill thought out views of Liz Kendal. Authenticity is essential to gaining a hearing in contemporary politics. Successful sound bite politicians are history.
Secondly the career paths of Jeremy’s opponents are very similar.
All three have worked as Ministerial bag carriers before being elected to parliament, where they have been accelerated through the ministerial ranks by their previous patron, or shadow ministerial ranks in Liz’s case. The skill required in all these jobs is to be able to follow a policy line when being interviewed or in debate. It is more important not to concede a point rather than follow the logic of the argument. To put this another way, being a Ministerial Advisor may enable you to achieve a senior position quickly but leaves you short of real political skills.
Bluntly these candidates are not as good at politics as they should be.
Andy BurnhamThis leads to the most striking characteristics of the heirs to Blair and Brown, they seem to have no clear political vision or philosophy. Their claim to be centre left seems to be based almost entirely on them not being Jeremy Corbyn and hard left or Tories. This won’t do.
I would see a centre left position along these lines: no more military adventures in the Middle East and elsewhere; a huge house building programme to provide jobs and affordable accommodation; an assault on the failed and exploitative energy and transport markets primarily by regulation but by public ownership where necessary; an end to welfare dependency amongst the lowest paid not by punishing people but by increasing the minimum/living wage; and reducing the huge public subsidy to private landlords. One could go on.
These policies are attractive and would have been recognised by Atlee and Wilson as moderate aspirations. The surprise is these traditional Labour positions have not been embraced.
When voting against renewing Trident, benefit cuts, military action in Iraq and Syria and so on I have found myself in the same lobby as Jeremy Corbyn. However, I will not be voting for him. Our views overlap in many places (although I do not consider Hamas and Hezbollah as friends) but the only vehicle for turning these policies into reality is a Labour Government. Unless the laws of politics have really been turned upside down the electorate will not choose Jeremy as Prime Minister.
The Parliamentary Labour Party would also be a problem. Having voted against the whip more than 500 times, imposing discipline on other Labour MPs would be nigh on impossible. A shambles would ensue.
Yvette CooperI will vote for Yvette as being credible, electable and hope she will get bolder. If Jeremy were to be elected by Labour party members I would accept his leadership. That’s democracy. However, Ed Miliband not only lost a winnable election but has bequeathed the party a crazy selection process. The Labour Party may have chosen two failures as its last two leaders, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, but I fail to see how allowing members of other political parties to vote for the Labour Party leader is an improvement. It is eccentric and foolhardy.
If it appears that Jeremy is elected by the votes of people who are members of the Conservative Party and the Trotskyist sects he will have no credibility. It would be better if this whole political pantomime were put on hold until a saner set of rules are agreed upon.
Graham Stringer is a regular columnist for Manchester Confidential. He is the Labour Member of Parliament for Blackley and Broughton with a majority of 22,982 after the 2015 election, up from 12,303 in 2010. He was elected to Parliament in 1997 for the now abolished constituency of Manchester Blackley.
Prior to this he was the Leader of Manchester City Council from 1984-1996. He is one of the few MPs to have science experience, as a professional analytical chemist. He is a member of The Science and Technology Committee at Westminster.
