The Not So Resistible Rise of Jeremy Corbyn
by Sean Gabb
19th April 2018
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When Jeremy Corbyn became Leader of the Labour Party in 2015, the Conservative Party rejoiced, and his own parliamentary party went into a long sulk. The received wisdom was that an avowed socialist, with some very iffy connections, was so unelectable that the Conservatives could expect at least five more years in office. I disagreed. Sure enough, he came a good second in the 2017 general election. I will now say with fair surety that, if there were an election next week, Mr Corbyn would get an overall majority. It might be a big overall majority.
Let me discuss the reasons.
First, there is the nature of the media campaign against him. It is fair comment to say that, in the 1980s, he was effectively a fellow traveller with the Irish Republican Army. It is fair comment also to say that he still has questions to answer about the nature of his dealings, again in the 1980s, with various Soviet Bloc intelligence agencies. His support of unlimited mass-immigration, his political correctness, and his admiration for the ludicrous semi-Communist Hugo Chavez, are also points against him. Instead of calling him properly to account over all this, the media has decided to smear him as an anti-semite.
Now, I have no doubt I shall receive at least a dozen spittle-flecked e-mails on the theme of Who Said What While Jeremy Corbyn Sat Where. But I will not answer any of them. I shall need a great deal more evidence than I have been supplied that he is just waiting for the right moment to shave off his beard and dye what remains of his moustache so he can reopen Auschwitz. There is much to be said about Mr Corbyn. But he is not an anti-semite. The British public has some regard for fairness, and every claim that he is one simply firms his support. It does more than that. A significant and growing part of the Labour electorate really is anti-semitic, and the accusations will only encourage these people to turn out and vote for him in greater numbers.
Second, there is his socialism. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher made an almost explicit deal with us. She and her friends and successors would cut our entitlements to a range of free or subsidised services. In return, our taxes would come down, and we could make our own arrangement. Since then, the free and subsidised stuff has been withdrawn – but the tax burden is more or less where it was in 1979. Taking into account charges levied by privatised or outsourced semi-monopolies, it is greater than it was. What he might deliver is one thing. What Mr Corbyn appears to be offering is to give us more of the stuff we still pay for.
Third, there is foreign policy. Since 1979, the British Government has operated in its external relations as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Pentagon. We have fought wars in Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Libya, and now in Syria. Each of these wars has been floated on a raft of increasingly shameless lies, and each has involved atrocities against civilians. People are sick of being lied to. They are sick of the atrocities. Mr Corbyn is promising an end to both. He wants a calm enquiry into that alleged poisoning in Salisbury. He wants a sane relationship with the rest of the world. For that alone, I am tempted to break the habit of a lifetime and vote Labour.
I have never met a Conservative MP I failed to despise. Taken together, they are pretty close to the dregs of humanity. They and the Blairites have given us forty years of corporate privilege behind a progressively awful cloak of Cultural Marxism. If the only difference between them and a purged and Corbynite Labour Party is less corporate privilege and fewer wars, no wonder the opinion polls are drifting towards a Labour victory. No wonder too the only response from Conservative Central Office is to spray out smears that probably those repeating them do not believe.
I said I might vote Labour. Perhaps I will. Even if I pull back at the last moment, I am confident there are many who will not.
Perhaps Jeremy Corbyn IS unelectable. He hasn’t won a General Election yet. In fact he’s never gained a seat for Labour in a by election. And he lost Labour’s third election in a row for them last year.
With the Remainiac vote to draw on, they might easily have won last year. In fact had Labour had a better leader, May probably wouldn’t have called the election in the first place and could quite easily have lost in 2020 having suffered all sorts of problems in the final stages of Brexit.
So Corbyn has already gifted the Tories what might turn out to be an historically important extra two years at least in power, and alerted them to the fact that Mrs May is a poor election campaigner.
He’s also made them realise they have to exhibit at least some semblance of discipline in Brexit, otherwise they might lose an early General Election.
And he’s definitely galvanised the Tory vote for them. The Tories are currently better placed in the Opinion Polls than I can remember any party being at the same time in the lifetime of any Parliament, or Government term of office.
They’ve been in power for nearly 8 years but are neck and neck with Labour IN THE POLLS, and are managing 4 or 5 % more in public support than Blair achieved in the actual 2005 General Election 8 years after he assumed power.
The control far more councils and mayoralties that they could have expected after so long in office and are the second Party in Scotland whereas not very long ago they were a washout there.
The Tories are also easily the most popular Governing Party in the Opinion Polls in any serious Democracy in the World.
They’ll do poorly in the local elections in May, but not near as badly as people think Corbyn will pile up bigger majorities in inner London, but who cares. He’s like Hillary Clinton piling up her votes in California and Washington DC.
Unless Mrs May is the new Messiah, the only explanation for all this, must be Corbyn himself. (Although Vince Cable plays a good walk on part).
Corbyn’s higher than expected level of support arises because he garners votes amongst a particular section of the elite which didn’t used to vote, namely people from better off families who want free higher education, and the same sort of handouts that the Lib Dems used to offer them but not deliver.
Being as stupid as they are selfish, they believe the same lies as long as it comes from someone else. Who knows? By 2022 a ‘third party’ might be promising them the same thing, and they’ll fall for that one instead.
Alternatively perhaps the Tories can buy their votes back in 2022.
In the General Election Corbyn was also promising free nursing care for rich people so that they could keep their assets and leave them to their already rich children. That however didn’t work so well, because these people aren’t so gullible. Consequently the the old voted for the Tories in greater numbers than ever, whilst the young voted for Corbyn.
He also took the precaution of changing his policy on the EU from being a lifelong agitator for ‘Leave’, to being a Remainer, changed from being a Unilateral Nuclear Disarmer to being in favour of replacing Trident, and by the time of the General Election was in favour of spending more on Defence in general, whereas before, he wanted to cut it drastically.
What if anything, this mish mash of hypocrisy achieved, is anyone’s guess.
Corbyn has abandoned the working class completely and assumed that will vote for him. He’s wrong.
The reason he didn’t lose by as much as expected in 2017 was because real Labour voters who hated him, still voted for their own Labour Party candidate, on the assurances they received that Corbyn wouldn’t win, and they wanted to avoid Mrs May getting the predicted landslide.
Meanwhile Corbyn managed to gather enough votes amongst of the self indulgent elite in other places to actually gain seats. He also won the votes of Remainiacs who thought his conversion to staying in he EU was genuine.
Basically Corbyn became the most recent version of the dustbin into which the disaffected of all political persuasions throw their votes.
Let’s see how all that goes in 2022, when people realise they are making a real choice after all. Corbyn might well do better than some used to think he could, but the glass ceiling he’s made for himself, will ensure that he doesn’t win.
Most people aren’t as gullible and materialistic as he thinks, and those who are, can easily be bought off by other shysters.
Wait and see
Well Sean, I certainly won’t vote for Labour. Not after what they did to my career with IR35. And I certainly won’t vote for the Tories. Not after the mess they are making of Brexit, the wars they are fuelling, and all their stupid virtue-signalling on the environment. I contemplated voting Lib Dem in 2001 and UKIP in 2010, but concluded neither was the right thing to do. Right now, the only party I could even think about voting for is the Monster Raving Loonies. The fact is, the system called “democracy” has failed. And the best thing to do, I think, is to keep out of it.
The more you leave voting to the sheep, the more you will get governments of wolves
But the sheep can outvote the “shepherds,” Sean. The best thing we can do is try to change the mental climate so that there is a chance of something worthwhile on offer. Then even the sheep might start to wake up.
Voting won’t change anything. Important things are decided at the supra-national level. They’re banning plastic straws in California and in UK – coincidence I think not.
…and if you think banning plastic straws isn’t an important thing you’re not paying attention.
I agree it’s important. I noticed some years ago that the abolition of double jeopardy has the same wording in the British and Australian Acts.