Dear Labour, you were once a formidible foe

Dear Labour,
My o my. What a pickle you are in. One should not only gently try and guide a friend heading down a calamitous path, but should be generous enough to do so also to a respectable foe, which you have proved over the years.
Your heyday came in 1997, when you presented to the British public a smooth-talking, sensible-looking chap with a posh voice and posh education, who talked about forging a new way and a new path ahead. How we scandal-weary Tories were humbled when, having pilloried you for years for your slavish indulgence to the unions and your Trotskyist militant councillors, we had to take our stale party to the poles up against this bright young thing who had struck just the right note with the British public. How formidable he was, too, when in power. We attacked you for reckless spending, he re-branded it ‘record investment.’ Remember that? Do you remember how your man at the top completely undermined our emphasis on families with programmes like Sure Start? Remember how he tackled anti-social behaviour with measures such as the ASBO? Remember how he brought more market forces to public services like the NHS? Do you remember how, on our traditional home territory, he had an acceptably more left-leaning but not outrageous answer for everything? Remember how we were thwarted at every turn?
Labour, why have you taken that legacy to be the most toxic part of your past, turning your back viciously on anyone who backed it, like Liz Kendall? Why are your frontrunners Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham too apologetic for their part in it, to defend it?

I worried for you when you picked Ed Miliband, the idiotic bloke with the stone who had an inferiority complex about his much sharper brother. I worried when, against many people’s expectations (including my own), we Tories won an overall majority, despite a pathetic, lacklustre campaign organised by our party’s leadership which presumed we could piggyback on to your misfortune north of the border. When old Moses Miliband stepped down, I really hoped you’d gear yourselves up, and give us a good fight over the next 5 years.

So far, all I have seen is you slide deeper and deeper in to a mess entirely of your own making. First, why didn’t you see that opening the floodgates for anyone with 5 minutes and a few quid to spare was not a ticket to engaging the public in your leadership battle, but a way for the disaffected in your midst, your hard left contingent and your more mischievous and less charitable enemies to club together in a most unholy alliance to secure the victory of Jeremy Corbyn, who stands even further left of the defeated Ed Miliband? Why is your party plagued with a culture that sees virtue in defeat, so long as you were thrown out sporting a copy of an aggressively left-wing manifesto and defiantly singing The Red Flag at the top of your voice? Why is pragmatism evil, and uncompromising idealism better?
Labour, didn’t you see that it wasn’t a debate you needed, but a strong leader who could take you – nay drag you – back to the moderate political centre? If you hadn’t decided that anyone with half an interest in you (whether in your rise or your fall) could have a say, those MPs who backed Jeremy Corbyn in the interests of ensuring a debate, would not have felt that there was a populist bandwagon to jump on, and would not have nominated the Islington North MP? I’ve actually heard the prominent Corbynite Diane Abbott say that she does not (or didn’t then) believe her man would even win. Pray tell, why are your MPs nominating people that they don’t even think could win a party leadership contest, let alone a general election, where it wouldn’t be the 450,000 so-called supporters voting, but everyone including those who deserted you in droves?

What is simply astonishing, Labour, is that your great and good have only just woke up to the calamitous reality of the decision to turn your party’s contest in to a public spectacle to which all but the paltry 1,200 you have apparently decided to boot out, are invited. Several of your MPs have now called for the entire thing to be cancelled. Yes, that’s right, you’ve chosen to enlarge your voting population and sufficient numbers of you have chosen to put a socialist firebrand forward. Now you’ve got the debate you wanted, and some of you want to ignore that, scrap it and start again, presumably with a re-written rule book.
No, Labour, you’ve made your bed, now we must all lie in it.

Labour, you could be forgiven for thinking that my letter implies that all of the Corbyn supporters are misguided fools. They are not. Some are intelligent, thoughtful people who have picked a candidate who has actually given straight answers to straight questions, as opposed to Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, who plump for saying nothing at all of substance to avoid upsetting any faction amongst your increasingly fractious ranks. I don’t blame them. They have seized an opportunity to reshape the Labour party in a new direction. You have chosen to take an attitude of indifference to the extent of anyone’s commitment to the party, just so long as they pay up and pledge to support your ‘aims and values.’ What are those exactly? I thought they were exactly what was up for debate, but anyway I’m so hopelessly confused by all this that I wonder if I’m just a misguided idiot.
The scale of your pitiful desperation, if it wasn’t already clear, was evident today in your wheedling apology to your so-called supporters when you extended the registration period by 3 hours because the computer gremlins struck at an inopportune time. So, to be clear, you can’t even be consistent on a deadline that we’ve known about for months, to avoid upsetting the ‘supporters’ who are so committed that they logged on at the 11th hour and 59th minute to register. I’m guessing there were so many of these ‘supporters’ that your site crashed.

Labour, come on, you can do better than this. It shouldn’t be right-wingers like me, or the Telegraph’s Julia Hartley-brewer, cheering on anyone who cares about the democratic process to put country first and back Andy Burnham. We are all going to have to live with the consequences of Corbynmania. We, your enemies, will try our best to use exactly the same tactics that busted Miliband, arguing that your left-wing agenda goes much further than your campaign suggests. We’ll use the fear of God to win, and I’ve no doubt it’ll work, possibly to your complete ruin. It certainly won’t be an exciting or inspiring Tory campaign, and it will be a PR, stage-managed one on your part again. A Corbyn victory only has one advantage: it will bring in to very sharp focus the great divide in politics, not only in Britain but across Europe, the debate for and against austerity. But if you can’t find a credible spokesman, that’s not going to matter in the election to come. We are heading for a new norm of Tory by default. The Conservative party may start to fracture and splinter, but its leadership will have considerable scope to choose the extent to which it listens to voters’ opinions, knowing enough of them will tick their cross next to the Tory candidate even if they hold their nose in disgust whilst doing so.

So, Labour, I urge you to make life as hard for Jeremy Corbyn as possible. Frustrate him at every turn and challenge him constantly. Show your big guns to be progressive and forward-thinking, not nostalgic seekers of a golden socialist dream that never was. Labour, you were a once formidable foe. Time is short, but you can be one again.

Regards,
Aidan