Jeremy Corbyn: the triumph of easy answers, dangerous ideas and the one-party state

There is no sniff of smugness coming from the Tories over yesterday’s victory of Jeremy Corbyn as the new leader of the Labour party. Writing in today’s Telegraph, Michael Gove has written persuasively of his belief that Jeremy Corbyn actually poses a real, serious risk to the security of this country – a line repeated by Michael Fallon and Priti Patel on news programmes yesterday; there will be other voices repeating much the same message from the big guns of the Conservative party.
Gove writes: “This choice, made by hundred of thousands of Labour members and supporters after hundreds of hours of debate and argument, is not an accident of electoral arithmetic or, indeed, a decision that was taken in blissful ignorance of Jeremy Corbyn’s views. It is an eyes-wide open embrace of the most extreme candidate available to lead this country.”
Political scaremongering? I don’t think so, because Gove and others substantiate their claims with reference to the most serious and literally deadly dilemmas of our time: the nuclear threat, conflict in Syria and the wider threat of Islamic extremism. Politicians may indeed choose the most favourable statistical presentation of waiting times in hospitals, or crime figures, for example, but the idea that they would seize opportunistically on a half-truth on policy areas over which people have and may again be sent to their deaths, is to say that they have no moral compass whatsoever. That’s not very likely. Jeremy Corbyn’s foreign policy approach is to combine splendid isolation, with a genial, friendly approach to those who seek our destruction and who, should we unilaterally surrender our nuclear deterrent and pull out of NATO, would be fools if they didn’t spot a golden opportunity to try and bring that about. It is no laughing matter when the second largest party in British politics and the only one currently capable of providing an alternative government is led by a man espousing such dangerous ideas.

Whatever you might say about Jeremy Corbyn, the fact is that his victory highlights serious and grave problems facing British politics, which it is everyone’s job to be concerned about, whoever they support and whatever they believe. Jeremy Corbyn’s rise began when a group of Labour MPs on the party’s left, including big names such as Diane Abbott and David Lammy and one Jeremy Corbyn, did what they always do when there is a leadership contest. They sat around a table and re-affirmed their belief that a lefty must enter the race to “ensure that there is a debate.” As Abbott tells the story, they all turned to her in expectation. “I’ve done it before,” she mused, and so they realised that it was Corbyn’s turn. And that, ladies and gentleman, is the pathetic story behind the nomination by a sufficient number of Labour MPs of a candidate that Abbott and Lammy have both admitted they did not believe could win, and who Lammy didn’t even vote for. “Sick as a parrot,” was how politician-turned-broadcaster David Meller described Lammy. IT’s little wonder then, that the last man to expect this was Jeremy Corbyn himself. But what this incident really demonstrates is how trivial and even burdensome certain members of the Labour party believe the role of leader to be. For them, governing and winning power is not a priority, but rigid adherence to their principles matters far more. The leader is viewed with a kind of suspicion, and should therefore be the kind of person least likely to cave in to political pressure to compromise and moderate his (and I say “his” very deliberately) hard left views to accommodate other strands of opinion within the party, or to seem acceptable to the electorate. Lamentably, their stupidity backfired, because Corbyn’s camp won the support of huge numbers of idealists flocking to pay £3 in order to vote for the bearded wonder.
They, too, represent the worst excesses of the political left. The more charitable would dismiss Corbyn’s voters as naïve and idealistic – if socialism actually worked, who wouldn’t be a socialist? I bet to differ. They actually represent the sheer arrogance of the left, who cannot even consider a resounding shock electoral defeat as proof that the public at large rejects their easy answers narrative. Do they still believe they are right and the rest of us will just have to wake up and see it one day? Or do they hold those who govern in such contempt that they believe that governing or being true to your values are stark alternatives, and can never form a winning combination?
I keep hearing about how Corbyn has, to quote Lammy, created a “renewed” and “energised movement,” but has he? Corbyn’s politics is the politics of easy answers: if we stay out of world affairs none of our ‘friends’ will harm us. If services are publically owned, they’ll be better, and that there is no place for share ownership or competition in creating choice for individuals and accountability for public service providers. It doesn’t matter that socialism has been rejected over and over again, or that in Greece it has completely failed in its mission to deliver a credible, workable alternative to the punishing austerity that now provides the only long, painful and protracted route to rescuing the country from socialism’s very own ruinous economic recklessness. Corbyn’s supporters wrongly equate straight answers with simple ones that are pleasing to the ear. The sensible among us might have enjoyed Corbyn’s comparatively direct manner of responding to questions when contrasted with his dithering, flip-flopping rivals, but that doesn’t mean we ever thought of him as a credible victor. But little separates those who seek easy answers on the right and left, except disagreements about who to blame. Little wonder then, that he is by far the most popular of the Labour leadership candidates among UKIP voters, of all people.

Jeremy Corbyn’s much-praised style can be described, quite simply, as the rejection of politics. You will hear no expressions of regret from him or his team, at the decision of many of Labour’s most experienced frontbenchers, not to participate in any Corbyn cabinet. You will see no attempt at compromise or adaptation from Corbyn, to a position that most of his party and the public could at least consider acceptable. His leadership will be marked by stylistic niceties: letting other cabinet members (all of whom will think like him, unless they are Tom Watson and trying to outfox him) have a go at sparring with David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions, continued simplicity in conduct and dress, and a mild-mannered courtesy. But these will be the only things any of us outside of his hard-line core, will be able to say in praise of the man. Even most of his admirers will continue this fine tradition of only commenting on Corbyn’s style of leadership, with only broad generalised attacks on austerity as the basis of their political arguments. They’ll never tell you how much a National Education Service, or renationalised railways will cost, or how university fees can be funded, because the question of who’ll pay simply doesn’t matter to them. They’ll tell you that the rich will pay, but the bar will be set low, and if the rich pay then so will everyone who depends on the jobs they create. In the end, we’ll all pay, and we’ll pay rather a lot. Uncontrolled trade unions will push the cost of public services up and up, with the full support of Mr Corbyn’s government. Idealistic dreams will replace policies grounded in sensible economics.
The truth is that these ideas are unworkable. The job of politics is to take a set of values and an idea of how society should be, and try to work within sensible parameters to get as close to that as you can. But to reject even the need to operate within those parameters, and to merrily march down a path without taking anyone on the ride with you is to abandon politics, and even embrace electoral irrelevance as a virtue, and basking in the glory of hearing your ideas shouted from the rooftops as a productive political contribution. Labour has now become a party of protest. Unless others step up to the plate and start to look like a real challenger, we have done what Lib Dem MP Norman Baker warned we might: we’ve sleepwalked towards a one-party state. But whilst Baker tries to argue that this is partly the fault of the Tories, the blunt reality is that it is not. It's the fault of the only other opposition party choosing to remove itself from the political picture. So congratulations Jeremy Corbyn and all your voters. You’ve done yourselves proud!