A party goes into an election seeking a fourth successive victory, something that has only happened once previously since universal suffrage was introduced in Britain. It does it after nearly a decade of ruinous austerity leaving the nation unprotected by a police force starved of resources, and with its national health service struggling even to survive. It does it under the leadership of Boris Johnson, a man entirely exposed as a liar and a cheat.
Such a party with such a leader stands not a chance of success.
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| Boris Johnson: gloating, entitled, triumphant The face of Britain for maybe five years, and maybe more |
The Liberal Democrat party had a new leader, Jo Swinson, who ran a lacklustre campaign which left her party with ten fewer seats at the end that it had had at the beginning. One of the seats lost was her own.
Outside parliament, the People’s Vote campaign, far from uniting all the forces favouring continued British membership of the European Union, fell into faction squabbling and purges. Other Remain organisations came up with recommendations for tactical voting to keep the Tories out which contradicted each other. An unedifying, chaotic babble of voices with no clear leadership.
The worst of all, though, was Labour, because it was the biggest party and therefore had the most responsibility.
Jeremy Corbyn consolidated his place in Labour history as the second worst leader the Party has had, behind only Ramsay MacDonald, its first Prime Minister, who betrayed everything it stood for by forming a coalition government with the Tories in 1931. His action reduced the party’s parliamentary presence to just 52.
Corbyn campaigned as a man of principle, but wouldn’t tell the electorate where he stood on the biggest question of his time, Brexit. Most suspected that he remained what he’d always been, a Brexiter, but he compounded that suspicion by making it clear that his refusal to say was designed to avoid alienating either Leave voters or Remainers. Since both sides knew he was equivocating in order to make them both think he was on their side, both sides turned against him.
Few voters understood what was honest about that kind electoral opportunism.
Equally, Corbyn failed to act on allegations of anti-Semitism in the party. At first, my sense was that he was just extremely indolent and couldn’t bring himself to move quickly on the charges that were brought. But then I realised that there were skeletons in his closet too. For instance, he wrote a foreword for the reissue of Imperialism: A Study by John Atkinson Hobson, in which he described the book as “brilliant”. The book talks about European finance being controlled “by men of a single and peculiar race, who have behind them many centuries of financial experience,” which puts them “in a unique position to control the policy of nations”. No prizes for guessing which race Hobson meant.
Was that Corbyn’s problem in dealing with anti-Semitism? He might have had to take action against people expressing views like those he had endorsed in this foreword.
I don’t think many British voters care all that much about us Jews, either for or against. But they’re quick at identifying equivocation and evasion, and what Corbyn was doing over anti-Semitism was extremely dodgy. It wasn’t the anti-Semitism itself that killed him, it was the dodginess.
In the same way, it wasn’t the position he took over Brexit that damaged him, it was the sense that it wasn’t straight.
He compounded these strategic errors with tactical ones, starting with agreeing to the election being held on 12 December, to suit Boris Johnson’s timetable rather than his own. Corbyn, it strikes me, is not particularly bright and didn’t see that if Boris wanted the election now, that was an excellent reason for saying no. Instead, Corbyn went ahead and got creamed.
This is the second time we’ve been through this in my lifetime. The first was in 1983, the last occasion on which the hard left took control of Labour, and was reduced to its smallest parliamentary representation since 1935. That 1935 election, by the way, was significant because it was the first step back towards office by the Labour Party, after its catastrophe of 1931.
The election of 1983 was appalling, therefore. But it has been outdone by the 2019 one. In 1983, Labour emerged with 209 MPs, in 2019 with just 203. The 2019 election has taken over from 1983 as the worst for Labour since 1935.
The common theme Corbyn’s and the others’ dismal attempts to confront Boris was lack of leadership. None of them could rally the disparate forces opposed to his plans into a focused movement against him. Now he’s in with a vengeance, and his vengeance will be terrible.
He will, of course, now force Brexit through. Since it is not the fact of leaving the EU that will be hard or soft, but the nature of the trade agreement we negotiate or fail to negotiate with the EU, we are by no means yet safe from a hard Brexit.
Next will be the continued attacks on the poor and on public services. Boris will continue to promise greater investment in the police, in social care and in healthcare, but the reality will be otherwise. After a few years, the poor and many of the not-so-poor will be a great deal less well off than they are today.
What does all this mean?
The fightback starts today.
The first step is to take back control of the Labour Party. Though Corbyn has said he will not lead Labour into another election, there are signs that some Corbynists at least will attempt to retain their dominance in the party. That may be less easy for them to do than they think. Some of the most zealous will certainly stick with the project but others may drift away, disappointed by the results. Others may simply realise that they would do better to work with other currents inside Labour, that a compromise that gives some of what they want is better than purity which gives them none of it.
Assuming that we can pull together to elect a leader who actually leads – and there are people who meet that requirement in Labour, such as Yvette Cooper or Keir Starmer – then a long slow process begins. After the crushing defeat of 1983, Labour lost two more elections before winning one. Can we win more quickly this time? Let’s hope so, but let’s remember what a long haul it was back then.
The other crucial step is to start the process of getting Britain back into the EU. That will certainly be a generational matter. I don’t expect to live long enough to see it myself, but it needs to be started. It is linked with the first step, since Labour has a crucial role to play in the process, and can’t while led by closeted Brexiters.
There are difficult times ahead. But difficulties aren’t overcome by not confronting them – Corbyn’s experience on Brexit and anti-Semitism shows that. A real leader will confront them, and real leadership is what we need.
Above all, we have to learn from our mistakes. We’ve been through it twice, in 1983 and 2019: the hard left takes charge and we’re thrashed in the subsequent election. That demonstrates the principle that if you don’t learn from your mistakes, you merely repeat them.
Two such routs were bad enough. Let’s make sure we don’t have a third.
