Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership has run out of steam
ASTRANGE hissing sound has echoed across the political landscape this Bank Holiday. It is the noise from the deflating balloon of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership. Filled with the hot air of Marxist rage the Corbyn personality cult was meant to soar to new heights of popularity.
But the local elections have served as a massive puncture to such hopes. Last week’s results were nothing like the triumph that his followers had predicted. In the run-up to the municipal contests the party forecast widespread gains, particularly in London. “There is now no corner of London that Labour cannot win,” declared the capital’s Mayor Sadiq Khan, adding that Conservatives were under threat “even in their crown jewels” such as the flagship boroughs of Wandsworth and Barnet. Journalist and Corbynista cheerleader Owen Jones cried: “The Tories have the hedge-funders but we have the people.”
After such displays of socialist fervour the outcome came as a dismal anti-climax to Labour. Corbyn’s party gained just 77 council seats overall. The Corbynistas might despise Tony Blair but in the local elections of 1995, during his first year of leadership, Labour gained no fewer than 1,807 council seats.
THOSE 1995 municipal results showed that Blair was on his way to Downing Street. The conclusion to draw from last Thursday is that Corbyn remains trapped in the wilderness. His dreams of the premiership seem nothing more than a fantasy for his supporters.
The scale of his failure is all the more remarkable given the storm of troubles that has engulfed the Conservatives, most notably the Windrush scandal which exposed profound ineptitude at the heart of Government.
Four days before polling, Home Secretary Amber Rudd was forced to resign over the fiasco, the latest in a string of embarrassing Cabinet departures for the Prime Minister. The Government has also been grappling with severe internal divisions over Brexit, further crises in the NHS and a surge in violent crime.
Yet Labour were utterly unable to capitalise on the Tories’ problem. That is because Corbyn and his circle are increasingly toxic as an electoral force.
At last year’s general election he enjoyed success partly because of his appeal as a politician of geniality and conviction. But the “Magic Grandpa” routine is wearing thin. The mask has slipped to reveal a leader who presides over shrieking dogmatism and snarling division. Under him Labour has truly become the nasty party.
That trait is most graphically highlighted by the blind eye turned to vile anti-Semitism within his party’s ranks. It is incredible that a man who poses as a champion of antiracism should have allowed such bigotry to flourish. The public’s revulsion at this trend was shown in the London borough of Barnet, one of Labour’s key targets in the capital, where a large Jewish population helped to ensure that support for Corbyn’s party haemorrhaged, allowing the Tories to regain control. One defeated Labour councillor in Barnet said: “Activists were being told that this is a racist party, an anti-Semitic party.”
But anti-Semitism is just part of the pattern of vicious, doctrinaire intolerance that has gripped Labour under Corbyn. It is also reflected in both the crackdown on free speech and the rampant, misogynist
SHE’S right. Yet the Tories cannot be complacent. It is true that they won the expectations game by avoiding a bloodbath. But the results were hardly inspiring for them.
They gained just 35 per cent of the vote, saw a tiny swing in their favour outside the capital and lost a string of seats in London, including 28 in Richmond upon Thames.
One analysis showed that if last week’s outcome were replicated in a general election Labour could emerge as the largest party.
Given that they are up against Corbyn, a man patently unfitted for the premiership, the Conservatives really should be doing much better.
It is an indictment of their enfeebled campaigning that they have allowed this Leftwing, ideological menace to gain such ground.
But then the Tories are also in a sorry state as an electoral force. Their membership is hollowed out, down to just 80,000 compared with Labour’s 552,000, while they are also dragged down by splits over the EU.
The best antidote to this decline is to unite behind the implementation of Brexit. AntiBritish and hopelessly extreme, Corbyn’s Labour could never deliver that, whereas independence could be the real instrument of democratic revival for Theresa May’s party.
‘Labour has become the nasty party’