Corbyn’s winter of discontent
AS THE party battle buses plough into the rain and snow of this wintry General Election campaign, Jeremy Corbyn already looks like someone who would rather be snuggled up in his Islington home with a cup of vegan cocoa.
The hard-Left Labour leader has cut a morose figure during his first full week on the stump.
Tetchy with journalists and voters alike, hounded by hecklers, he has stumbled between walkabouts and news conferences in his Lenin cap and tartan scarf with his reputed enthusiasm for campaigning apparently blown away by the icy winter wind.
So far, Labour’s push towards polling day on December 12 could not be more different from the party’s June 2017 election charge. Back then, the opposition leader bathed in a summer of love while being transformed from obscure politician on the far-Left fringe to a cult celebrity.
His name was chanted by adoring fans at mass rallies around the country. Swing voters warmed to his seeming avuncular manner that belied his extremist vision for turning the country into a Sovietstyle socialist state.
Two-and-a-half years later, the Corbynite campaign for Downing Street has a gloomy and decrepit air with only the activists in the Left-wing Momentum faction showing any genuine hunger for the fight.
PARLIAMENT’S long war of attrition over Brexit has left the Labour leader an exhausted figure. Mr Corbyn’s struggles to keep his party together and try to appeal to both Remain and Leave voters have destroyed his image as a conviction politician who unflinchingly sticks to his principles.
Sir John Curtice, one of the country’s most respected polling experts, observed this week that the Labour leader has been vainly trying to find a non-existent centre ground on an issue that is a binary choice between remaining in or leaving the EU.
“Jeremy Corbyn is considered to
IN the most fiercely fought online election battle to date, theTory HQ whizkids appear to have won the early skirmishes.
Campaign strategists are convinced the contest to grab voter attention onTwitter, Facebook, Instagram and the rest of social media could be the key to victory on polling day.
In 2017, theTories were trounced by a highly professional Labour propaganda operation. Since then, Conservative be this great radical but he’s the only compromiser left on the biggest issue in the election,” the professor of politics at Strathclyde University said at a briefing for Westminster journalists. “On Brexit, there isn’t a centre ground.
“The one issue where the Labour
Campaign HQ has been quietly pouring resources into sharpening their online attack.
“Our guys have been working up to this for a long time so we could hit the campaign with our key messages from day one,” said one senior source.
They kicked off this week with an eye-catching series of images and videos focused on the impact of Labour’s borrowing proposals on ordinary households.
It was followed by a party
Party leader shows Blairite moderation is the one issue where being a Blairite moderate doesn’t get you anywhere.”
Labour strategists are determined to try to steer the election debate on to any issue other than Brexit as a result.They have already political broadcast featuring Boris Johnson making himself a cup of tea while answering questions about himself and the election, carefully calculated to go viral on the web.
His habit of leaving the teabag in his brew sparked an online debate that helped to spread the four-minute political message.
Hordes of Left-wingers fell into the trap of mocking the film, multiplying views exponentially by drawing attention to it. In contrast, reached for their traditional election weapon of choice, the scaremongering warning that the Tories will wreck the NHS. Yet even that line of attack appears to have lost its edge.
Opinion polls overwhelmingly show that the health service is seen as the most important issue for Labour voters while Brexit is the chief concern of the electorate as a whole. By repeatedly raising the NHS, Labour is addressing its own core vote.
Another dilemma for Mr Corbyn and his allies is their addiction to announcing ever more radical proposals. Labour’s 2017 election manifesto contained the most Leftwing programme for government in the party’s history with proposals for sweeping state control of the economy and a half-a-trillion pound spending spree funded by soaring borrowing and crippling tax rises.
YET that document is only the starting point for Labour’s ambition this time around as spokesmen bolt on even more extreme pledges.
Yesterday Labour added British Telecom to the list of assets to be seized by a future Labour government that already includes the railways, water and energy firms and Royal Mail.
Mr Corbyn needs to button up his anorak and endure his winter of discontent on the campaign trail.
On the evidence of his campaign so far, he can look forward to retirement on his north London allotment by next spring.
Labour’s formula of actors filmed posing as ridiculously posh Conservatives or ordinary folk moaning about cuts is already looking a little clunky and old-fashioned.
In an election that is dominated by the Brexit divide, it is questionable whether the social media war will really change many minds.
Yet the slickTory online offensive suggests the Prime Minister’s team are leaving nothing to chance.
INTERNET surfers viewing the official Conservative Party website were bemused by a link to Boris Johnson’s Instagram feed earlier this week. It connected to an account entitled “just pictures of dogs” that displayed random pictures of pet pooches without even a glimpse of the Prime Minister. By yesterday, the glitch had been sorted out.
KEN Clarke and Sir Nicholas Soames were both spotted ambling around Parliament’s corridors on Wednesday. The retiring Tory veterans were using their security passes for the last time before access for all former MPs was closed the following day. “Marched out tonight for the last time after 36 years as an MP,” Sir Nicholas tweeted, adding: “Sad moment.”
SARAH Olney, a former Lib Dem MP hoping for a comeback at the General Election, might need to try harder to win over her local voters. Lib Dem election leaflets misspelled the name of the Richmond Park and Kingston constituency she is seeking to represent, referring to “Kington”.
LABOUR canvassers are getting detailed advice from hard-Left Momentum activists on how to charm voters. “You make your first impression at the door before you even say hello. Make sure to smile, be upbeat and make eye contact,” says the faction’s Canvassing To Win guide. It also helpfully reminds them to remember: “You aren’t a robot.”
POLLING guru Sir John Curtice pointed out at an election talk that a series of surveys have found 1 per cent of Brexit Party voters want the UK to stay in the EU. “It always raises a titter at every briefing,” the Strathclyde University professor said.
DAVID Lammy has launched the most desperate attack of the election campaign so far. “How can Boris Johnson not know the words to The Wheels On The Bus?” the Labour MP tweeted after the Prime Minister visited a primary school. “Even if you didn’t sing it to your kids, did nobody ever sing it to you?”
NIGEL Farage’s complaint that Tory chiefs offered Brexit Party candidates peerages to tempt them to stand down may raise eyebrows among some former Ukip donors. In the run-up to previous elections, some senior figures in that party used to speculate about the possibility of seats in the House of Lords being available for Ukip backers should the party hold the balance of power in the Commons.