Corbyn’s Brexit fudge is playing into her hands (and Boris’s, too)
NEIL KINNOCK will forever be remembered for the excruciating embarrassment of falling over on Brighton beach into the sea after cockily telling a mass of photographers: ‘If you want a real scoop. I’ll walk out there, on the water.’
This weekend, 36 years on, another Labour leader visits the same southcoast town to host his party’s annual conference. No one — even his most staunch Momentum disciples — believes Jeremy Corbyn walks on water.
But his life ought to be made easier by the fact that the Tory Government is paralysed.
The list of problems facing Boris Johnson seems endless. A succession of Commons defeats. Failure to call a General Election. Ministerial resignations. Winston Churchill’s grandson and 20 other MPs stripped of the party whip. A Supreme Court hearing into whether he misled the Queen. Two former Tory prime ministers turning on him, with one brutally saying he ‘left the truth at home’ over Brexit.
In such circumstances, Corbyn should be so far ahead in the polls that bookies would have stopped taking bets on Labour winning the next election.
In fact, though, according to a YouGov poll this week, Labour is on 21 points and the Tories on 32. What’s more, Labour has slipped into third place behind the resurgent Lib Dems under their new leader Jo Swinson.
Another poll puts him as the most unpopular opposition leader on record at minus 60. Even the best recent poll for Corbyn shows him eight points behind the Conservatives.
I’ve never thought much of Jo Swinson. My opinion sank even lower this week after she attacked David Cameron for his decision to call the 2016 EU referendum even though, at the time, she herself repeatedly demanded one. Epic hypocrisy from a party that should have taken a patent out for the word.
ALSO, Swinson’s policy of wishing to revoke Article 50 (which triggered the Brexit process) and wanting to stop Britain leaving the EU without even having a second referendum is an insult to the millions of people who voted Leave and is a disavowal of democracy.
That said, in self-serving tactical terms, the Lib Dems’ party conference this week can be considered a triumph for the 39year-old Swinson.
It’s no wonder people are talking of the Lib Dems becoming the official Opposition instead of Labour. Lib Dem clarity on Brexit — however undemocratic — has caused a serious problem for Corbyn, whose own policy of remaining neutral on British membership of the EU threatens to haemorrhage votes in a General Election.
While this ambiguous Brexit position has been widely ridiculed, it is not necessarily bad politics. Harold Wilson, one of Labour’s greatest leaders, had a similar policy when Britain’s membership of what was then called the European Economic Community ( EEC) was discussed in the early Seventies.
Like Corbyn today, Wilson knew his party was split between supporters of British membership, such as Roy Jenkins, and opponents, who included Michael Foot and Corbyn’s mentor Tony Benn. Wilson made Labour’s official stance one of neutrality and allowed his ministers and MPs to campaign as they wished.
For his part, Wilson campaigned to keep Britain in the EEC. I have been told that Corbyn has been studying Wilson’s strategy and wants to model his own on it.
The danger is that Labour Remainers will peel off towards the Lib Dems.
And opinion polls suggest this is already happening. This drift away from Labour is not just because of Corbyn’s deliberately opaque Brexit policy, but because he is adopting a swathe of radical economic ideas.
Not only plans to renationalise industries such as gas, electricity and water, but also proposals to confiscate about £300 billion of shares from companies and hand them to workers.
The march Leftwards is symbolised by the party’s National Executive Committee setting up a working group to look into restoring to the party’s constitution Clause 4, which was dropped by Tony Blair in the New Labour years. It committed
Labour to ‘secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry’ through ‘common ownership of the means of production, distribution a and exchange’. O Originally drafted in 1917, the year o of the Russian Revolution, it signalled signal a commitment to radical redistribution re of wealth. The sym symbolism could not be clearer. It would be a siren rejection of the legacy of Blair.
I have long lo been a critic of Blair and his cy cynical politics, but he did lead Labour Lab to three successive General Election victories from 1997 to 2005. 20
Corbyn must surely realise that the decis decision to abolish Clause 4 was one of the reasons Blair got Labour e elected to Government after 18 y years out of power.
Is Corb Corbyn really happy restore what he and his fellow Socialists regard as rigid ideological purity rather than th do everything in their power to make Labour electable?
Corbyn Corbyn’s lurch to the Left will scare awa away middle-ground floating voters who wh always hold the key to victory in any General Election. Furtherm Furthermore, it is a distraction from the cardinal issue of Brexit.
RECENT headlines have been dominated by stories of Tory defections and ejections. But a Momentum-friendly Mome Labour party is not n the natural home to people su such as Yvette Cooper, Tom Watson and an Sir Keir Starmer.
Could t they quit? It’s possible. But much more likely is the further draining away to the Lib Dems. The Tories Torie would benefit, too.
Jo Swinson Swin must hardly believe her luck. R Regardless, history could be repeating repeat itself.
In the 1983 General Election, Labour w was led by Michael Foot on a hard hard-Left platform which was famousl famously described by his colleague ll Gerald Kaufman as the ‘longest suicide note in history’.
It resulted in humiliation at the polls, with the Tories winning 214 more seats than Labour.
Another casualty was Foot himself. He was replaced by Neil Kinnock at that year’s autumn party conference.
There is no way that Jeremy Corbyn will follow in Kinnock’s stumbling footsteps on the Brighton beach shingle and risk a repeat PR disaster.
But politically, he’s certainly risking the Lib Dems taking over from Labour as the main Opposition party.