Tories put Corbyn on the canvas

AT THIS stage in an electoral cycle – with a Tory austerity Government halfway through an effective second term under a leader with no mandate and no plan for the most important decision facing the nation since WWII – Labour should be wiping the floor with the Tories.

Instead it was Corbyn on the canvas in Copeland yesterday morning – knocked out of the ring by Theresa May who’ll take a win as an encouraging sign of her own strength.

Just to spell this out – never before in the whole history of post-war British by-elections have a government overturned so large an opposition majority as Labour were defending in Copeland.

There was scant comfort in seeing off Ukip in Stoke but little credit to Labour after the blundering fanatic of a candidate Paul Nuttall ran out of feet, hands and cloth caps to shoot himself in.

Corbyn, of course, is going nowhere, and his band of loyalists will not admit the reality – that he is patently unelectable to the majority of voters and that he is seen as having sold the pass on Europe.

In Copeland and in Stoke, Labour were chasing the wrong voters – trying to persuade Leavers that they would look after their interests when in fact the political market is for the 48 per cent of Remain voters, 62 per cent in Scotland, who want to make the best deal possible from Brexit.

Corbyn in his heart does not care for the European Union and will see the departure of troublesome critics like Jamie Reid and Tristram Hunt as bonus points on the road to controlling the Labour Party as a left-wing social movement with little parliamentary clout.

That is a betrayal of the people of Copeland, whose efforts to save their local hospital could now be in vain.

But the real betrayal is of the millions of Labour voters, and European Remain supporters, who are looking for a home and some political leadership on the left of centre in Britain and find a landscape devoid of either.