LABOUR PAINS & RESULTS ROUND-UP
Corbyn was a disaster in waiting. He should now do the decent thing and quit.. only that will give party ANY chance on June 8
THE writing is now on the wall in inescapably large letters – Labour are heading for catastrophic defeat at the general election under Jeremy Corbyn.
To most of us who take even a passing interest in politics, it did not need yesterday’s disastrous local election results for Mr Corbyn’s lack of prospects to be confirmed.
His election as Labour leader was always a disaster in waiting – delivered by an alliance of the malevolent, the well-meaning and the naïve.
Now the consequences can be measured in actual votes. There were low expectations of what Labour would achieve in these local elections but – true to form – Corbyn managed to deliver an even worse result than anyone anticipated, with Labour losing around half the seats they were defending.
If Corbyn had a shred of self-awareness, he would now be looking for a diplomatic reason to resign and give Labour the vestige of a chance to bounce back in the month ahead. Stranger things have happened.
Instead, we had his chief lieutenant, the sinister John McDonnell, informing the nation that all will be well when people see more of Corbyn during the campaign, when all available evidence suggests the opposite.
I have tried to give Corbyn the benefit of the doubt on two counts. First, I doubt if he ever really wanted or expected to be leader of the Labour Party – a position for which he is manifestly ill-equipped.
Second, I harboured a hope that – after a lifetime of living off the Labour Party’s patronage – he just might have enough loyalty to look in the mirror and face up to the reality which almost everyone else can see. The snap election pre-empted that remote possibility but the local elections have created a new reality check.
Corbyn really should go in search of that mirror and he will find that it does not lie.
If he soldiers on, many Labour candidates – to stand a chance – will be in the bizarre position of reassuring voters that there is no danger of a Corbyn victory so feel safe to vote for a Labour MP. It’s a difficult message. Labour’s few good news stories came from candidates who had distanced themselves from the Corbyn effect. In Wales, they campaigned on the success of the Labour-led Welsh Assembly.
In Manchester, Corbyn was kept at a safe distance from Andy Burnham’s mayoral campaign. Unless Corbyn does the decent thing – which seems unlikely – Labour will have to soldier on under these unpromising circumstances.
It will remain essential for there to be a viable opposition after the nightmare is over.
In Scotland, the Corbyn effect was a relative side-show, though certainly unhelpful to Labour.
The Tories made huge strides because they set themselves up effectively as the party opposed to a second independence referendum. Their message was unambiguous – unlike Labour’s, where Kezia Dugdale’s position was again undermined by Corbyn’s blundering intervention on the day Nicola Sturgeon set the IndyRef2 hare running.
People who never dreamt of voting Tory did so as the most effective way of saying they simply do not want another referendum any time soon.
My guess is that we will not hear much from Ms Sturgeon about IndyRef2 in the weeks ahead.
The idea of Scotland as a “Tory-free zone” was always a myth. There are plenty of Tories but, for the past 30 years, many of them have backed the SNP as the “respectable” anti-Labour vote. Now that has been blown apart and will not be put back together again.
By demanding a second referendum because of the Brexit outcome, Sturgeon seriously overplayed her hand – and finally roused natural Tories to return to the welcoming arms of Ruth Davidson.
As long as Scottish politics are polarized along constitutional lines, Labour will find difficulty in making themselves heard.
But as soon as the ground shifts back to social and economic issues, there is plenty of potential for recovery.
By breaking the Nationalist spell, and effectively sidelining the referendum demand, the Scottish Tories have changed the terms of the debate.
It’s now time to talk about the NHS, education and all the other areas in which the SNP have done miserably little, while obsessing about the constitution.
With hung councils all over Scotland, alliances will have to be made. It should not be forgotten that, in 2007, the Nationalists came to power by doing a deal with the Tories at Holyrood and they will again look for local fixes that suit them.
Labour should not rule out any options either. The least attractive one will be for councils to operate as branch offices of the SNP’s central command in Edinburgh – the same people who have inflicted such brutal cuts on local government services for the years ahead.
With hung councils all over Scotland, alliances will have to be made Corbyn managed to deliver an even worse result than anyone anticipated