The Labour Party is on the brink of wipeout
Ignore the BBC and the polls – we are heading for one of the biggest shocks in British electoral history
This could actually be it – the end of Labour. Some may scoff, pointing out that it has narrowed the gap with the Tories in some polls. But on the ground, in the heartlands, the party smells of death.
Before the darkness always comes that euphoric moment of clarity. The Liberals felt it in 1924, when they suddenly grasped that the workingclasses – towards whom they felt deep intellectual ambivalence – were about to sweep them away. Their push to make amends came too late. Today, Labour MPS across the Midlands and North are so certain the end is coming that, as one Tory puts it, “they are not even bothering to change tack”. They are either insulating their egos for the raucous humiliation of televised vote counts or they have quit – especially if their name is Tom Watson.
Historic political collapses don’t so much clang with confusion as ring with lucidity. Although they almost don’t dare to, Tory candidates can sense it on the doorstep. One standing in a Midlands market town told me: “People know they have been cheated. Lifelong Labourites are reciting ‘Let’s Get Brexit Done’, before we’ve even had a chance to bring it up.”
The opposition’s counter-strategy is slapstick Momentum. Instead of putting Leavers up in marginals, it is parachuting in Corbynista loyalists. Take Natalie Fleet, who after being selected for Ashfield (70 per cent Leave), infuriated locals by trilling that Brexiteers didn’t know what they were voting for in a chalkboard-scraping Newsnight interview.
The incumbent Labour MPS who have not already resigned are imploding. The BBC – an avuncular blind-deaf national treasure no longer of this world – may rattle off dopey items on the NHS being an electiondecider. But on the frontline, attempts to shift the focus from Brexit have stupendously backfired. Instead, constituents are demanding to know why Labour is blocking democracy. Prospective candidates who desperately want to talk about police cuts and food banks are being forced back onto the stingy slogan that they “can’t back something that will harm constituents”. It has more than a slight tang of the Liberals circa 1924. As one mill striker put it then: “We have had two parties in the past, the can’ts and the won’ts, and it is time that we had a party that will.”
What is more, to the horror of Labour, Boris Johnson is proving surreally popular in the West
Midlands, this election’s main battleground. An old Etonian among ordinary folk he may be, but the land of closed steelworks and sparkly glamrock connects emotionally with his gloom-piercing character. Which is why social media attacks on Johnson by Black Country Labour prospective candidates – far from going viral – have been met with sniffs of disapproval. There is less love for his rival leader. One joke doing the rounds is: “I’d rather jump in the river Trent than vote for Corbyn. An’ I co’er swim.”
In its historic heartlands, the end of Labour can’t come soon enough. It is a stillborn populist movement that has mummified hideously into a metropolitan protest group. Its story is tragic. Within 30 years of its launch, bohemian Bolshevism had smothered the hopeful pragmatism of its rankand-file. But if socialism crushed Labour’s spirit, Blairism sucked out its soul. To the Mandelson set, the working class was the man who griped “too many immigrants” over digestive biscuits in their focus groups, but might find renewed purpose at a call centre in Hull. Thank the stars that Corbynism – the spoilt adolescent of Blairism – is about to blow the whole thing up in a fit of fundamentalism.
Nevertheless, for Labour to be decimated, two things need to happen. First, although the Brexit Party could in fact help the Tories win target seats – by splitting the Left-wing vote in areas like Ashfield where many Leavers will never vote for “Tories who closed the pits” – the two parties should seriously consider standing down in seats the other can’t win. The Brexit Party has a historic opportunity to become the real third force in British politics. (Rather than the Lib Dems, who merely shout the loudest in politically overcrowded Remainia). But Nigel Farage must urgently learn from the mistake he made as leader of Ukip in 2015, when he fixated on national airtime at the expense of pavement politics, and spread his operational butter too thin.
Second, the Tories must stop throwing away votes by over-relying on their “oven-ready” deal, twinned with their bland offer of more money for public services. Candidates have picked up the hunger for an optimistic story about the future, particularly from “none of the above” voters, whether it’s reinventing their town as a tech hub or building that train network that was promised 20 years ago. The scale of the Tory victory depends on how many of these people it can galvanise with the promise of a new dawn – with “a party that will”.
As a Brexiteer from a dynasty of “Labour men”, I can’t help but reflect with a hint of melancholy. But to former supporters, the party is like the family Staffordshire bull terrier that has become feral. The kindest thing is to put it down – peacefully but resolutely.
follow Sherelle Jacobs on Twitter @Sherelle_e_j; read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion