DLJ initials that spell doom for Labour
Party code for voters who just Don’t Like Jeremy
EACH morning for the next three and a half weeks, a small but dedicated army of Labour supporters will pin on their red rosettes, pick up their clipboards and set off on a mission to divine the mood of the nation.
More specifically, they will gather data to feed in to ‘Contact Creator’, the online program used by their party to manage its ‘ground war’ in the 650 electoral battlegrounds.
Every canvasser is given a set of codes to record responses. ‘ L’ denotes a solid Labour supporter, while ‘DL’ (for Don’t Know, Labour) indicates a wavering voter. Most seasoned Labour activists are fluent in this psephological shorthand. But in this Election they have had to learn a new cypher – ‘DLJ’.
DLJ is how Labour’s teams are coding former voters who are abandoning t he party specifically because of Jeremy Corbyn. And from Yorkshire to Humberside, from the West Midlands to outer London, the feedback is the same. Canvass sheets are now thick with the letters DLJ – which might as well mean Don’t Like Jeremy.
‘It’s how we start conversations,’ one MP tells me. ‘The phone will go and I’ll just say, “1 in 4 DLJs. How about you?” ’
Another explained: ‘They’re all we’re focusing on. If you spend 15 minutes with a DLJ you can bring them round. But there are just too many. There simply isn’t going to be time to reach enough of them.’
The 2017 General Election is already over. Labour is no longer fighting a campaign in the traditional sense. Thoughts of winning a majority, or enough seats to provide effective opposition, are gone.
Instead, a series of savage battles for survival are being fought by individual MPs, while in parallel a very different struggle is being fought by their leader.
Corbyn’s Election ended on April 18, the day Theresa May called it. Observers of his daily schedule expressed bewilderment as he immediately began visiting seats with large Labour majorities.
But it wasn’t the majorities that were significant. What was significant was Corbyn’s targeting of those seats with large Labour memberships. While his MPs fight for their l i ves, Corbyn i s already putting in place his post-Election strategy. Part of that involves mobilising his supporters to repel any immediate leadership challenge, hence his bizarre campaign grid.
IT’S also seen his personal activist base mobilising behind those sympathetic to his leadership, rather than critics in winnable seats. In an email, members of the Corbynite Praetorian Guard, Momentum, have been told to ‘prioritise those candidates we consider to be “Corbyn supporters” rather than those who have been consistently oppositional’.
But by far the most important part of the strategy is laying the groundwork for what has been christened ‘ Corbynism without Corbyn’. This week Labour Krem-
KEN LOACH, award-winning director of gritty social dramas Kes and I, Daniel Blake has been commissioned to produce a hardhitting party political broadcast for Labour. But I understand he’s hit a snag. The plan was to profile ordinary people whose jobs are under threat from Theresa May’s cruel administration. But Loach has been struggling to find anyone who fits the bill. According to a Labour insider: ‘They’ve been scrabbling around trying to get workers around the UK whose jobs are at risk. But they can’t find enough.’ Perhaps he should try contacting members of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
linologists have been trying to work out who leaked Labour’s manifesto. But what was more instructive was the response of Corbyn’s surrogates when the document appeared.
No sooner was it online than his supporters began explaining how ‘popular’ the policies were. Between now and polling day a new policy is set to be unveiled every 24 hours.
This policy blizzard is not because Team Corbyn believe establishing a Peace Minister or saving Britain’s bees will sway the electorate. But rather, they hope it will help cement a vital post-Election narrative.
That narrative will go something like this. ‘Jeremy has reshaped the party. Under him Labour has finally fought an Election on a prospectus that is both radical and popular, but he has been horribly misrepresented by the press. Despite that, we have shown a true Left-wing alternative can resonate with voters.’
Subtext: ‘The message was great, we just had the wrong messenger.’
Those moderates fretting ‘ Corbyn’s never going to go!’ are missing the point. Of course he will go. The only questions are when and how, and whether his favoured successor – Rebecca Long-Bailey – will be shoehorned in as his replacement.
There is talk of a ‘pre-resignation’ immediately after polling day to spike any snap challenge, followed by an orderly autumn departure.
But that depends on Long-Bailey being in the contest, seats in the Shadow Cabinet for his allies and a commitment that significant elements of his programme will remain. This is Corbyn’s fight now.
For years the hard-Left’s mantra has been ‘ the only reason our agenda hasn’t been electorally successful is it’s never been tried’.
But on June 8 that theory will be tested to destruction.
So his priority is dragging as much of his battered ideology as he can from the wreckage.
Meanwhile, hundreds of his MPs continue their own desperate struggle. Many will not survive. The letters DLJ will form their epitaph.