The Corbynites lost because they hate working Britain. And the feeling is reciprocated
After seven weeks touring the nation talking to voters, our columnist was one of the few to see what was coming . . .
Corbyn says about the IRA or national security, they resent it.’
Ironically, to Labour’s leader, this concept of a deeper collective consciousness is anathema. The man who loved to paint the Conservatives as the party of avarice and self-interest never attempted to address his toxic associations, but simply relied on stuffing the voters’ mouths with gold. Fifty billion for WASPI women here. Twenty billion for free broadband there. What was a little historic fraternisation with the gunmen of the IRA and Hamas, when one trillion pounds of public spending could buy him the keys to Downing Street?
And to be fair, why would such moral – not to mention fiscal – turpitude seem out of place when you look at the rest of his party? A party that stood back and allowed its Jewish Members of Parliament to be driven from its ranks. That cowered and vacillated as Momentum’s boot-boys issued de-selection punishment beatings to anyone who crossed them. And responded with nothing more than craven appeasement and the plaintive cry: ‘What can we do? We have to stop Brexit.’
But it’s not just Labour that has lessons to learn. All of the parties now have to take a crash course in what happened on Thursday. Because this is their last chance. And it is the country’s last chance.
British democracy is on its final warning. Never, ever again can our parliamentarians set themselves with such blind disregard against the expressed wishes of the people. For the past three years, politicians have been lecturing the voters about how they got it wrong. That t hey didn’t really understand
Brexit. Or didn’t want a particular form of Brexit. Or didn’t want Brexit at all.
But they did understand. In Bolsover and Canterbury and Wrexham and Bishop Auckland and St Ives and Chingford and Sedgefield. They understood all too well.
That Jeremy Corbyn literally had no position at all on the biggest issue facing the country for a generation. That Jo Swinson’s policy of unilateral revocation was an affront to basic fairness, let alone democratic principle. And that Boris, for all his clumsy prorogations and broken deadlines, was sincere in his pledge to get Brexit done.
But there is a further lesson that will need to be learnt from Thursday’s demolition of the Red Wall. And it is that the era of missionary politics has finally ended.
The British working class are no longer going to be instructed by munificent benefactors how best to improve their lives. Brexit has given them agency, and they will not be revoking it.
As Election day approached there was fevered speculation that traditional Labour voters would hold their noses and return to the party of their parents and grandparents. They didn’t. They were intent on making a statement. And that statement was ‘ No one takes us for grated any more’.
Boris certainly can’t afford to. The Northern Blue Wall is wide but fragile. A phrase I heard echoed by more than one successful Conservative candidate was: ‘I’ve been told these votes are on loan.’
Yes, fledgling Tory MPs such as Mark Fletcher, Sarah Atherton and Dehenna Davison will be granted a bit of time. But no Prime Ministerial badinage about the virtues of a US trade deal will save them if Wrexham High Street remains a nocturnal desert, or the promised Bolsover police stations its unmanned, or A&E isn’t brought back to Bishop Auckland.
But if the Tories now need to secure the trust of working Britain, at least they don’t have to do so from the position of having betrayed it. Unlike Jeremy Corbyn, and his acolytes. Labour’s vanquished leader has promised a period of ‘reflection’. But after a month and a half out on the hustings, I can save him the time and trouble.
The Corbynites lost because for all their liberal pretensions, they hate working Britain. And working Britain reciprocates. A sense of patriotism. A strong work ethic. A pride in community and of place. To the ideological fanatics of the New-Left these are heresies. They believe the scrapping of Trident, a four- day week and freedom of movement are what the working men and women of Britain crave. And if they don’t, they’ll just have to be forced to accept them anyway.
For four long years, Jeremy Corbyn and his minions have not spoken to or for Britain’s working communities, but at them. And their message to the people of Bolsover and Wrexham and Bishop Auckland and Sedgefield has been the same. ‘If you’re not one of us, then you can bugger off and join the Tories.’
So on Thursday, they did.
Never again can our MPs wilfully ignore the wishes of the people