Who knew that Corbyn would be a catastrophe? Everyone ... except him

WELL, who knew? Who knew that a lifelong Brexiteer leading a party that needed to represent t he half of the country that did not want to leave the EU didn’t make sense?

Who knew that a man who was such an admirer of the IRA and Palestinian terrorists wouldn’t go down as well as someone who wasn’t proud to embrace the killers and maimers of countless innocents?

Who knew that a man who opposed every Labour election victory in his backbench lifetime and held in dripping contempt every leader who delivered those victories was not someone who could bring himself to do any of the things – develop strategies, formulate popular policy, deliver accessible messages, know when to compromise – that make them possible?

Who knew that a man who surrounded himself with men (‘absolute boys!’ in their own proud parlance) every bit as ideologically pure as himself – for which read endlessly arrogant, fathomlessly entitled and intellectually incurious – wouldn’t have what it took to reach the masses?

I could go on and I think, on this historic occasion, as Jeremy Corbyn and hi s enablers have produced the worst result for what I still think of as ‘my’ party since 1935, I will.

Who knew that reacting angrily and evasively to any interviewer who dared ask you questions about your position and your policies – often regarding the issue of greatest national importance since the war – made people mistrust you and wonder if this insecure, peevish old man was really the person they wanted to govern them?

Who knew that being so inflexible, so tone deaf, so unwilling to apologise for what countless others agreed were egregious violations of common decency – even if you remained wilfully blind to them yourself – would end badly?

Who knew that telling anyone who didn’t believe in full, immediate Communist revolution to shove off and vote Tory instead might backfire? Many knew. Many told him. But Jeremy Corbyn and his coterie of bl i nkered minders wouldn’t see it. Any more than they would entertain the notion that there might even be some sort of moral duty attached to being in opposition; namely that of opposing the Government by speaking for all those who otherwise go unrepresented, and in doing so keeping the wheels of democracy turning.

So now we lifelong Labour supporters have this. A landslide for the Tories and virtually unfettered power – probably for another decade – handed to Boris Johnson, a man I’m far from alone in regarding as a bullying narcissist, a blubbery bundle of ambition, vanity, solipsism and deceit barely contained by a bad suit.

The Corbyn cultists will tell you that the radiant ideological purity of their icon is to be revered, no matter how personally inept he might be. That only the spotless of heart should be allowed to construct or enter socialist heaven. You can’t change their minds because they simply will not listen to anyone outside their dogmatic echo chamber.

But the first rule of politics is that you have to get elected. Which means you have to make yourself electable. Not to the electorate you want but to the real-life electorate you’ve got. Which means putting aside your century-old ideologies and plotting a path towards compromise and workability.

THE i rony is t hat, buried underneath the vote- repelling surface, was what I believe was a manifesto with decent aims and achievable goals that would appeal to a relatively broad swathe of Labour supporters. There was only one thing standing in the way – a man so unelectable that to vote for him was to waste your ballot. And yet he wasn’t going anywhere. The measure of Corbyn’s own and his supporters’ toxic self-regard can be seen in the fact that he wasn’t gone by the time the sun came up on Friday morning. To resign when the scale of the disaster became clear was the single noble gesture it was still within his power to make.

A wordless apology, if you like, for persistently ignoring the fundamental truth that it is not the electorate’s job to come to you but yours to go to them. But still, at the time of writing, he is unapologetically there. ‘Taking some time to reflect,’ apparently, though he says he will not seek to lead the party into the next Election. But still there, while his acolytes blame Brexit, the media and anything else within reach of their flailing arms rather than accept their own practical and moral failures.

The Tories’ vote share increased by one per cent this Election. Labour’s decreased by nearly eight. Boris didn’t win. Corbyn emphatically lost.

Pragmatism beats purity every time. My eight-year-old son hates doing his times tables. I’d love him to accept that buckling down and learning them off by heart will do him nothing but good in life, but he’s too young. Too human. It’s not going to happen. So I bribe him.

It’s not perfect, I feel a bit bad. But he’s up to the eights now and that seems a reasonable return for the small stain on my conscience.

But Corbyn should have a much larger stain on his – he’s shattered the hopes of millions of decent, loyal Labour supporters and handed the party he despises yet more power to do with as they punitively, autocratically wish, adding to t he s uffering of t he very people for whom Labour has traditionally fought.

And all because one man and his tiny clutch of comrades decided that nothing was better than something. What a legacy. What absolute… boys.