Leo McKinstry
of Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, with their absurd demand that the people “rise up”.
In their deluded, undemocratic contempt for the popular will, Blair and Mandelson have undoubtedly damaged the two struggling by-election campaigns. The desperation of Labour’s fight is revealed in the sheer nastiness of the party’s tactics.
Through these twin battles, Labour has emerged as the truly nasty party of British politics, capable of brutish intimidation and lurid hyperbole for its own ends.
At a conference last Saturday, Corbyn spoke piously of Labour’s search for “hope and dignity” as he urged voters to reject “the politics of hate” yet if there is one group peddling hate and division, it is his lot.
In Stoke, where the main challenge comes from Ukip, Labour have indulged in their usual cynical ploy of trying to use the NHS as a weapon against their opponents. A vote for Ukip “is a vote to break up the NHS” falsely declares Labour’s campaign literature. But Labour have also engaged in a merciless campaign of character assassination against the Ukip candidate, party leader Paul Nuttall, who has been smeared over everything from his academic record to his attendance at Hillsborough on the day of the football disaster in 1989.
The Labour candidate Gareth Snell is in no position to occupy the moral high ground given his exposure for sending unpleasant tweets that denigrated women and the cause of Brexit.
Even worse, Labour has lurched into divisive identity politics of the kind that never used to exist in Britain. Last week Labour activist Navid Hussain circulated text messages to Muslims in Stoke warning that they would go to hell if they did not for vote Snell.
In Copeland, Labour have painted themselves as the sacred guardians of the NHS and the Tories as the dangerous heretics. Already hit by Brexit, Labour’s trouble in the constituency has been compounded by Corbyn’s negativity about the nuclear industry, by far the biggest employer in the area.
To compensate, a potential reorganisation of local maternity services has been used to whip up hysteria.
One Labour leaflet declares that if Labour does not win “mothers will die. Babies will die. Babies will be brain damaged”. Another says that byelection is “a matter of life or death”, while a third claims that a Tory victory “will cost mums their children”.
CORBYN and the Labour candidate Gillian Troughton should be ashamed to put their names to this kind of monstrous, morbid scaremongering.
What could be more sick than the use of innocent young lives to portray your opponents as evil agents of death? But this is what Labour under Corbyn has become: an unhinged cult that peddles fear, Islamic injunctions and lethal threats.
Labour’s pose of compassion is as hypocritical as it is offensive. This is, after all, the party of the Mid-Staffordshire hospital scandal and the Iraq invasion. Screeching about the NHS or religious duties might see Labour scrape home on Thursday. But in the process, they will have debased politics – and exposed their dark heart.
‘The Left is hysterical, brutish and divisive’