Corb blimey… Labour excuses are all at sea
The most important thing for Labour now is to move forward – by all its members screaming at each other: “The leader YOU like is even more useless than the leader I like. So it’s YOUR fault.”
Perhaps both halves of Labour are trying to lose.
When the anti-Corbyn wing of the party said after the General Election, “we must never have another night like this again,” maybe they meant, “because we still won Hartlepool and we need to get rid of that”.
For example, Peter Mandelson was asked why Labour lost, and said: “Covid and Corbyn.” That’s quite an achievement for Corbyn, to lose elections more than a year after he stood down.
I think Mandelson is wrong – it’s Harold Wilson who’s to blame, along with Henry the Eighth.
So the solution is, the Labour Party has to make a party political broadcast, in which Keir Starmer ties Corbyn to a lilo with spring onions from his allotment.
Then he drops him in the Channel while MPs dance naked on the beach and chant “into the sea with Jeremy” to chase away the spirit of his plans to nationalise the railways.
On the other hand, some Corbyn supporters say: “The way to stop Labour voters turning to the Tories in Red Wall seats is telling them, in clear terms they understand, that if they don’t support our policies, they should sod off and join the Tories, the backstabbing traitors.”
Maybe part of the problem is no one in Labour appears to have any idea what sort of society they want.
The Labour candidate in Hartlepool, asked for his “vision” of an ideal society, said: “I’d like to see smaller primary school classes.”
IS THAT IT? You can have ANYTHING – free daily massages on the National Health, travelcards to include log flumes and waltzers, whole towns turned into a giant bouncy castle, and smaller class sizes is the limit of your imagination?
Every Labour leader, asked what they stand for, says something like: “I believe in values. I believe every child should have the opportunity to have a value.”
But the Left don’t seem able to inspire people either.
A socialist message should be hopeful, but often a speech from the Left of Labour goes: “Last week I saw a food bank. I’ve never seen so many miserable people. Then it rained. Vote Labour.”
While they’re eager to blame each other, it makes it hard to see the wider trends. Labour parties around the world have been collapsing. The SPD in
Germany are now behind the Greens, which I expect is the fault of Keir Starmer. And the Socialist Party in France is down to around 10% support, which must be because of Corbyn.
The party needs a brave radical approach with popular leaders not afraid to speak out.
My solution is a bold new front bench of the party led by Gary Neville, Dame Judi Dench, Stacey
Solomon, Andy
Murray and
Stormzy.
Then we’ll see how we go from there.