There’s some elephants in the room here — firstly there’s no explanation of how dissent is possible under a Corbyn leadership that doesn’t damage Labour’s electoral prospects, and most importantly how it’s morally acceptable for MPs and members who believe that on certain issues he’s not just wrong but disastrously so, to do so. It’s all very well saying criticism should be constructive, but one of the defining characteristics and reasons for his leadership is that he’s implacably at odds with the party’s centre on some things. All the Tories need to do is repeatedly ask whether Labour would uphold Article 5 of the Nato treaty and huge numbers MPs would be boxed into a position whereby they had to either effectively declare their leader unfit to be PM or actively lie about their moral and intellectual convictions about defence and foreign policy. No mention of this of course in the national defence section. Alternatively, Jeremy says something everyone knows he doesn’t believe.
On economic policy the problem isn’t the message (Owen pretty much quotes Gordon Brown verbatim with his), where warm words and the fluffier, giving policies can paper over the cracks, but the nitty gritty and the personnel can’t be covered up with Osborne & Little. If you’re on the centre-left, who much as we’re disparaged in this article, Labour needs the support of to win, you can’t seriously advocate someone who’s shared the views John McDonnell has over the years being put in charge of the country’s finances and say he’d make a great Chancellor — even before you unpick some of the specifics of the few policies he’s come out with. It’s just impossible. The best you can do is say, “He’s not quite as bad as his worst moments.”
There’s an unfair, but revealing slur against Labour MPs saying some would rather see May than Corbyn as PM. That’s not the case — but you’re asking them to choose between someone who they believe intentionally harms the poorest and a leadership team who would do so unintentionally. You only have to look at Corbyn and McDonnell’s (and Owen’s interestingly), consistent cheerleading for Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela to see why they might believe a Corbyn run government could unintentionally match the Tories for economic disaster.
It’s a shame, because there’s much here to agree on, the stuff that has held Labour together for over a century, whether under Blair or Attlee — more investment for services, fighting inequality, now I’d love to see a comprehensive transport and economic plan, but it’s just impossible to unite behind that stuff with Corbyn as leader. There’s too much nasty baggage, too many political beliefs which are incompatible to say “let’s unify”.
In order to unify around the good stuff, people like Owen need to accept that the problems with Corbyn’s leadership go deeper than a lack of a media message. The bad polls aren’t a product of a disunity, both are symptoms of something far more fundamental about the nature of Corbyn’s politics, which is that a leader who actively defines himself as a sole possessor of virtue may delight his fans and those who uncritically agree, but are utterly unacceptable to anyone else — whether they’re in his party or the electorate. That particularly goes for leaders who’ve advocated beliefs so despised by the wider electorate they haven’t had an outing outside the internal politics of the far left for decades.
Still, even if every internal critic shut up and said he was wonderful or left, he’d still face that fundamental problem and eventually would happen by Labour getting wiped out in a general election. The Tory leaflets write themselves, an it won’t matter if every person on the left doesn’t mention the IRA stuff, Venezuela, Nato, Hamas or whatever for years, eventually they’ll be weapons in an electoral massacre. You might think it’s unfair, but try explaining that stuff on the doorstep when you agree the things Jeremy’s said on those subjects are to be charitable, hopelessly naive, or to be critical fairly reprehensible.
Again, even if you’re trying your absolute utmost to be kind and unify, the best you can say is, “Yes, but…” Not a recipe for victory.
The madness needs to stop but it can only do so by somehow getting rid of Jeremy Corbyn, and the only way that can probably happen is for people like Owen to realise that some things, like a plausible Labour government governing for all, are far more important than their intellectual pride at being revolutionaries.
