It seems that most commentators believe Jeremy Corbyn will be announced as the new Labour leader in under three weeks’ time. His views and policies are coming under increasing scrutiny, and a good thing to. Parts of the Labour Party seem to be voting for him on the basis that he is the second Coming of Christ and he has no links with the Blair regime. I wonder how many of them have actually studied his policies in any detail, or looked into his beliefs. It’s all very well to vote for someone who your heart agrees with. It’s when your head tells you something different and you still go ahead and vote for them that you should worry.
The Labour Party resembles a group of hundreds of thousands of lemmings who are about to collectively jump off a cliff and commit suicide. And they’re doing it in the full knowledge that this is going to be the end result. I shake my head in disbelief at the apparently sane people who knowingly ignore the fact that Jeremy Corbyn is simply unelectable as Prime Minister. They know that. I know that. You know that. I suspect even Jeremy Corbyn himself knows that. The thing is, unless you have power, you can’t change anything, and anyone in elected politics is well aware of that simple fact. So why, oh why is he going to win? It’s partly because he has a habit of answering a question, as evidenced in the leaders debate I hosted at LBC. It’s partly because he’s a nice man. It’s partly because of the deluded leadership election system Ed Miliband bequeathed. It’s partly because he appears to represent an anti-politics mood. It’s partly because, despite him being an MP for 32 years, he’s successfully portrayed himself as being apart from the Westminster bubble, something which Andy Burnham has also laughably tried (and failed) to do.
But the simple truth is that he isn’t where the British people are. I have a list of twelve questions for Jeremy Corbyn below. He would answer ‘yes’ to them all. Most British people would answer ‘no’ to all of them. All. Of. Them.
- Do you think Britain should withdraw from NATO?
- Do you think Britain should give up its nuclear deterrent?
- Would you refuse to join the Privy Council as leader of the opposition?
- Do you think Northern Ireland should become part of the Republic with no referendum?
- Do you think the railways should be renationalised?
- Do you think the energy industry should be renationalised?
- Do you think the top rate of income tax should be above 80p?
- Do you think the Bank of England should be brought back under political control?
- Do you think face to face talks with ISIS are the way forward?
- Would you hold face to face talks with Hezbollah or Hamas?
- Do you think there should be an inquiry into Jewish influence on government decisions?
- Should Argentina be given a say in the governance of the Falkland Islands?
Yes, there are a few hundred thousand ultra-lefties who would agree with their messiah, but they don’t win elections. It’s Essex Man, Worcester Woman, it’s middle England who win elections, and assuming they bother looking at Jeremy Corbyn’s views they won’t be putting their cross in the box of any part he leads. Most sensible Labour supporters know that. But it seems they are going to be outvoted by people who seem determined to ignore the political facts of life.
The people to blame for this are not the people who vote for Corbyn. They are in some sort of political trance and they know not what they do. Or perhaps they do. No, the people to blame are Ed Miliband for coming up with this lunatic way of electing a leader, the idiot MPs who nominated Corbyn in the first place, when they certainly won’t be voting for him. Yes, Sadiq Khan, I mean you. Margaret Beckett, you too. I could go on.
But most of all I blame the other three other leadership candidates for having spent the four months since the election talking meaningless bollocks. They haven’t come up with a single memorable policy or quote between them. They have bored us all to death and inspired no one. Not even their own pets.
And it could have been so very different. I leave you with two words. Chuka. Umunna.
