by Matthew Paul
They sure know how to pick ‘em. On 20th December, this column advised –not entirely in earnest– that the best interests of our country would be served by electing as Labour leader a candidate with the dynamism and glittering intellect of Rebecca Long-Bailey or Richard Burgon. It even suggested –in the interest of a strong government being balanced by a strong opposition– that Conservative supporters might join the Labour Party just for the opportunity of voting for one or the other of them.
Persuaded by this analysis –and undaunted by their recent defeat at the hands of both Jonathan Edwards and a Tory candidate straight out of The Munsters– the Carmarthen East & Dinefwr Constituency Labour Party chose last week to endorse not one but both of these titans of the democratic left; Becky as leader, and Burgon as her deputy. If anything can turn around the difficult fortunes of the Labour Party, it is a leadership team of this calibre.
To be fair, in the General Election campaign Corbyn fought off the attacks of billionaire-owned media like The Pembrokeshire Herald, pro-Zionist lobbying groups and the entire UK establishment to deliver what must be regarded as an impressive result for Labour. Tories can brag about outdated, irrelevant measures of success like seats in Parliament and who gets to kiss the Queen’s hand, but Corbynites understand that to secure a meaningful victory, you first have to get shot of the factionalist Blairite splitters who held socialism back through three consecutive terms of Labour government.
As such, it is surprising that the Labour Party as a whole –not to mention the voters who were duped by Tory MSM into electing Conservative Members of Parliament– don’t seem to be demonstrating the same clear vision as their comrades in the CE&D branch.
The field in Labour’s leadership election handicap has been winnowed down to four. One clear frontrunner –Sir Kier Starmer– has been half the course ahead of the others right out of the gates, with endorsements from a hefty majority of Labour MPs and major trade unions.
Starmer has several advantages, not least his splendid quiff.
He’s certainly not stupid. Although he isn’t clever in the flashy, showmanlike way Boris Johnson is clever, Starmer is analytical, conscientious, always well prepared and on top of his brief. Starmer also has a carapace of ambition and arrogance that isn’t a million miles from Boris’s own Olympian self-assurance. These qualities could seriously discomfit Boris, to whom detail is a foreign land and preparation something other people are paid to do for him.
What Starmer entirely lacks is a sense of humour. He has an excellent chance of winning any award going for most pompous man in public life. So fundamentally unable to recognise a joke that he personally oversaw the (ultimately unsuccessful) prosecution of a man who made one on Twitter, you are about as likely to see Sir Kier engaging in self-mockery as to see an issue of Charlie Hebdo in Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s downstairs loo. Subjected to any kind of satirical attack, Starmer takes on the wounded expression of an Emperor Penguin who has slipped on ice and dropped on his arse right in front of David Attenborough and a film crew. Put this across the despatch box from Boris, who never misses an opportunity to take the piss, and all the preparation and analysis in the world may be of no effect.
Sir Kier is also a tiny bit of a phoney. Full of four-Yorkshiremen rhetoric in describing his comfortable and decent upbringing, he has publicly repudiated private and selective education but is regularly involved with the old boys’ association of his (fee paying) selective grammar school. Around the Comrades, Sir Kier says he ‘doesn’t use’ his title –and if he doesn’t use it because he disagrees with the whole business of Knights of the Realm, perhaps he shouldn’t have accepted it– but it’s usually in evidence when in the company of his fellow Benchers of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple.
Following an important endorsement from the GMB, Lisa Nandy has also made the cut. If the Labour Party let the general public elect its leaders, she would have a fighting chance of winning. A recent Ipsos Mori poll showed her as having the highest overall public approval versus disapproval rating –on point ahead of Starmer with a thumping plus 43– of any of the four.
Which brings us back to Becky, whose performance in that poll was not quite so good, with an overall approval rating of minus 7; just ahead of the equally awful, but far smarter and more competent, Emily Thornberry. Thornberry’s support is being squeezed from both sides –those who want to stop Starmer even if it means voting for Long-Bailey and those who want to stop Long-Bailey even if it means voting for Starmer– and she will probably fall at the next fence.
Thornberry’s absence from the contest won’t hurt Labour’s prospects at the ballot box, but it’s hard to think what the party could have done –short of re-opening Chris Williamson’s coffin and pulling out the stake– to find a hard-left candidate with less public appeal than Rebecca Long-Bailey. Her flatmate and closest political conspirator, Angela Rayner, chose not to stand as leader this time round; probably a sensible choice given that the party seems to be heading further into, not emerging from, the wilderness. Like John Lennon’s quip about Ringo’s talents as a drummer, Long-Bailey isn’t even the best leadership candidate in her own flat. Corbyn without the charm, the Momentum heavy mob –who never set much store by charm anyway– have nonetheless given her their backing.
Tories know what this feels like. From around 1994 until David Cameron took over as leader, the Conservative Party was regarded as a national embarrassment. They weren’t winning elections and no-one seriously expected them to. They turned inwards and spoke to their own activists. “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?” Michael Howard asked voters in 2001. “Hell no” came the answer.
Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum have led Labour into the same trap. If moderate, sensible elements in the Labour Party don’t succeed in taking back control from the Corbyn cult by electing Starmer (who would do) or Nandy (who might actually be quite good), what happened to Labour on 12th December in Carmarthen East & Dinefwr will happen to Labour everywhere.
Add Comment