It’s quite difficult coming up against the appeal of Jeremy Corbyn. He comes across as something of a saint. After all we are just members of the ‘nasty’ establishment; a ‘rich elite’, soulless, cruel, pro austerity. But politics is a much more sophisticated process than followers of an idealism allow it to be because, as anyone who is at the sharp end of it knows, what it really is, is a struggle of competing forces.
It has now become fashionable in modern politics to lean on the wisdom of ordinary party workers and members. Corbyn is a huge advocate of this; he calls it a ‘new politics’. Openness and involvement are all the rage. Corbyn now wants to go further and give control over Labour policy making to the membership at large. It starts from the premise that the people always know best. This is not always true. Movement politics, that is the one where people see everything as either black or white, who flood MPs offices with generic campaign e-mails that they haven’t often even put their name to, who are always against or for things be it poverty, NHS cuts, nuclear weapons, profit; but who never ever ever explain how they would do it, or pay for it, if they were handling the reins of power. For example no-one wants us to build on our green and pleasant land but our children, who want to stay in the area, need affordable homes. This is what I mean by the struggle of forces; Governing involves the sharing out of limited resources between competing demands. And to get that right is the dilemma every elected politician faces every day of his career, whatever side of the spectrum he sits on. To get it right requires deliberation, information, debate, and expert views. This has to be done openly, legitimately, democratically and mostly without hysterics and banner waving. Politicans on the whole get a bad press but nearly all of them, take this role very seriously indeed. They will outsource only to help with their decisions because ultimately the buck stops with them. It stops with them because that is the way our successful democracy works; it gives voters more knowledge and detail about the people they elect and what they do with their power than ever before but when these people are elected they are the ones that need to make the key decisions between elections. What Corbyn is doing is robbing Labour MPs individually and collectively of their political legitimacy and distinguishing voice. Labour lost the last election because voters did not trust the party on the economy, welfare and immigration. What to do about that should be the mainstay of Labour thinking for the next four and half years. If it’s thrown out to conference to drive and decide party policy those challenges will be ignored. Corbyn is going down a very perilous route for a party leader; he is surrounding himself by people who do not agree with him. He may well find that the revolution he started will be the one that consumes him.
We will not fight Corbyn the man, for he is decent enough, we will fight him policy by policy. So let me start by just some myth busting put about at their conference. Our economic recovery from recession has indeed been slower than we would have wished however; the UK posted the fastest growth of G7 leading nations last year and is on track to repeat that this year. We are also 5.2 per cent larger than at the start of the crisis. To the claim that we are not ‘one nation’ and that we only represent the 1 per cent, I would say this; the top per cent of earners have seen their income fall by 7 per cent due to tax rises and loss of benefits. That ‘unemployment is rising’: yes in the last data but we are now close to traditional measures of ‘full employment’. Mr Mcdonnell says he will not balance the books by cutting nurses and police. What he actually wants to do is dress up tax rises and possibly more borrowing to pay for them. Experience has taught me that if you ask people if they want more nurses, doctors, people in the armed forces they will say yes. However, if you ask the same people if they want an increase in their own taxes to pay for them they are less keen. That is the conundrum. Voters want a fair and efficient Government that delivers and still balances the books. That’s what we are trying to do.