The election for the leadership of the Labour party is drawing nearer, and as you probably know, there is an increasing focus on veteran Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn was entered as a mere addition to the debate, but as people have realised that Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper have all the charisma and personality of a centrist ham sandwich and Liz Kendall is campaigning for Labour to go even further right than Tony Blair, Corbyn has garnered support from the left of the party. Who’d have thought a party that describes itself as “socially democratic” and was founded by a socialist Scottish miner would have a strong power base on the left?
I don’t have much faith in any of the candidates. Burnham is a Northern Ed Milliband, Cooper cannot seem to make any sort of impact even on this dismal debate, people won’t see any point in voting for Kendall’s Labour since they will basically be an extension of the Tories and Corbyn won’t win over the right-leaning English voters in the Home Counties, or the right-wing press that dominates political debate and has destroyed previous Labour leaders (Neil Kinnock, Ed Milliband).
However, rising support for Jeremy Corbyn seems to have alarmed the right of the party. John McTernan jumped in to call Corbyn supporters “morons” on Newsnight, looking like he had momentarily forgotten that he was in the same party as these “morons”. McTernan has worked as an adviser and was director of political operations under Tony Blair. However, his last appointment as chief of staff to former Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy was less than stellar, with Labour losing 40 of their 41 Scottish seats. McTernan’s former colleague Tony Blair panicked as soon as Corbyn got a sniff of the lead in the polls. Blair also attacked members of the Labour Party who supported Corbyn saying that if they were voting with their hearts they needed “a heart transplant”. Personally, I don’t think Tony Blair – who advised the autocratic Kazakh leader on his public image in a multi-million pound deal weeks before the Kazakh police shot dead 15 striking oil-workers – should be lecturing anybody on their heart being in the wrong place, but I could be wrong.
Tens of thousands of people have joined Labour since the May general election, but are they all genuine? John Mann MP certainly doesn’t think so, demanding that every single one of these people should be investigated to see if they hold hard-left beliefs, i.e they might vote for Corbyn. Harriet Harman responded by saying “rigorous” checks are in place (which involve trawling applicants Facebook pages) to see if they share “the aims and values of the Labour Party”. That is some of the most eerie, totalitarian, dystopian language I’ve heard in politics. It’s almost Stalinesque; “Share the views of the leadership and accepted political consensus or face expulsion” is what’s being implied here.
It’s not just ordinary members of the public either. Journalist Alex Andreou, after revealing he supported Corbyn, was attacked on Twitter, with Mann allegedly sending a message calling Andreou’s argument that senior members of Labour attacking grassroots members is counterproductive “disgusting”. Alleged supporters of other candidates trawled Andreou’s timeline, finding incidences of “treason” and claiming to report it to Labour HQ. Such acts of “treason” included criticising the Labour leadership and saying in a column for The Guardian that he would vote Green in the Euro elections. What can we draw from this? The Labour party is fast resembling an authoritarian private members club, where criticism of policy and leadership results in threats of expulsion or rejection. That people who may have drifted to other parties in the Blair/Brown/Milliband years and now see there is a place for them in Labour under Corbyn aren’t wanted.
The fact of the matter is that many people, especially young people, are joining the Labour party as you only have to pay £3 and fill in a form. If these people shared the centrist views of other candidates there would be no problem in the minds of the party leadership. Surely tens of thousands of new, ambitious members is a good thing? Yet Labour appears shocked that disenfranchised, angry members of the public, who have jobs outside politics and live an ordinary life might be a bit too left leaning, maybe even *gasp* socialists!
I believe Corbyn is the best candidate for leadership, but I doubt he can win the election. Yet, Labour should face reality. They won’t win the 2020 election, no matter who is in charge. This period should be about building up votes, recovering the working class voting base and to admit the mistakes of the past. The Labour party won’t win any new voters if they try to stop leftists having a say. The people trying to join Labour to vote for Corbyn are ordinary people, not hardcore Communists trying to infiltrate the party. Stopping people joining the party because they might support a certain candidate then calling your election democratic is laughable.
Words by Gabriel Rutherford