It was with a spring in his step that Jeremy Corbyn, an unusually sprightly 70-year-old strolled down to the polling station on 7 May 2020. After all this was a day most had said would never come. The Labour leader had confounded the critics who said he’d never win the leadership, then those who said he’d be ousted after a succession of disasters.
In fact the public had rather taken to ‘Uncle Jez’ as the Daily Mail referred to him (not that Jeremy took the Mail, but his housekeeper had told him this). There had been a brief wobble when Zac Goldsmith won the London mayoralty after the Evening Standard published a dossier on Jeremy’s meetings with extremists in an attempt to taint Labour’s candidate Sadiq Khan, but that was forgotten after Jeremy delivered a rousing hour and a half speech attacking the media. Afterwards hundreds of people in Islington had patted him on the back and said they’d never buy a paper again - although he noted his newsagent still stocked the Mail and Sun.
Yes, the polls pointed to a Tory victory, but as Owen Jones had pointed out in his excellent Guardian piece that morning this didn’t matter. After all, polls weighted for those who were unlikely to vote, and as Labour’s strategy had been to energise non-voters, something which couldn’t be captured by the polls, and having been cheered around the country by huge crowds he felt confident that something had changed in Britain and he was about to defeat George Osborne to become Prime Minister.
24 hours later, as he prepared to go to sleep after a harrowing night, Jeremy was feeling rather less sprightly. The big disappointment wasn’t that he’d failed to become Prime Minister - he had after all come further than anyone had anticipated, but that he’d failed despite successfully carrying out his strategy. Labour had succeeded in energising non-voters, picked up voters from the Greens and put a dent in the SNP vote but found itself stuck on 30% of the vote and losing seats. Most painful of all had been Esther McVey’s valedictory speech in West Wirral, the former employment minister who Ed Miliband had managed to oust in 2015 represented everything Jeremy thought the British public were ready to reject. After defeating Margaret Greenwood, she’d thanked Jeremy for being a Labour leader who got people back into work - her.
The night had all started so well, with a decent swing to the party in Sunderland South - not quite enough for victory but pointing to a hung parliament. A hasty meeting had been arranged between Kezia Dugdale and Nicola Sturgeon in the early hours to thrash out some early principles for an informal coalition. Labour pundits on the BBC election coverage pointed out that the scare tactics the Tories had used against Corbyn hadn’t worked as they had against Ed Miliband but had made them appear panicked and nasty. Jeremy’s former ally John McDonnell, now on the back benches criticising him for compromising his principles and committing Labour to staying in the EU after the threat of mass resignations, even grudgingly praised him and stated that the Labour campaign had shown positive campaigning ‘could win’.
Just as it had in 2015 though, it was in the Midlands where Labour hope began to expire. It quickly became clear that what had energised voters in Labour’s heartlands was less appealing in the seats the party actually had to win. A five point swing to the Tories in Nuneaton all but confirmed defeat. All that was left was to see if the party could regain some dignity in Scotland and match Ed Miliband’s seat total. Despite Labour’s vote rising across Scotland it only gained the party three seats, a total which hardly made up for the bloodbath in England. As the night went on, defeated candidates, who had until the results came in remained dignified in their upbeat advocation of Labour’s ‘2020's Socialist Vision’ manifesto, began to tell stories of how they’d been accosted on the doorstep. They told of voters who said that while they thought the party’s heart was in the right place, they weren’t prepared to risk a government that would print money the moment the economy looked sluggish and which was seemingly totally unconcerned about closing the remaining £15 billion deficit. Those were the polite ones.
As he reflected on a chastening night, Jeremy did have some self doubt - how had he done everything right and yet lost? Voters hadn’t deserted him over his comments when refusing to vote to bomb ISIS, at least those he spoke to. His anti-austerity alternative had energised people - Labour had more members than ever, commentators who had been sceptical to incredulous about his victory in the leadership election had praised him as beating their admittedly low expectations. Dan Hodges had even written a piece titled ‘What If Corbyn Wins?’ when Jeremy had briefly gone ahead in the polls as UKIP surged after Britain voted to remain 'In' the EU. OK, it had included a promise to perform Swan Lake naked on the Members’ Terrace if he did win, but he’d forced his detractors to acknowledge it as a possibility. Rallies across the country were joyous carnivals of optimism where the masses democratically showed their disdain for Tory rule. Yet here he sat with fewer seats than Michael Foot, and George Osborne, a man who’d been despised by the public as Chancellor, had won the biggest election victory since that traitor Tony Blair.
What if the hordes of left leaning non-voters he had been pursuing were just a herd of chimeras? That while there were a decent number of voters who failed to vote because they saw the party as not socialist enough, there weren’t as many as he thought, and instead of realising that non-voters had more or less the same opinions as actual voters. Some wanted an anti-austerity alternative, some wanted to send the immigrants back and wouldn’t vote for any party that didn’t promise to, others would’ve voted Tory but hadn’t been too bothered about it due to where they lived. Some didn’t even know or care if there was an election on. What if the non-voters who were attracted to his policies were generally in safe seats? It caused a brief existential crisis within Jeremy - had defeat turned him into a Blairite?
One thing that hadn’t helped was the Green Party’s promise to abolish capitalism - he’d counted on mopping up the million or so 2015 Green votes and so it came as a bit of a shock to be called a capitalist stooge and betrayer of the environment. All because he’d said he wouldn’t close existing fracking wells and put good men and women out of work. Vivienne Westwood placing a dead dog on his lawn had been frightening and slightly bizarre and the Green vote had only dropped to 600,000. He should’ve known Natalie Bennett and Caroline Lucas would always be able to outbid him from the left - so much for solidarity. A Lib Dem recovery of sorts had also harmed his prospects, as centrists who couldn’t stomach the Tories took a second look at a party which now treated Nick Clegg as Jeremy treated Tony Blair. Again, he thought, had he been wrong all along to tie his electoral strategy to people who cared less about getting him into government than shouting out how virtuous they were? He’d said “welcome back” in his first speech as leader, yet what of those he’d turned away? Those who were ‘anti-austerity’ but were turned off by talk of promises that they thought were irresponsible, unachievable and possibly undesirable, those millions of voters who wouldn’t be seen dead at a march screaming anti-Tory slogans but had voted Labour all their adult lives? Perhaps he and Tony Benn had been wrong about the Labour Party all along - and that the key to the party was its ability to compromise to change things in government rather than being the ‘movement’ of mythology. Perhaps they hadn’t got their ‘party back’ after all but had instead taken it away from its purpose as an electoral force. It was his successes that caused Jeremy to despair. He hadn’t crashed and burned, he’d compromised and moderated on some of the opinions he knew were vote losers. Heck, he’d even become a bit of a draw on the chat show sofas - remarkably people found his collection of photographs of drain covers endearing. Yet they hadn’t voted for him - he'd emulated his mentor Tony Benn and become a national treasure anywhere but the ballot box. This was the best he could do and it wasn’t close to being enough. Then the phone rang. It was Owen Jones.
“Congratulations Jeremy.”
“Sorry, did you see the result?”
“Yes but you got 30% of the vote on a fully socialist program Jeremy, we’ve changed Britain, given the workers a genuine voice.”
“But we lost.”
“This is just the beginning though, the hard work starts now. Turnout was 70%, if we can get 5 more percent we can win in 2025. People will be crying out for change, they just don’t know it yet.”
“But the Tories dismantled the BBC, hamstrung the unions and are now bringing in profit making schools and hospitals and we've got five more years of it.”
“Jeremy, we showed the masses that there can be a socialist alternative, this time they were sceptical, but after five more years they’ll be crying out for a full on socialist government. Plus the media was so biased against us, what you’ve done is remarkable considering. It’s a victory for socialism.”
“I suppose.”
“And of course those who didn’t get fully behind you, those who didn’t argue for a fully socialist alternative. So many were ranged against us we’ve done brilliantly. This is their defeat, not yours.”
The Labour leader snapped out of his existential despair, and ripped up the mea culpa speech he’d prepared as he supped on cold dark reality and tonic water in the early hours of the morning. It had said that although when he was elected leader it was clear Labour needed change, something different from the mantras which had grown tired over the years, the change required perhaps wasn’t him or his policies. That perhaps now was the time to recognise those he’d ignored and defeated had principles too, and that they might represent the best chance of preserving what was left of Labour’s legacy to Britain after 15 years of Tory rule. He’d now snapped out of his despair though and realised that it wasn’t his fault but the voters, and that it was his duty to fight for a socialist government that surely was just around the corner. Paradise wasn’t lost, it was merely postponed once more.
No comments:
Post a Comment