Weakness comes in many guises. Last night, for instance, I found myself feeling something close to pity for Jeremy Corbyn. Pictures of the House of Commons may be notoriously unreliable but they can still tell a story. And there it is: Corbyn Alone, Jeremy Agonistes, Jezza Contra Mundum. Mocked by his enemies and abandoned by his notional supporters, the question is no longer whether Jeremy Corbyn is a disaster for the Labour party but, rather, when his leadership will be put out of its misery.
Not for a while yet, I fancy, even though he hirples on like a blind, three-legged, cancer-stricken, dog. An object of pity not scorn.
Comparisons with Michael Foot are grotesque and grotesquely unfair to Mr Foot and not just because that was 1983 and this is 2015. Other comparisons are equally inappropriate. Iain Duncan Smith’s tenure as Tory leader was an unmitigated fiasco but, whatever his faults and delusions, he was recognisably tethered to the Conservative party’s right-wing; Corbyn, by contrast, is the leader of a left-wing faction that hates the Labour party just as much as it despises the Conservatives. We are past the point of entryism; this is a takeover.
The ongoing efforts to stifle internal dissent and threaten heretics with deselection are only part of the story. Typically, they also demonstrate the extent to which the Corbynites inhabit an alternative reality. You can’t get away with that sort of caper anymore. Not in the social media age.
But the people who voted for Corbyn don’t care that he is leading the Labour party to disaster. There shall be no compromise with the electorate, no appeasement based on anything so tawdry as electoral viability. The purity of opposition is infinitely more satisfying. 71 percent of Corbyn’s supporters think like this. In other words, they’re not prepared to even try to win an election.
This was always obvious to anyone who cared to open their eyes. Corbyn, bless him, has never hidden who he is or what he believes. So just as it is not surprising that his Shadow Chancellor signed a letter calling for MI5 to be disbanded so it is not surprising that, in Corbyn’s preferred world, the United Kingdom would abolish its armed forces.
Doubtless it would be lovely if every country agreed to live like this. But it seems mildly improbable that this alternative world can actually exist. That doesn’t matter, of course.
There are ample reasons for questioning whether the current government has either a firm grip on defence policy or a credible plan for dealing with Islamic State. It would, in the circumstances, be useful to have an opposition party capable of asking those questions. The Labour party is no longer that party. It cannot even hope to be so long as its leadership is, to all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from the Stop the War (sic) coalition.
It is worth asking, again, how long members of the Shadow Cabinet can remain loyal – in even a nod and a wink sense – to this sort of stuff? At what point does enough become enough? When does dignity and self-respect, to say nothing of the national interest, demand action?
The nature of the Corbynistas is such that there will never be a moment at which reality penetrates their coccoon. There is no point in hoping that they will change their minds. Like their leader, this is who they are. Like their leader, they like losing. Putting these people into power would be the cruellest thing you could do to them.
In today’s Times, Rachel Sylvester quotes a Labour MP who says, “People who were saying ‘give him a chance’ are now saying ‘enough is enough’. Even those who were sympathetic thought ‘I voted for Jeremy Corbyn but I didn’t vote for this’.”
Except you did. This is exactly who and what you voted for. Corbyn’s political views have neither advanced nor, in any fundamental sense, changed in 30 years. Why would anyone expect them to do so now? He cannot change – that is, he cannot lead the Labour party to electoral viability – without betraying himself and everything in which his kind of people believe. It would be unfair and, worse, a fraud to ask him to do so.
That doesn’t mean Labour MPs, or even supporters appalled by what’s happening, should leave the party. There’s no need for that, not least since someone will have to rebuild the organisation from the rubble in which Corbyn will leave it. But nor is there any need to pretend they can serve with him either. The shadow cabinet cannot prevent Corbyn from ruining the Labour party but there is no need for them to sit in it while he does so. The idea doing so will mitigate the damage is a fool’s promise.
And know this, too: the Tories have barely started to hit Corbyn. Imagine what will happen if and when they decide they need to? It will be an electoral massacre of blood-chilling proportions. (A wiser Tory party would see this as the moment to occupy the centre but that’s a matter for another day.)
It’s not just that Corbyn doesn’t have the answers, it’s that his worldview prevents him from even having the right questions. That’s a problem that can’t be solved.
We’re past contempt. We’re past laughter. We’re reaching the time of pity. That’s how bad matters have become for Labour. It is astonishing.
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