Funny to see Iain McNicol, the party’s general secretary, warm Labour activists up for the bad news. “Isn’t it remarkable that so many people have joined Labour?” he says. “I look forward to seeing them on the doorstep, alongside the members who have campaigned for years and decades.” This was a bit of a dig – it’s an open secret that McNicol and others are appalled at the way these new members have been able to pay £3 and dictate the result of the leadership election – and these guys are highly unlikely to spend any time on the doorsteps. Tristram Hunt wrote in the Spectator about these new members. There is, he said, much
“anger among party members who have spent years delivering leaflets and are being called ‘Tories’ for not supporting Corbyn by people who joined the party weeks ago. We are entering the era of emoji politics, where identity and emotion suffocate debate and rationality.”
This is what most Labour MPs think, even though very few of them will admit it with Hunt’s candour.
Iain McNicol left the stage, saying it gave him “great pleasure” to get straight to the results. As if. It gives him anything but pleasure: this is the worst news the Labour Party has had for decades. The question for its MPs, now, is how they pretend otherwise.
PS If it is Corbyn then YouGov will be delighted: its polling has been pretty much the only evidence that anyone had to go on. And an election like this, decided by second preferences by an ever-changing electorate, is especially hard to poll. All of the pollsters got the general election wrong; only YouGov had the courage to get stuck back in and make such a bold call for Corbyn.
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