Labour’s election strategy – vote for us and watch us lose

The crapness of Corbyn’s Labour is a phenomenon. It fascinates me. Frankly, it does my head in. For there is a theory, you see, that Corbyn’s Labour isn’t really crap at all. That it is all a conspiracy. That journalists such as me, who I suspect are ‘neoliberal’ or something, merely construct a narrative demonising it as such. Where politicians match our prejudices, this theory goes, we give them enormous leeway and spring to their defence. When they don’t, we supposedly deem them ‘mad’ or ‘radical’ or, yes, ‘crap’, in a spirit of sheer defensiveness.

It’s a neat theory, this, and very occasionally I even find myself wondering if it might be true. But then I hear something like Diane Abbott’s interview with Nick Ferrari on London’s LBC radio last Tuesday, and I realise it definitely isn’t.

What the hell was that? Did you hear it? A colleague of mine described it as ‘the worst political interview I’ve ever heard, including that one with Natalie Bennett’. Which, if you remember the then Green party leader’s interview before the 2015 election (also with Nick Ferrari, as it happens), and her vague promises to build half a billion houses for a few quid each, is truly saying something. Next to Abbott, though, it was a show of virtuoso competence. Ostensibly there to discuss Labour’s pretend plan to increase police numbers (all Labour plans are pretend; they might as well promise a moonshot), the shadow home secretary variously promised 10,000 new policemen, 100,000 new policemen and a million new policemen. The cost at which this was to be achieved travelled around a lot, but sometimes got as low as £30 per head. Which is, I suppose, just as well if there are going to be a million of them.