Both anecdotal accounts (neatly backed up by a friend — and generally objective analyst — who has been canvassing for the Conservatives in the British Midlands) and the polls suggest that the Corbyn tide may be receding. May could be looking at building, possibly quite substantially, on the small majority she inherited from David Cameron. But will she be able to make her way to the sort of (overall) majority that would enable the missteps of her campaign to be forgiven, if never entirely forgotten? To do that, I reckon, she’ll need a majority of over 80 seats, a total that I think she will miss by quite some way, although there are some pollsters looking for the Conservatives to secure an even bigger majority.
As for May’s Labour rival, the far-left Jeremy Corbyn, it remains a disgrace that he has come as close to 10 Downing Street as he has. I wrote a bit about his record here and here, but it’s worth adding a few more snippets from around the web.
Writing for CapX, Tim Knox and Daniel Mahoney take a look at a recently published Labour Party report ominously entitled Alternative Models of Ownership in which it is claimed that:
“The predominance of private property ownership has led to a lack of long-term investment and declining rates of productivity, undermined democracy, left regions of the country economically forgotten, and contributed to increasing levels inequality and financial insecurity. Alternative forms of ownership can fundamentally address these problems.”
Alternative forms of ownership?
“National ownership of certain industries promotes long-term planning of the economy, helps to provide modernising infrastructure, quality health and social care, and to combat climate change.”
As Knox and Mahoney reveal, there’s plenty more where that came from.
And then there’s the case of Andrew Murray, the senior trade union official seconded to Labour campaign team in a very senior role. Also writing for CapX, Oliver Kamm explains:
He only joined the Labour Party a few months ago, having previously been a longstanding and senior member of a Stalinist sect called the Communist Party of Britain (CPB). His record of support for tyranny is long, explicit and public.
Is Kamm exaggerating?
Well, no.
In March 2003, Murray gave a “political report” to the executive committee of the CPB in which he declared: “Our party has already made its basic position of solidarity with People’s Korea clear.”
That’s North Korea.
Then there’s Seamus Milne, Jeremy Corbyn’s Executive Director of Strategy and Communications, and one of the most influential members of his team. Prior to that, he, as The Spectator’s Nick Cohen observed, “provided a niche service on the Guardian by catering for a corner of the market that yearned to hear defences of 20th century Soviet Communism and 21st century Islamo-Fascism at the same time and for the same reasons.”
Back in 2015, David Patrikarakos writing in Politico, noted how:
Milne has made a point of arguing that the number of Stalin’s victims has been greatly exaggerated. His views on global geopolitics represent the worst of unthinking, historically illiterate, and reactionary leftism. The South Ossetia conflict? Not the result of Russian aggression but U.S. interference. Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea? Not Moscow’s fault — it’s all down to Western expansionism. The Islamist extremists who killed British soldier Lee Rigby on the streets of London? Merely the “predicted consequence of an avalanche of violence unleashed by the U.S., Britain and others in eight direct military intervention in Arab and Muslim countries.” From Hugo Chavez to Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin, every dictator and demagogue standing up to so-called U.S. imperialism is a de facto good guy.
Even by the standards of the hard left, Milne is almost pathologically unwilling to let the tiresome facts of reality intrude upon the certainty of ideology.
Much like his boss.
Voting closes at 5 P.M. (EST) tomorrow. Exit polls will be out shortly thereafter.