Writing for the Washington Examiner, Dan Hannan takes a typically sharp look at Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s hard left new leader.
Here’s an extract:
[Corbyn] is….happy to ally with any cause, however vile, provided it is sufficiently anti-British and anti-American.
[His] steady and surprising march to victory runs parallel to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ unexpected success in the Democratic presidential race, is a shambling, self-righteous repository of every second-rate, lazy, 1960s Marxist nostrum. And Labour’s activists can’t get enough of him. They haven’t just picked the lowest card in the deck; they have slammed it belligerently on the table, giving Corbyn 59.5 percent of the votes in a four-candidate race.
“Labour activists”, yes and no, I reckon. It will be interesting to see how much of Corbyn’s success can be put down to the votes of the new Labour ‘supporters’ (who could vote in exchange for £3 or, if they were members of the right union, for nothing).
Corbyn’s campaign has also been helped by a surge in new members and supporters who paid £3 to take part in the vote, leading to a near-tripling of those eligible to about 550,000 people. Throughout the campaign, he addressed packed rallies and halls, where he had to give speeches outside the buildings to crowds gathered in the street.
While his supporters will be jubilant about Labour taking a turn to the left, his triumph will be deeply disappointing to the parliamentary party, which overwhelmingly backed other candidates by 210 to 20.
Hannan concludes:
Don’t worry about Corbyn. The honest, narrow-minded, pious old duffer won’t be around long. But spare a thought for the party of Keir Hardie and Clement Attlee. What a wretched way to end.
I suspect that Dan is right (if overly sentimental) about the ‘old Labour’ of Hardie and Attlee. That’s likely gone, once and for all. But Corbyn, I think, will be Labour leader for quite a while, quite a bit longer, in fact, than those (few?) of his more centrist opponents who stick to their principles. Those that do will probably find themselves playing the Menshevik in various local Labour Party constituency meetings the length and breadth of the country.
Dan is also (characteristically) too kind when he refers to Corbyn as “honest”. Yes, Corbyn is famously frugal (interestingly, he’s teetotal and a vegetarian to boot) and he’s certainly no crook, but, even if he believes (and I am sure that he does) in the core truth of his version of the socialist vision, it’s a truth that he is prepared to wrap in lies.
In an earlier (July) article, this time for Conservative Home, Dan wrote:
Look, I’m just going to come right out and say it: I like Jeremy Corbyn. In a world full of sleekit, image-conscious politicians, he’s genuine. He didn’t enter Parliament for popularity or power or pelf. He lives frugally (I’ve only ever seen him arrive at meetings by bike or public transport) and has spent the past 30 years taking up all manner of unloved causes, from Irish republicanism to – well, to British republicanism.
Many of Corbyn’s Labour colleagues remark on his humourlessness; some call it sourness. But I don’t see why that should count against him. Earnestness, in politics, is often the flip-side of conviction. There has always been an honourable place in the House of Commons for Roundheads.
An honourable place, too, for the Bennite tradition which Corbyn represents – if not exactly a large place. If we had proportional representation, Corbyn might lead small socialist party along the lines of Germany’s Die Linke or Denmark’s Red-Green Alliance. First-past-the-post ensures that that tendency must instead find expression within a much wider Labour movement…
Hmmm, I’ve never bought into the view that we should give a politician much credit for being true to his convictions if those convictions are profoundly misguided – or worse. And with Corbyn, ‘worse’ is the right word. As for Corbyn being a ‘Roundhead’, well, that’s a (Putney) debate for another time, as is the notion that there is an ‘honorable’ place for the Bennite tradition. There is a place for the sort of hard-left, profoundly illiberal thinking of the type pushed by Tony Benn in any democracy, of course, but an honorable one. I don’t think so.