The Aftermath, Part 3 - Who Is To Blame?

So, following the catastrophe that overtook the Labour Party last week, blame is inevitably being directed at Corbyn.  As pointed out in my last post, there is some dubiour research that supports that conclusion, if you are minded to accpet it at face value.

I think, however, that blaming Corbyn's leadership, or lack there of demonstrates a massive misunderstanding about the situation confronting the Labour Party.  Corbyn and his adherents are being demonised and portrayed as something to be crushed and driven out of the party, like fleas or ants. It works on the assumption that once Corbyn and the Corbynistas have been eradicated then everything will be okay again.

I think this is, fundamentally, missing the point.

Corbyn is not the disease, he is the symptom of the disease. His election in 2015 was not some whimsical decision by the membership, a jolly jape they decided on without thought to the consequences.

It was their way of signaling to the 'elite' in charge of the party how utter dissatisfied and disaffected they were, after almost two decades of Blair, and Brown, and Milliband; how neglected, ignored and taken for granted they felt. that's why Corbyn's message resonated and that's why he got elected.

Of course. the aforementioned 'elite' didn't get the hint. If there is one thing they are very bloody good at it is thinking they know best. They viewed the election of Corbyn as a foolish error on the part of the membership, who had to told off, sent to the naughty step and made to elect a proper leader this time; hence the Chicken Coup - only the 'elite' (significantly misnamed; there isn't much elite about them in terms of intelligence or wisdom) were so clueless and craven they put up Angela Eagle and the Owen 'Lacklustre' Smith might be viable alternatives, with fairly predicable results. Corbyn won, and the elite decided that, obviously, the membership were being recalcitrant and really, really needed to be taught a lesson.

At no point, it seems, did anyone bother to ask, "Why DID they vote for Jeremy?" Or if they did, the answers were probably just a load of patronising generalisations and sneers.

Remember what happened with Corbyn as leader (before Friday the 13th, I mean): membership soared to almost half a million and there were genuine signs of a mass movement developing.  People becoming re-engaged and excited about being Labour again.  2017 happened, just as much as 2019 did, and can not be ignored.  The message resonated and the messenger was not deemed too abhorrent then.

Only, of course, the 'elite' knew better.  Corbyn and his rag tag bunch had stepped out of line and had to be put back in their place - for the good of the party, you understand, and especially for th good of the membership, who had let the power Ed Milliband had unwisely gifted them go to their heads and used it unwisely.

They identified real but not Earthshaking issues - the presence of some foolish people in the party who don't think before they tweet, plus some genuine anti-Semites - and started to make Quite A Fuss about it. And they never missed a chance to confide just how awful things were to their friends in the media.

In the meantime, of course, Brexit was rumbling on. They noticed that Corbyn and the Unions weren't too hot on Remain and the 'elite' - who love skiing in the Alps and holidays in Umbria - felt once more they knew better. The 'elite' always knows best and if they have to keep intervening to correct the unruly plebs, well, noblisse oblige.  After all, THEY haven't gone to Oxford to do PPE so how could they be expected to know what's best for them?

The proles had voted foolishly - AGAIN, you'd almost think they were doing it on purpose - and once more had to be corrected. A botched compromise was devised and Labour was forced to go into an election offering a fudge that might have been morally principled but only seemed to tell people they were being ignored - again.

So, now that Corbyn is on his way out, the impetus will be to make sure that him and his horrid followers are excluded from the party and never even given a whiff of a shot of getting anywhere near power. It will be very hard for anyone running on anything that even resemblance of a Corbynite ticket to get the nominations to stand as leader. There won't be any more 'widening of the debate' because the elite know they will lose that debate. They will try to force a bland slate of safe, Blairy candidates on the membership. One of them will win, and it will be just like the 2010 leadership election all over again.

The lesson of 2019 is not that Corbynism needs to be crushed but that the 'elite' need to look at why Corbynsim ever happened in the first place, and be honest about why something that was actually working pretty well in 2017 was an abject failure two years later. And acknowledge their own failings and responsibility for the stagnation and failures of the last 20 years.

I'm not holding my breath.