The Election: It’s Due to Brexit and Smears, Not Rejection of Labour Policy

As I’m sure everyone following this blog knows, the Tories won Thursday’s election. I had a horrible feeling they would, because despite Labour’s excellent manifesto and the polls showing that support for the Labour party had risen so that they were close behind them, the Tories are masters of deception. They’ve had the mass media, almost without exception, lying to the electorate for the last ten years. And I was afraid people would believe Johnson’s lies when he said he was going to build 40 new hospitals, recruit more coppers and nurses. All demonstrable lies, but people believe them. Just as they believed the lies put out by Thatcher and Major when their reforms were causing mass unemployment, poverty and misery, and ruining the Health Service. But I was unprepared for the extent of the Tory victory. They now have a majority of 78 seats.

Like very many people, I felt extremely bitter and angry, and spent yesterday trying not to think about politics, though it was inevitable. And now I’m ready to start analysing and making sense of this mess.

Martin Odoni has already written a very good piece about it, which is well worth reading. He argues that the result had zip to do with the public rejecting Labour’s manifesto, and everything to do with Brexit. He writes

It is absolutely self-evident, and was even so as the results were unfolding, that the biggest factor in the outcome by a country mile was Brexit. At almost every turn where Labour’s support had slumped, a similar number of votes had been claimed by the Brexit Party, by the Tories, or by a combination of the two – the two parties that are most rigorously pursuing British departure from the European Union. Most of Labour’s lost support was in traditional working class territory in the north of England, the north of Wales, and the Midlands, and most particularly in areas where there was a high Leave vote in the 2016 Referendum.

Now, I have no doubt Corbyn was a factor in some voters’ rejection of Labour – no politician will be everybody’s cup of tea. And given how brutally and relentlessly he has been smeared by the media, including many supposedly ‘left-leaning’ periodicals, there can be no doubt that the wider public’s view of Corbyn has been unfairly coloured. But the general results do not offer any specific evidence of a rejection of Labour’s policy platform as a whole. The shift was very definitely Leavers, with their maddening tunnel-visioned obsession with Brexit, moving to parties boasting their determination to ‘Get Brexit done’.

Either way, a personal objection to Corbyn does not constitute an objection to his policies. When discussing the Labour Manifesto, people were usually very enthused – Labour’s polling numbers did improve substantially rather than deteriorate after it was launched – just as they had been in 2017. On that occasion, Labour scored forty per cent of the vote, and it seems unlikely that huge numbers have suddenly reversed that position.

Absolutely. When Labour were mooting their new policies – of renationalising the NHS, and taking water, electricity and the railways back into public ownership – the polls showed that the public largely supported them. Which is why the Tories and the mass media had to fall back to smearing Corbyn personally with the false accusations of anti-Semitism and that he was some kind of Communist, IRA-supporting threat. Also, analysis of the grassroots membership of UKIP also showed that they’re largely in favour of nationalising the public utilities. What they don’t like is the EU, immigration and the new morality – the acceptance of the LGBTQ community. UKIP always was much smaller than the impression given by the media, and collapsed when it spectacularly failed to win any seats at the last election. The reasonable, or at least, less bonkers section of its membership went over to Fuhrage’s Brexit party, which has now also collapsed.

I conclude from this that it’s not Labour’s manifesto that’s the problem, despite Piers Morgan and the rest of the media and Tory establishment, including the Labour right, all claiming that it’s ‘far left’. It isn’t, and never was. It’s properly centrist in the true Labour tradition of a mixed economy.

I also think it would be difficult for the Labour to win under the circumstances. The anti-Semitism smears began when the Jewish Ed Miliband was elected leader. He was far more moderate than Corbyn, but dared to utter a mild criticism of Israel and so was subjected to a storm of smears. And Maureen Lipman flounced out of the party for the first time. Corbyn was then subjected to further smears and abuse for his support of the Palestinians – which does not equal anti-Semitism nor even a hatred of Israel, except in the minds of the ultra-Zionist fanatics. This was pushed by the media and the Conservative Jewish establishment, as well as the Labour right. They also misrepresented his work helping to negotiate peace in Northern Ireland as support for terrorism and the IRA. Oh yes, and he’s also supposed to be a supporter of Islamist terrorism. There’s also a nasty touch of racism in some of the other reasons I’ve heard for people not giving him their support. I’ve been told that Labour are in favour of open borders, and would flood the country with immigrants. Diane Abbott is also bitterly hated, and among the sneers I’ve heard thrown at the Labour leader is the accusation that he had an affair with her. Well, he might have, but that’s his own business and doesn’t affect his policies or how he intends to govern. Abbott is perceived by many as anti-White. I remember the quotation the Scum attributed to her in the 1987 general election ‘All White people are racist’. I don’t know if she really said it, but I doubt she believes it now. She’s friends with Michael Portillo, so I don’t think she regards him as racist. But her continuing anti-racism means that she is perceived by some as anti-White. And this also extends to Corbyn through their close professional relationship. And then there are the antics of the Labour right and their determination to bring Corbyn down through splits, rumours of splits,  right-wing female Labour MPs trying to claim that he’s a misogynist and the endless lying and partisanship of the media.

It reminded me very much of the elections in the 1980s and the abuse and smears hurled at the Labour leaders Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock. Labour lost those elections, and Lobster has published a number of articles explaining how, under the circumstances, it would have been difficult for Labour to win.

But I don’t believe that we should give up hope just yet.

Labour’s manifesto was popular. People do want a return to the old social democratic consensus of a welfare state, mixed economy, and nationalised NHS. Prviatisation hasn’t worked, services are still crumbling and Boris will soon show how empty his promises about building hospitals and putting more money into the Health Service are. It’s just that, for the people who voted Tory in the north and midlands, Brexit took precedence.

And I feel that Corbyn has also given people hope. Before Corbyn’s election, I was extremely pessimistic about the survival of the NHS because all of the parties were participating in its privatisation. But Corbyn showed that its privatisation was not inevitable, at least at the hands of Labour. Which is no doubt partly the reason why the Labour Thatcherites are now queuing up to blame him for the election defeat. I do feel very strongly that Corbyn has set a very firm basis for a future Labour party to build on and grow from here, provided it finds a suitable successor.

I do not want another Blair.

Also, my guess is that this defeat will also make the true Labour supporters more determined. Always remember: an animal is most dangerous when it is cornered. I’ve heard tweets from people calling for new, more aggressive forms of resistance like the occupation of Jobcentres. And these will come. People will think up new ways of getting Labour’s message across.

And Boris hasn’t and won’t solve this country’s problems. Sooner or later some people, at least, will have to realise what I sham and a fraud the Tories are.

Let’s make it sooner.

Tags: 'Leave' Campaign, anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, Brexit, Brexit Party, Conservatives, Diane Abbott, Ed Miliband, Gays, General Election, IRA, Islamism, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, Margaret Thatcher, Martin Odoni, Maureen Lipman, Michael Foot, Michael Portillo, Mixed Economy, Nationalisation, Neil Kinnock, NHS, NHS Privatisation, Nigel Farage, Palestinians, Piers Morgan, Public Utilities, racism, The Sun, tony blair, UKIP, Welfare State, Zionism