This is a guest post by Phil Carmel
While science has now conclusively annihilated the myth that lemmings commit mass suicide by jumping off cliffs, the same is sadly not true of Labour moderates.
The rot already set in last year when despite provoking mass Shadow Cabinet resignations and commanding three quarters of the Parliamentary Labour Party, they absolutely bottled it. Rather than declare UDI, elect their own PLP leader and become Her Majesty’s Official Opposition, they chose to half-heartedly pick a guaranteed losing alternative to Jeremy Corbyn in an ill-conceived and even worse-planned leadership election.
Not surprisingly, Corbyn smashed Owen Smith in the subsequent vote, strengthening his position in the party and establishing beyond any doubt that he would lead Labour into the General Election.
Bereft of ideas and equally bereft of principle, the vast majority of the PLP then dutifully walked into the Brexit lobby, three-line whipped as only masochists like them could enjoy, into voting for Article 50. Some London Labour MPs, and Chris Lewis in Remain Norwich, concerned for their future skins in heavily anti-Brexit constituencies, sort of rebelled, but nobody really buys it they did it out of principle. Meanwhile, moderate Labour MPs across the North and Midlands cravenly sold out, fearful of the UKIP menace which ultimately never came and was always likely to dissipate post-Brexit.
But the greatest delusion of all was the unique strategy of revolutionary defeatism they then chose to adopt for this General Election. Corbyn is toxic with the electorate, they told us. It’s going to be a wipe out. Just give him enough rope. Let him OWN the catastrophe.
And oh boy, is he going to own it.
The moderates chose to keep their heads down, mouth all the right platitudes about party unity and general elections and so on, pledge everlasting fealty to the party, button down the Broad Church hatches and wait for Jezza to fall on his sword on June 9. Sometimes, the cold cynics even mentioned, sotto voce, that Jezza was going to lose anyway, so any constituents could harmlessly help them further their careers without the danger of Corbyn ever becoming prime minister, while backing it up with the inferred nonsense that moderate Labour voters should vote for them to help get rid of Corbyn on June 9, or maybe to fight antisemitism in the Labour party, or other such guff.
And bingo, given that they offered no progressive alternative to right-wing Toryism or to the frankly regressive Third Worldist and dictator-appeasing Corbyn, the people realised they only had one choice on the left and came flooding back to the Labour party, even the one led by Jeremy Corbyn. In the last few days, Labour has even started sweeping up the few Remaining LibDem voters, in much the same way the Tories swept up the UKIP ultra-Brexiteers.
The result is that whatever happens on June 8, Corbyn isn’t going anywhere on June 9. He looks like getting more votes and vote share than Ed Miliband did in 2015 and could quite possibly beat Tony Blair’s score in 2005.
Invigorated, he’s staying put, the party firmly in the hands of the left, the moderates muzzled and awaiting deselection.
And given the fact that the whole Corbyn experiment was never intended to win in the first place but rather to gain control of the party, it’s absolutely mission accomplished.
The Labour MPs who destroyed the Labour party aren’t on the left, they’re on the right. And their stupid footsoldiers in the constituencies, pounding the streets and banging on the doors for a vote « just for the local MP, not for Corbyn » are really no more than Jezza’s useful idiots.
