So the Labour Party elected a new leader and shock horror it was the one who had all the grass roots support, the one who believed in something, who hasn’t just been ticking boxes on a long planned route to power, whose credentials relied on integrity, honesty and principle. What were they thinking! Won’t someone think of the Middle Englanders!
The most interesting outcome is the outpouring of concern coming from right wing media and ‘moderate’ conservatives/middle englanders. How Labour are ‘making themselves unelectable’, or ‘vanishing into an 80’s parody’ of themselves. But it is nearly always framed within an ‘if only’ context.
It is almost like they recognise how shitty the prospect of a Conservative government is, how unpityingly amoral and exploitative they will be, that they are begging for an alternative to vote for. The sense is that they would vote Labour, if only the party were just amoral enough for them to be favoured by their policy. That raising taxes for the super rich is fine, but raising tax for middle income earners is abhorent and they’d rather see benefits cut to the most vulnerable in our society before paying an extra penny for front line services like the NHS.
It’s the delusion that being in the middle makes you right, whitewashing over the reality that the moral centre is often an amoral position. For instance, where is the middle ground between equality and racial discrimination?
And so people find Corbyn unelectable because he is willing to take a stance on subjects that deviate from the social normative, that he consistently tries to be honest and true to his beliefs (a criticism I really enjoyed was when decades old quotes from Corbyn’s team were trawled up by Conservatives – yes, the statements were a little radical, but the chief criticism was that it somehow demonstrated that they never anticipated being in power… that they had just spoken their minds on subjects, rather than maintain a poker face until public opinion was clear enough to follow).
I hope he does well, that he is given a chance – listened to and supported by his party – because this is the shift we need, from politics of power to politics of honesty. My concern is that he will never be taken seriously because he looks like that old sociology teacher you had, that you knew you could fob off with crappy excuses and a large portion of the population have never grown out of that 14 year old mindset (see every Tory MP ever).