I woke up this morning to the dreadful news that Labour lost Copeland last night. I’ve been meaning to write a blog of this kind for the last couple of weeks but today I felt forced to set paid work aside and speak out: Should Jeremy Corbyn select someone on his own side of the party who is much younger and less sullied by past politics, and anoint him or her as leader?
The right wing of the party and the rest of the commentariat will be peeing their pants with glee over Copeland, and honestly I feel sick to the pit of my gut over it. Perhaps now we on the left of the party need to have a discussion about someone of our own kin replacing JC at the head of the party?
The facts
Labour had its arse kicked at Copeland last night.
The polls are showing Labour 15% behind, despite Theresa May being blatantly incompetent. I can’t see how she even wins her own seat let alone gains 15% for the Tories in the polls.
Past politics
Jeremy has had a long and somewhat controversial career as a backbench MP. He has had a policy of saying what needs to be said when his leadership ducked it in fear of the right wing mainstream media.
There are two filthy words in the British dialect. ‘Islamic terrorism’ and ‘Irish terrorism’. I have real problems with Israel and the Palestinians. What they are doing is disgusting. However, JC aligned himself not with the moderate Palestinians but with their more extreme bedfellows, Hamas. For better or worse the electorate think in simple language and in shorthand. The right wing labelled Hamas as ‘Islamic terrorists’ and JC has now been tarred with the same brush.
My own family has real issues with the IRA that goes back to the 1930’s. I won’t go into detail – suffice to say we have had more direct interactions with them than your average plumber in Birmingham. I don’t like them much, but even with Ulster blood in me I felt we needed a resolution of some kind. JC spoke to them direct. The plumber in Birmingham will read that JC is a ‘terrorist sympathiser’.
The plumber in Birmingham will feel as if his business is being threatened by ‘Polish people’. Due to them he might say, his rates have fallen. He might say that with some justification. From my own perspective I see the UK as a nation of mongrels with no one completely ‘British’ except in their belief system and their love of our culture. You cannot be ‘genetically British’. Jeremy Corbyn’s nuanced stance is infuriating not to me but to the plumber in Birmingham. The mainstream media are calling him ‘pro immigration’ when to be ‘pro immigration’ for the working classes that sway between Labour and UKIP is intolerable.
This is not a Blairite rant
I’ve cited three major issues above that are damaging to the party. I have set out the polls. I have shown that despite the Labour Party now being the biggest political party in Europe in terms of membership numbers, we are going to have our arses kicked for years to come. To be in government in 2020 we need to change that now. We need a 15% lead in the polls even now.
I am a Momentum supporter and on the Left of the Labour Party. I am sick of hearing the right of the party snipe and crow when we get beaten. Theirs is not the solution. We have a man who is too easily tarred by things that will stick in your plumber in Birmingham’s throat.
Clean hands
What if JC anointed someone to replace him at the head of the party who had only been in Westminster for 5-7 years? Who hadn’t been on the wrong side of history for decades as a rebel backbencher? Who the media couldn’t dig through their past and find all sorts of nuggets that the plumber in Birmingham would use as shorthand for ‘terrorist supporter’, ‘Britain hater’, and so on?
My feeling is that the mainstream media have done such a good job on JC that a new, fresh face with very similar politics may shut the right of the party up, heal division, and draw UKIP supporters back to Labour.
By all means attack me for this. Please don’t get personal. I love everything JC stands for and hate the right wing attacks on him and his views. I just wonder if the time has come for a clean pair of hands to steer Labour away from general election humiliation toward Downing Street and to enact the policies we so badly need in the UK – to start looking after the people at the bottom as well as the billionaires at the top.
Richard Shrubb
