It really is the season to be jolly! Or, at least, time to be mildly optimistic about the months ahead.
I know we’ve yet to survive the presidential inauguration: that fateful moment when Donald Trump puts one tiny hand on the Bible and another on the nuclear trigger. Then, as the mushroom cloud clears over the crater that was once a wind farm blighting the view from a Scottish golf course, we’ll still have Brexit to enjoy with our gap-toothed Toblerones and the realisation that Lego costs more than actual house bricks. Yet on the bright side, we also have the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn being relaunched as a ‘leftwing populist’.
Okay, stop the giggling at the back. That might sound as appealing as selling the Titanic as a ‘submersible cruise around the North Atlantic’ but the ensuing disaster won’t be anywhere near as bad. Jeremy will simply sashay through the curtain and reveal a new look for Spring; his Aladdin Sane to the Ziggy Sawdust human / scarecrow hybrid that’s currently scaring the public from voting for Labour. No longer will he wear the trawler captain hat, the cheap biro-leaking-in-the-pocket shirt, and the history lecturer jacket with early-era Woody Allen slacks. He will instead resemble every bit of the modern populist: good suits, better jokes, and the ability to smack all kinds of merry hell out of a fact-based argument.
To Labour, the idea of giving a makeover to Corbyn is obviously appealing. Here they already have the base model radical with so much ordinariness that he should have every advantage when it comes to appealing to the ordinary British voter. Add on a few of the optional extras and a few go-faster stripes and surely they will have themselves a winner…
Except there is one small catch. Isn’t Jeremy Corbyn already a leftwing populist? Does he not, in fact, resemble a checklist of the recognisable populist tropes?
* Sets out to appeal to non-establishment grassroots voters? Tick.
* Refusal to play conventional politics? Tick.
* Peculiar fashion sense? Tick.
* Overly simplistic world view? Tick.
* Odd mannerisms? Tick.
* Distain towards the media? Tick times two.
Given the rise of populism everywhere, the pressing question one might ask is: just why is Jeremy Corbyn doing so poorly in the polls? Why is Labour polling worse than the establishment party when establishment parties are taking some historic smackdowns?
The answer, perhaps, has something to do with the notion ‘leftwing populism’. What does it even mean?
Populism on the Right has found traction by offering an antidote to something the public had found unsatisfactory for a very long time. Right-wing populism is in no small part a response to political correctness; that ill-defined attitude which amounts to a prohibition on language and, by extension, thought. The PC group-think was itself a product of late twentieth century academia, where leftish theoreticians, such as Jacques Derrida, were championed by generations of young radicals. ‘If language encodes our values’, they whispered in pub snugs across the land, ‘then by changing our language we can also change our values!’ In other words, if you never speak about the differences of ethnicity and gender, then those differences disappear, as would the problems associated with them. The public, in their wisdom, never shared that idealism but the discontent they felt was rarely manifested in national politics. It required an issue such as immigration to push it onto the national stage, where populists could create alternative realities steeped in the language of nation and identity.
The challenge now for any would-be populist on the Left is to find a similarly emotive fallacy that stems from the Right and disaffects the broader public. Yet what would that be? What mistaken belief system, beloved by the Right, could those on the Left oppose? What ‘lie’ is so firmly rooted in the establishment that Corbyn could say something that sounds fresh and striking to the ears of the ordinary voter?
Arguably, the only establishment ‘truth’ Corbyn’s leftwing populism could challenge is that of the free market. It took a generation before the anti-EU forces built enough steam to break from the political fringes. Anti-capitalism might well be doing the same, emerging as the more buttoned-up ‘post-capitalism’. Cobyn could mimic Bernie Sanders whose campaign railed against the excesses of corporate America and the complicit nature of the political system.
If that is the kind of leftwing populism that Corbyn envisages, he is gambling on the public becoming more engaged about the points where the free market is struggling: zero hour contracts, denuded rights for workers, restrictions on unions, and the wider problems we face as technology increasingly replaces jobs. Labour’s problem is that there is little to suggest that public disquiet is that widespread.
It means that Labour face a similar problem to UKIP back in the 1990s when they had to generate the context for Brexit. Love him or loathe him (hint: one is easier than the other), Nigel Farage forced that issue into the mainstream. There is little evidence to suggest that Jeremy Corbyn is similar placed to do the same. Populism is usually channelled through potent personalities and Farage, Trump, and, even Sanders, became demagogues to their followers. They each have that spit-in-your-eye bravado possessed by those who emerge from the political fringes to leave us spellbound with self-evident truths wrapped in fist-sized fallacies. Every time that Nigel Farage cries ‘They’ll never tell you this but I will!’ it is hard even for those who oppose him to not feel a vestigial pull of conviction. The same is true of Donald Trump every time he points to the media and accuses them of lies.
Corbyn, to his credit, is no demagogue. Corbyn’s success with Labour grassroots instead lies in a personal strength that is sometimes indistinguishable from stubbornness. He has called for a kinder politics. His performances in PMQs have been sober and are one of the areas where he’s been successful as Labour leader. He is already at one with the British public on many social issues such as mental health provision and homelessness but it is also damning to say that ‘he means well’ because meaning well also means being wrong on other fairly major issues. Like many on the Left, he over intellectualises matters of morality – wars, terrorism, and murder – meaning his compassionate politics are often ridden with contradictions. It’s not that he lacks authenticity as much he can look authentically misled; a problem compounded by choices he has made in terms of his cabinet and manner in which he has alienated moderate Labour. This compassionate, kind, and socially aware leader is also the head of a party split by factional fighting that occasionally breaks out into open riot. Under Corbyn, Labour have become a parody of student politics, dominated by Owen Jones lookalikes with their thin and limply knotted ties. It is the party of 1970s union officials whose plain talking has risen them well above their talents. Labour now means the leadership of Dianne Abbott and John McDonnell, ably unassisted by a cabinet of unknowns.
Those on the Right look at Corbyn and see a man making foolish decisions. On the Left, they see a man loyal to his principles. Both assessments are equally correct. Jeremy Corbyn might well be too principled to make a success of his peculiarly quiet and sombre populism.
