Discover more from REACTION
Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn? What the hell is going on?
The British are famous for going mad as soon as the sun comes out and the mercury rises beyond a certain level on the thermometer. Men starved for most of the year of vitamin D start taking their clothes off in the street, revealing a vast acreage of pasty, white skin. In Newcastle the effect is quite frightening. In Glasgow it is even worse. In Paisley, where I’m from originally, you don’t want to imagine the scenes. Everywhere, from Esher to Easterhouse, from Birmingham to Belfast, drink consumption goes up and we all start to complain that it is too darn hot, in the same whining voice we were using a fortnight ago to say it was freezing. As I said, hot weather drives the Brits slightly round the bend.
Even so, it seems worse than ever this time as the country swelters amid election excitement, if not quite full-on election fever. A dynamite poll for The Times by YouGov published today showed the Tory lead down to only five points. Only a few weeks ago the Conservatives had a lead of around twenty points over Labour. Jeremy Corbyn is closing in on Theresa May. The UK is back in hung parliament territory and we must contemplate the appalling reality that the country could soon have a new Prime Minister drawn from the anti-British, magic money tree extremist wing of a once great and patriotic Labour party. What the hell is going on?
Right. Everyone calm down, please.
First question: are the polls correct? Yes they are, but only up to a point. Labour began the election miles behind and it has fought a clever campaign, pushing “free money” policies such as scrapping tuition fees, which is the most stupid idea (impoverishing universities) this side of Jeremy Corbyn’s appeasement foreign policy.
In contrast, the Tory campaign opted for one of the most stupid initiatives ever undertaken by a party ahead in an election.
The old adage that party manifestos, those lists of soothing aspirations and questionable promises, do not make any difference, turns out to be bunkum, like many an old adage in this febrile era. The Tories produced an absolute stinker of a manifesto.
They by mistake declared war on ageing homeowners, who did not like it and who now think that if they need social care they will lose their house immediately. The detail does not matter. This is elementary, gut instinct, not on our side stuff. In a too clever by half push into Labour territory, Team May took on its own voters and botched the u-turn to the extent that anger is mixed with confusion and grumpiness.
Add to the mix some disquiet in the country that the complacent Tories were running away with the election too easily, and you have the conditions for Labour closing the gap and Tory concern.
So, Corbyn has moved up. There is one important qualification, however, which suggests the real Tory lead is wide. Polls, pollsters admit, are good at measuring broad shifts and trends, and mapping the underlying moves on attitudes to leadership. But they are terrible at measuring turnout or likelihood to vote.
Corbyn’s surge is among young voters (and women too). But the young are peculiar in elections. They get excited, and then masses of them don’t vote:
Picture the scene in a middle-class household…
Youngster: “Basically, I’m like, totally going to vote for Jeremy Corbyn.”
Dad: “Really? Even though he would tax me, your mother, and you, out of house and home and would have shut down the private school we scrimped and saved to send you to?”
Youngster: “I told you to send me to the comp with my mates.”
Dad: “Whatever.”
Youngster: “Yeah, you’re just a banker and a total breadhead. Corbyn’s totally, like, the change we need. When is the election? I don’t want to miss it.”
Dad: “Yesterday. It was yesterday. The Tories won.”
Youngster: “Oh. Like, oh. Can I have some money?”
The likelihood is that the Corbyn surge will frighten older voters. And far fewer young voters will turn out than they say they will. That has tended to be the case, and it helps explain why Cameron beat Miliband last time.
Incidentally, after the election we need to talk about how so many youngsters seem to have adopted Corbynite, anti-market views. The shift leftwards was one of the reasons this artisan little site Reaction was launched – to make a different case, as well as to provide some entertainment (hopefully) for you the readers and us the writers.
The Corbynite surge makes one think, though. It is almost as though the Tories should have been making the case for markets and conservative ideas with much more clarity and force, and mapping out aspirational policies to help the young on tax, student debt and housing.
Indeed, the problem goes even deeper than that. It’s almost as though there is a price to pay for all that ideological cross-dressing by Team May, and shape-shifting in which the terms of reference of the left are accepted. In this way Team May talks of “the workers.” That is divisive and alien to the Tory tradition – either in the One Nation sense or the Thatcherite sense. A finance director works. A delivery driver works. Only Jeremy Corbyn has never done a useful day’s work in his life.
Anyway, a victory for Jeremy Corbyn is not likely. His personal ratings are dire and the switch of UKIP voters pushes the Tories up above 40% into very comfortable territory.
But afterwards, when the Tory machine has been cranked up during the bank holiday, and the real “short” election campaign begins on Tuesday, after that – if victory for the Tories is the outcome – there will I suspect be the most almighty series of rows, over the direction and structure of the government and its policies. Brexit may turn out to be the easy part for Theresa May.
And now, some bad news, although good news for the brilliant Rachel Cunliffe, deputy editor of Reaction. She is leaving to become comment editor of CityAM. I won’t make one of those cringeworthy tributes as favoured in American journalism when there is a change in the newsroom: “X has done some of the greatest editing and headline writing in the course of human history, and we remain in awe of his skills as a human being, hero and transport correspondent.”
No, this is Britain. But Rachel is brilliant and she will be missed. No, it’s ok, I’ve just got some dust in my eye.
The daily email continues from Tuesday under new authorship. And there are more signings for the Reaction team to be announced shortly.
Have a good weekend.
Subscribe to REACTION
Iain Martin and the team make sense of the news, providing commentary and analysis on the stories that matter in politics, geopolitics, economics and culture.