In some of the more recent polls Labour has ticked up a little. Perhaps the leads of over 20 points started to spook some voters. There are certainly plenty of Labour voters who do not want to join in the Tory festival of obliteration and even if they think Jeremy Corbyn is a useless embarrassment, unfit to tie the shoelaces of John Smith, they know that Labour has deep roots and might (might) endure beyond the campaign of vandalism unleashed by a self-indulgent bunch of far-left loons.
Stephen Pollard revealed on Reaction the latest thinking on a Blairite takeover of the Lib Dems after June 8th. That may yet happen, but will the Lib Dems be happy to be taken over by Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson? They are a europhile party and a dedicated lot hardly well-disposed to Blair and the Iraq War. How would a coalition of pro-Brussels Labour Lib-Dem types win support deep in lost England? With a pledge to take the UK back into the EU?
Again and again it comes back to the awkward reality that there is the Labour party, and it has an infrastructure, a history, property and a brand. Parts of Britain are strongly Tory, but much of it is not. There must in all but the most weird circumstances be space, a need even, for a moderate non-socialist centre-left party that can give the Tories a run for their money. That’s Labour, surely?
The antidote to such positive thoughts for Labour people is to consider the absolute state of the party in 2017. I don’t just mean the way in which it is in such a deep hole in Scotland, and on the run in Wales and in parts of the north of England. I mean the basic level of ineptitude and uselessness on display from the Corbynites – those far-left crusaders who spent thirty years demanding a go and are now showing they are hopeless, or worse.
Take Diane Abbott, please. We’ve all had brain fades at one time or another. My worst was at a think tank event when asked a very simple and good question about immigration policy. Nervous in front of a sceptical crowd my mind just would not work for twenty seconds. So, I sympathise.
But I am just a hack/commentator blathering on and pontificating. I am not the person the opposition is putting forward as the next Home Secretary. Her appalling radio performance on police numbers obliterated any chance the party had of its policy getting attention. You listen to that Abbott clip and, unless you are deranged, think: these Corbynites couldn’t run a tap. You wouldn’t send them for a loaf.
Next, take John McDonnell, please. This is the man who wants to be the next Chancellor of the Exchequer, or next leader of the opposition if his mate Corbyn falls. On May Day yesterday McDonnell spoke at a rally in Trafalgar Square with the hammer and sickle flag behind him, and the flag used by the Butcher Assad. McDonnell chose to associate himself and his party with such people. He could have walked away. Instead he stood there. We have become so used to it, after more than 18 months of such antics, that it is no longer shocking.
There can be no accommodation with these Corbynites. If – and it is a big if – the Labour party can be saved after this disastrous experiment, it’ll involve recruiting hundreds of thousands of moderate Labour voters as members to out-vote the infiltrators. It’ll have to be an explicit all out war against the far left, with expulsions and life time bans for posing with a hammer and sickle flag. Nothing short of that will work.
