The Corbyn Moment - "Things can...and they will...change"

Jeremy Corbyn MP has been Labour leader for a week. Last week's results were a truly sensational victory. Mr Corbyn won the contest in the first round, garnering 59.5% of the vote. The ranking of candidates was slightly different to how I predicted it. Andy Burnham MP did better than I thought he would. It would seem suggestions of a last-minute surge towards Yvette Cooper MP were campaign-bubble gossip. Despite exceeding my expectations, Mr Burnham was substantially behind Mr Corbyn, and Yvette Cooper was slightly behind Mr Burnham.

As expected, Liz Kendall MP came fourth, at a paltry 4.5%. Mr Burnham and Ms. Cooper represented the soft-left wing, whereas Ms Kendall represented the definitive Blairite faction. The voters were having none of it though. In Mr Corbyn, they saw a candidate who could reverse the social democratic conversion the party had undergone, since Neil Kinnock's leadership began in 1983.

The breakdown of votes is shown below, and shows all three major groupings were Corbyn-leaning. If you can gleam one thing from the results, it's that Jeremy Corbyn has an unquestionable mandate. The 2010 leadership election was predicted by some to be a slim victory by Blairite David Miliband, with his brother Ed just behind. In reality, the affiliates section (unions and other groups linked to Labour) helped take Ed over the 50% finishing line in the final round. The party chose a soft-left person over the Blairite contender by the narrowest of margins. Losing in 2015 has convinced Labour voters that they were not left-wing enough, whereas the 2010 leadership election was an opportunity for the party to reaffirm its attachment to New Labour. The country as a whole has quite likely shifted to the right since 2010 on a plethora of issues (the EU/welfare/immigration) but Labour has moved in the opposite direction.

Data provided by YouGov

It's folly to try and directly compare the 2010 and 2015 results, given the £3 sign-up voters were a whole new category in 2015, introduced during Ed Miliband's reforms of future contests. What you can do is compare the reaction, post-result. Ed Miliband was of an unknown quantity when he won the leadership in 2010. His victory was unexpected, but right up until the 2015 election results flooded in, many believed he could actually win. He had been close to Gordon Brown since the 1990s, became an MP in 2005 and was elevated by Mr Brown to the post of Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in 2008-10.

Mr Corbyn has had no frontbench roles, since becoming an MP in 1983. He's rebelled against the Labour party over 500 times in Parliament. Despite a majority of all 3 groups showing support, prominent Labour MPs have snubbed serving under Mr Corbyn. Rachel Reeves MP was on maternity leave over the summer, and has since declared she intends to return to the backbenches. One-time contender Chuka Umunna MP was not offered a seat at the table, whilst Tristram Hunt MP and Liz Kendall amongst others have ruled out being in the new shadow cabinet.

The signs of a Jeremy Corbyn victory seemed almost assured when Tom Watson MP was announced as the new deputy leader. He was famously instrumental in Tony Blair's departure from No.10 in 2007. Some have rushed in recent hours to dub the Corbyn victory as the "death of New Labour". Headlines last weekend included "Bye Bye Labour!" and even "Red and Buried". In actual fact, the destruction of the New Labour project actually happened when Tony Blair resigned in 2007. Since 2007, the party has been soul-searching, and seems to have turned to its roots. It will be interesting to see how the polls change, once they account for the Corbyn Factor. One or two Corbyn-specific YouGov polls have already started to show most of the public don't actually expect Mr Corbyn to be Prime Minister in 2020.

One week into Corbyn's leadership, and it hasn't been easy. John McDonnell MP was appointed Shadow Chancellor, and almost immediately attracted criticism for comments about the IRA and Margaret Thatcher. He apologised for the comments, but appeared flustered in his first Question Time appearence since his appointment. It's understood that the Shadow Cabinet announcements were delayed, due to arguments about the appointment, and some MPs refused to serve as a result. The verdict is still out on Mr Corbyn so far, but a week is a long time in politics, and his first one has not exactly been a dazzling success.

Ed Miliband's five years at the helm was an inadvertent spasm in the party's history, which unexpectedly nudged the party out of its New Labour comfort zone. You could say the party drifted somewhat. Some Blairite tendencies now and then, but accompanied by leftist ones, not seen for a long time, over those five years. The party had a vacuum at its heart during the Miliband years. It knew it wanted to leave the Blair/Brown years behind, but it wasn't ready to define itself all over again just yet. Jeremy Corbyn had an appealing idea to fill that vacuum, and subsequently won the top post.

At the moment, the new leader is being hammered, and critics are preoccupied with various controversial comments. Focus will soon shift to what they're saying now. The disappointing performance of the first week will be seen by supporters as growing pains, but critics will say it's the start of what could be Labour's shortest leadership tenure. Let's see how week two goes.

Till next time,

P

Left Foot Forward?

Welcome to my new politics blog. I've been intending to set this up for a while now. I'll try to make regular posts, and I expect I will be, given the sea change in British politics, since May.

Today is the day the Labour Party's 2015 leadership election comes to a head. At the time of writing, the deadline for all votes cast is mere minutes away. It is going to be one of the most edge-of-the-seat political events of the decade. It is an election, where the result could quite possibly define a generation. If the leader is not able to recover the Labour Party's fortunes, after a shocking defeat in May this year, the Conservatives may extend their hold on No. 10 well into the 2020s. This would put the current Conservative administration close to the tally of the Thatcherite/Major years. In other words, Labour electoral wilderness.

Such a prospect would be devastating for Labour. Under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's New Labour government, the party held power for thirteen years. David Cameron and a successor holding office until at least 2025 would reverse all thirteen of these years, and then some.

The polls up to now suggest that the MP for Islington, Jeremy Corbyn is expected to win the leadership. The BBC's latest Panorama episode, dated 7th September revealed that Jeremy Corbyn nearly didn't make it onto the list, and was 5 nominations short at one point. Two minutes before the deadline, MPs got him over the finish line; not necessarily out of genuine support, but to ensure a broad spectrum of debate. John McTernan dubbed these MPs "morons" on a July edition of Newsnight.

Liz Kendall MP is seen by many as the Blairite candidate, and her polling has been disappointingly low. At a time when the party is grieving, it's likely they don't want to listen to a candidate telling them they must appeal to Tory or UKIP voters, to win back power. Liz Kendall released a campaign ad on YouTube a few weeks ago, but it attracted ridicule from some, by depicting Liz in an office by herself, solemnly typing a message and pacing around the room. There are even memes of it now. Not what was intended at all. Online supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, dubbed Corbynistas, have been criticised for bombarding the Kendall campaign. They have thrown a load of slurs at her, calling her Tory, a witch, and one called her a better-looking Margaret Thatcher.

When the votes are finally counted and the leader is announced, I hope people don't let this sort of thing happen again. It's dispiriting to watch  a party of opposition attacking itself. We need an opposition to scrutinize the Tory-majority government, albeit a wafer-thin majority government. I'm not terribly convinced that the Andy Burnham campaign has enough momentum to make a last minute surge and take us all by surprise. Mr Burnham ran in the 2010 leadership election, and came fourth out of the five candidates, meaning he was eliminated only in the second round. I would expect to see him come third this time round, ahead of Liz Kendall.

What I do think could happen is that Yvette Cooper could just about pull off an unexpected victory, based on strong first preference votes, combined with high numbers of second preferences. One snag is that a last-minute surge is highly speculative. It was claimed last week that half of all the voters had not cast their votes yet. Others believe most of the votes were already cast, before Yvette Cooper took centre stage, over the refugee crisis in mainland Europe. If she wins, it could be close.

As a simple general point, Labour cannot hope to win if it directs all of its anger and resources against its own leadership candidates. It's simply not acceptable to allow this kind of infighting, when you're a potential party of government. It's the sort of behaviour that makes people start to think, "thank goodness this bunch aren't in office anymore, look how nasty they still are". The next Parliament is going to see the state rolled back on an unprecedented scale. The economy is in a sweet spot at the moment, and the government's cuts are now being pursued on purely ideological grounds. The Prime Minister entered office in 2010, promising to save the country from becoming the next Greece, and we're supposed to believe that all is well, but there are still doubts lingering at the back of our minds. The EU referendum is on the horizon, and continuing austerity will likely make social inequality worse over the coming years.

The government of today is not going to last forever. Ever government has its Achilles Heel. Labour has to be in a position to pick up the pieces if needs be. All I would say for now is that, based on reading and watching how the Tories and Labour fared, in previous periods of opposition, they required a charismatic youthful leader, in order to finally win an election, after multiple attempts. Let's hope Labour picks the right person, whoever they are, this time round. Keep your eyes peeled, as I'll hope to write up a post-election update. See you then!

P