Peter Viney's Blog

1979, 1997 … 2019. Another big election. On what a grey and miserable day.

Was it a shock? Not entirely. When the exit poll predicted Labour at 191 seats (out of 650), I said ‘More likely 201-205.’ I said it because I thought the pollsters must have under-estimated the “London bubble” for Labour. We ran a book. Five of us.  203 seats. I won.

There were signs that Labour’s worst result since 1935 was coming. I thought they’d get trounced. The Sunday Times interviewed in Tony Blair’s old constituency, Sedgefield. A recurrent theme was Corbyn and terrorism. The quote they got was ‘a lot of people here have lads in the forces.’ They also said Blair was personable over fish’n’ chips in the pub. The unspoken point was that Corbyn wasn’t. Well, being vegetarian and teetotal does cause a chilly atmosphere in a Northern pub.

I’ve been reading Facebook posts extolling Labour and Corbyn for weeks. They all made me think of the ‘London bubble’ syndrome, or ‘Metropolitan Elite’ or  ‘Islington Socialism.’  Corbyn is MP for Islington. Blair used to live in Islington. It means London-dominated Labour. London has increasingly departed from the rest of the country, particularly on Brexit, but also on espousing theoretical socialism rather than practical socialism. Champagne socialism?

Social facilities: Almeida Theatre, Islington

Walk around Islington, through the antique market, then up the street past those boutiques to Ottolenghi for a fabulous dinner and across to the Almeida for a piece of hugely subsidized first rate theatre. Pay just a quarter the price of seats in the West End. One of the strongest Labour areas in the country. Corbyn’s margin is massive. So is John McDonnell’s, and Diane Abbott’s. These Labour high-ups make sure they represent the solidest seats. (In contrast, Boris Johnson was advised to switch from Uxbridge with its 5000 majority to somewhere rock solid safe,. He declined to do so.) Wander along the South Bank, or Brick Lane. Once deeply blighted areas of London are thriving. When I lived in London in 1970, there were areas of Camden and East London that taxis wouldn’t go. Often they wouldn’t go “south of the river.” Not any more. London benefits enormously from immigration (young, hard-working, enthusiastic cheap labour). It has a grossly unfair proportion of subsidized theatres, art galleries, museums, public spaces. It attracts the better educated. It is truly a bubble. (SEE: London-centric Theatre here)

Social Facilities, Cefn Goula, Tredegar, 200 yards from my grandparents’ old house (now demolished)

Then go to Tredegar in South Wales, my mum’s home town. Aneurin Bevan’s home town … his family were my mum’s neighbours. He is regarded as the father of the NHS. Boarded up houses and community centres. Dismal. Deserted. It’s in Blanau Gwent, where Michael Foot was MP,  and Labour managed to retain it, but with a reduced majority. That wealthy-deprived divide is one London Socialism goes on and on about. If you walk round the two areas, you just think ’people here in North London pontificate on theory, but haven’t got a clue about abandoned Britain.’ That’s why Labour was truly screwed this time.

Paul Embery, Unherd.com said:

Labour’s estrangement from its core vote predates his leadership. Long before Corbyn took over, the party had started to prioritise the agenda of the urban, liberal middle-class over that of its old working-class heartlands. As it did so, support from the latter began to ebb slowly away.

Many, many Labour voters believe Momentum was a hijack of their party by people who truly belonged in the Socialist Worker party / Militant. So do I. All those £3 memberships fees. McDonnell is the power behind Corbyn’s rather lost and puzzled face. These were the sort of people that Labour was expelling in 1983.

As the results came in, the camera went to Hilary Benn in Leeds, at last an articulate Labour voice. While politely praising Corbyn, he said the three issues on the doorstep were first and foremost Corbyn (the perception of anti-Semitism and terrorism), then Brexit … then tellingly the extent of Labour’s promises in the last few weeks. They were simply too much to be credible, and people knew that. I’ll add, they’re not daft as a brush in Yorkshire. My summing up is that that Corbyn was about to promise a rainbow in every garden with a pot of gold under the end. Well, free broadband (do I get a landline, computer and router to make it work?) Four day week (a good idea actually). Vast investment in every single desirable area. The campaign asking ‘Which do you disagree with?’ was dumb. It was like being asked ‘Would you like World Peace? Yes or no.’ ‘Would you like to halt climate change? Yes or no. ’Would you like free care for all elderly people? Yes or No.’ Obviously you say “yes” to everything. The claim that all this was “costed” was patently ludicrous.

The thing is, Corbyn was an appalling and inept leader of the opposition. You can line up every one of the 15% of British Jews who did not think him anti-Semitic and post videos of them praising him online. But 85% think he is. His antics with various terrorist organizations paint him as either anti-Semitic and pro-IRA, or dumb and lacking in empathy. People who’ve met him tell me he is a really nice guy and genuinely concerned and well-meaning. I’ll accept that. Others tell me that in his years as a backbencher, his main attributes were being contrary, stubborn and thick. So on balance, fucking stupid then.

The most ineffective leader since Michael Foot. He wavered and hedged on Brexit and failed to offer a clear Remain alternative. He didn’t oppose “Leave” as an opposition should have, and found the Labour heartlands in the north stayed with their 2016 “Leave” prejudice and so switched to Conservative (and Brexit Party, taking vital votes too). No effort was expended in persuading them of the folly of leaving the EU. Labour’s job as opposition was to present and explain why the EU was beneficial. He preferred to sit on the fence fuelling suspicion that he is a Brexiteer at heart. OK, I know the Remain ticket did Lib Dem no good, but he had three years to make a case and never even started. He can never be forgiven for handing Brexit to the Tories on a plate. Yes, he should resign immediately, but more so, John McDonnell, who pulled his puppet strings should go at once too.

Danny Savage: BBC website. In short, the electorate disliked Jeremy Corbyn to such a level that he forced many of them to turn their back on the party they had always voted for. If I had a pound for every time somebody expressed their dislike for him, I would have lots of pounds.

Me too. I voted Lib Dem this time, and saw Jo Swinson lose her seat. Her campaign defined ‘lacklustre.’ I agreed with her Remain stance, but she failed totally to win hearts and minds. She was the secondary school teacher you can’t dislike, but her lessons bore the kids shitless. The Lib Dems came third in Poole. Yet the BCP (Bournemouth Christchurch Poole) council currently have a Lib Dem leader. Until 2015 and 2017 the Lib Dems were the second party here, as in much of the South. The Conservatives and Labour, greatly aided by a media intent on drama, made it into a two horse race. The BBC and ITV and Channel Four shut the other parties out.  We NEED proportional representation. We won’t get it. The boundary changes which are due will add to the Conservative majority or at least boost their chances strongly next time. You can’t complain about that. Equal constituency sizes must be the fair choice.

Boris Johnson was facing the two wettest opponents of modern times. A lot depends on personality, and this bullshitting booster, hate him if you will, has a strong personality compared to two feeble ones.

Further comments at 4 a.m. Laura Kuenssberg (the bane of Corbynistas, unfairly I think) pointed out that Boris now had a solid majority. She did not point out that he’d cleared out the opposition to his left ruthlessly before the election, but she did suggest that he would also not be in thrall to the ERG and the fanatic Brexiteers any more. The suggestion was a very soft Brexit.

How will his Populist “One Nation” rant go? If he can follow up in working class areas and actually boost the NHS, he might be popular. As Mayor of London he apparently left all the hard work to others and operated as a cheerleader. It might work if he gets the right people doing the work, and hopefully side-lines total arseholes like Rees-Mogg.

A lot of it was ‘let’s get it all over with.’ Boris Johnson’s main appeal. I’ve spoken to passionate Remainers, who have told me that they’d prefer a soft Brexit to limbo. I disagree with ANY kind of Brexit, but I understand where they’re coming from.

Astrology? Boris is Gemini, which explains the two-faced. But Libra is his ascendant. That should indicate seeking balance … north / south, rich / poor. We’ll see.

It is Friday 13^th and a depressing morning … in a way. I was distraught when Wilson lost in 1970, distraught when Thatcher won in 1979.

The world continued to turn.

I hope it will now clear the hard left out of the Labour party and return it to its roots, OR that a new Centrist party might coalesce around the left of the Tories and the right of Labour, probably using the Lib Dem local organisation, but definitely under a new name. The rebels against their extremist leaders fared so badly – Anna Soubry, Chuka Umunna, Dominic Grieve, Luciana Berger, Frank Field. That’s one of the things that depresses me most. We need those voices.

The biggest concern is the break-up of the union. He is really going to have to work hard to placate Scotland. Can he? I doubt it.

On the positive side, friends have been totally unable to sell their houses and downsize (an issue for our age group)  in a totally dead housing market due to uncertainty. That should pick up. At least we have a certainty now, even if it is not a welcome one.

POSTSCRIPT

Friday afternoon. Jeremy Corbyn is on the radio whining that he was defeated by a media plot and no other politician had been so abused.

It’s called POLITICS. Own the problem, for it’s yours, Jeremy. Every politician has been abused … Harold Wilson, Russian spy or bonking his secretary; Edward Heath unmentionable rumours (proven untrue); Margaret Thatcher “the evil bitch”(I quote Corbynistas); John Major and Edwina Currie; Tony “Bomber” Blair and his vile wife, Cherie;  Boris “bonker” Johnson. It comes with the territory. No, you won’t get compensation from The Daily Mail for post-traumatic stress.

Own up. Resign. Get out. Fuck off. Let the party get on. You are yesterday’s man. If you do not own up (It was me. I called it wrongly. I was an unpopular dickhead) then your mental health will suffer in future. Do it now. Listen and repeat, “It was me. I was not worthy.”

NOW READ POLLY TOYNBEE’s FULL ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN (LINKED)

Some quotes from Polly Toynbee:

Labour was disastrously, catastrophically bad, an agony to behold. A coterie of Corbynites cared more about gripping power within the party than saving the country by winning the election. The national executive committee, a slate of nodding Corbynite place-persons, disgraced the party with its sectarian decisions. Once it was plain in every poll and focus group that Corbynism was electoral arsenic, they should have propelled him out, but electoral victory was secondary.

He should have gone before dawn. Any possible or impossible successor will clear out that Len McCluskey clique – Karie Murphy, Seumas Milne, Andrew Murray and others who propped up the old fellow to secure their own power base – with results worse than Michael Foot. Watch them try to divert blame onto “Corbyn-disloyalists”, remainers and ”Blairites”. Corbyn is not an amoral man. He can never tell a lie: pretending to watch the Queen’s Christmas message in the morning showed he’s not used to fibbing. He is a man without any qualities required of a leader, mental agility, articulacy, strategy, good humour or charisma.

Yet his legacy is of historic importance: he did this country profound, nation-splitting, irreparable harm. Had he led his party and the unions full tilt against Brexit, the narrowly lost referendum could have been won. But he and his cabal refused outright: when beseeched, they said they were too busy with May’s local elections. He wouldn’t share any remain platform. Festering Bennite 1970s ideologies blinded his sect from seeing Brexit was the far right’s weapon of buccaneering destruction.

The campaign was chaotic, all front-bench talent banished for fear of outshining the leader. Toe-curlingly bad performers and insignificants were punted up as loyalists, while serious heavyweights Keir Starmer and Emily Thornberry might as well have been shut in Johnson’s freezer. Even John McDonnell, better by far than Corbyn, was largely kept from the cameras. Corbyn’s sectarian grudges prevented any effort to heal the party’s rift, leaving immense talent wasted on the back benches.