Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

As many of those folk who have known me for a long time, and especially in close-up, will already know, I am a very strong believer in a healthy democracy. This needs at least two (but hopefully not too many) political parties with credible policies and a reasonable hope of being elected to government.

We have increasingly lacked that proper structure here in Britain, which is why I have (as many readers will be aware) been playing a small part in trying to fix the issue. For the past nearly seven years this has meant trying to find a replacement main opposition party to the Conservatives – whose ongoing tenure in government seemed to me assured for many years to come – in the knowledge that Labour were going to more or less destroy themselves in about half a dozen years.

As I told people in the second half of 2010 and later, I knew that Labour had set themselves upon an irreversible path to their own demise once they had installed Ed[ward] Miliband as their party leader – though I doubt any of them believed me back then. The party was turning to the left, and then some. Now, of course, those people perhaps understand at least something of why I made that bold claim, and with such conviction.

Fast-forward to today and what do we find?

Labour continued to turn leftward, eventually and inevitably installing the real party-killer (Ed-M was just the catalyst that made it not only possible, but just about unavoidable) Jeremy Corbyn. It had to happen. Equally predictably, this move allowed the ever-lurking out-and-out Communists to infiltrate and dominate the party, using the movement they created called Momentum. Their long-awaited day had come!

Thus today's Labour party has become the wolf in sheep's clothing, and is busy transforming the party from within. The parliamentary party has, as they'd have expected, become a serious problem, because of all those pesky 'moderate', 'Blairite' or 'blue Labour' MPs as the current leadership (and especially Momentum) brands them.

Thus we are seeing a number of more 'suitable' candidates for the upcoming General Election being parachuted in to safe Labour seats, while the less safe seats are becoming more marginal in the present political climate so will probably be voted out of office anyway – not a significant issue, then.

The Labour party manifesto for this election reads like something that wouldn't have gone amiss in former Communist East Germany – and its supposedly draft version was leaked to two news outlets so that it became in effect de facto policy. As I posted on social media less than a day ago, the idea was to make it effectively impossible for the party to materially change anything – and indeed at the meeting to discuss any such changes that was held later in the day, it was reported as just 'tinkering' and making no substantive alterations.

Thus the Corbynite faction have what they have sought all along: the leader they wanted, the now-official policies they wanted, and their own/preferred people forming a majority of their parliamentary party a month from now.

This was the real reason they embraced the 'snap' election so readily: not to win it (they knew that wasn't possible) but to transform Labour into a genuine Communist Party disguised as something else, even if the camouflage isn't exactly fooling most people. Still, they have enough supporters for their needs, considerable evidence of which I continually find in various places.

Such a wolf can never again be a suitable alternative party to the Conservatives. As I said seven years ago, Labour had set itself upon a one-way street to destruction: there can be no way back. Perhaps, as some have surmised, they will split as they once did when the SDP was formed by 'the Gang of Four' more than a generation ago. If so, though, it will be for the same actual reason (i.e. not the public face) which will be currently-elected members seeking to avoid losing their seats – self-interest, in other words, so this would not make a breakaway party trustworthy.

With UKIP now losing support hugely, the party falling apart internally (which has been going on for some time now) and rapidly becoming a 'dead end', as I labelled them a few years back; the Greens continuing to fool nobody so with barely three percent support; and a slowly resurgent Liberal Democrat party as the only other even vaguely realistic alternatives; it is the last of these that – for all its faults – looks like being the only conceivable future opposition party out of those currently in existence.

What about possible new parties, though?

The wealthy UKIP financial supporter Arron Banks has been rumoured to be creating a new party, a kind of UKIP Mk 2 that is provisionally being called "The Patriotic Alliance" – but all has gone very quiet on that front for the past two months; i.e. from well before the snap election was called, so the current hiatus wasn't caused by that.

So, in conclusion, what we expect to happen in the next few months? Theresa May's Conservatives look set for a landslide win in next month's General Election. After that, Labour might or might not split, Arron Banks' new party might or might not be launched, and the Lib Dems might or might not continue to climb up the pecking order. It looks like interesting times ahead!

How to 'Jezz' It Up – or not!

Labour party leader Jeremy 'Jezza' Corbyn has been almost invisible for several weeks as I write this, reappearing just a day or so ago with what at least one of his spokesmen has suggested is to be a 'Trump-style' re-launch. This immediately struck me as another big step on the road to Labour's seemingly inevitable oblivion, at least as a credible political party seeking election to national government.

His (or his aides') thinking has probably been along the lines of: "It obviously worked for Trump, so those same lines should do it for me [or "him"] too!"

Wrong! The USA has been suffering all manner of issues during the Obama years, some of which came to wide public realisation and understanding during the second such term. It has certainly become widespread knowledge during the last couple of years or so, thanks to trusted sources outside the mainstream media – sources such as Drudge Report, Breitbart and of course InfoWars & Prison Planet.

Also the alleged attempted rigging of the presidential election in favour of Hillary Clinton has been widely reported on those and other sites, as have other related matters.

Thus Trump's messages to the voters of America were not only appropriate, but resonated with them He is also very much non-Establishment, which is something else the voters lapped up, as they were sick of being conned by the Establishment – which in the States is more-or-less a two-headed beast, near enough running both significant political parties there.

To transfer those same messages (nearly verbatim) into our political arena just doesn't work, as the quoted snippets in this piece illustrate. The full speech is a lot more telling, though I haven't (so far) found a video of it online.

It doesn't take a genius to see why those Trump-like lines don't work when transplanted to our country and even to our politics. Oh yes, we too have an Establishment, and their aims, objectives and methods are at least similar to those in the USA in some regards. However, although they are supporting the Left primarily, exactly as in the States, they are also trying to control the Right – with very mixed success.

Thus this particular re-launch seems almost certain to backfire, as is discussed here.

Meanwhile, Labour's fortunes are sinking, not only in opinion polls but also in by-election results and especially regarding council seats. The Liberal Democrats are making hay while the sunshine switches away from Labour, even taking seats in Labour heartlands via huge swings.

Here's one such result from a council by-election just this past week...

Sandhill (Sunderland) result, council by-election on 12-01-2017:

LDEM: 45.0% (+41.5)
LAB: 25.0% (-29.9)
UKIP: 18.7% (-7.2)
CON: 10.0% (-5.7)
GRN: 1.3% (+1.3)

Just look at the size of that swing away from (mainly) Labour to the Lib Dems! Sunderland is, unsurprisingly, a traditional Labour heartland – but perhaps no longer.

This and other results over the past year might well be giving an indication that Labour's seat losses in the next General Election could be even more severe than commentators and psephologists have already been saying, and closer to my own prediction (which I originally made nearly a year ago, and haven't changed) of 120 to 130 Labour seats come May 2020.

Re-arranging the Deckchairs

Three months or so after Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn appointed his initial Shadow Cabinet, already an upheaval is under way as that entity is being reshuffled at this very moment.Some has already happened, no doubt more is to come. A running 'blog is being run here.

As many expected, this has become an exercise in removing at least some of those who voted against the Dear Leader's wishes in the free vote (i.e. not Whipped) on military intervention in Syria – although the initial perceived threat to Hilary Benn (who made the strongest case for intervention, from the Labour side of the Commons) was later dismissed but has today re-appeared.

My feeling is that he has to go if the Corbyn leadership stance is not to be weakened, especially during this reshuffle. We shall find out this afternoon!

Barnsley East MP Michael Dugher has written about what he and others have termed a 'revenge reshuffle', calling it neither good politics nor the supposed Corbyn 'new politics'. He is right – and in fact his piece is (perhaps surprisingly) well worth a read, though one does need to grit one's teeth when reading the predictable references to the supposedly 'wicked Tories' and just ride over all of that.

However, the point of it was – as Dan Hodges has long been aware, and has written about – for Corbyn to stamp his personal authority on his leadership of the party, and in the process eliminate most if not all of the significant dissent that had been occurring in recent times. It is useful to read Dan's piece to realise just how effective this has been.

This is not to say that the whole was handled well, especially by 'Jez' himself – unless his intention was to produce the exact side-effects that Iain Martin documents here. As one sometimes finds when looking at something sideways-on, there might have been a deliberate purpose to handling all this the way he has done, camouflaged by the broad perception that he was botching it as usual. Perhaps yes, perhaps no...

Overall, this is a moment in the Labour party's long history that will be marked as a turning point, one way or another, and whether it survives as a viable influence could very well be being determined right now. That old saying about 're-arranging the deckchairs on The Titanic' springs to mind: whatever is done on the inside, without regard to the world beyond, will make no difference to the party's sinking below the political waves.

Divide and Not Rule

Further to the Corbyn/Labour situation, this short item at Political Betting shows how dire things already are. Bearing in mind that it was the public who overwhelmingly selected Corbyn to be the new party leader, not Labour MPs, and it is that same pool of people who are polled for both leader approval polling and voting intention surveys, this makes it even worse than could otherwise have been the case. That initial broad support in August/September is no longer there.

Though, as it says at the linked post, "things can happen", and there is a long time to go until the next scheduled General Election in May 2020, the conclusion at the end is unambiguous: another Conservative majority seems almost certain.

In fact, it might not work out that way, but unless there is a drastic change to Labour, they at least look set to become either the third or possibly even fourth largest party group in the House of Commons after that election.

It is unlikely that Labour will regain any of their former seats in Scotland, which is a crucial factor; indeed the SNP might well take the remaining three seats north of the border, making them possibly the third largest group in the Commons, with UKIP (if they are still around by then) gaining a large number of frankly undeserved seats via the back door, as the only remaining perceived to be non-establishment Britain-wide party.

I hear that UKIP are doing particularly well in Wales at the moment, so watch out for signs of this growing over the months and years to come. I personally think that their tactics there will continue to bring dividends for a while, but will falter after next May if they can't turn that into seats anywhere, or in subsequent years as more and more council seats in Wales come up for re-election.

An alternative scenario – and the one I have been anticipating for a while now as being the more likely, despite what some insiders are saying right now – is an SDP-like split and a new party being formed. My thinking is that this is most likely to occur soon after next May's council and police & crime commissioner elections if (as expected) Labour do at all badly.

This new party would probably hold most of the seats that the immediate defection takes with it, come May 2020, and could pick up a number of the remaining Labour MPs' seats as well, reducing the latter group to a very small number of members. This would be a healthy thing for British politics, both national and local, as again a Communist totalitarian-tendency movement will be marginalised, just as has always happened in the past – and that is what they are looking set to become exclusively.

Okay, the whole of Labour is essentially 'mild Marxist', tempered and slowed by its long-standing Fabian practices, but has generally been manageable and has never quite completely wrecked our nation – though it has been close once or twice, including just a very few years ago. A Corbyn-led (and, essentially, selected) set of Labour-labelled candidates is a very different proposition!

Interestingly, all of what has been happening with Labour has been more-or-less inevitable from the moment the Conservatives formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, back in May 2010.
A very few people around these parts might remember that I have been smiling as I told them in years gone by something of what I expected to follow over the period ahead; and most of that has now panned out – actually slightly better than I had predicted back then.

It was so easy to predict, simply because of the underlying nature of the Labour party, its rules, and both its higher echelons and the ordinary and Union-based members – and there is much more yet to come, equally predictable!

Tipping Point

Even a Lefty writing in The Independent has this weekend indicated that Jeremy Corbyn needs 'to be got rid of' as the headline puts it.

The trouble is that it can't be done. Anyone who knows how the Labour Party constitution and procedures operate will already be well aware that it is virtually impossible to topple the party leader. The leader has to step down, realistically, and that generally happens only after a General Election failure – as Ed[ward] Miliband did after his such failure just six months ago.

On top of that, with the huge support the current Dear Leader received when elected to that position – and still receives even today, if not to quite the same degree – both among the Labour party membership and around the country, it would not go down well if anyone were even to attempt to oust him, whether or not it succeeded.

Indeed, the mere attempt would not only impact Labour's support and votes in future elections, it would almost certainly lead to an unrecoverable split and the party breaking into two – something like what the 'Gang of Four' did some thirty years ago when they too broke away from Labour and created the Social Democratic Party (SDP).

This would split the existing Labour vote even more than if Mr Corbyn were to be left in place and his leadership never challenged, and make neither resulting party a strong parliamentary force, as each would have only a few dozen MPs at best – and those would no doubt be representing their own party's heartlands almost exclusively (there might be the odd fluke win for one or the other) so not representative of the majority of the electorate.

 

There are several other bad things that will probably happen, but that will be the overriding consideration, I can well imagine.

Perversely, therefore, it is probably best for the party to leave things as they are, grit their teeth and wait it out until the next General Election in May 2020. They are simply going to write that one off in advance – and I suspect that privately many have already done so.

 

They can meanwhile, in the shadows, and starting right now, be devising and creating mechanisms that they can simply drop into place immediately there is a change, ready to begin re-building the party's electoral (and perhaps other!) fortunes immediately after that almost certain total disaster, rather than losing months during the leadership election that will follow. Remember: it took more than four months to elect Jeremy Corbyn.

They must therefore hope that, after the 2020 election, Corbyn will then do what Ed-M did earlier this year and step down of his own volition (or perhaps with encouragement from party colleagues and others) as soon as the scale of the inevitable rout becomes clear, and certainly once the Conservatives pass the finishing line (326 seats) in the election results.

It is the only way they can now proceed, realistically, in a kind of damage limitation exercise that will last some 54 months.

 

They made their bed – no-one else imposed it on them – and now they must lie in it!

Through at Two

Again I am saying 'months' here, and once more looking at Jeremy Corbyn's career (such as it will turn out to be) as Labour party leader.

It is now two months since he became the leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition party, and with a struggle has now even become a member of the Privy Council – which he is required to be in his position, but avoided once (on a flimsy pretext) and apparently didn't conform fully to the accepted protocols on the second occasion – but got away with that.

Rather than present a catalogue of causes of his upcoming (and necessary) departure from his new position, I think this by Iain Martin covers most of the bases, and is thus useful reading.

In practice, there is no reason to believe that Mr Corbyn will either step down from his party leadership position any time soon, or be successfully ousted. It could drag on for years, helped by the Labour party's own rules and procedures. Nevertheless, it should be noted that this was the month when his position became permanently untenable and he was now clearly an irreversible detraction from Labour's electoral and broader public standing.

The longer he remains, the more the public will learn of the true nature of Labour, usually hidden beneath a veneer of apparent respectability, so I am hoping it really does take years to oust him.

Fun at One

One month, that is.

A month ago I wrote about what I foresaw as possible consequences of the Corbyn leadership of the British Labour party. One month in, much of what I anticipated has come to pass, other aspects are obviously on the way but currently still to come, and one or two items might not happen exactly as I thought they were most likely to go.

Already, the new leadership and its campaign team have moved to try to make the party the more-or-less revolutionary Marxist body I have been quietly expecting, with ways to deselect moderate sitting MPs and replacing them with out-and-out Lefties as candidates at future elections. The leadership's approach to the party's sitting MPs has been disastrous, as last night's meeting of the Parliamentary Party – well-reported in various places – demonstrated very clearly, helped by members tweeting their views from within the meeting room.

The MPs are not happy, especially with policy U-turns and other impositions by the Dear Leader and his staunch supporter, the new shadow chancellor John McDonnell. So far they seem to be sticking with the party, rather than (as yet) forming a breakaway new party, SDP style. I think that will have to come in due course, most likely in the second quarter of next year by my (typically complicated but thorough) reckoning.

Frankly, the parliamentary party is tearing itself apart, as several of its members have openly admitted via social media in particular – and the broader party nationwide isn't faring much better.

This is fine in some regards, as it is what many of us anticipated and it could prove valuable to the Labour party if they bother to learn the lessons. Some will, but I suspect that many others will not, and the party's future viability is thus threatened if they don't fix this in the false belief that either all is well, or that it cannot be mended.

In the final analysis the fading away of Labour would be a good thing for Britain – but not if it leaves a vacuum where there should be a credible Official Opposition party (Labour can probably never again be a party of government, by the way) and there are no other viable contenders at the present time. I wish there were.

Labour have a long-standing track record of putting themselves through periods such as this, but always coming back from the brink. It genuinely might not happen this time, but it is not impossible. The next month should be even more telling than these past few weeks have been...

And Now The Fun Begins!

So, as expected, Jeremy Corbyn has become the new Labour party leader today, and Tom Watson the new deputy to replace Harriet Harman, who had also been standing-in as leader during the leadership contest.

This largely predictable outcome (firmed-up by Andy Burnham's woefully poor campaign and multiple flip-flops over various policies) now sets Labour on a path they haven't seen for three decades. Already half a dozen shadow cabinet members have resigned from those positions, and a number of others (including Ed Miliband) have publicly stated that they will not serve in Corbyn's shadow cabinet.

Some are saying these are principled decisions, rather than self-interest – but anyone can see what being associated with Corbyn's extreme-Left outlook and direction for his party would do to their longer-term careers, so for my money they are in fact doing this out of self-interest.

Actually, it will be the eventual shape of the new shadow cabinet that should give us our best clue as to where the Labour party is now going to be heading. If Jeremy Corbyn stuffs it with his hard-Left comrades then it will generate splits within the party, possibly resulting in a faction going off to form a new party, as the 'Gang of Four' did back in the 'eighties to form the SDP, no doubt later possibly at least considering joining forces with the Lib Dems.

History would be repeating itself, and for similar reasons.

Another interesting ingredient is the part that the new deputy leader could well play to keep the party together under trying circumstances. Tom Watson is capable of doing that, though even he would struggle to deal with the sheer magnitude of the issue. I'd give it a two year life-span – more of a delay than an avoidance – and then it really would be 'crunch time' for the party.

Incidentally, 'big beast' Tom W has a strong reputation within the party regarding his skills and abilities in matters of this ilk, and has gained a lot of personal stature with his strong handling of the 'phone hacking scandal, though that was intended to harm the party's media deserters, specifically Rupert Murdoch, not to deal with the topic. Some of us saw through that, and noted the 'ouch!' factor when The Mirror was shown to have been at least as guilty.

Tom was also one of the small group of Damian McBride's smear campaigners who were targeting (among others) Sam Cameron, the Prime Minister's wife. Remember that? McBride had to resign his own position at the time.

Despite all of this, Tom W could keep most if not all of the party together for a while, but eventually the only way it will find to survive as a significant and credible political movement will be for Corbyn to step down, probably in 2018 by my calculations. I don't think he will head-up Labour's General Election campaign in 2020, and will wish to give his replacement time to get established and to re-jig the party's manifesto.

Some are saying that Tom himself might become the successor to 'Jez' – but with all his baggage he would be an easy target for the Conservatives, so I don't recommend this. I wouldn't put it past him to try, though. The problem for Labour is that they have so little political talent that isn't already very publicly tarnished beyond being a serious contender.

The only exception of whom I am aware is the currently inexperienced Dan Jarvis. If he were to be wise enough to look ahead and prepare himself for that opening, starting right now, he could be Labour's last hope to avoid all those pitfalls and become a genuinely valuable leader of the main opposition party in British politics. I don't know of any others who could pull it off.

On the Jez

(The title of this post is based on something B. A. Baracus said in the very first A-Team TV episode)


Well, that was the last of the Labour leadership televised hustings, just a few hours ago now. Did it help anyone?

Yes, it helped Jeremy Corbyn, who seems to have come across as more genuine than the others, the proverbial 'breath of fresh air'. Although there is an element of illusion in that seemingly very widely-held assessment, there is no denying its power.

It now seems to be almost certain that 'Jez' will become the new Labour party leader. Is this what I was originally predicting?

No. I was at first expecting Andy Burnham to win – but the Burnham campaign has been so poor, and the candidate himself has flip-flopped so many times (and been caught at it, and exposed on a number of occasions) on various policy questions, that his credibility has dropped quite significantly, even among Labour supporters themselves, who tend largely to be gullible and easily led by the nose.

I was also part-expecting a real show-stopper of a revelation or a gaffe by Corbyn – and that could still happen – though this was only a statistical judgment based on the sheer length of the campaign and the tendency of such things to happen during such extended periods in a party leadership context. It is now probably too late as, I suspect, the considerable majority of ballots have by now been cast.

I consider this to be somewhat unfortunate for Labour. Not that I am a Burnham fan, or anything like, but at least he could have handled the 'leader of H.M. official opposition' job tolerably well, whereas the likes of Corbyn and Yvette Cooper would, I think, be very poor. Liz Kendall isn't really in the running now, looking to come a distant fourth in the contest.

Thus we look set to have an unhealthy political scenario up ahead, with its inevitable tendency to draw the Conservative Government toward the centre, and easing-up on their more strongly principled policy stances because it will thus be so easy to attract disillusioned and disenfranchised Labour voters. This is one of the reasons why a good, mainstream opposition is vital for a healthy democracy.

Fortunately, the silver lining to this dark cloud is that it cannot last long. As Jeremy Corbyn will be unable to secure the support of many of his party's MPs on a number of his policies, sooner or later he will find his position is untenable – probably visibly around two years from now (actually much sooner, but it won't necessarily show outwardly for some time).

Although there is no certainly that the party's so-called selectorate will have grown up sufficiently by then, at least there is the possibility that they will choose a more acceptable leader next time. Perhaps there will be no too-lefty candidates from which to choose on that future occasion – though I suspect that 'bumbling Burnham', regardless of what he says about it today, will return to have yet another unsuccessful crack at it!