06 September 2018
Sensible Season
Now who’s being silly?
By J R Thomas
The 2018 Silly Season is over at last and political historians can begin working out which, in these remarkable times, were the real events, which the stupid, and which the merely silly. And if anything was of any real consequence at all. The Chequers Plan for Brexit would be easy to consign to “silly” for example, silly if bizarre, but it may yet turn out to have very serious, if unintended, consquences. As Mrs May talks weightedly of no deal, M. Barnier and his team of negotiators suddenly find much to admire in the output of that weekend in the Chiltern Hills.
Sir Vince Cable though seems to have entered wholeheartedly into the silly traditions. He mused aloud, to journalists indeed, that the next leader of the Liberal Party might come from outside the Parliamentary Party (though how this might actually work he seemed not to have considered). What this did do was to suddenly focus attention on the fact that Vince promised to serve only a couple of years as leader, and then hand over to his deputy Jo Swinson. Ms Swinson took the opportunity, or perhaps she had just remembered, to point out that two years expire in July 2019. She kindly did not point out that the Cable leadership of his party has produced no discernible flicker of a revival whatsoever. Well, she doesn’t need to. All this is a long cry from the approach of that former Liberal leader, William Gladstone, of going for long August walks, followed by huge and admiring crowds, to whom the Grand Old Man would turn, addressing them for many hours on improving topics such as Irish Home Rule or Church Disestablishmentarianism. Those of our readers who have climbed Snowdon from the south and noted Gladstone’s rock on its high crag will reflect that both the GOM and the crowd were made of stern stuff.
The mountain goat of modern times is Mrs May whose love of Alpine walks is well known. She prefers to do this unaccompanied, except by husband Philip and presumably a discreet phalanx of security officers, no doubt brooding on all she must do before 19th March next year. One hopes that that did not distract her too much from the magnificent conditions this year in the Alps.
Which leaves Mr Corbyn. You might feel that if anybody embodies the modern representation of Gladstone it should be Jeremy C, with vast audiences, not of crinoline and waistcoat clad stern Victorian walkers, but of torn jeans and T shirt wearing ravers. Mr Corbyn last summer had a wonderful time at various music festivals around the country, with his own anthem of “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn, Ohh, Jeremy Corbyn”. (You had to be there to get the full effect.) However, JC seems to have felt that the best thing in music, unlike politics, is to leave them wanting more and quit at the height of your fame. Or he may have been distracted by his little local difficulties of the silly season, allegations that he and prominent elements of the Labour Party are anti-Semitic, or at least do nothing to discourage such strands in the Party. It is odd that Jezza, who is a more consummate politician than he is often given credit for, has got himself in his present fix. He merely protests a right wing newspaper plot. In this may lurk a scintilla of truth, though it could well be a plot not entirely unwelcome to some of JC’s allies (anybody seen John MacDonnell recently?).
Mr Corbyn loves a good cause, and a long-standing one has been the rights of the Palestinian people, and the hostility of Israel to the concept of a Palestinian state. As Mr C says, and my Corbynista Diary colleague in these very pages has several times pointed out, there is a world of difference between being pro-Palestinian and being anti-Semitic. But a lot of Mr Corbyn’s increasing flounderings on the subject are because he has not said that very clearly, or loudly. The Labour National Executive finally adopted the international definition of anti-Semitism this week, but still Jeremy hummed and hawed and tried to amend. Very odd. Mr C wears his passions loudly (and his learning lightly), and he may be a little muddled on the subject himself – some of the photo opportunities that keep popping up to haunt him certainly suggest so – but surely there can be no anti-Semitism in the man. So why has he not made one strong speech and refuted the muttering?
That is both a real and a rhetorical question. The answer to both we can guess at. Mr Corbyn is a prisoner of some of his wilder colleagues on the far left shores of the evolving party, of Momentum in particular. Momentum is an odd conglomeration of various left wing causes, some more idealistic than others, but it is run with a great deal of energy and determination. That has given it enormous power in many constituencies – as now ex-Labour Frank Field can tell us. Many Labour M.P.’s, who might otherwise be a great deal more rebellious against the current leadership, know that the raising of lances and banners would lead directly to de-selection as Labour candidates at the next election. They may not seem brave or bold, but realistically, de-selection will mean a new candidate, more to the left of the departing one, and letting the party slip further and further from its recent past roots – indeed from its long-time historic roots. So the issue is whether to try and fight from within, or to give up and start a new party. The last Labour M.P.’s to do that were Messrs Jenkins, Rodgers, and Owen, and Mrs Williams. Look what happened to them.
That is not what Jezza fears, of course. His place in left-wing political history is secure. But even so, he cannot run the party without the support of Momentum. Momentum made him and Momentum could secure his early retirement. And elements of Momentum are anti-Jewish, or anti-Semitic, not to mince words. Labour has always had particularly strong support from British Jewry, but that support has mostly been of the more liberal programmes of the party. In Tony Blair it found a Labour leader, as it had with Harold Wilson, strongly representational of the values and standards of the British Jewish community. Parts of the left resent that, and some leftists see plots everywhere, including Jewish control of money and policy. (Some are just nuts, it has to be said.) So the civil war in the new Labour Party (the new Labour Party as opposed to New Labour) has become a battle between the brave few, (Margaret Hodge, Frank Field and a few others), silent but unhappy parliamentarians (a majority of the parliamentary party), and a very well organised and energetic mass leftish membership in the country.
All that has been summer moonshine to the Conservatives, who with only an occasional stir of the pot have kept the fighting active, taken the shine off any urge among young voters for festival singing admiration of the bearded one, and, not least, distracted from Tory problems. That latter won’t last long, but in the meantime Labour looks less like a serious contender for office, to the extent it ever did. Indeed, what the Conservatives, having had a bit of summer fun, now have to achieve is to keep Mr Corbyn in his job – he is the best vote winner they have at the moment. To accidentally force him out would be very silly indeed.
