The Other Coalition

The latest YouGov poll for The Sun gives Labour, on 45 percent, a 14-point lead over the Conservatives’ 31 per cent. It has never been bigger since YouGov started polling. So much for Tony Blair.

Any examination of the Mail and Telegraph newspapers confirms that the Coalition’s savage cuts in services and in spending power, the road to yet further economic ruin, are no more popular with Conservative supporters, Middle England, or what have you, then they are with anyone else. The Coalition of Resistance to them can and must include hitherto Conservative supporters, Middle England, the Mail and Telegraph newspapers, and what have you.

At the recent local elections, Tory Britain flocked to Labour in areas where the party has been the traditional challenger, insofar as there has been any, to the Conservatives. But where the Liberals and Liberal Democrats have been strong, they flocked to Independents who in many ways exemplify and embody the looking to the State, including the council, to safeguard conservative values against the market gone mad. Madness manifest as, for example, Post Office privatisation, or toll roads owned by oil-rich foreign states, or the deregulation of Sunday trading.

John McDonnell’s was a much more interesting and inspiring candidacy than Diane Abbott’s, brought down by silly Political Correctness and by the stage-outrage of the right-wing newspapers over a remark very tame indeed compared to the casually vicious and viciously casual tribal spitting of their own side. John was nominated by more people than Abbott, including Frank Field. Including the Countryside Alliance’s Kate Hoey. Including Ian Lavery and Ronnie Campbell, the two Labour MPs, being half of all the MPs, from the second most rural county in England; Campbell is a pro-life Catholic. And including Ian Davidson, a Co-operative stalwart who on the floor of the House has correctly identified New Labourites as “Maoists and Trotskyists”, and who, as befits a protégé of Janey Buchan, is a hammer both of Scottish separatism and of European federalism.

Only John McDonnell, with his uniquely broad base among Labour MPs, had begun to demonstrate that he could do that. But not only, nor ideally, can he ever do so. Over to you, Jon Cruddas. You could and should include the identification of such Independents in such areas who would be suitable as parliamentary candidates, perhaps organised as a party for the purpose and for ease of identification on ballot papers, where Labour was in third place or below, or where, in Scotland or Wales, Labour was in second place but the combined vote for two other parties was higher.

Labour would stand aside for those candidates and one or more affiliated unions would pay their election expenses, in return for giving confidence and supply to a Labour Government, but to no other. Those elected would be guaranteed at least one seat on each Select Committee, the Chairmanships of those closest to their own most direct concerns, and even a Ministerial position in each Department; at any rate, they would be eligible to Ministers. In turn, they would keep the Government faithful to the mainstream, moderate politics of those who had elected it, by no means only in their own constituencies or areas, but throughout the country.

Don’t just replace one Coalition party. Replace them both. Jon Cruddas and Ed Miliband, over to you.