Primed

Peter Hitchens is the Peter Hitchens of the Left. If he is not a registered supporter for the purpose of voting for Jeremy Corbyn, with whom he agrees about almost everything, and with certain of whose supporters he agrees about even more, then I have absolutely no idea why not. The same goes for Peter Oborne.

My second piece for Prime Politics today begins:

You can have all the private health insurance that you like. But if you were hit by a car, or if you collapsed in the street with a heart attack, then someone would call 999, and an NHS ambulance would take you to an NHS hospital.

That that call would certainly be made, even by a perfect stranger, is testament to the definition of the United Kingdom’s culture by the social democratic legacy of previous Labour Governments, supremely that which was elected in 1945. Everyone benefits, of all classes and in all areas. Such was always the intention behind it. Today, however, it is under threat as never before.

Even in the 1980s, nothing came close to the scale of the attack, not merely since the recent General Election, but since that of 2010; under the Liberal Democrats, who never moderated a single thing, as much as under the Conservatives. The election of Tim Farron augurs well, as does the vote of all eight Liberal Democrat MPs against the Welfare Bill that seeks to dismantle Tony Blair’s best legacy, of alleviating child poverty. But we must not let that recent party of government off the hook for its numerous offences.

Labour grew from many and various roots. Trade union and co-operative. Radical Liberal and Tory populist. Christian Socialist and Social Catholic. Fabian and even, in the space both on Labour’s fringes and on Marxism’s fringes, Marxist, subject to the balancing and moderating influences of the others. Giving the wrong answers does not preclude asking the right questions. Much of the Fabian tradition also gives the wrong answers.

We need a broad alliance between the urban and the rural, the metropolitan and the provincial, the secular and the religious, the socially liberal and the socially conservative. An alliance including all ethnic groups, all social classes, and all parts of the country: One Nation.

Herewith, the bare bones of a basis for that alliance.

I have thought very long and very hard about this. It is all or nothing for Corbyn.

If he won, then our people would be the Labour Right, much as we might dislike the word. But if he lost, and even if he came second, then the Labour Right would be Tony Blair, John McTernan (the man who lost Scotland), and all the rest of them.

Labour needs two strong wings, with its fully functioning brain, heart and voice all in the middle.

With a strong Right, then there would be no reason why the Leader could not come from the Left. Likewise, with a strong Left, then there would be no reason why the Leader could not come from the Right.

Under Andy Burnham, the Deputy Leader, Tom Watson, would be used as a token leftie for the purposes of media ridicule and abuse, as John Prescott was by Blair.

But under Corbyn, the Deputy Leader, Tom Watson, would be the voice of Labour's centre, heart and soul, as Prescott is now. It would always be the same Tom Watson, as it has always been the same John Prescott.

Labour can be a party that went no further left than Tom Watson. Or it can be a party that went no further right than Andy Burnham, than Stella Creasy, than Blue Labour, than the above article.

Burnham is going to have to take one for the team.