Illustrating that and how the rise of Jeremy Corbyn has shown British political journalists to be politically illiterate demi-toffs who are glorified gossip columnists, Janan Ganesh writes:
If Britain’s Labour party rounds off this golden summer for Conservative voyeurs by electing Jeremy Corbyn as leader, here is an abridged account of the aftermath.
First, the sugar rush of novelty. A republican Marxist peacenik fronting Her Majesty’s loyal opposition is a story to please radicals and entertain bored neutrals.
As Jeremania spreads, commentators, devoted to the craft of reading too much into transient commotion, will suggest he “has a point” about capitalism and “engages young people” with his “authentic” idiom.
This credulous guff will go on until political gravity does its remorseless work, perhaps by the end of the year. Voters will grow bored of the joke.
The unstable compound of trade union heavies and teenage dreamers that is Team Corbyn will melt down.
Labour MPs will show no loyalty to a man who has voted against their party more than 500 times since 1997.
Ideas such as zero austerity and withdrawal from Nato will lose their eccentric charm and acquire the infamy they deserve.
Mr Corbyn will fall soon enough, and certainly before the 2020 general election.
The hard left will wail but with the pinched vocal cords of people who secretly know they are getting what they want. Their mission is to vent, not to rule.
The more insidious threat to Labour is actually the soft left, with its undeserved sheen of respectability.
These are the people who elected Ed Miliband as leader in 2010 and egged him on through every vainglorious showdown with corporate Britain until he crashed into the electorate on May 7.
Having shown such marvellous judgment five years ago, they now want him replaced by Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper, with their better-presented versions of continuity Labour.
They still caress the dream of winning an election while situated some way to the left of Tony Blair, despite the evidence of the past two elections.
Sadiq Khan, the London mayoral hopeful, is of the soft left, as are shadow cabinet members Hilary Benn and Lucy Powell. Ms Cooper and Mr Burnham themselves increasingly match the description.
On May 8, these people had a lot to answer for. Three months on, they count as moderates.
By standing still as their party spasms leftward, they have attained a spurious credibility.
Labour’s proximate problem is Mr Corbyn but its ultimate problem is the soft left.
When he burns out, these crack election-losers will still be there, looking plausible and being diligently wrong.
If Britain’s Labour party rounds off this golden summer for Conservative voyeurs by electing Jeremy Corbyn as leader, here is an abridged account of the aftermath.
First, the sugar rush of novelty. A republican Marxist peacenik fronting Her Majesty’s loyal opposition is a story to please radicals and entertain bored neutrals.
As Jeremania spreads, commentators, devoted to the craft of reading too much into transient commotion, will suggest he “has a point” about capitalism and “engages young people” with his “authentic” idiom.
This credulous guff will go on until political gravity does its remorseless work, perhaps by the end of the year. Voters will grow bored of the joke.
The unstable compound of trade union heavies and teenage dreamers that is Team Corbyn will melt down.
Labour MPs will show no loyalty to a man who has voted against their party more than 500 times since 1997.
Ideas such as zero austerity and withdrawal from Nato will lose their eccentric charm and acquire the infamy they deserve.
Mr Corbyn will fall soon enough, and certainly before the 2020 general election.
The hard left will wail but with the pinched vocal cords of people who secretly know they are getting what they want. Their mission is to vent, not to rule.
The more insidious threat to Labour is actually the soft left, with its undeserved sheen of respectability.
These are the people who elected Ed Miliband as leader in 2010 and egged him on through every vainglorious showdown with corporate Britain until he crashed into the electorate on May 7.
Having shown such marvellous judgment five years ago, they now want him replaced by Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper, with their better-presented versions of continuity Labour.
They still caress the dream of winning an election while situated some way to the left of Tony Blair, despite the evidence of the past two elections.
Sadiq Khan, the London mayoral hopeful, is of the soft left, as are shadow cabinet members Hilary Benn and Lucy Powell. Ms Cooper and Mr Burnham themselves increasingly match the description.
On May 8, these people had a lot to answer for. Three months on, they count as moderates.
By standing still as their party spasms leftward, they have attained a spurious credibility.
Labour’s proximate problem is Mr Corbyn but its ultimate problem is the soft left.
When he burns out, these crack election-losers will still be there, looking plausible and being diligently wrong.
Ms Cooper does not believe the previous Labour government was wrong to run a
fiscal deficit after 15 years of economic growth. Both she and Mr Burnham think
families should be entitled to tax
credits for a third child.
These views are not mad. They are just a bit too leftwing for Britain.
For any serious party, that amounts to the same thing.
The soft left is more electable than the hard left but then Mars is more habitable than Neptune: neither planet will host human life anytime soon.
Boil away the rhetoric exchanged by Mr Blair’s defenders and his Milibandite critics, and what remains is an argument about electoral viability.
The soft left believe Labour can be more social-democratic than Mr Blair was and still win, even if it means smaller parliamentary majorities than those he achieved.
Mr Blair has always doubted there can be a majority at all if the party departs a “millimetre” from the vigilant centrism of his own government.
For him, the relationship between ideological positioning and electoral success is non-linear: a marginal move to the left does not cost a marginal number of votes.
The evidence is on his side. In 2010, Gordon Brown veered slightly from Mr Blair and lost. In 2015, Mr Miliband did the same and lost again.
Twice in a row, Labour has scored a lower vote share than the Tories managed in 1997, when they were so roundly hated that a bill to proscribe them by law would have aroused only a few murmurs of disapproval from the Home Counties.
The median Briton, who is 40 years old, has never seen Labour win a general election except under Mr Blair.
So, when Mr Corbyn goes, Labour will not be primed for power. That will require those on the soft left to retreat, too.
They can start by admitting their complicity in his dizzying climb. It was their coded disavowals of New Labour that legitimised the more vicious renunciations we see now.
It was their cultivation of excitable youngsters and blowhard celebrities that changed Labour from a professional political machine to a zoo where any passing chancer who voted Green five minutes ago can abuse long-serving MPs as traitors and apostates.
Their legacy is a party that welcomes the slightly unelectable, the very unelectable and almost nobody else.
These views are not mad. They are just a bit too leftwing for Britain.
For any serious party, that amounts to the same thing.
The soft left is more electable than the hard left but then Mars is more habitable than Neptune: neither planet will host human life anytime soon.
Boil away the rhetoric exchanged by Mr Blair’s defenders and his Milibandite critics, and what remains is an argument about electoral viability.
The soft left believe Labour can be more social-democratic than Mr Blair was and still win, even if it means smaller parliamentary majorities than those he achieved.
Mr Blair has always doubted there can be a majority at all if the party departs a “millimetre” from the vigilant centrism of his own government.
For him, the relationship between ideological positioning and electoral success is non-linear: a marginal move to the left does not cost a marginal number of votes.
The evidence is on his side. In 2010, Gordon Brown veered slightly from Mr Blair and lost. In 2015, Mr Miliband did the same and lost again.
Twice in a row, Labour has scored a lower vote share than the Tories managed in 1997, when they were so roundly hated that a bill to proscribe them by law would have aroused only a few murmurs of disapproval from the Home Counties.
The median Briton, who is 40 years old, has never seen Labour win a general election except under Mr Blair.
So, when Mr Corbyn goes, Labour will not be primed for power. That will require those on the soft left to retreat, too.
They can start by admitting their complicity in his dizzying climb. It was their coded disavowals of New Labour that legitimised the more vicious renunciations we see now.
It was their cultivation of excitable youngsters and blowhard celebrities that changed Labour from a professional political machine to a zoo where any passing chancer who voted Green five minutes ago can abuse long-serving MPs as traitors and apostates.
Their legacy is a party that welcomes the slightly unelectable, the very unelectable and almost nobody else.
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