Janan Ganesh: A Corbyn win would be disastrous for Labour

Sometimes things are as simple as they seem. There is no profit in searching for complexity or perverse consequences in events that can only play out one way. Contrarians, stand down.

If a socialist peacenik becomes leader of Britain's Labour Party on September 12th, it is not somehow a problem for the Conservatives, too. Tories high-fiving each other at the prospect of facing Jeremy Corbyn should not "be careful what they wish for". They should not "reflect" on what his sensational climb "means" and "engage" with his "movement". They do not "underestimate" him, they estimate him correctly – that is, derisively. There are no hidden dimensions or unconsidered angles here.

Tellingly, none of the supposed traps awaiting a complacent Tory party include the possibility that Corbyn might actually win a general election. Even the bravest contrarian will not make that mental leap. Instead, the theory goes, a weak opposition will free Conservative malcontents to hound prime minister David Cameron without restraint. Also predicted is the flourishing of a continental-style extra-parliamentary left whose strikes and protests will enervate the government over time, just as Margaret Thatcher succumbed to civil disorder.

Lasting toxicity

Neither of these hazards are real. Even if they are, they will be as nothing next to the lasting toxicity of Labour electing the unelectable.

It is now customary to identify a serious opposition as the one adhesive capable of keeping the mutinous Tories together. Only fear of the enemy stops this wobbly team of market liberals, reactionaries and monomaniacal eurosceptics from cracking up. This is sound in theory. It is belied by experience. The Conservatives were most divided in the mid-1990s, when Labour was led formidably by Tony Blair. And their great age of bonhomie was the 1950s, when their opponents fell apart over economics and the bomb.

Political parties do not need outside assistance to behave stupidly, or well. The Tories may pound each other to a bloodied stupor over Europe in the coming years, but that will have nothing to do with Labour. Their rebels are self-motivating, thank you very much.

As for the popular insurrection against austerity, your columnist invites you to wake him up when it happens. Students and trade unions will march through London, but then they always do. Corbyn will rouse dog-on-a-string radicals at folk music festivals in the West Country. None of this will congeal into a national movement that draws in swing voters. Britons have had five years to revolt against Cameron and his fiscal policy. As ever, they have proven to be a terrible disappointment to the left’s moral visionaries.

Habitual protesters show a blend of narcissism and innumeracy: a belief that tens of thousands of trudging comrades reveal anything about a nation of 62 million. Contrary to their vainglorious recollection, Thatcher was not brought down by poll tax riots but by her inability to hang on to a chancellor of the exchequer and the trust of her MPs. The mayhem in Trafalgar Square in 1990 was a proximate cause, not the source, of her fall, which was already in train.

Even if the clever-clever analysis is right, and Corbyn lulls Tories out of their discipline while captaining a revolution, this does not account for the damage done to Labour.

Extreme leader

The mere act of choosing the most extreme leader in its history might be impossible to live down. He can resign immediately on September 12th but the harm to Labour’s good name will still be measured in years. For a generation of swing voters, Labour will always be the party that elected “that guy”, and only ever one rush of blood to the head away from another folly. Anyone who thinks the election of Corbyn is anything but a huge net benefit to the Conservatives is trying very, very hard to be interesting.

The enemy of sound political judgment is the desire for distinctiveness. Commentators sometimes parse straightforward events for surprising nuances or daring new angles because it makes for good copy. But it is better to be right than original.

No, a Corbynite Labour party will not cause trouble for the Tories. Cameron will not find him a confounding adversary across the parliamentary dispatch box. Demonstrations will not shake the government. They will not even shake the streets they are held on. Politics will not be reinvented. Corbyn is not “on to something” with his critique of capitalism and western foreign policy.

This is a passing commotion whose principal victims are the millions of low-paid Britons who need a serious party of the centre-left.

(Copyright: The Financial Times)