Corbyn is terrific. He is discrediting and destroying what is left of British socialism

For at least 70 years the far left has wanted a go at running Britain’s Labour party. Even the strange experiment conducted in the early 1980s does not count properly. Then, Michael Foot was elected leader because of the support of the soft left and figures such as Neil Kinnock, with Denis Healey staying on to serve. Anyway, Footie was a giant of the Labour movement compared to the character currently leading the party.

The far left kept pushing, through the years of irrelevance when, to their fury, Tony Blair won three elections. His mistakes on foreign policy and Iraq gave the anti-western far-left new life, via the anti-war movement but it was still difficult to see how it could ever get control of the UK’s main non-Tory party.

Then, in the summer and autumn of 2015, because of a series of accidents worthy of an Evelyn Waugh satire, the far left got its chance. Jeremy Corbyn, the most unlikely leader of a serious British political party in living memory, scraped onto the ballot thanks to the support of moderates who wanted the debate broadened. Cheered on by left-wing commentators such as Owen Jones of the Guardian, Corbyn and his team of aides captured the imagination of a new generation of left-wing activists and members. To the horror of many sensible Labour people, Corbyn became leader.

In hindsight, the moderates compounded their mistakes by, understandably, challenging the hapless Corbyn, launching a leadership election last year in which they were defeated. The Tory former Chancellor George Osborne, I am told, explained recently to senior Labour figures in the Commons where they had gone wrong in trying a coup too early. After the election of Iain Duncan Smith as Conservative leader in 2001, he pointed out, it was agreed that the modernisers and Tory establishment would stay quiet for two years, to let the IDS leadership play out unimpeded. Then they moved against him, replacing him in a ruthless, classic Tory coup. Osborne providing advice to Labour. Life is full of little ironies.

To say that the Corbyn project since he won re-election as leader has run into difficulties would be an understatement. Last night in the Copeland by-election, in north-west England, Labour was humiliated. It is the first time a governing party has taken a seat from another party in 35 years.

Labour’s Gillian Troughton was defeated by the Conservatives’ Trudy Harrison. The Conservatives won 13,748 votes compared to Labour’s 11,601. The majority was 2,147, and the turnout was 51%. The Lib Dems were third with 2,252 votes.

The Tory victory is even worse than it looks for Labour, because the outgoing Labour MP Jamie Reed timed his departure to give his party the maximum chance, knowing there was anger locally about the NHS. Corbyn Labour still lost.

Labour did win in Stoke-on-Trent Central, where Gareth Snell defeated UKIP leader Paul Nuttall by 7,853 votes to 5,233 (majority 2,620). The Tories were third with 5,154 votes and the Lib Dems fourth on 2,083.

But in hailing this as a vindication, the Corbynites are only revealing how detached they are. Stoke is Labour in the way that Surrey is Tory. Seeing holding Stoke narrowly as a major achievement somewhat misses the point.

The response of desperate Corbynites to the Copeland disaster has been just delicious. The fault lies say Corbyn’s remaining fans with Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, apparently, because they have been on the television talking about Brexit of late. Or the voters of Copeland were so crying out for an even more left-wing Labour party, apparently, that they, er, voted Tory.

Owen Jones of the Guardian has the intelligence to realise that something serious is up, and he has promised on social media to write something addressing it this weekend. He keeps on analysing how low Corbyn has brought Labour, but never quite gets to a proper mea culpa for his leading role in foisting Corbyn on Labour and almost destroying the party.

The Conservatives, of course, cannot believe their luck. May has underscored the extraordinary connection she has made with those voters who like her authenticity and unflashy determination to get on with Brexit. It may not last, but as of now there exists the possibility that the electoral map of England (and perhaps parts of Scotland and Wales) is about to be remade, with the Brexity Tories able to reach into areas where they previously had no hope.

In sensible Labour there is deep despair. I ran into a depressed pair of dedicated Labour MPs this week, who thought a proper Labour leader would be capable of taking on the Conservatives on Brexit and the NHS, but they could see no way for years of such a person emerging and getting past the Corbynite membership that is a block to recovery.

But I want to offer an alternative way of looking at it, as someone who wants there to be a strong opposition (to test the Tories and to provide the UK with choice).

Jeremy Corbyn is terrific, for a simple reason. The far left wanted control of the Labour party and spent decades proclaiming how marvellous it would be at running things. Those claims are very publicly being tested to destruction and the spectacle is close to being hilarious. The hard left toughies are revealed as bungling amateurs. Others among their ranks are middle-class muppet poseurs with zero connection with mainstream voters.

There is a broader point. Socialism is a terrible idea. One of mankind’s worst. It has been responsible in its most extreme and coercive form for the deaths of tens of millions of people and epic human misery. This is a good time to remember how it happened. This year marks the centenary of the Russian Revolution, a tragic event which completed the upending of Europe and provided inspiration to murderous, narcissistic, trainee demagogues everywhere.

Happily, amid that turmoil Labour opted to be a democratic, parliamentary party early in its history. But within it there always lurked people who genuinely thrilled to the S-word and to socialist solutions. The far left really does want the elimination of markets (imagine how good a National Supermarket Service or one airline would be) but leading moderate figures in the party have for decades flirted with the term, using it in private as though socialism, with its destruction of institutions, dislike of the family, and nonsensical economic prescriptions, had just got a little out of hand when tried in all those countries. The wartime generation had an excuse for thinking this, because socialism then for someone such as Healey was seen as the only alternative to fascism. Since then there is no excuse whatsoever, as the spread of markets has done wonders improving the living standards and life expectancy of billions of people.

In this way Corbyn really is doing Britain a favour, unintentionally. Not only is the far left being shown to be useless, to the point that surely at least some of the youngsters who fell for it start to worry about electability, but it is being demonstrated, as though there was any doubt, that their ideology has no purchase with the overwhelming mass of voters.

The abject electoral failure of ‎Corbynism should give Labour moderates hope. At some point they may in alliance with centrists be able to construct a new non-socialist alternative to the Tories in England, without having to pretend to be socialist deep down. Either in Labour or beyond it, post-Brexit once the Blairite effort has blown itself out, Labour moderates can regroup. They can point for decades to what happened when the far left took over allowing the Tories to soar. They can rebuild, free of the socialist curse.

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Have a good weekend.

Iain Martin,
Editor and co-founder,
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