Dispatches reveals Labour completely stuffed
The hysterical and well-organised response of the Corbynite horde to a perfectly reasonable piece of investigative journalism, before they had seen it, suggested their masters knew it would look bad. And it did. Channel 4’s investigation by Dispatches aired on Monday evening showed very clearly that Momentum, the Soviet era tribute band, is at the centre of an attempt to infiltrate the Labour party and turn it into a revolutionary socialist party.
The undercover reporter discovered Momentum senior staff hiding from public view the organisation’s involvement in running the re-elect Corbyn campaign. That meant covert use of Unite the union offices, a repeated blurring of the lines with the Corbyn leadership campaign and careful preparation of a deselection campaign against mainstream Labour MPs, even holding back over-enthusiastic local groups who want to press the button too early. All this from people who have the gall to talk about “straight-talking honest politics.”
The overwhelming feeling I had watching it was deep regret for decent Labour members and sadness at what is happening to Britain’s main opposition party. Plenty of my friends on the centre-right think it is hilarious, and I admit there are comical moments involving Corbyn himself, probably the biggest twit to run a political party in modern British history.
But the destruction of Labour and its infiltration by the dangerous far-left is a national tragedy, which denies the country a credible opposition party. The risk is that the Tories will be unopposed for a decade and without proper challenge and competition either become careless, lazy or even more self-indulgent in their periodic bickering.
Yet the Corbynite fantasy seems to have captured tens of thousands of young people (who have yet to be introduced to the reality that you need more than 10 million votes to win a general election but will learn it soon enough). On BBC Question Time last week was the perfect example of the thinking which has taken hold. A young Corbynite audience member declared that she was for “Jeremy” because his expenses are so low when other MPs are supposedly spending money on expensive suits. Come on, wake up, switch your brain on, for goodness sake. Corbyn’s expenses were very low in one quarter because he forgot to submit them. Other than that, he lives in London, making his costs somewhat lower, for reasons not difficult to discern, from that of an MP who lives in Wales or Scotland.
None of that – mere facts – seems to make the slightest difference. The Corbyn cultists have their fingers in their ears when critics of the sainted “Jeremy” say anything and their clear-minded leaders have perfected a way of telling the gullible and extremist a mad fairy tale of England.
It is all one million miles removed from what might appeal to those people who never get mentioned, namely the voters. The lesson of the 2015 election last year was a new version of an old truth about England and where it sits. It is not always Tory – large parts of it are very definitely not – but there is a decisive majority of sensible people who look for a relatively serious person to be Prime Minister, who are wary of extremism, who want the country defended, who want to make a little money, and some quite a lot given the chance, and to get on in the world. They didn’t take to Ed Miliband. They are never, short of a zombie apocalypse, ever going to vote for Corbyn or his Marxist friends.
That being the case, the infiltration and the Dispatches documentary should spur a moderate fightback to reclaim the party, but what is the point? What is clear watching that Dispatches, I am sorry to say, is that it is already simply too late. Labour is not in the process of being infiltrated. It has been infiltrated. It has been taken over decisively by the far left and by non-Labour people. That means Labour as we know it is dead and a new party of the moderate centre and non-socialist centre-left is going to be required. Every month it is delayed the more difficult it will be for the moderates to get going and build an alternative in time for 2020. Every delay brings closer the time when the people of Momentum pick off good MPs one by one. For that is what they are going to do.