Perturbed commentators and disgruntled Labour Party MPs expressed shock and awe last night at the spectre of common sense, a quality which they believed had long disappeared from British party politics.
As the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee ruled that incumbent leader Jeremy Corbyn will be allowed to stand for re-election, horror descended upon Westminster at the thought that one of the most popular leaders in the party’s history might actually end up re-elected.
Corbyn won the Labour leadership just last September, when he received 59.5% of first-preference votes in the first round of voting, a mandate which surpassed even that achieved by Tony Blair back in 1994. Of the other candidates, Andy Burnham received 19% of the vote, Yvette Cooper 17%, and big-on-business Liz Kendall 4.5%.
Despite this overwhelming success, most Labour MPs and almost all mainstream journalists consider Corbyn entirely unelectable, a self-fulfilling prophecy which the public are sure not to have missed. Corbyn has been widely criticised for loony-lefty policies like increasing the top rate of tax, renationalising the railways, officially apologising for the Iraq war, opposing austerity, and introducing rent controls, initiatives so whacky that they happen to be supported – however unwittingly – by the majority of the populace.
His political counterparts have instead urged Corbyn to tone it down a little, advocating a move to a stolid centre ground in which they can all happily ape one another before heading off to enjoy their sinecures. Given what lies at stake and the complex nature of today’s politics, many within the Labour Party thought that in this leadership race, it might be better to avoid the vagaries of chance or direct election.
While BBC scriptwriters sputtered about a possible legal challenge to the appearance of Corbyn’s name on the ballot paper, at the last gasp Labour politicians managed to catch their breath as common sense, that vile pollutant, dissipated into the surrounding air. For the NEC at least managed to impose a £25 barrier to voting on non-members and all members who registered with the party after 12 January, thereby safely excluding from the vote much of their wrong-minded unauthenticated traditional support.
