"Eamonn McCann: It’s Corbyn or catastrophe for British Labour party
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The British parties with most to lose if Jeremy Corbyn wins the Labour leadership are the Scottish Nationalists and the Greens. Labour voters deserted the party in droves on May 7th, out of disillusion with politics in general and their own party in particular.
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the prospect of a mass, insurgent Labour campaign sweeping the country in 2020 appears to the old sweats of Blair years as an appalling vista.
Blair himself laid it on the line in a speech to New Labour lobby group Progress on June 22nd: “I wouldn’t want to win on an old-fashioned leftist platform. Even if I thought it was the route to victory, I wouldn’t take it.”
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Have they not grasped that the swell in support for the SNP and Greens has been generated, in part at least, by disgust at the lies which fell from the lips of New Labour as they strove to deliver Britain to Bush’s war. Corbyn’s consistent opposition to the war is one of the reasons hundreds of thousands, including a considerable number who had supported and even stood for other parties a few months ago, are cheering him to the echo at fervent rallies that spill onto the streets.
Sure, a Corbyn-led Labour Party might well split. But the splitters are at least as likely to find themselves in the political wilderness as those have held hard to decent Left ideas which, articulated by a decent man who betrays no sign of personal ambition, now resonate across Britain, including those swathes of Britain lost by Labour in May.
It’s Corbyn or catastrophe for Labour.
www.irishtimes.com/opinion/eamonn-mccann-it-s-corbyn-or-catastrophe-for-british-labour-party-1.2314993
There is panic in the air, the FT editorial is warning against Corbyn, every spinner from Oxbridge on a large salary has been prodded and prompted to get out onto TV and lecture the public about what is good for them.
Gordon Bennett will make a speech on Sunday, we are told. The nation holds its breath to hear what the great man has to say, to see him strut across the stage, fall to his knees with tears in his eyes when saying to the public, "remember Sure Start", but all the public will remember is the Iraq War and the faces of the liars.
The BBC will do its best o help the elite. Jess Phillips wll be interviewed again and again. "Jez Corbn?" she will ask. "None of the doorsteps I have knocked at have even mentioned him," she will chortle. "He's not what I think of as progressive". But that's exactly why the whole country likes him - he's not progressive like Blair and Brown, he didn't vote for the War.
While Jess's doorsteps don't speak of Corbyn, the metropolitan elite and Westminster bubble speak of nothing else - "Get Corbyn", "Stop Corbyn" is their desperate cry. Some of the sharpest, slimiest Oxbridge graduates, advisers and spinners around calm the fears of the metropolitan elite by saying "don't worry, the British public will never vote for Corbyn, they are like the people on Jess's doorsteps, the never menon Corbyn".
But then the metropolitan elite pick up the Evening Standard and read
"Among Ukip voters, 39% of them liked him [Corbyn] the most, higher than the 38% of Labour voters who said so."
and the wailing and howling begins once again, but more loudly than before.
And how the people laugh, how the people cheer
"hundreds of thousands, including a considerable number who had supported and even stood for other parties a few months ago, are cheering him to the echo at fervent rallies that spill onto the streets."
"It’s Corbyn or catastrophe for Labour."
It's catastrophe for the metropolitan elite.