Friday 18 September 2015

Forebodings

"This is the New Politics.   And it's very boring"  (Bill Quango MP)
In strictly electoral terms - specifically, the 2020 general election, assuming some sort of euro-nonsense doesn't derail the Fixed-term Parliament Act - the Tories are unlikely to be defeated by Corbyn and his motley.   Certainly, the newly elevated Campaign-Groupers can apologise sweetly for past excesses and verbal diahrroea, and will soon muster a half-decent spin operation to avoid the worst of the self-inflicted damage.  Maybe even sucker Osborne into some unattractive sneering.  But Corbyn is not papabile, any more than were Foot or Kinnock or Miliband; and the massed voters of Britain will find him out.

How much will that matter?  If we are being swept up by 2015-style People's Politics (or whatever they like to call it) maybe it will matter not so much as in former times, and parliamentary formalities will become ever less relevant.  I suspect there are plenty with fantasies along those lines, in more than one of the camps of the Corbyn coalition:  those that dote on him in desperation for a happy leftie revival; or expect to use him to promote their hard-core neo-marxist policies; or are simply having a laugh (and that's a category broader than just those £3-paying Tories: there are some proper wags and chancers along for the ride in the heart of Team Corbyn, and I know whereof I speak).

These people we can leave to their dreams, be they the traumatised, the Trots or the tricksters.  There's another category I worry about, and I think back to the riots of 2011.  Readers may recall that one of our thoughtful Anons offered a comment along these lines:  the summer of 2011 was characterised by random, if contagious criminality born of sullen idleness - but the nihilistic hordes lacked an officer-class to convert the phenomenon into anything more sinister or systematic.  However (opined Anon), just such a cadre was being hatched amongst the disaffected ranks of unemployed, social-media-savvy graduates: and we could all tremble when the natural leaders and strategists and administrators took charge of the cannon-fodder. 

Hasn't happened yet.

Imagine, though, developments along those lines as the Tories continue to exercise their quietly triumphalistic political hegemony.  Under normal circumstances the leaders of all respectable parliamentary parties are pretty much obliged to swing in on the side of law'n'order: even Kinnock opposed the excesses of the Miners' Strike.  

But that's in the currency of the Old Politics.  Suppose Corbyn, by contrast, felt able to suck on his teeth, stroke his grandfatherly beard and say publicly, well, these kids do have a point, things outside the Square Mile are pretty grim for them, parliamentary politics have failed the people, austerity really is wicked, and actually quite unnecessary ...  then maybe he holds a big rally to fan the flames, organised by his well-staffed political office, manned by experienced, professional Livingstonistas who know exactly what they are doing and still dream of the poll-tax riots.

It's one thing when the whole of polite society comes down like a ton of bricks on a bunch of uncoordinated rioters as in the past.  Quite another, I suggest, when the official voice of a mainstream party provides equivocating political top-cover, with its nastier functionaries in secret liaison with Anon's officer-class (and Sinn Fein, and ...  Oh, and for good measure, with Nicola Sturgeon refusing to allow Police Scotland to send any reinforcements to the rioting cities of England.)  This in turn legitimises 'balanced reporting' by the BBC, which indemnifies civil disobedience ...

None of this wins the 2020 election for Corbyn, because the massed ranks of the pensioners of England will unwaveringly vote against him.  But it might not seem much of a victory, to the newly-installed Prime Minister Osborne. In the meantime, the streets could get very messy indeed.

So, much as I'd like to agree with BQ that the New Politics is boring - I'm not so sure.
_  _  _  _  _

On the other hand.  The house-training of the Corbynistas has already begun, as the last 48 hours have shown.  It should never be forgotten that the Labour Party of 1920 was more or less a marxist revolutionary movement, but was brought swiftly into line per Westminster traditions and practices.  Such is the genius of British politics.   

Is Corbyn equally tractable?  In which case, let boredom reign and Osborne's merriment be unconfined.  Or is St Jeremy the unreconstructed and unreconstructable messiah, as many of his supporters ardently hope? 

ND

21 comments:

dearieme said...

papabile?

dearieme said...

Well said: they are bound to try the violence card.

Nick Drew said...

I have changed it as you suggest - it looks nicer - though my dictionary says either

in my experience middle-class lefties, though utter cowards themselves, are thrilled to the point of wetting themselves when they meet or even think about people who really are up for violence

Demetrius said...

This is UK based. There are some big nasties out there and some we may not see coming. If Cameron and the Conservatives run out of luck and have to deal with bad things with hard decisions with downsides anything could happen.

hovis said...

Interesting tea leaf reading.

Not sure I can agree that the 1920's Labour party was more or less a Marxist revolutionary movement. Depends on the definition of more or less. From this distance of time it certainly doesn't look like one [a revolutioary marxist party] in the mould of those found on continental Europe at the time. Maybe to to the elites losing power (to new ones) it did though.

Think Corbyn's role is catalyst not contender, even as leader. Failure will be spun as moving the Overton Window. Think we will see much more polarisation - just the natural expression of what has occurred really in the last 10 years in the UK as a whole,(think UKIP). As a government Tories will remain sclerotic, Labour will disolve from their curret form.

Electro-Kevin said...

I don't care about Corbyn. I want Cameron 'found out'.

I want to know how he is getting away with it.

“It is an unacceptable way for this organisation to work – to suddenly present a bill like this for such a vast sum of money with so little time to pay it. And it is an unacceptable way to treat one of the biggest contributors to the European Union. It is an appalling way to behave. I am not paying that bill on 1 December. If people think I am they have got another thing coming.”

*I am not paying that bill on 1 December.* So it gets paid after the election instead.

He thinks you're chumps, folks. And I'm afraid you are.

I could quote umpteen examples which are similar. If someone treated me like this in business they'd be getting a smack in the gob - or paint stripper poured over his car bonnet in the middle of the night.

He is far worse than Blair.

He is a danger to our country.

Suff said...

OT
Prince Harry for PM. COME ON ENGLAND. And the rest of the home nations. It's like e breath of fresh air, people understanding the value of achievement through hard work and dedication

Nick Drew said...

yes, curtain up - & game on, as the man said

Peter S said...

It's fluid and dangerous. Just transferred all my (small) assets out of England to "another country".

andrew said...

Your scenario wont happen.

The cons have cut back welfare.

I hope you noticed it was to in-work benefits.
i.e. people struggling by on min wage.

Not struggling by on benefits with only just enough to pay any 2 of rent, heating, food.
They also gamble that most people only fall into that group for 6 months or so

IF unemployment picks up - or the amount of time you stay unemployed rises a lot, something bad might happen.

however, this is a small country and when things get bad, we really are all in it together.
in the same way that Jezza ins introduced to the realities of power and will make accomodations if he expects to be a party leader in 2016, whoever is in power when things go wrong next time will tack to escape a storm of mass discontent.

Sackerson said...

ND, I think TV is key. Look at the difference between how the BBC treated the poll tax riots and the Countryside Alliance. And there's much tighter law around demonstrations now, especially anything close to Downing Street. Gone are the days when the mob could put Wellington's Apsley House windows through.

Jan said...

One thing Jeremy Corbyn has done is succeed in making the existing political class (which includes the mainstream media) look really old-fashioned. it was hilarious initially when they were thrashing around warning of doom and gloom and a return to the 80s militancy.

More likely they are all worried that they will be ousted before long!

CityUnslicker said...

events, events.

A sort of recession is due 2018/2019 at the latest; however crap the left are, 10 years of Tories may have enough voting another way for a weak Labour-SNP coalition.

Much is possible in the next few years. Also, the BBC, unlike with UKIP, will be very keen to show Corbyn et al are NO THREAT AND NOT REVOLUIONARIES at all. So people maybe more accepting in 2002 than we think.

But who knows, tomorrow is always ahead of us.

Sackerson said...

CO: You mean, "tomorrow belongs to me"?

Electro-Kevin said...

Oh well.

Our (inter)national rugby team should be muched improved by 2020.

Infused with a limitless number of fit, aggressive young men able to ruck and scrummage at a world beating level to get across a line.

This is our generation's Battle of Britain moment. Should we really be distracted by mere sport at this time ?

Raedwald said...

One clear lesson from 2011 for potential rioters - CCTV and social media remove any chance of anonymity from public disorder, and the courts will be both harsh and vindictive if you lose. There's more street kudos from a close instagram hit pic of a kid throwing a petrol bomb than from being the thrower - the thrower is sure to get 10 years, the phone-holder gets the girl.

So, future public disorder is either tokenistic and the perps are hammered ... or CCTV networks are taken out in advance, mobile signals disrupted, police comms disabled and rioter fury is directed at real economic or control structures that wound or fatally injure the State. And as the latter requires a covert network of the type that the security services have been honing their skills in detecting, even Corbyn's officer corps will find it hard to organise.

2011 was a useful exercise for the State; deficiencies have been identified and corrected, low definition CCTV cams upgraded all over London and holes plugged, ANPR rolled out across all major cities and police / intelligence now adept at picking up self-incriminating tweets and facebook posts. Any re-run would have to be exceedingly sophisticated to succeed - or borne out of pure mass fury that gives a scale of rioting of Ceausescu proportions that simply overwhelms the State.

AndrewZ said...

The 2011 riots were perpetrated by criminals, opportunists and thrill-seekers. People like that are not a revolutionary force. They aren't interested in ideology and they don't have any commitment to a cause. So they'll use "like, oppression and Tories and stuff" as an excuse to go looting but then they'll go home to play with their new toys. All they want is an adrenaline rush and some easy personal gain, while being a serious revolutionary is a full-time job full of hard work and danger.

The real risk is that Labour might become a leftist-Islamist alliance like the Stop the War Coalition. Corbyn's obsessive hostility towards Israel will not resonate with mainstream voters and his sympathy for Hamas and Hezbollah will positively repel them. It will get a very positive response from Islamists and their supporters. With support collapsing elsewhere, the Labour leadership would be tempted to focus all its efforts on the one group that seemed to be responding positively. Even if the support was only coming from a small number of activists and self-appointed "community leaders" , Labour would soon be desperate enough to grasp at anything that might keep the party afloat.

The far left would love the idea. They would see it as a glorious alliance of the marginalised and oppressed against racism and imperialism. Many Labour MPs would be appalled, but those who spoke out would suddenly find their local parties flooded with entryists intent on deselecting them. With regular Labour membership (i.e. excluding the three-pound carpetbaggers) at such a low level it wouldn't take many committed activists to do that. Before you know it, Labour suddenly becomes an openly anti-British party that encourages Muslims to reject British identity and see Britain as their oppressor. This strategy would cost them most of their seats in 2020, but it could do an awful lot of damage to British society in the meantime.

Nick Drew said...

Kev - our generation's Battle of Britain moment. Should we really be distracted ..?

not sure TPTB are particularly distracted, they just like to get on with things in their own way (see Radder's comment, which I hope and believe is broadly accurate) with as low a profile as poss. (the '84 Miners Strike was prepared for in exactly this way)

Andrew - strategy would cost them most of their seats in 2020, but it could do an awful lot of damage to British society in the meantime

your suggested leftist-Islamist alliance - very attractive for some of them - is one rather tangy flavour of the general scenario I was painting: but actually the most suicidal of the lot for the party as a whole, because if Labour becomes characterised that way they lose a number of their significant traditional 'block-votes' immediately

[it will be very interesting to see how Sadiq goes next year - he is a machine politician, and his machine is 90% (white) Livingstonistas, and has chosen to fly an Islamic flag quite prominently

he is very divisive among the Asian community, there is some nasty clan-factionalism in Tooting which (for those who can read Urdu) isn't even hidden: restaurants, e.g., carry notices in their windows saying the equivalent of 'no Irish' etc]

Ryan said...

Corbyn, the silly old fool, is nothing more than a tomb tabard used to provide a front for the real power of the hard left union leaders, just as Blair was the front man for the secretive slow-burn intellectual Marxists behindn the Fabians.

So, the question is, how do the unions plan to use that power? Seems they are aiming to house-train Corbyn to be a genuine possibility for PM - watch out for the red poppy making an appearance on Remembrance Sunday. If they are going the democratic route then presumably street violence has been ruled out.

Even if the unions did indulge in provoking some street violence, many of their own members are Asian, which might make it look uncomfortably like a race war, rather than a class war.

Anyway, I don't see it as important. The left, as an organised political movement, are finished. They couldn't even run their own leadership election, let alone the nation.

The question is, when are we going to fix the mess? And who is going to set about doing it? It ain't going to be Corbyn or Cameron and time is running out. Maybe it will be the CIA....



AndrewZ said...

Of course, it's possible that Corbyn will be pushed out long before the next election.

For that scenario the man to watch is Tom Watson, Labour's Deputy Leader. He's a ruthless machine politician who understands that in order to stab someone in the back you have to get behind them first. So if Corbyn won't talk to the media then Watson will always be happy to oblige. He'll position himself as Corbyn's ambassador to the PLP, the sensible one that they can work with. He's already in with the unions and after a few months of loyal service as Corbyn's deputy he'll be able to reassure the party activists that he's one of them.

So when the party's support collapses Watson will be in the perfect position to take over. He'll have support from key factions within the party and promoting the deputy means a relatively smooth transition. The initial challenge to Corbyn might come from an ambitious backbencher who is willing to act as a "stalking horse" candidate in the hope of future reward. But it would just be a way of engineering a leadership contest that Watson could then enter without appearing disloyal, and with all the usual protestations that he's only doing it for the good of the party, public duty, etc.

Anonymous said...

"there's much tighter law around demonstrations now, especially anything close to Downing Street"

And yet that Pink-Floyd offspring could be photographed setting alight to a pile of newspaper against a Whitehall wooden door, yet he wasn't charged with arson with intent to endanger life, just with his Cenotaph acrobatics.