There must be many a leftie tearing their hair at this:
It's rather bigger than some recent Tory poll leads, but by no means an outlier.
WTF? Boris has screwed up the Covid / national economy challenge almost as badly as Trump (albeit with none of the FlatEarth numbskullery, so it's pure incompetence and bad judgement), putting the UK right up there with the worst performers. It would be laughably easy to compile a list of colossal and very public mis-steps, ranging from the catastrophic, through the corrupt, to the comical. Johnson hasn't put a foot right since the long-distant Greenwich speech. How come polling like the above is even vaguely possible?
I think we may rule out any supposition that the populace is being swayed by some purposeful 'subliminal influence' media campaign of breathtaking subtlety and genius being mounted by Cummings who, original as he may be, is also plainly what my father's generation would have called a four-letter man. Conversely, the Labour Party has not advocated a policy of Covid house arrest for obese BAME diabetes sufferers, nor otherwise lately perpetrated anything universally repugnant. So - WTF?
I offer two broad theses and, being fairly puzzled meself, invite the C@W faithful to pitch in with others.
1. Natural Loyalty In Time Of War
This one barely needs elaboration. You stick together when the chips are down and, as in 1945, if you have reservations about the mob you've thereby lent support to, you can always heave them out. When Starmer wants to sleep at night he'll be comforting himself with this one: let's face it, the evidence is, it's all he's got. So pure is his strategy, he won't even risk tapping the ball occasionally into any of the gaping open goals Boris specialises in. Hey - this is Strong Human Instinct we're talking about: let's not mess with that. (Pipe down at the back there, Burnham.)
2. The Labour Brand Is Utterly Trashed
All through the Blair years in power, long after the Bambi-fresh appeal of Blair had evaporated, the more innocent of my Tory friends were continually perplexed. Whatever outrages the Blair/Brown regime came up with, and however well successive Hagues / Duncan Smiths / Howards / Camerons spoke to wrongness of what was being done, Blair sailed on regardless to electoral victory. And I used to say to them: that's a measure of how much people truly despise the memory of the Major and the later Thatcher years.
So here's the polar-opposite Thesis #2. In the 30 months following GE 2017, Corbyn so trashed not only his own reputation but the entire Labour brand, that the electorate will spurn the People's Party for a decade.
Yes; judging by what happened 1997-2015 (or indeed 1951-1964) it could be argued that the wasteland wilderness period could even be longer. I suspect some of the more reflective lefties fear as much.
We must all have been pondering on this one: what do we think?
ND
