More humble pie for the 'moderates'

They were wrong and we were right. The same faces, given a platform on the BBC week after week, didn't give Jeremy Corbyn a chance: repeatedly criticising his inability to lead when they refused to follow. Politicians, pundits and columnists were almost all on the same page: socialist policies will kill off the Labour party and he must be stopped at all costs. They came close but they failed, and look what happened.

Corbyn and his small, loyal team had to battle the following:

Most of the PLP
The Conservative Party
The Liberal Democrats
UKIP
All of the mainstream media (more or less: a couple of Guardian columnists supported him but as a whole, the paper did not)

Word has it that inside Labour Party HQ, those with contacts in the media were either wilfully obstructing the party messages or undermining them at every opportunity. This blog I wrote at the time explains the repeated failures by the self-proclaimed 'moderates' which left the Labour Party looking an utter shambles and therefore, completely unelectable. It is a blessing that this stuff probably evaded the notice of enough of the electorate to stop the Tories getting another majority: imagine what Labour could have achieved with that manifesto and the backing of the majority of the PLP.

Why didn't they back him? Given that he is invariably described as "a good man", "a principled politician" etc, I think the truth is that many of those Labour MPs didn't want policies that would fundamentally tear up Thatcherism; they wanted, broadly, to keep the status quo. This article by Diane Abbott from 2014 came a while after I cancelled my Labour party membership having become sick of Labour failing to challenge the idea that the last Labour government were at fault for the global financial crash and more or less backing the economically illiterate austerity policies of the Coalition government. As a Unite member, I voted for Jeremy Corbyn and when he became leader, I re-joined the party as a full member. You see (and I'm still a little smug), I KNEW that austerity didn't work. I KNEW that Labour needed to support the many and not the few and I KNEW a strong left-wing Labour party could win - and we would have if the PLP hadn't been so desperate to cling to Thatcherism.

A few in the PLP who didn't support Corbyn may have felt that socialist policies would not appeal to the electorate. Either way, they were wrong and should be big enough to say so. Sadly, since the results came in, most have been very quiet indeed.

Labour will still lose because people are deluded and misinformed.

Despite what the polls say, I think the Tories will get another majority - although it won't be the increase they were expecting when they called the election.

Obviously those earning ludicrous sums of money who want to pay less tax support the Tories, as do people whose businesses want to donate thousands of pounds to the Tories rather than pay millions in tax. And there are racists (returned from UKIP) and short-sighted hate-filled people who don't see that they too might need benefits if they fall ill or lose their jobs. But I'm constantly baffled by the misguided others who support the Tories. Take this 18-year-old who managed to get an article published in the Huffington Post yesterday: I sent him a series of tweets challenging areas I thought he didn't have the full picture. He replied to a few and we had a short to-and-fro but in the end, he wasn't able to back up his article against my responses. I'm pleased that people like him are engaging with politics but, like I was at 18, doesn't seem to get that he can't believe what he reads or hears and needs to build up his own understanding with further reading from independent sources and inform his opinion that way.

The same goes for the frankly distressing ideas in this Guardian article. There are people saying "I've voted Labour for 50 years.....but now they're too left-wing." REALLY?! He really needs to look at tax levels, funding of education and the NHS and policies on privatisation vs nationalisation over that period. Another contributor says "I'm left-leaning" but goes on to explain how business should be the focus and not the NHS. Sorry mate but big business has been THE focus of the last 38 years and look where that got us. Another doesn't seem to have read the independently-checked figures in Labour's policies but does believe the Tory manifesto which has one costing: that of the 6.8p child's breakfast.

Unfortunately, we cannot take our politicians' words as truth. And we cannot trust the press and the media to adequately and fairly analyse their policies. Sadly it seems too many people are still going to vote without first checking that what they believe isn't total bollocks.