Tony Blair is to blame for the rise of Jeremy Corbyn

[T_i_B]

Very good article about the ongoing leadership contest / open civil war in the UK Labour party.

http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2015/07/22/tony-blair-is-to-blame-for-the-rise-of-jeremy-corbyn

Tony Blair's Labour followers have always claimed to be the wing of the party which cares most about winning. However, since Blair's departure, this desire to win seems to have totally deserted his supporters and the man himself.

David Miliband's defeat to his brother in 2010 was a huge surprise for most commentators, yet it was wholly predictable. Miliband had the Labour leadership in his hands yet threw it away out of an arrogant refusal to move towards his party's own supporters. His successor Liz Kendall has taken a similar and even more election-losing trajectory. She began her campaign by winning gushing plaudits from right-wing papers and is set to finish it with the support of little more than one-in ten Labour supporters.

Rather than blame the Labour electorate for the rise of Corbyn, the party should instead look at the paucity of the alternatives. If any of Corbyn's rivals had even a sprinkle of star power or political vision, then Corbyn would be nowhere in this contest. Corbyn is winning precisely because Labour supporters understand who he is and what he wants and don't understand the same of his rivals. When Corbyn says he is against austerity and then votes against welfare cuts, Labour supporters understand that position and can choose to either back it or not. When Burnham says he's "firing the starting gun" against welfare cuts and then chooses to abstain on a vote authorising them, people have basically no idea what or who he really stands for.

As long as Labour continues to speak and think like chartered accountants, they are doomed to lose. As George Orwell once famously wrote: "If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." Blair was a brilliant political leader. However, his biggest legacy is a style of political language and thought which has made obfuscation easier and political vision harder. As a result of this approach to politics, the public are more distant from politicians in general and Labour in particular than ever before. If Corbyn becomes the next Labour leader in September, a large deal of the credit should be laid at Blair's own front door.

[craigmatic]

1. Damn that is a good read. Corbyn is going to be the next leader and the tories will probably have a

harder time at PMQs because he comes off as principled and earnest. I hope he can win the next election.

[T_i_B]

2. Corbyn would never win a general election.

But then again, if he were elected leader the Parliamentary Labour Party would kick him back out at the first opportunity. So it's unlikely that he would ever even get that far.