Labour is ‘in crisis’, according to reports in the MSM (see today’s News Review here). The issues are antisemitism, a forthcoming BBC ‘Panorama’ programme broadcast this coming Wednesday, and Jeremy Corbyn’s weakness or frailty.

I observed with interest the pre-emptive ‘whataboutery’ already used by Labour, declaring that their antisemitism isn’t so bad when compared to the ‘islamophobic racism’ in the Tory Party. You’ll have noted that Brexit doesn’t really come into it unless as plaything for the infighting inside Labour, with some of the Anti-Corbynistas such as Tom Watson MP wanting Labour to become the Remain Party, a 2nd Referendum as ‘Brexit Policy’ included.  

There’s a brilliant article in the paywalled DT which provides excellent arguments. It’s by Sherelle Jacobs and has the title “It’s time for tortured Labour to embrace its Remainer elite fate” (paywalled link). The subtitle shows where this journey is going: “The Left has lied to itself for over a century. It needs to stop”. So let’s look at the article  in more detail, with extensive quotes:

“In politics, what looks like the beginning of the end is often merely the end of the beginning. Take the paradox that is the Labour Party. It may seem to be on the edge of extinction, but in fact is on the cusp of reinvention – as a populist-bashing Remainer institution. On Thursday, for the first time ever, it fell to fourth place in an opinion poll. But just when you thought that this week would see yet another dismal chapter of “Corbyn is Even More Useless Than the Useless Tories”, in stepped the magnificent Ann Widdecombe.

The energising power that this particular Brexit Party MEP has over liberal luvvies cannot be overstated. Every time she takes to the media, she acts as a sort of Thatcher-branded defibrillator for the deadened, divided Left. True to form, her controversial European Parliament maiden speech, which compared the UK leaving the EU to “slaves” rising up “against their owners”, briefly unified warring Labour in collective outrage. […]

Meanwhile, of course, millions of traditional Labour voters agree with Miss Widdecombe. They see the EU for what it is – a nasty, crooked, global elite vanity project, sodden with petty bureaucratic control-freakery and tortured by nostalgia for empire.” (paywalled link)

Having thus set the scene, Ms Jacobs next presents her proposal, a proposal that is rational for those who have been observing the faffing around inside Labour when it comes to Brexit policies:

“With Labour so fundamentally alienated from its traditional base, it has nothing to lose from ripping the plaster off and becoming the party of Remain (and, in realpolitik terms, probably everything to gain from going all-in as the anti-Widdecombe party). It cannot get away with hedging on Brexit any longer: Jeremy Corbyn – once so effective as the soft, crumbly, honey-flavoured face of the hard Left – has finally passed his sell-by date with impatient liberal Remainers. Meanwhile, the infuriated Northern heartlands are ditching the party for Nigel Farage in their droves.” (paywalled link)

Ms Jacobs then goes on to explain why this would be a good idea – for Labour:

“Although I am a Leaver, and appalled by Labour’s attempts to block Brexit, I cannot escape the conclusion that, to survive, the party’s natural course is to back a second referendum. It could use this as a springboard to try to reclaim Scotland and absorb the Liberal Democrats; a Lib-Lab pact would allow each of them to make inroads into Tory marginals dense with anti-Brexit professionals, such as Oxfordshire and Winchester.

This may sound like Brexit sacrilege, and a kick in the kidneys for Left-wing Leavers like Kate Hoey who have tried to hold their colleagues to account. But Labour MPs are in denial about the political monster to which they are ideologically shackled. Labour has always been a patrician movement, not a populist one. It is not in the business of representing what ordinary people think, only imposing its enlightened views on them – from the globalist religion of mass immigration to disastrous experiments in economic planning.” (paywalled link)

Next comes Ms Jcob’s devastating political analysis of the Party – devastating for Labour and for Lefties generally:

“Labour’s emergence as the so-called “party of the people” is, in fact, a weird quirk of history. The conventional story goes that, in 1900, Labour waved the magic Marxist wand of “political consciousness” at the homogenised, industrialised masses, and unified them in a moist-eyed mission to build a new Jerusalem.

In reality, at the turn of the 20th century, the British working class was hopelessly fragmented – scattered across dozens of non-conformist churches, and thousands of local family-run factories (we were known as the workshop of the world for a reason). Far from being a politically conscious collective, “the masses” lacked a coherent grass-roots vision of the future anchored in their own core values – namely family, individualism and community.” (paywalled link)

Wait – it gets better, and Ms Jacobs elegantly draws the connection between Labour then and Labour now:

“Labour stepped into the vacuum with its bullying, militant doctrine, combining state-enforced morality and spirit-crushing egalitarianism. But buried in the pretentious gloop of Karl Marx’s grand theory is one commonsensical truth: when people realise they are being taken for fools by an arrogant elite, they will eventually tell their masters to stick it. It was what Miss Widdecombe articulated so dramatically in her speech, which, dare I say, had the most delicate whiff of The Communist Manifesto about it.” (paywalled link)

There’s more, savour it and enjoy the brilliant analysis, described with crushing precision:

“With the Right turning Left-wing in their views of structural oppression, it makes perfect sense for Labour to embrace their true identity as the party of sneering elites. After all, McMarxist economic policies, which combine middle-class freebies with wealth-destroying dogma, are a vote winner with many well-off sadomasochistic metropolitans. And what is socialism but an intellectual accessory for insecure snobs?

As George Orwell wrote, “while theoretically pining for a classless society, [Lefties] cling like glue to their miserable fragments of social prestige”. So knock yourself out, Labour, champion free pointless university degrees for all, while sneering at us Brexit populists. It will probably get you the London vote – and the working classes who have deserted your fake movement are over you anyway.” (paywalled link)

This is how to burst the Labour/Lefty balloon with a sharp pen! I’ve yet to see a better, more succinct analysis of Labour’s desperate situation – but yeah, let our chattering metro-elites in the MSM chatter about ‘Tory islamophobia’ by all means.

Let them waste time while the Brexit train is leaving the station …

 

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