“Never interfere with your enemy when he is making a mistake" - the Corbyn nomination
Napoleon's advice to his marshals appears very appropriate to Conservatives with the news that Jeremy Corbyn has been nominated as a candidate to be leader of the Labour party.
At first sight this may appear to be good news for Labour's opponents. Dan Hodges (who despite his disenchantment with Ed Miliband did vote Labour last month) wrote in the Telegraph that Jeremy Corbyn getting on to the ballot paper proves that
"The lunatic wing of the Labour Party is still calling the shots."
UKIP's one MP Douglas Carswell tweeted
"Please let it be Jeremy! I'm so hoping Mr Corbyn gets it! UKIP 2020 strategy to displace Labour wld get another boost"
Labour MP John Mann tweeted a similar opinion but the opposite attitude
"So to demonstrate our desire never to win again, Islington's Jeremy Corbyn is now a Labour leadership candidate"
Many Tories have gone wild with delight, and jokingly suggested - at least, I hope it was a joke - joining the Labour party temporarily at £3 each to vote Corbyn and ensure Labour stays unelectable.
(Some Greens are doing the same, because they are deluded enough to think Corbyn might win.)
HOLD ON GUYS!
Of course it should be obvious to anyone with better political judgement than a brain-damaged wombat, or most of the 35 Labour MPs who nominated him, that in the short-term this will be damaging to Labour, pulling the leadership debate away from those parts of the political landscape where most voters are and ensuring that press coverage will remind the majority of voters who did not support Labour last month of why they voted against the party.
And if Jeremy Corbyn were to actually win it would be an exact mirror-image of the election of IDS as Conservative leader in 2001. A result which would have destroyed the Conservative party had it not been reversed by the parliamentary party - and the Conservatives are better at sacking leaders than Labour are - and which did us so much damage in the meantime that Blair was able to be re-elected in 2005 despite the invasion of Iraq.
However, cheering on Labour candidates in this was might have any number of unfortunate results. For one thing, it might wake Labour up to the mistake they are in danger of making and frustrate the outcome the people doing it want - hence the Napoleon quote in the title of this post.
Secondly, it might encourage complacency. We have enough problems of our own.
We have to get the EU Referendum right - so that whatever outcome it produces both is and is seen by most Conservatives (we'll never convince some hardliners, of course) as a fair, democratic and representative outcome, and one which doesn't tear the Conservatives apart.
We have to make sure the economic recovery continues for as long as possible and make sure that when the next world recession arrives Britain is in a position to deal with it. Because sooner or later there will be another recession - the only chancellor stupid enough to think he had abolished Boom and Bust was Gordon Brown, and look what happened to him!
Last Friday's Economist had a very strong cover article on this, arguing that there is a danger that when the next recession comes the aftereffects of the last one may leave many countries in a poor position to deal with it. The cover illustration showed a knight walking away from a dead dragon (representing the last recession) with his sword and lance stuck in the deceased monster, leaving him only a dagger to fight the next dragon (recession) towards whose jaws he is walking.
Then there is the need to find millions of pounds to balance the budget without wrecking essential services or the economy, the need to ensure our country's defences are strong enough to stand up to Vladimir Putin, the need to deal with DAESH (which I refuse to call "Islamic State"), finding a constitutional settlement which is fair to Scotland and the rest of the UK - and the list goes on.
Harold MacMillan once described the biggest danger in politics as "Events, dear boy, Events."
There are plenty of events which the present government will have to watch out for, and we cannot afford to assume the incompetence of the Labour party will indefinitely excuse us from dealing with the electoral consequences of how those events are managed.
Incidentally, if anyone was serious about joining the Labour party to vote for Jeremy Corbyn, to have people joining other parties to influence their selection of leader for the worse is a seriously bad idea. Particularly if, like me, you think moving towards primary elections would make British politics more democratic.
In the longer term the consequences of a Corbyn candidacy might even be good for Labour, if his decisive defeat marks a clear break with the left and gives the new Labour a "Kinnock v Militant" moment. This may be what one or two MPs who do have more intelligence than a brain-damaged wombat and still nominated Corbyn are privately hoping for. Or alternatively, if he becomes leader and is such a disaster that it forces the Labour party to wake up.
I don't think either of those scenarios is likely. But unless he wins, the unfortunate headlines Corbyn is going to generate for Labour this summer will be long forgotten when the next General Election come around, almost certainly in 2020.
At that time most people will vote on the progress that has been made since 2010 in dealing with the fundamentals of the economy and the country. If most of them are not looking good, heaven help the Conservatives - and heaven help the country.
At first sight this may appear to be good news for Labour's opponents. Dan Hodges (who despite his disenchantment with Ed Miliband did vote Labour last month) wrote in the Telegraph that Jeremy Corbyn getting on to the ballot paper proves that
"The lunatic wing of the Labour Party is still calling the shots."
UKIP's one MP Douglas Carswell tweeted
"Please let it be Jeremy! I'm so hoping Mr Corbyn gets it! UKIP 2020 strategy to displace Labour wld get another boost"
Labour MP John Mann tweeted a similar opinion but the opposite attitude
"So to demonstrate our desire never to win again, Islington's Jeremy Corbyn is now a Labour leadership candidate"
Many Tories have gone wild with delight, and jokingly suggested - at least, I hope it was a joke - joining the Labour party temporarily at £3 each to vote Corbyn and ensure Labour stays unelectable.
(Some Greens are doing the same, because they are deluded enough to think Corbyn might win.)
HOLD ON GUYS!
Of course it should be obvious to anyone with better political judgement than a brain-damaged wombat, or most of the 35 Labour MPs who nominated him, that in the short-term this will be damaging to Labour, pulling the leadership debate away from those parts of the political landscape where most voters are and ensuring that press coverage will remind the majority of voters who did not support Labour last month of why they voted against the party.
And if Jeremy Corbyn were to actually win it would be an exact mirror-image of the election of IDS as Conservative leader in 2001. A result which would have destroyed the Conservative party had it not been reversed by the parliamentary party - and the Conservatives are better at sacking leaders than Labour are - and which did us so much damage in the meantime that Blair was able to be re-elected in 2005 despite the invasion of Iraq.
However, cheering on Labour candidates in this was might have any number of unfortunate results. For one thing, it might wake Labour up to the mistake they are in danger of making and frustrate the outcome the people doing it want - hence the Napoleon quote in the title of this post.
Secondly, it might encourage complacency. We have enough problems of our own.
We have to get the EU Referendum right - so that whatever outcome it produces both is and is seen by most Conservatives (we'll never convince some hardliners, of course) as a fair, democratic and representative outcome, and one which doesn't tear the Conservatives apart.
We have to make sure the economic recovery continues for as long as possible and make sure that when the next world recession arrives Britain is in a position to deal with it. Because sooner or later there will be another recession - the only chancellor stupid enough to think he had abolished Boom and Bust was Gordon Brown, and look what happened to him!
Last Friday's Economist had a very strong cover article on this, arguing that there is a danger that when the next recession comes the aftereffects of the last one may leave many countries in a poor position to deal with it. The cover illustration showed a knight walking away from a dead dragon (representing the last recession) with his sword and lance stuck in the deceased monster, leaving him only a dagger to fight the next dragon (recession) towards whose jaws he is walking.
Then there is the need to find millions of pounds to balance the budget without wrecking essential services or the economy, the need to ensure our country's defences are strong enough to stand up to Vladimir Putin, the need to deal with DAESH (which I refuse to call "Islamic State"), finding a constitutional settlement which is fair to Scotland and the rest of the UK - and the list goes on.
Harold MacMillan once described the biggest danger in politics as "Events, dear boy, Events."
There are plenty of events which the present government will have to watch out for, and we cannot afford to assume the incompetence of the Labour party will indefinitely excuse us from dealing with the electoral consequences of how those events are managed.
Incidentally, if anyone was serious about joining the Labour party to vote for Jeremy Corbyn, to have people joining other parties to influence their selection of leader for the worse is a seriously bad idea. Particularly if, like me, you think moving towards primary elections would make British politics more democratic.
In the longer term the consequences of a Corbyn candidacy might even be good for Labour, if his decisive defeat marks a clear break with the left and gives the new Labour a "Kinnock v Militant" moment. This may be what one or two MPs who do have more intelligence than a brain-damaged wombat and still nominated Corbyn are privately hoping for. Or alternatively, if he becomes leader and is such a disaster that it forces the Labour party to wake up.
I don't think either of those scenarios is likely. But unless he wins, the unfortunate headlines Corbyn is going to generate for Labour this summer will be long forgotten when the next General Election come around, almost certainly in 2020.
At that time most people will vote on the progress that has been made since 2010 in dealing with the fundamentals of the economy and the country. If most of them are not looking good, heaven help the Conservatives - and heaven help the country.
Comments
Without a strong opposition then weak ideas from government seem sensible, like cutting the debt in the last parliament. so we end with a poor government who's only strength is "being 'less worse' than the other lot".
The better the opposition the better the government, why?, because they blooming well have to be, that's why.
You've probably seen one of the spoof reports which demonstrate that most people can automatically correctly read a typing error where the fingers hit the keys in the wrong order so that a word has the correct letters "not necessarily in the right order" (to quote Eric Morecombe) provided the first and last letters are in the right place.
Which is useful in a sense but can make it a pain finding and correcting such typos because you automatically see the word which should be there and miss the error.
Also agree that if the Electoral Commission wanted to sabotage either campaign, appointing the wrong person to lead it would be the most effective way to do so.
Think I will set up a new thread on this
No, you did not mis-spell democratic - I DID :) I put in quote marks as a reference to the fact I don't think our current system is very democratic.
It wasn't an attempt to pull you up on a typo, god only knows then I would be a hypocrite (I make millions of them)