Jeremy Corbyn's Labour pains

The leader of the Labour party is now a man who describes terrorists and religious fundamentalists as "friends", who wants to "compromise" with murderous fanatics, who shares a platform with antisemites and donates to their causes, who speculates on wild conspiracy theories, and whose new Shadow Chancellor wants to "honour" IRA bombers.  His supporters can shout as much as they like that these are "smears" – but it's hard to see things that way, when these are things the man himself has actually said or done.  Quoting somebody's own words is not "smearing" them, and these issues will not go away.  In spite of all of this, Labour party members and supporters voted for Jeremy Corbyn in droves.

But twenty-four hours into his tenure as Labour leader, it was quickly becoming clear that Corbyn's bungled Shadow Cabinet reshuffle; his absurd decision to "crowd-source" his lines for Prime Minister's Questions (as if Labour still haven't learnt that opening things up to the general public – especially on the internet – is just asking for the system to be abused); his description of journalists' questions as "people bothering him" (as if he expects just to be able to do whatever he likes without any scrutiny, like he did when he was a backbencher – it is the job of the press to hold politicians to account, not simper and genuflect to them as in places like North Korea); and so on were only the tip of the iceberg.  Jeremy Corbyn's position as Labour leader is surely completely untenable.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if senior figures within the party were already planning how to depose him.

His fans will shout and scream that he was "democratically elected" as leader, and that he "has a mandate" which needs to be respected.  They will call for "unity", and expect other Labour MPs to be "loyal" to their leader.  But this is all nonsense…

Jeremy Corbyn doesn't give a fig for democracy.  Not if it doesn't fit his predetermined agenda, anyway…  Corbynites on Twitter are incensed at the idea of Labour MPs not supporting their leader, and rebelling against his "principled" stance on a variety of issues – but this is exactly what Corbyn has been doing for over thirty years, during which time he has rebelled against his party's whip more than five hundred times.  It seemingly hasn't occurred to people that disagreeing with Corbyn can also be a "principled" position, and that Labour MPs not toeing the Corbyn line might not be rebelling just to cause trouble, but out of the same high-mindedness which led Corbyn himself to rebel against myriad former Labour leaders.  As Helen Lewis pointed out in the New Statesman back in July, Jeremy Corbyn does not have a monopoly on principled belief.

"But Corbyn was democratically elected!" they bleat.  Moderate Labour MPs have to respect that!  Since when has Corbyn respected the sovereign wishes of an electorate?  He certainly doesn't respect the views of the people of the Falklands Islands, who voted overwhelmingly to remain a part of United Kingdom in a 2013 referendum.  He doesn't respect the views of the people of Northern Ireland when he hobnobs with the IRA.

No, Jeremy Corbyn is only interested in democracy or party unity when it suits him.  I don't see how he can reasonably expect other Labour MPs to show any more loyalty than he would've shown if any of the other candidates had won the leadership contest – or expect people to respect the democratic wishes of his voters any more than he respects the democratic wishes of the voters in the Falklands, or in Northern Ireland.  He certainly can't expect to carry on doing whatever he pleases free from media scrutiny and without consequence.

And as a result, his time in charge of the Labour party will be characterised by dissent, attrition and rebellion – all of which fractious in-fighting will cause splits in the party, and distract Labour from being an effective opposition to the Conservative government.  So much for the wisdom of people who naïvely greeted Corbyn's election as leader with: "At least we'll have an opposition who actually 'oppose' now!" (or similar).  Well, at least Corbyn and his cronies know they can always blame someone else for their failure to hold the government to account.

Demo-crass-y

'Democracy', we are told, is a good thing.  Unfortunately, it turns out most people no longer know what 'democracy' means.

According to Graeme Archer (writing today for the Daily Telegraph), a minority Labour government supported by the Scottish Nationalists would 'have no democratic legitimacy'.  As Twitter user 'Primly Sable' points out, this must mean the last coalition government also 'lacked legitimacy'.

@TeleComment @graemearcher So the current government also lacks legitimacy?
— Primly Stable (@PrimlyStable) April 21, 2015

And it's true that I did see plenty of people complaining about the coalition in 2010, claiming that the government had no mandate.  Phrases like "nobody voted for this government!" were very much in evidence (despite being demonstrably false).  The truth is, however, not that those people genuinely believed the coalition government 'lacked legitimacy', but more that they simply didn't like the coalition government.  All too often, questioning a government's mandate is simply a tactic to damage the credibility of a government you don't support.

I do not like the SNP.  Not one bit.  But it is ludicrous to think that, if they win a significant number of Westminster seats on 7th May (as well they might!), any influence they end up having in a UK government is somehow 'illegitimate' – as if they took part in some sort of heist.  Like MPs from any other party, SNP MPs are democratically elected to parliament, because that is who the voters in that constituency want to represent them.  And although the SNP, or their supporters, have occasionally been guilty of this themselves (think 'postal votes' in the Scottish Independence Referendum last September!), being an advocate of democracy also means not crying 'foul!' and branding the whole system bankrupt just because you end up with a result you don't like.

It's fine not to like the government – in fact, it should be encouraged!  But if that's the case, just say so, instead of hiding behind high-minded obfuscation about 'democratic legitimacy'.

Debatable, at best

I think there are now one hundred days until the General Election (I haven't bothered to count, but that's what people on Twitter are saying – and they're never wrong!), but most of the talk so far has been about the damned televised leaders' debates.  The leaders' debates were a new innovation for the 2010 General Election – I have already explained why they were a bad idea then, and are still a bad idea now.  But the more I hear of the debates, the more convinced I become that they not only add nothing to the election campaign, but are detrimental to democracy in general.

As I described in my post from October last year:

[…] this clunky, unnecessary, counter-productive political device […] has been imported from America and shoehorned into our vastly different political system with practically no alterations. 

The televised leaders' debates serve to make our electoral system seem more presidential, and in doing so, diminish the link between local MPs and their constituents.  They oversimplify politics in a way which doesn't serve the country at all.  It's time to admit that they were a mistake in 2010, and we'll be better off without them in 2015.

However, when I wrote in October, the debates were in the spotlight over the issue of whether UKIP should be included.  By now, however, we have moved way past that – with UKIP's participation in the debates now seemingly a given, the latest wrangling is about whether the Green Party should also be involved, along with the nationalist parties of Plaid Cymru and the SNP.

A seven-way debate, of course, is not impossible.  But whether it's possible should not be the question we are asking here – rather, we should ask 'is it desirable?'  There are several reasons why I believe it is not.

Firstly, the simple fact of the inclusion of parties who don't put up candidates across the whole of the UK – and who, therefore, necessarily only speak to a portion of the electorate – is problematic.  As the broadcasters reach out to the SNP and Plaid Cymru, Northern Irish parties such as the DUP are now wondering aloud why they are not also being invited to join the debates; if the DUP (who, let's not forget, currently have more seats in the House Of Commons than either Plaid Cymru or the SNP) were invited, we would end up with a debate between eight party leaders.  These debates are supposed to help voters decide how to cast their votes – how does presenting them with options at least 25% of which they couldn't possibly vote for even if they wanted to do that?

Secondly, even leaving that issue aside, I don't see how the televised debates are meant to help an undecided voter make up his or her mind.  In 2010, the analysis of each leader's performance in the debates seemed to focus much more on 'body language', what colour tie each leader was wearing – and, afterwards, who had 'won' – than on the actual content of each argument.  The whole process struck me as horribly superficial.  With seven, or even eight, people involved instead of three, that rigmarole will be intensified further, with pundits and public discussing who stood where, who wore what, and who 'won' instead of – y'know – actual politics.  That's not the way to build a thriving democratic process.

My final objection is closely related to the last one, because even before the debates have begun people are not talking about politics and policies – they are talking about the debates.  They are talking about who should, or should not, be invited to the debates; what the format of the debates should be; when they should take place; whether broadcasters should 'empty chair' any leader who declines to take part…  Are these the issues on which we should be focussing, with only a hundred days left before we have to decide who will be running our country for the next five years?

The more we allow the ins-and-outs of the debates to dominate the discourse leading up the election, the more we allow the superficiality of politics to take over, and the less we as voters can connect with the issues which really matter.  That is not democracy, and that is why we need to consign the televised leaders' debates to the history books.

Your right not to vote

It's Polling Day!  The most magical day of the year!  Children awake at the crack of dawn, to find the stockings they had hung up beside the fireplace, so empty and unfulfilled the night before, stuffed full of shiny new polling cards and campaign literature; the whole family gathers to exchange election gifts, and then sit down so a sumptuous home-cooked Polling Day dinner; we sing election carols, which tell and retell the glorious tale of that first election, all those many years ago - it is a story everyone knows, but which never gets old.

I have voted in every election since I turned eighteen.  I consider voting to be an important part of citizenship.  However, I also fully support the right of those who don't wish to vote - for whatever reason - not to do so.  It's a shame not everyone feels like this.

In the past few weeks - as in the run-up to every election - politicians, activists, celebrities (whose own feeling of self-importance won't allow them not to stick their oar in) and ordinary people have been reminding everyone to vote.  "Remember to vote!" they say, in a patronising, mothering tone - as if those who don't are simply forgetful, careless, or plain lazy.

Campaigns like Never Forget To Vote use powerful, emotive rhetoric about "Nazis" and "protests" to encourage people to go out and vote on Polling Day.  We are told time and time again that people "fought and died" for our right to vote - not to use that right is an insult to the brave men and women who fought for freedom and democracy.  We are told that, in many countries around the world, the right to vote is still very much in peril - if we don't vote in our own elections, we are insulting those who don't have have the same democratic rights we in the UK enjoy.  For women, especially, the emotive spectre of the Suffragettes, and their struggle to extend the franchise to women, hangs over anyone who dares not visit the polling station.

It's all a load of hyperbolic rubbish, really, isn't it?

We in Britain are fortunate to live in a democratic country.  We are not hapless subjects writhing beneath the heel of some despotic tyrant.  But democracy is, above all else, about choice; those wars we fought so long ago to preserve our freedoms were not waged so that we should have the right to vote, but so that we could choose to vote.

I know (or know of) many people who are choosing not to vote in today's European Elections.  These are not people who do not care, or who have simply "forgotten" to vote - they are interested, intelligent, politically-active people, many of whom have, in the past, been members of political parties, or even stood for election themselves.  Their choice not to vote today is exactly that - a conscious, informed decision to abstain from voting.  That is as valid a choice as any.

There are many good reasons to vote today.  But there are also good reasons not to.  And in the end, it is each individual's choice whether or not to exercise the right to vote.  Not to do so in no way diminishes the struggles or accomplishments of those who put their lives on the line in the name of democracy or freedom - indeed, that is a big part of what those people were fighting for.  A conscientious abstainer is as much a part of the democratic process as anyone.

Let's drop the pretence that anyone who doesn't vote today will have blood on their hands once the cyborgs rise up and enslave all of the free peoples of Europe (or whatever).