There is more nonsense being talked in this leadership election than in any similar event in any political party for the last fifty years. These are the facts.
Political cycles are similar to economic cycles but longer and follow a natural process. In nature rain is needed to alleviate drought, but if the rain comes and does not stop there is a flood and people again yearn for drought. In other words the solution in one circumstance becomes the problem in another. As Lord Lawson recently pointed out there have been two great political weathers since the end of World War Two. The Attlee Consensus, which crated the welfare state, a mixed economy with a lot of state engagement and a priority for social justice, came first. Both the main political parties stayed with this model until in the 1970s inefficiency, overmanning and industrial strife led to such an uncompetitive economic performance that the UK became the first industrialised country in history to need a bailout form the IMF.
The result of the debacle was Thatcherism. This rolled back the state, denationalised all the utilities and industries in state ownership, curbed the unions, and decimated large parts of out of date industry. The welfare state remained largely intact, within it the jewel of the health service, but talk of social justice faded and was replaced with social mobility and aspiration. It was generally accepted as the best medicine for the country’s condition and a consensus built up around Thatcher’s nostrums which were followed by New Labour. NL gained three election victories as a kind of Thatcher Light or Pink Thatcher party. Most, but not all, of the current leadership contenders still wear Thatcher Pink and their friends trawl the media saying that a move to the left will put Labour out of power for a generation etc. They haven’t a clue what they are talking about.
Because the Thatcher era is over. It has become top heavy and powered by debt, over inflating assets, unable to balance its budget without attacking the weakest in society and it runs an economy which operates a trade deficit which is out of control, because it is based on consumption in a country which makes next to nothing it consumes. The gap between rich and poor grows by the hour and the phenomena of food banks and sleeping rough challenge the very notion of a fair and just society.
Labour’s response to Thatcher’s early victories was to swing more to the left, with calamitous results, because it was offering the very recipe which had failed so recently. But now it is the Right which is failing and the electorate has actually moved to the Left. New Labour is now an irrelevant noise which real people ignore. It cannot win because the ground it would occupy has been seized by a revitalised Tory party, which Osborne has moved from the Centre Right to the Centre Left.
But that is not a problem for Labour because almost all the votes up for grabs, and not committed as a lifetime gift to the Tory tribe, are on the left. The figures bear this out. Only once, in 1997, did New Labour improve on Neil Kinnock’s total in 1992. Since that first Blair victory they have been unable even to match it. Only twice have they even been able to beat Kinnock’s 1987 total. Indeed at every election since Blair’s first, new Labour’s total has fallen. Except for 2015, when it went up for the first time in 18 years. Because for the first time it did not call itself New Labour and shifted just a little to the left.
Labour’s defeat in 2015 came not from failing to convince entrepreneurs. It came from the anti-austerity SNP which wiped out Scottish Labour and from UKIP which picked up about 3 million working class votes in England which should have gone to Labour. The Tories did not win. They coasted to victory on the lowest Tory win in terms of votes since before WWII. Indeed Cameron got a million fewer votes in 2015 than Churchill did in 1950. And Churchill lost.
The Corbyn campaign understands all this. That is why they have the momentum.