As long as some in Labour insist all Tory voters are evil, they guarantee that their party will lose Here’s progress: the British left seems, finally, to be letting go of the delusion that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is […]

Here’s progress: the British left seems, finally, to be letting go of the delusion that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is doing OK with the electorate.

John McDonnell can still flannel about how Labour “surpassed expectations” with its catastrophic results in the local and mayoral elections, but he’s increasingly a lone voice.

Even the mighty powers of Corbyn supporters’ cognitive dissonance can’t turn a crushing defeat into a success.

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The real problem? The voters

Here’s more dismaying news: though the hard-left is tentatively recognising the disaster for Labour, when it comes to attributing responsibility, it’s still high on self-regard and wishful thinking.

There are many reasons for Labour’s long-term decline, and Corbyn himself is a symptom as much as he’s a cause.

But for the left, the guilty party is obvious. Labour has lost because of the voters.

“Lower than vermin”

Misled voters were offered “real Labour” under Corbyn, and they turned away.

It’s an article of faith that the Conservatives are evil, and what reason could anyone have for voting evil apart from being evil?

That some voters might have simply weighed the options – and decided that the brittle, robotic ideologue is still the least-worst candidate compared to the fractious shambles – is not a hypothesis that gets house room.

This attitude – that the public has revealed itself to be Tory, and so deserves to get Toried right in the face – is both endemic and self-destructive.

When Nye Bevan called Tories “lower than vermin”, he was (at least notionally) talking about policy makers rather than voters; it was the Tory opposition who framed it as an insult against the electorate.

Now, some leftists are happy to take that Pyrrhic rhetorical step entirely on their own. They even wear it as a T-shirt.

Quasi-religious thinking

Calling Tories evil isn’t political thinking. It’s quasi-religious thinking, a puritanical division of the world into the saved true believers and the ideological damned.

And yet, those damned are part of the nation that Labour supposedly seeks to govern; more than that, Labour cannot govern unless it reclaims swing voters from the Tories.

This is an unpopular truth, and one that the left has been through interminable contortions to avoid.

The fantasy of a progressive alliance

We have had the fiction that a “truly left-wing” leader could win by recruiting non-voters.

This imaginary bloc of disenfranchised socialists evaporated when Ed Miliband lost in 2015, but the lie evolved: Miliband was simply not “truly left-wing” enough, and the SNP’s success in Scotland showed that people were hungry for a “truly left-wing” party.

Now that Corbyn is manifestly not going to win in Scotland (because Scottish voters were backing a nationalist centrist party, not vapour-ware socialism), the fantasy of a progressive alliance is beginning to circulate.

If only Labour could unite with the “truly left-wing” Greens and Lib Dems and God knows what other odds and sods, the Tories could be seen off.

None of these are practical paths to power for Labour. They are simply dreams of a world where Labour needn’t ever engage with the “vermin”.

Non-voters don’t vote

As anyone who has ever been out canvassing can tell you, this is not the world that exists. Non-voters, by definition, tend not to vote. When they do – as the EU referendum showed – there is no guarantee that their turnout is going to tip things to the left.

Winning means winning over one-time Conservative voters. Winning means serving one-time Conservative voters, and indeed current Conservative voters, and Conservative members too.

The state of fire-purged purity sought by the left is entirely and utterly incompatible with holding office, and only by holding office can Labour do the things that Labour exists to do: create growth, redistribute wealth, protect the NHS and comprehensive education systems, promote equality.

A martyr to the ballot box

Comparisons of Corbyn to Michael Foot have always been flattering, not least to Corbyn himself who has neither the intellect nor the principles of Foot.

But come this summer Labour will look back on the 1983 wipeout with nostalgia: losing a mere 52 constituencies and holding 209 seats in Westminster will seem like unimaginable political comfort.

The hard-left has been happy to martyr itself electorally, and in doing so, it’s surrendered the country to Conservative rule.

If there’s any wickedness in politics, it’s not in Tory voters: it’s in the self-righteous leftist ninnies who’ve given up on their own nation.