by Kevin Meagher

It doesn’t matter how many young people turn up to hear Jeremy Corbyn speak from the top of a fire engine. Or how many ‘likes’ his Facebook page gets. Or how many Macbook revolutionaries follow Russell Brand’s inane ramblings on YouTube. All that matters in the political system we have is winning over a majority of voters. Without accepting this immutable law of electoral politics, all the hopes, aspirations and polemics of activists’ are instantly rendered meaningless.

The Left disagrees. Speaking at a rally for Jeremy Corbyn recently, the musician, Brian Eno, loftily proclaimed that “electability is not the most important thing” for the Labour party, to enthusiastic cheers from the adoring crowd. When it boils down to appealing to the maximum number of voters or Not Selling Out, then it’s a no-brainer. To many on the Left, ideological correctness is more important than political pragmatism. Instead, “changing the conversation” (another Eno-ism) outweighs the importance of actually winning the vote.

The fundamental mistake that Corbyn and his enraptured supporters make is confusing ‘The People’ with ‘The Electorate’.

‘The People’ include the downtrodden masses that don’t vote and aren’t, all too often, even registered to do so. The Left, nobly, wants to help them the most. If they were one and the same as ‘The Voters’ then the likelihood of changing the conversation in British politics – would be much greater than it is. But they’re not the same, so the chances are nil.

Fully a third of people didn’t bother to cast their vote in May’s general election, yet at 66 per cent, turnout was actually the highest since Labour’s 1997 landslide. By failing to stake their democratic claim, as the wealthy surely do, the poor, the dispossessed and the beanbag radicals of the Left keep the dial fixed onto a status quo that simply ignores their issues of concern.

Meanwhile, the Electoral Commission estimates there are at least six million adults missing from the electoral register. It’s a situation that’s likely to get steadily worse with the recent switch to individual registration, rather than the old system where households could be signed-up en masse. Moreover, while 94 per cent of those aged over 65 are registered to vote, just 56 per cent of 19-24 year-olds are.

So, bluntly speaking, The People don’t matter (the young, least of all); it’s The Voters that the politicians and parties need to court in order to win power. They live in dozens of marginal seats across the country and will make-up the electoral battleground of the next election, as they do all elections. Any movement, of even a few thousand of them, has profound implications for the result. They want to be reassured that their mortgages, savings, two cars and foreign holidays won’t be put in jeopardy. Addressing their concerns becomes all that matters.

Is this an ideal arrangement? No, but the realpolitik of Labour’s moderates is preferable to the fantasypolitik of the Left. The public isn’t interested in a workers’ revolution or the overthrow of capitalism. They’re not even motivated to vote by the awfulness of the bedroom tax or the government’s other vindictive benefit sanctions. How do we know? Well, if a moderately left-wing Labour party promising the repeal of the bedroom tax couldn’t win in May, why would a much more left-wing Corbyn-led party?

For Labour’s pragmatic moderates – trying to deal with the hindrance of sub-optimal voter turnout – there is little choice other than to address the concerns of Middle England head-on. It isn’t ideal, but it’s the essential reality of our system. You cannot change anything for people lower down the ladder until you’ve assuaged those further up it. The ones that actually bother voting.

And you can’t blame middle class voters for going to the polls to defend their self-interest. Why aren’t the poor doing the same? After all, there’s a lot more of them. A reserve army that, if properly motivated, would alter the entire terms of British politics.

This, then, is the prize. So why aren’t all those pepped-up young activists, hanging on Jeremy Corbyn’s every word, straight off to their nearest housing estate to start signing-up the millions of dispossessed adults who are entitled to vote but who don’t and would never think of doing so. That’s how you change the world; when you can confidently treat ‘the people’ and ‘the voters’ interchangeably. Until that day come – if it ever does – left-wing politics will be little more than a juvenile indulgence.

Kevin Meagher is associate editor of Uncut

Tags: Brian Eno, electability, Jeremy Corbyn, Kevin Meagher, Labour leadership contest, the left