As manoeuvres against Jeremy Corbyn develop into a full-blown ambush, it is possible to imagine scenarios in which he survives as leader, but hard to conceive why he’d want to. I don’t agree with the analysis that he lost the referendum with incompetence, a lack of leadership, and an inability to keep his mind on the matter when distracted by his hatred of his conservative allies. I think he lost the argument because he is not in favour of the EU.
Corbyn is leftwing aristocracy as surely as Boris Johnson is a toff: the bicycle and the beard, the honesty and the lack of personal ambition, the unblemished history of support for the underdog, the travels in South America like a socialist finishing school. His leftie bloodline is unimaginably pure. It is ironic that a man so horrified by elitism should never miss a chance to mention where his parents met – in London’s Conway Hall, on a committee about the Spanish civil war.
This story drips heritage. He is the opposite of the regular aristocracy in so many important ways – he will not lie and scheme his way to victory. Yet he shares one flaw: when it’s all about you and your purity, it is hard to be agile, allow your ideas to comingle with those of people who may be less pure, and change with a changing world. Corbyn has opposed the EU since the 1970s. Whatever came out of his mouth, nothing in his manner suggested he had, on this or indeed anything else, changed his mind.
I don’t agree that his time as leader has been a disaster – leave would have won the referendum regardless. It would always have turned the debate into a conversation about immigration and hammered out its racist cant, whoever opposed it. A more centrist Labour leader would have made more concessions – offered bogus and unworkable migrant caps – but the more strident voice would still have won. Corbyn has been a one-man Occupy movement, squatting in the office of Labour leader on behalf of the people (of whom I was one) who felt the party’s high command was lifeless and intellectually spent. The point has been made, and the apparatus now has to be put to better use.
There hasn’t been a more fertile time for a Labour leader since the 1990s. The case for a snap general election, already strong, will only intensify over the coming weeks. As the sheer mendacity of the leave argument becomes clear – it never intended to curb immigration, there will be no extra money for the NHS, there was no plan for making up EU spending in deprived areas – there will be a powerful argument for framing the general election as a rematch. Not another referendum, but a brake on article 50 and the next move determined by the new government. If you still want to leave the EU, vote Conservative. If you’ve realised or knew already what an act of vandalism that was, vote Labour. The next Labour leader might wake up with something real to fight for.
Yet this will depend on an altogether different quality of argument. The failure to articulate the beauty of international cooperation belongs to every last one of us; not the Labour party alone. I was in Berlin on Monday, where the German minister for Europe, Michael Roth, said: “Europe is still an emotional project that can actually move people.”
I prepared to be moved. It was a bit late by then, granted. But I still thought I could pinch it and use it. “What is positive about us,” he continued, “is that we do not think in black and white.” I thought that was the start of a list, but it wasn’t, it was the end: our beating emotional heart was ambivalence. Our big idea was not to express ourselves very well. This just isn’t enough. “The EU has its problems, but …” isn’t enough.
There is a reason why, when Marine le Pen and Donald Trump congratulated us on our decision, it was like being punched in the face – because they are racists, authoritarian, small-minded and backward-looking. They embody the energy of hatred. The principles that underpin internationalism – cooperation, solidarity, unity, empathy, openness – these are all just elements of love. Politicians only ever say the word “love” when they’re talking about gay marriage. But, to channel Lyndon B Johnson, the stakes are as high as ever, and the answer still the same: “We must either love each other, or we must die.”
The only positive thing to be said for this result is that it will change the way we talk about electoral anger. Elaborate respect has always been paid, by the media and politicians across the spectrum, to the rage of the dispossessed, those in the de-industrialised north, left behind by globalisation, expected to celebrate economic triumphs from which it took no benefit. That respect, of course, was never backed up by meaningful redistributive action, yet it was paid. Meanwhile, no respect has been paid to the passions of the remain voters – even though this amounts to three-quarters of our younger generation, it is apparently still seen as the preserve of the metropolitan wealthy. Even though remain’s principles are those of meeting the future with the accumulated brilliance and inventiveness of the minds of the present, they were reduced to the line that, if we stayed in the EU, things would be cheaper.
Had the leave voters lost, their rage would have continued unabated – even if they could find a politician who would close all the borders rather than just pretend to, even if they found a party with internal consistency, which also put up trade barriers, their conditions would not improve.
The anger of the progressive remain side, however, has somewhere to go: always suckers for optimism, we now have the impetus to put aside ambiguity in the service of clarity, put aside differences in the service of creativity. Out of embarrassment or ironic detachment, we’ve backed away from this fight for too long.