If Jeremy Corbyn is not electable, then who is?

by Salman Azami

LONDON

A word most commonly used by critics of the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is that he is "unelectable", but the obvious question is -- if Jeremy Corbyn cannot win a general election for Labour, then who is the alternative electable prime minister?

Last year, he was able to galvanize a large section of Labour members including many young people previously not interested in politics, many former Labour activists disenfranchised with the direction of the party, and a large section of trade union members. Consequently, he comprehensively beat three other more desired candidates by huge margins to become the new Labour leader against all odds.

The majority of the Labour MPs did not want Jeremy Corbyn as their leader, but the party membership overwhelmingly did. It was the responsibility of the MPs to accept the democratic wish of their party members and rally behind their leader, but from Day One, a significant section of the MPs tried to undermine his leadership and kept criticizing Corbyn through the hostile media that were ready to give them the platform to cry out loud how terrible he was as a leader.

The coup against Corbyn was staged at the worst time possible. The Remain campaign lost the EU referendum and many cities in Labour’s heartland in the north voted for Brexit. At a time when the country was without proper leadership with the prime minister announcing his resignation and the Conservative party in complete disarray, these MPs decided that their priority was not to lead the country towards stability in a turbulent situation, but to stage a coup against Jeremy Corbyn. Majority members of the shadow cabinet resigned and 172 Labour MPs passed a no-confidence motion against their leader. When these actions did not work, they tried to find someone who would be good enough to challenge him.

They chose Owen Smith as their unified candidate to challenge Mr Corbyn after their efforts to disqualify Mr Corbyn as a candidate through back door failed. Not only that, through back door the National Executive Committee disqualified 200,000 new Labour members from voting and increased registered members’ fees more than eight folds giving a strict margin of 48 hours to register. Nothing worked and the Jeremy Corbyn surge continued with the veteran leader winning by even a bigger margin than last year in the leadership election.

So, the Labour Party is now back to square one and is certain to go into the next general election under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, but the question about his electability remains as strong as ever. These MPs failed to convince their own party members -- and also the electorate as a whole – that they had other alternative candidates that could be more “electable” than Jeremy Corbyn.

They chose a candidate who was unimpressive and uninspiring to say the least. Having Owen Smith as the unified candidate of MPs gives two alternative pictures -- either there is a dearth of talent within the Labour MPs who can do a good job as the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, or there was no one among the MPs apart from two weak challengers (Angela Eagle being the other one – she eventually stepped down to support Owen Smith) who had the confidence to defeat the incumbent Labour leader. This tells a very sorry state of the MPs who can find faults of their leader, but are not good enough to take up the job themselves.

It is important to look at the state of the Labour Party in the last two elections. They lost comprehensively under Gordon Brown in 2010, and then lost catastrophically under Ed Miliband’s leadership including almost being annihilated in their traditional stronghold of Scotland. Clearly, the electorate lost its trust in Labour. One of the reasons Labour lost was that it did not provide the voters with much of an alternative choice than the Tories in terms of their policies while Ed Miliband lost out to David Cameron as a leader in a big way. Despite all the Labour MPs being fully behind Brown and Miliband, they failed to win both elections.

It is with this backdrop that Jeremy Corbyn came into the forefront after being a backbench MP for over three decades. He came with traditional Labour values and provided genuine alternatives that attracted a large section of people towards the party making it the largest political party in Western Europe. After decades of career politicians in Labour leadership who rubbed cheeks with media tycoons like Rupert Murdoch and took the country to an illegal war with severe consequences, people found a leader who is different. He is decent, principled, honest, and above all has policies that are very different from what the Tories offer.

The appalling manner in which the Labour MPs behaved to oust Corbyn is probably the reason the party is so behind the Tories in opinion polls. They made their own leader the scapegoat for the loss in the referendum accusing him of being lackluster. Even if we accept that for argument’s sake, we need to ask them what they did to win their own constituents to vote remain. They keep on saying that they represent 9 million voters, but why did many of these voters turn their back on them and vote to leave? Why should the leader be solely responsible?

Let us now talk about policies. The policies Corbyn stands for\ are they not actually the policies that the party is all about? Should the party not give the electorate a real alternative to the Tories? Why do they have to apologize and change their stance on issues like immigration? Why can they not convince the voters that immigration is actually not the real problem and the issue can be dealt with through other means? If they all sing the same tune and provide a genuine alternative, then people will have the opportunity to vote for policies rather than personalities.

No divided party can win an election -- everyone knows that. It is time that the Labour MPs accept that they do not have an alternative “electable” leader and trying to work with Corbyn is their best way forward. Despite endless media onslaughts against him\ open criticism and a lack of cooperation of his own MPs, he was not doing too badly in the polls until the civil war in the party broke out. Local elections this year also showed signs of optimism.

Everything is possible if a united party, which has seen a huge surge in party membership in recent months, can convince the voters around the country that a Labour government under Jeremy Corbyn is the best for post-Brexit Britain.