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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » We shouldn’t rule out the possibility that a Corbyn leadership could be the catalyst for LAB’s rebirth
Yesterday William Hill put up a bet offering 5/2 on Jeremy Corbyn leading LAB at the next general election. The thinking behind this chimes with the widespread assumption that Corbyn would be disastrous for LAB and that well before GE2020 there’d be a move to oust him and replaced with someone perceived to be much more voter friendly.
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It's copacetic.
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/voting-intention-1979-1983
Unlike (for example) Michael Foot, he has no experience of being on the front bench, either in government or in opposition.
Unlike Michael Foot, he would have been elected leader with the support of only a small number of his MPs.
He has little interaction with other Labour MPs (two of whom tweeted the other day that they had not spoken with him or met him properly in 10 years of being MPs). He has been grumpy, irritable and evasive in TV interviews. He would be completely out of his depth in terms of writing and formulating the details of workable policies (regardless of whether they are far-left-wing or not). He would be very awkward having his regular meetings with the Prime Minister on confidential matters ("Sometimes tea, sometimes not tea"). He has little sense of party discipline or loyalty, having voted against his own party's whip hundreds of times.
That's all before we get to scrutinising or analysing any of his actual policies.
If he became LOTO (and, when it comes to the crunch, I don't think he will) his leadership and authority would fall apart within months. He's a lame duck already, albeit that he has two functioning legs and he's a hippopotamus rather than a duck.
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When he was in Croydon two weeks ago, one of the questions was "How will you ensure that Labour MPs won't derail your leadership, when most of them are pro-austerity [and didn't vote for him]?" It is not enough for him to point to the mass membership of the party as his source of authority. The job of the Leader of the Labour Party is to lead a group of MPs and get them disciplined enough to win a general election. Being frenziedly backed by a proletarian mass is not enough.
But then again, four years and eight months is a mighty long time to wait for a pay out on this bet, unless Hills decide to do a Paddy Power (which they won't).
More like ~1.4 (Corbyn gets the gig) x ~1.5 (he lasts until an election) x ~1.05 (William Hill still being in business in 2020) = ~6/5
Has Jezza had a proper job?
And if so, how come they just gave David Cameron an overall majority, albeit a small one? There were non-Oxbridge party leaders (albeit no bald ones ...)
I don't think it's the age or background of leaders that Corbyn's electorate are turning against, but the gimmicky, ultra-focus-group tested version of politics which targets minute slivers of the centre ground and never seems quite to deliver what it promises. Copyright Phoney Tony Blair and nicked by D Cameron.
And anyway we mustn't of course confuse Corbyn's electorate of 600k with the UK's (and in particular the English) floating electorate - the 10-15% of voters in marginal constituencies who decide elections. Perhaps the biggest difference is that those who are motivated to vote in leadership elections are more likely to care about ideology, whereas floating voters (almost by definition) are less likely to care about that and much more likely to care about competence (or at any rate perceived competence). I think the latter is why they turned so quickly against the Tories in 1992 and so much more slowly against Blair after Iraq.
None of this is original of course, and it doesn't preclude Corbyn getting a short honeymoon after he's elected. But I think the requirements to be popular with NPXXMP and the (enlarged but still small) Labour Party selectorate and the requirements to "resonate widely" with the Great Unwashed in Nuneaton are very different.
Never underestimate how much people will want to believe a new politician who is promising things are going to get drastically better.
Many things were better in the 80's, and British politics was certainly one of them.
About the only thing that's better these days is that we don't live in daily fear of nuclear annihilation. (Also many types of medicine and computing have improved).
http://www.timeanddate.com/date/durationresult.html?d1=23&m1=07&y1=1913&d2=10&m2=11&y2=1980
http://www.timeanddate.com/date/durationresult.html?d1=26&m1=05&y1=1949&d2=12&m2=09&y2=2015
I suppose it depends on what you describe as 'successful' and who for. A party with hard left policies getting 25% of the vote and winning the odd convert (while of course turning off millions of others) could be judged as successful by those on the hard left. That however is a disaster for a Labour Party, one of whose reasons to be is to seek power - to be the party of the left which does make the compromises with reality needed to challenge a Tory party which has traditionally had no qualms about doing whatever it takes. Farage has done brilliantly with UKIP for example, in boosting their popularity within particular groups of voters, but no one in their right mind would say it's a good idea to make him Tory leader.
To give a cricket analogy about Corbyn's possible success, these days you'd probably say that your ideal Test opener is capable of scoring at five an over, aggressively dominating bowling and playing outlandish shots - it's become hugely beneficial to be able to put pressure on the opposition. However, that ability is of no use whatsoever if you're no good at keeping out opening bowlers and have rubbish technique - you might smash the odd 50 but you'll average in the 20s. Similarly Corbyn may have an attribute that other politicians could do with - personability and appeal as the outsider - but it will only gain him brief, inconsequential bumps in the polls when he's got absolutely no credibility whatsoever due to his ridiculous economic and foreign policy prescriptions.
(I am a little ray f sunshine)
And they vote. In large numbers.
Just wait till immigration is raised as an issue. Corbyn will lose lots of Labour support with unlimited immigration...
'Jeremy Corbyn 'to issue public apology over Iraq war' if he becomes Labour leader.'
Another day of headlines across the board for Corbyn, silence from the ABCs. Not bad for a 1970’s throwback, he certainly has this modern-day media coverage malarkey wrapped up.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/young-men-in-senegal-join-migrant-wave-despite-growing-prosperity-at-home-1434127244
But I don't think that's relevant while his health is in decent form. Perhaps for a moderate, centre-of-the-road politician it might be but with Corbyn, the passions for and against his policies will far outweigh any minor concerns about his age or health, unless there's evidence that it really is more than a theoretical risk.
In any case, the joy of a parliamentary system is that if a PM falls seriously ill, you can simply replace them with someone else.
And that is before you consider his 'team', if he can manage to construct one. It will consist of inexperienced unknowns. Contrast Michael Foot's shadow cabinet, which contained far more ministerial experience than Mrs Thatcher's government at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Cabinet_of_Michael_Foot
Labour needs to be destroyed, so that it can then rebuild itself into something that actually functions as a political party for the masses. Corbyn is the man to destroy the current Labour party.
Labour needs less of the Owen Jones and Polly Toynbee types and more of the Southam Observer type, in my book. I could vote for the Labour party then.
The bad news for Labour is that might well happen outside its ranks if it does not handle the consequences of his election with finesse. And there is no sign at all that Labour will handle the consequences of his election with finesse.
5/2 on his being leader in 2020 might give rise to some definitional questions about the party that he is leading at that date. But it is a good bet.
What we are likely to see is a greatly enlarged version of the Milifandom. Some will be greatly energised but that energy will not transfer to the floating voter in Middle England (or Wales). On the contrary: for every noisy recruit, there'll be ten silent defector; people who just want to get on with their lives, who have opinions but are not political, who have (or had, or want) a job and pay their taxes.
In the interim, Corbyn may catch an anti-politics mood at times but it will only be at times and while he may get polling bumps now and then, his personal ratings will always be worse even than Miliband's. As will his economic competence ratings - and we know where the combination of those two facts leads. At the bottom of it all will be a belief that he is not only not prime ministerial material, he's not even ministerial material.
Blair didn't get his landslide because people loved Labour, he got it because Tories stayed at home. The Labour vote went up by 2 million, the Tory vote dropped by around 5 million, the LDs got 28 more seats on the basis of essentially no more votes.
Also an Old Labour/WC Party will be head to head against the kippers, and be on the wrong side of the main issue that both these people today - immigration, which will make it even harder for them to form a government.
I wouldn't touch this at 5/2. Corbyn will get a honeymoon, but I can see him polling around 20% in a year and slipping into third place, possibly fourth, before being deposed.
1) Would Labour remove him?
2) Would Corbyn resign?
3) Is a Corbyn-led Labour party likely to prove a complete, total and unanswerable disaster?
The answers to those questions make me think this is a value bet:
1) No. Labour have never had the stomach to remove leaders - not even total failures like Foot and Brown. The logistics of ousting Corbyn are nightmarish - triggering a leadership election is the only realistic way to do it, and there is no guarantee he wouldn't win if he stood, as under Labour's rules he is entitled to. The fact that such figures as Johnson and Beckett (Beckett!) have been mooted as possible successors reveal the paucity of potential leaders to take over from him in any case. There seems little point in even trying to act unless something better is on offer. The only thing that might change this is if the deputy leader puts in a barnstorming performance and becomes a plausible alternative - but that doesn't seem likely.
2) No. Corbyn, as we have seen, is a man who does not make mistakes or deal in things like logic. He seems to have become more arrogant as his campaign progresses and he laps up attention from the adoring crowds he pulls. As long as they keep coming, he'll want to keep going.
3) No. That is, it will be a disaster. No question of it. But as we saw with Miliband, the mere fact that in the real world everyone thinks you are completely mad and wouldn't trust you with a packet of polo mints counts for little as long as a vocal, easily led and totally unrepresentative minority continue to support you, which the Labour left surely would with Corbyn no matter what happens (look at how every legitimate question about him becomes 'an establishment stitch-up'). As long as he has Owen Jones, Charlotte Church, Russell Brand and their intellectual fellow travellers behind him, he and they will continue to think they can win - even if they are bouncing at sub-20% in the polls, which as @Andy_JS pointed out is implausible - indeed, they might even lead in the polls for a time. Remember @SouthamObserver's vivid if rather gross simile. Labour's leadership are quite capable of pulling away happily, thinking they are showing their passion, while everyone else is pointing out that they look like a bunch of weirdos.
So if Corbyn is elected, the only reason I can see why he might leave early is (a) a major scandal, and it's hard to think what could come out that's more serious than the allegations made against him already or (b) health. And the latter is more than a 5-2 shot even at his age.
Therefore, it's actually quite hard to see the parliamentary Labour party being able to knife him even if under Labour's labyrinthine rules they were able to. Somebody (not me) put up this excellent article a while back which highlights the problems. I particularly thought of this quote: "A putsch against Corbyn raises the fear, as one MP gloomily observes, “of him just winning again”, leaving them looking both “unelectable and fucking stupid”."
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/20/jeremy-corbyn-labour-leader-tory-economy-plans
It's possible to avoid an identikit politician without going far left.
I do think he has a good chance of leading Labour to the next election (needs to win the leadership first, of course). Labour are pretty rubbish at axing leaders.
It's also an issue with Trump, Biden and Clinton, of course, and one reason why I don't think we should assume they are as clear front-runners as the odds would indicate.
Where I disagree with Mike is whether that will actually help. It has been a long running debate on here about how effective or important a good ground game is in a national election (I would not dispute for a moment that it can be key in a by-election).
If the price of having these shiny new activists is being a party that alarms the middle of the road swing voter who basically wants a government that does not screw up too badly and otherwise leaves them alone it will be a terminally bad exchange for Labour. But I can see a party full of these new activists deluding themselves about that. After all, who believes the polls anymore?
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/60053000/jpg/_60053324_60053323.jpg
Shifty....
EDIT: They also have very similar politics. Imagine trying to get Red Ken elected as Prime Minister for the leafy suburbs and market towns - and you'll see why Corbyn is doomed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/34008319
The first two practice sessions for Spa are today.
There are only four survivors of Blair's final cabinet still in the Commons: Beckett, Benn, Johnson and Timms. That's a pretty remarkable rate of attrition given that it's only eight years ago.
Age shouldn't be a problem for Jezza. The nearest analogy would be the Politburo and they all looked to be in their eighties. Jezza's still mentally young - about fourteen - and he's stayed that way.
'What has four legs and forty teeth? A crocodile. What has forty legs and four teeth? The central committee of the Communist party.'
'What's the difference between Tsarism and Communism? Under tsarism, the crown went from father to son. Under Communism, it goes from grandfather to grandfather.' (The word for 'grandfather' is used to mean 'old man' in Russian.)
'What support does Gorbachev have in the Kremlin? None - he can walk without help.'
"5/2 on his being leader in 2020 ... is a good bet."
I bow to your greater expertise in political betting but I sense (anecdotal only) that peak Corbyn has passed and the tide is ebbing fast. How many have already voted? That could be crucial.
Corbyn's age will only become an issue if his health becomes an issue: he wouldn't be given a free pass on a health scare in the way a leader in their 40s would. But until then, it won't be that that does for him, if anything does.
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/jokes/read/18134/
The Politburo always looked like a bunch of fossils and often behaved like that. Jezza's mind fossilised in his teens. I still believe it's between the anodyne duo, and the least worst will the Andrex puppy.
Assuming that JC is elected leader, (if he is not, there will be a Union and financially backed opposition inside Labour), then he will bring energy and some radical thinking to Labour - which it has lacked for at least 10 years.
Most probably, Labour needs a period of internal turmoil, so that it can sort itself out, bring it into 21st century thinking and realise practical policies - or else it will slowly disappear into irrelevancy in the wake of a new party that supplants it.
So where will JC's support come from - most likely the WWC (away from UKIP), trades unionists, anti-war people, and many who feel they are being left behind financially. How the ethnic vote will split it is difficult to say, but he should get about half of them.
The Guardianistas, who would be horrified to invite him to one of their 'intellectual, talking about nothing important' dinner parties, can be ignored. Mostly they vote Labour so they can parade a social conscience as long as it does not affect them personally and also can afford to do so as they will have very well paid jobs in the pubic sector or media. As Alfred Doolittle said, he could not afford that dreadful middle-class morality.
How will Labour emerge - difficult to say, but it will be either strengthened or a shrinking remnant in just a few parts of the UK.
I suspect Corbyn will initially gain huge amount of media coverage, say some popular things but still lose badly. Then his supporters will re-coalesce in their anti-establishment comfort and continue the nastiness unashamed. They are no different to the LibLabCon bunch of the Telegraph web pages. How would they fare if Nigel Farage became PM?
I doubt Corbyn would fight a GE though. I think by winning he will feel he has proved a very impressive point. I think he will step down on the agreement that Labout adopts a more compassionate stance towards the poor and the lower-paid workers, and allow somebody more suited to leading a national party take the job.
But on reflection the lack of ideas from Cooper and Burnham also shows the problem that a post Brown left of centre party has. The left has always been best at thinking up ways of the State spending more money. Several of these ideas have been good ones and accepted readily by the political consensus. But what do you do in a world where there is no money left, in the world of perpetual "austerity" where public spending goes up but only by enough to pay the interest and the odd wage increase?
It seems to me that there are 2 choices. One is the Corbyn route, which is simply to deny reality and promise more spending regardless. There is no doubt that there is a strand of the left who are attracted to this despite endless demonstrations of the consequences, the latest being Greece.
The second is to go the managerial route: not to spend more (or at least much more) but to spend it smarter and on the priorities. Even writing that makes it sound boring and neither Cooper or Burnham are close enough to being interesting in their own right to make it any better.
It seems to me this is why Labour is indulging in this fantasy nonsense. The alternative seems just too like what the Tories are doing to be worth the bother. But it is probably closer to what the people want.
Its the hair thing that really matters Mike?
EDIT - Sudden thought, but how many of Brown's last cabinet are still in the Commons? Can't be a huge number, especially given about a third of them were in the Lords anyway! We've lost Murphy, Balls, Brown, Darling, Straw, Miliband Sr, Denham, Jowell and Hain. I think that leaves Benn, Harman, Bradshaw, Johnson, Woodward, Burnham, Cooper, Woodward and Byrne. Considering it's only five years and they had a low average age, that's a pretty extraordinary attrition rate as well.
Am I misremembering?
Sure it wasn't your folks refusing to feed the meter?
It wasn't a nationwide thing, but it gave me some vivid childhood memories.
Jezza would be a disaster. I can't see any real plusses.
Kendall, with time, could give the Tories a run for their money in 2020 but she's unelectable in the present Labour party.
The Mogadon Pixie has ovary ownership issues, so that leaves Burnham as the safest choice to go to a manageable defeat.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3204828/Riot-breaks-overcrowded-refugee-camp-Germany-resident-tore-pages-Koran.html
Inflation was coming down by the end of the 70’s, too.
Of the six policies Corbyn would be sure to have on his 'Edstone' five are likely to be popular and potential vote changers. Only one is a certain vote loser.
(This contrasts with the original 'Edstone' where Ed's 6 'pledges' were meaningless)
1. Free University fees
2. Cancellation of Trident
3. Recognition of Palestine
4. Nationalization of BR
5. Exit the EU
6. Increase union power
Turnout down. Did he not say the tory vote down ?
I notice that Cooper is 10-1 at Ladbrokes to be leader in 2020 ; that seems like a good bet to me
If Corbyn is elected, could Cameron go for an early general election either in May '16 or immediately after the Euro vote (whenever that is)?
He has the money for an election and if Labour are in mess, there could be utility in going for it really early.