Jeremy Corbyn: Labour will be led into the wilderness by a characterless man

Given that Jeremy Corbyn will not become Prime Minister, as even many of his supporters accept, there is no way that this can end well for the Labour Party. A YouGov poll at the beginning of August found that 30 per cent of Corbyn supporters intended to vote for him even though they didn’t think that Labour was likely to win the 2020 election with him as leader. Because that is not why they voted for him.

But his election is no good for the country either. At least Liz Kendall reminded us which comes first. David Cameron and George Osborne are playing their opportunity adroitly. They are taking Harriet Harman’s advice, offered at the second Prime Minister’s Questions after the election, not to “gloat” and to “show a bit more class”.

In the privacy of his mind, I am sure that the Chancellor, in particular, is dancing a daily jig of delight at his good fortune – so soon after an election that he thought might end his career. But in public Cameron and Osborne keep their straight faces on. The Prime Minister has warned that Corbyn is a threat to national security and economic security, while the Chancellor told the New Statesman last week: “I don’t think that’s particularly good for the country that you have an opposition heading off to the wilderness.” He is absolutely right but he is not the right person to say it.

It is because Labour has gone for a scream in the wilderness that he will be able to cut tax credits for the working poor. That is what moving the centre ground looks like: a government that talks about a compassionate one-nation approach as it makes the country more unequal.

But Labour has made its choice. The question is what Labour centrists, a majority among MPs but at present a minority in the party, do about it. As ever, the question was posed with clarity by the Antichrist of the New Jerusalem, Tony Blair, in an article two weeks ago: “Do we go full frontal and take it on, or do we try to build a bridge between the two realities?”

He answered his own question by implication. Late-period Blair can’t help himself, saying the Corbynistas inhabit a “parallel reality” as a “refuge” from the real thing. But everyone knows what the early Blair, the rising MP, would have done. He would have built the bridge.

In the struggle going on this weekend in Labour frontbenchers’ consciences, he would have been a collaborator. Yes, Jeremy, he would have said when the leader called to ask if he would continue as shadow Home Secretary, but I will go on advocating... At this point our imaginary historical phone call wavy-dissolves into the conversation Corbyn has had or is having with Andy Burnham.

Many Labour shadow ministers will stay and serve under Corbyn. Those who refuse, such as Chris Leslie and Liz Kendall, are more to be admired – after all, we all respect principle in this new dawn, do we not? But “they also serve who only stand and wait”, as Milton said. Some of them have to stand up for Labour as a party of government and wait until the time comes to organise for it.

Corbyn mentioned “unity” in passing in his victory speech, and his spin doctors – yes, he is a professional politician, after all – insist that he wants to unite the party and to work with people who hold a range of views within it. In any case, his record as an habitual rebel means he is not in a good position to demand doctrinal purity. So shadow ministers are in a strong position, especially if they work together.

Many people think it would be embarrassing for Labour’s frontbenchers to be asked if they agree with Corbyn on nationalising everything and abolishing poverty with free money. But it shouldn’t be that hard. They can say that Labour is united in wanting to make the country better and that “Jeremy” has said he wants an open and bottom-up debate about how to do it. The bolder ones might just say that they don’t agree with the leader and that the public finances have to add up, or that anti-Americanism cannot be the only principle of British foreign policy. It would then be up to Corbyn, on the wrong side of the question and on the wrong side of public opinion, to sack them, and he can’t sack them all.

The other part of building the bridge is to pretend to be delighted about the enthusiasm of Corbyn’s 251,417 voters, mostly new arrivals since the general election. We all know that half of 1 per cent of the adult population is no “movement”, and that enthusiasm in error is no virtue, but politeness requires an acknowledgement that everyone means well – even those who want to replace capitalism with something else, as yet unspecified, but which will still provide them with iPhones and good-quality supermarket food.

The Labour Party can hold together, but it will require ingenuity on the part of those who think that Labour ought to aspire to be a party of government, and it is not obvious that the parliamentary party has the intellectual resources it needs. It is so denuded of talent that it is hard to see where the succession to Corbyn will come from. Part of the reason for his success is the thinness of the field against him, but look beyond them and behold a wasteland. As Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP who is as astute in analysis as he is weak on solutions, said last week: Corbyn “is not causing the crisis for the Labour Party”.

Corbyn is a cipher, a semi-mythical figure into whom his supporters read their “mad as hell and not taking it any more” frustration. It is surprising that he has got through an entire leadership election campaign without anyone noticing, but he is one of the most characterless, uninteresting people to have made it to the front rank of British politics – as his supporters are about to discover, but as I suspect that the wider British public discovered in their first impression of him in his victory speech.

Twitter.com/@JohnRentoul