A Corbyn who connects would really frighten the Tories

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/28/jeremy-corbyn-authentic-brighton-tories

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It is a moment for which the left has waited precisely 34 years. On 27 September 1981, at the Labour conference in Brighton, Tony Benn was defeated by Denis Healey for the party’s deputy leadership – “by a hair of my eyebrow”, as Healey records in his memoirs.

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More than three decades on, in which time it has often been pronounced dead, crushed or moribund, the left returns triumphant to the same gathering, in the same town, to celebrate. It’s not just recompense for Benn’s historic defeat, but one better. This week, which would ordinarily have been a wake and a post-electoral audit of what went wrong in May, will instead be a celebration of Jeremy Corbyn’s astonishing victory and (he and his cohort hope) the beginning of a new and glorious surge for their party. It is the stuff of political legend that he has at his side Benn’s son, Hilary, as if to give the stamp of dynastic approval to the endeavour (“Dad would have been absolutely thrilled.”)

Only the silliest Tory – which is pretty silly – would dispute the dusty glamour of what is happening at Brighton this week. Most politicians are as sentimental as they are technocratic, Labour politicians especially so. Since the Corbyn saga began in the summer, Labour’s central story has been drenched in the narrative schmaltz of the triumphant underdog, the shabby tribune who defies the odds to beat the clones in suits.

This is a politician who is quite relaxed being pictured while handling a huge marrow, for God’s sake

I wrote in this space last month that, of the four Labour leaders David Cameron has faced, “this one will be the toughest”, and that remains my view: not because Corbyn is a plausible prime minister, but because he refuses to engage in routine forms of political combat and does not acknowledge the official scoreboard. Though reasonably keen (as far as one can tell) to walk into No 10 on Friday 8 May 2020, his principal objective as leader seems to be the building of a new campaigning movement rather than the mustering of a government-in-waiting.

Before the preparation for this conference, he had never used an autocue. In his interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr, he evaded most of the questions with a shrugging, avuncular charm that was both exasperating and effective: let many opinions bloom, he seemed to be saying. This is a politician who is quite relaxed being photographed while handling a huge marrow, for God’s sake. It’s as if Malcolm Tucker had never existed.

Meanwhile, it has not escaped the attention of the Conservatives that every attack upon Corbyn by his Blairite foes during the leadership contest only enhanced his appeal. So the Tory response has been selective and comparatively sotto voce. “Do we treat him as a joke, or as a grave threat to the nation?” asks one friend of the prime minister. “He can’t be both. Let’s see whether he’s more Jez or the Jester or red peril by the end of the week.”

Lurking beneath Corbynmania is a question about the purpose of political activity and the nature of political parties – and the Tories will be watching very closely as it surfaces and resolves itself. The Labour leader’s position is that Tony Blair represented an entryist caucus that took over the party, immobilised its internal democracy and turned a class movement into a cult of personality. Discipline mattered more than debate, unity more than conscience, soundbites more than reasoned argument. The result was spin, Iraq, the unchallenged advance of global capitalism, conference reduced to a meticulously choreographed pageant, and the trading of Labour’s soul.

To which the remaining Blairites say: yes, maybe – but look what we got in return. Those three successive terms in government dwarf any other electoral achievement by the party, and gave us a 13-year run at the public services, welfare and the reduction of poverty.

Corbyn is right that millions of voters are sick of the stifling side-effects of Blairite politics and what they see as its bowdlerised Tory offspring. When they talk about the “new politics” and “authenticity”, what they really mean is “not Blair”. Corbynmania is above all else a liberation movement, the toppling of a grinning statue. The apology for Iraq will be Labour’s way of saying sorry for its most successful leader ever. Odd, really.

That there is energy in this mission is indisputable. But to what end? This is what fascinates the Tories. As students of New Labour, Cameron and George Osborne watched Blair’s capture of the party and its reconstruction as a delivery system for power. Corbyn’s focus is quite otherwise. He will expand this week upon his plans to democratise the party and its policymaking structures. Who will dare oppose him at this stage, with his thumping mandate, and high-wattage halo?

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There was a time when the answer to the question, “What’s Labour’s defence policy?” was, “Which one would you like?” Yet you do not have to be a veteran of 1980s electioneering to know that a modern party cannot survive unless it speaks with one voice. Internal democracy only works if it is the prelude to an agreed position to which the party sticks. The public’s taste for “new politics” is not limitless – or not, at least, when it is sizing up prospective governments. Cacophony is fun by the seaside, but less appealing when you are choosing the people who will run the country.

What the Tories will look for most keenly is evidence of Corbyn’s capacity to move beyond this triumph to the next challenge. To win, he must find a way of speaking with passion and compassion to the millions of sceptical voters who will decide well before Christmas what they think of him, and consider the matter closed until 2020. He may never hug “Mondeo man” close. But will he have anything to say to the voters Blair won for Labour – and their children, voting for the first time in 2020?

Will he, in short, look over the heads of his own tribe to the viewers at home and tell them why he is on their side, too? Of course, he will go through the motions of reassuring non-Labour voters that his party is a nationwide movement with an offer for all. But will he look like a man who knows he is obliged by electoral arithmetic to say this, or a man who means it? A man whose words are “authentic”? Call me a neoliberal, crypto-Blairite running dog of Goldstein if you wish, but the answer to that question will decide who governs this country for at least a decade.