Labour’s bitter refuseniks risk being stranded by the tide

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/28/labour-conference-refuseniks

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What a shocking disappointment. We assembled in Brighton for a bloodbath, for gunpowder plots, sectarian skulduggery and the starting pistol fired for the great Labour civil war. But it didn’t happen – or not as I write. The press room here is dazed, confused and feeling cheated – though most deliver the headlines they’d pre-cooked anyway.

Jeremy Corbyn’s triumph sent Labour MPs into a slough of despond, the future grim, no way out. Some over-hastily walked away eschewing contamination with a Corbyn shadow cabinet. Surely the far left would impose impossibilist policies and doom Labour forever?

But that hasn’t happened. Corbyn has done exactly what he said he’d do, though no one who remembers the 1980s Militant nightmare had any reason to expect it. He is proving so far to be the consensual, democratic leader he said he’d be. What a surprise. Politics is being done differently, as promised. No MP need parrot mantras they don’t believe, free to disagree amicably. Sensible policy has emerged, though by what means isn’t altogether clear.

Related: Six things we’ve learned from the Labour party conference | Jonathan Freedland, Tom Clark, Rafael Behr, Matthew d’Ancona, Martin Kettle and Gaby Hinsliff

In just two weeks, Corbyn policies that made most MPs’ blood run cold have evaporated. The non-negotiable deal-breakers that really would crack the party apart have been wisely and quickly resolved. Hilary Benn and Alan Johnson made the robust case for Europe – no ifs, no buts – to warm applause.

Staying in Nato needed no debate. The nuclear hazard was avoided. Maria Eagle, the shadow defence secretary who only took the job on the basis that she is pro-Trident, was clapped and no one wanted an anti-Trident debate. Yet all summer the CND message had been a Corbyn-defining policy, casting him back in the era of the Aldermaston marches of his and my youth. Of course Trident replacement is an atrocious waste of money: Labour in power might have side-stepped it, but Labour in opposition can never let Tories paint them as “putting the country’s defences at risk”. Sensibilism has replaced impossibilism. Now I see even some furiously anti-Corbyn MPs have a very slight spring in their step.

Wasn’t anti-austerity the great drum beat of Corbynism? Yet here again Labour has refused to jump into the “deficit deniers” mammoth trap set by George Osborne. You had to pinch yourself to hear John McDonnell pledging to go every step of the way to abolishing the deficit. Though, as in Ed Miliband’s manifesto, McDonnell will use very different policies to achieve it.

Talk to new members wandering about here dizzy with delight at “getting our party back” and you wonder how long before some spot a disappointingly small leftward shift. Even Corbyn’s abolition of tuition fees is, according to the shadow universities minister, “up for review”. How long before the newcomers and the post-Iraq returnees start harrumphing about ”betrayal” and stomp off again? This was some of the presentational problem with the Ed Balls deficit plan: was it austerity-lite or not? Entryism may give way to exitism.

Related: John McDonnell speech: what he said, and what he meant

McDonnell promised a “stiflingly boring speech”. He lied – it was interesting and elegantly plain. More surprising, McDonnell, the old backbench thunderer, looked convincingly chancellor-like. Who would have guessed? Labour may succeed this week in looking grown-up and serious, casting Cameron’s crew as too slick and shallow with their shoddy “political stunts” and “games playing”.

To be sure, McDonnell denounced Amazon, Google and the rest as the tax dodgers that Margaret Hodge nailed so powerfully. But that’s not revolution. Top tax will rise by no more than the 50p Labour already pledged. People’s quantitative easing has slid into a policy only for use in a future recession.

Details were thin on exactly how he would balance the books and what he would substitute for Osborne’s eye-watering public service cuts. But sober and devoid of arch jokes and cheap slogans, his speech will ring true with many wearied by the artifices of modern political rhetoric. Will he win back Labour’s vanished economic credibility? That’s never a fair fight. Osborne gets away with gaping holes, utter implausibility and sheer accounting dishonesty, often exposed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. But Labour is cut no slack.

Moderation and consensus – that’s not what was expected. Can Corbyn keep up this air of unity, while letting his frontbench pick and mix their support? The political rulebook says no, but that iron law is rusting away. Free votes on some issues may do no harm, fresh air not chaos. McDonnell jokes that he’ll join Boris Johnson lying down in front of bulldozers against a new Heathrow runway, even if party policy backs it – and why not? It’s a long way to the next manifesto.

As for the moderates, the Corbyn refuseniks were yesterday urged to return to the fold. Now they look like rebels without a cause, beached on the Brighton shore waiting for their boat to be floated by a red tide that never quite rolled in. Threats against their persons have, let’s hope, receded as McDonnell pledges: “No deselections. Let’s just get on with the job.” You can see many mods recalibrating their stance. How much, exactly, to the right of all this do they really want to be?

One big thing they do know. Labour basks in this unexpected Indian summer of warmth and comradeship under an auspicious red moon, but too many voting citizens may already have made up their minds. Ed Miliband, on arrival, had a bounce of 20 plus points but Corbyn has sunk to an all-time low: the drag-anchor of his past can’t easily be shrugged off. The abiding image may forever be his refusal to sing the national anthem. A relentless press battery warns of “a tax war on the middle class” and the Confederation of British Industry puts its boot in too. Labour’s finances are on the critical list, as only a 10th of union funding may survive the trade union bill and private donors are shutting their wallets.

Related: A Corbyn who connects would really frighten the Tories | Matthew d’Ancona

Both Corbyn and McDonnell shine unexpectedly brightly in the television studios – calm, confident, likable, mildly self-mocking, no glitz, no gimmicks. Isn’t that authenticity – just what people say they want, politics unwhipped, unspun? Isn’t politics about leading, not slavishly following focus groups? The polls will be the merciless judge of whether people mean what they say. Can Corbyn’s new politics change the game, or is strong leadership and perceived soundest economics always the decider?

Only one thing matters now: Corbyn must cajole voters beyond the pool of already left-leaners in their cocoons of self-confirming tweets. If not, then someone else must face the voters next time. Who that might be is a question. But those who spend time obsessing over that, while failing to assault Osborne’s monstrous cuts, may find themselves stranded on Brighton beach as history moves on.