Morbid Symptoms by Donald Sassoon

Author:Donald Sassoon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

Included in the category of ‘citizens of nowhere’ (in a different era she might even have used the words ‘rootless cosmopolitans’) were ‘left-wing human rights lawyers’ who ‘harass the bravest of the brave’ (i.e. returning soldiers). Had Jeremy Corbyn used that language he would have been decried by many in his own party as an anti-Semite. William Davies, writing in the London Review of Books, declared he was ‘surprised that a speech condemning financial elites, human rights lawyers and nationless people in blanket terms wasn’t interpreted as anti-Semitic’.162

Totally out of sync with these developments, Corbyn’s opponents in the Parliamentary Labour Party vociferously argued that he was a throwback to the 1960s. They seemed to accept that the only valid politics were variants of Thatcherism or, to coin a phrase, Thatcherism with a human face. In its rhetoric if not its deeds, the PLP even found itself by-passed on the left by the Conservatives.

But the Conservatives’ swing to the left did not fool anyone (few people read manifestos anyway). Theresa May lost her majority. The pledge to have workers on company boards was swiftly abandoned. The Social Mobility Commission – set up by the Conservative-led coalition in 2012 to monitor progress towards improving social mobility – resigned six months after the election, citing ‘lack of political leadership’.

The electoral swing to Labour in 2017 (plus 9.6 per cent), though not sufficient to ensure victory, was stronger than that in any previous election since 1945. Labour did particularly well among young voters. Corbyn won the support of two-thirds of the under-twenty-fours, and over half those aged twenty-five to thirty-four, leaving the Conservatives ahead only among electors aged forty-five and older. (The Labour advance among the young was confirmed even in the disastrous election of December 2019.)

In 2017 Labour’s share of support rose to 40 per cent – five points above Blair in 2005, and adding 3.5 million votes to Labour’s total under Ed Miliband in 2015. Corbyn did well in working-class areas of the north such as Oldham West and Royton, where there was a swing of over 10 per cent, quite contrary to the impression Rafael Behr had sought to convey during the by-election of December 2015, when he explained that ‘In Oldham, Jeremy Corbyn is just another face of “poncified” Labour’ (Guardian, 2 December 2015). Behr recanted two years later: ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters correctly understood that his candidacy represented a total rupture from the party’s past.’163 Pity Behr hadn’t. Politicians, even intelligent ones, were no better: in August 2016 Sadiq Khan had urged Labour members to vote for Owen Smith, declaring ‘We cannot win with Corbyn’ (Guardian, 21 August 2016).

The so-called ‘commentariat’ also got it completely wrong, particularly those writing for the left-leaning liberal press. On 31 March 2017, the New Statesman intoned: ‘Corbyn’s failure is no excuse for fatalism.’ In the same issue, Nick Pearce (Professor of Public Policy at Bath) explained to all and sundry that ‘Corbynism is invisible now. It has no secrets to conceal.’ On 25 February

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