Much has been said and written about the potential consequences of a Corbyn victory, most of which hasn't been particularly positive. From talk of Corbynites requiring heart transplants to cries of economic naiveity and inelectability - the debate has been unedifying to say the least. However in the spirit of the Corbyn campaign I won't make this post one long moan. After all I'm not a fan of deontological reasoning, and if I felt that a Corbyn vote would help destroy the party's future, resigning the country to indefinite Conservative rule in the process I certainly wouldn't be voting for him. Nevertheless I don't share this negative view, and partially for cathartic reasons I'll explain why below.
1 - His outlook exemplifies why I joined the Labour Party
As previously alluded to this isn't the be all and end all in politics, but it is definitely a positive. I don't consider my views or the views of Corbyn to be "hard left", he's not arguing to transform Britain into an anarchist commune, most of the policies he's advocating are in my view simple common sense. It probably won't help Corbyn's cause that he is being portrayed as an ideological lunatic by much of the establishment (the Labour establishment's derision is particularly damaging), but it is firmly my view that Corbyn's supposedly "hard left" platform could gain widespread public support if marketed in the right way. This isn't to say that Corbyn could definitely achieve this, I suppose he'll have to prove this if and when he's elected. Sadly at first impressions this might be quite difficult if much of the party continues to adopt a top-down authoritative stance on issues which concern the future direction of the party. Neverthless, I hope that if Corbyn does win the rest of the party will be mature enough to accept his democratic mandate and wholeheartedly support him. I think there's a lot to be said for Tony Benn's mantra that politicians should "say what they mean and mean what they say", the public want and deserve honesty in politics and I wholeheartedly believe that being honest is the best way that we will achieve a more caring and equal society.
2 - We need to win back some of Scotland before we can win another general election
I've heard many times, and from many sources that we "let down our core support by not being elected". It is certainly the truth that no matter how many faults the Blair governments had they were infinitely better when acting on behalf of vulnerable people than the heartless government we have currently. Having said this I do wonder what the reaction of this deliberately vague mass of working class people would be to being told that their Labour politicians were formulating policy not on principle, but on what they perceived could best win elections on their behalf. My best guess would be that the general response would more closely resemble "you lying politicians are all the same, you're only in it for yourselves" than "thank you ever so much for thinking about my family's needs". Respect for politicians, and for conventional politics has reached a nadir. In this context, and without wishing to oversimplify the argument, I'm not particurly overjoyed with the idea of embracing the same old "if it goes well we can be honest in a few years' time" politics that ushered us towards this point in the first place.
Getting back to the subtitled matter in hand, even without considering what the public expect of their politicians - this is a somewhat flawed vision, if only for the reason that we'll find it very difficult if not impossible to win a majority in parliament without regaining some previously held Scottish seats. It seems quite likely that fears of an SNP coalition contributed towards Labour's 2015 defeat, and there's no indication that I can see that this won't happen again in 2020 unless the SNP can be properly challenged. I'm not trying to imply here that Scottish voters are left wing compared to English voters, and it's true that even if this were the case a Corbyn leadership could still prove to be too little too late in terms of loosening the SNP's grip on Scotland. However I would argue that the SNP and the independence movement more widely managed to utilise the anti-Westminster sentiment prevalent across that whole of the UK far more effectively than the likes of UKIP in England and Wales. Corbyn, who doesn't fit the politician stereotype and who isn't afraid to confront the establishment is in my view best placed to tap into this sentiment. Initial polling (which sadly I can't find the link to) did indeed seem to indicate that Corbyn was disproportionately favoured by UKIP voters and Scottish voters relative to the other leadership candidates. There's a large degree of cynicism about politics in Scotland and more generally across the UK, as such treating the future of the Labour party purely as a debate that can be represented on the left-right spectrum in my view overlooks many of the problems that the party faces, particularly in regards to the decreasing turnout amongst our "core vote". If the way to win in '97 was simply to "move to the right" then I certainly don't think the same applies now.
3 - Individually his policies are quite popular
It feels like the umpteenth time that I've written this, and even the staunchest critics of Corbyn by now are probably well aware that when polled the public consistently support policies such as rail nationalisation, energy nationalisation and higher taxes on the rich and big business. Critics of these sorts of tables quite sensibly point out that if the public were so overwhelming in favour of these ideas Labour, or TUSC for that matter would perpetually be in government. I agree with Corbyn's critics that perceptions of competence matter, and I will go on to discuss this in more detail along with the implications of Cruddas' recent polling in the next section. However as for integrating these specific policies into a wider perception of the party, it seems to me a stretch too far to say that these policies make our image too publicly toxic. It may be true that voters are turned off by parties that they view as overly ideological, but refusing to try and mix highly popular policies into a broader economic perception as far as I can see is nothing more than throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If someone who wants nationalised railways refuses to vote for Labour because they think that we will cause another recession through over-borrowing, this is because we haven't done a good job at constructing our more general economic arguments, not because nationalising rail is some form of electoral kryptonite.
4 - He's meaningfully addressing Labour's perceived economic incompetence
After having emphasised the importance of economic perception you may well be wondering why I'm supporting a candidate who has been persistently portrayed as insane by most of the mainstream media. The right wing press would almost certainly ramp up their efforts against a Corbyn led Labour party, even relative to their nasty smear campaign against Miliband. This would certainly be a hindrance to Labour's efforts going into 2020, perhaps terminally so if it were to be mixed with high levels of internal briefing and leaking from certain figures within the PLP. I don't however believe that the right wing press on their own can win an election, their readership is relatively small compared to the size of the overall electorate and even regular readers most likely take their judgements with a pinch of salt. The likes of the BBC on the otherhand do hold a large degree of influence when it comes to elections. I don't at all believe for one minute that the BBC ever tries to be biased in its news coverage, particularly with the hawkish gaze of the Murdoch press analyzing its every move. However I do agree with what Robert Peston (who I think it's fair to say isn't a lefty) has previously said about the BBC's preoccupation with re-reporting stories from the Mail and the Telegraph, which I would assume is a result of the BBC repeatedly being accused by certain sections of the media of lacking credibility.
In my view Labour is disproportionately inhibited by this tendency - as particularly in relation to the economy the nexus of mainstream news reporting often centres around preferred right wing narratives such as "cutting the nation's credit card bill", rather than focusing on academic macroeconomic arguments. A prime example of this would be the "Top 100 business leaders" letter featured in the Telegraph before the recent election. This story remained BBC news online's number one story for two days. Three days earlier the Centre for Macroeconomics released a survey of academic macroeconomists in which the majority of respondents supported the claim that the coalition government had damaged the economy, this story only made a brief non-headline appearance on the BBC, tucked away in Robert Peston's blog. In my view neither story should have constituted "news", the 100 business leaders letter was blatantly cherrypicked by the Telegraph and Conservative HQ whilst the CFM survey was of a small sample size and as such wasmnot particularly reliable, even if as an aside it did provide enough evidence to show that not all economists believe in "cutting the nation's credit card". Yet despite both pieces of conflicting evidence lacking any true veracity, only one was given a mainstream platform. I should at this point clarify that I didn't just mention this example in order to rant about perceived injustice within news coverage, and in a stereotypically left wing fashion. I did so because no matter how tentatively the BBC reports issues such as these it will always provide space for a counter-narrative, which then plays a part in shaping future coverage. It should have been the Labour party spearheadng the anti-austerian message on mainstream news for the last 5 years, saying regularly how the coalition cost every person in the country an equivalent of at least £1500 a year. We shouldn't have let ourselves be so easily caricatured as the party of the bottom 10% against the top 90%, or indeed as a party that didn't understand economic reality. Cruddas' polling in my view was enticing a certain response by using phrases such as "living within our means" in its questioning, however there is certainly a lot of truth in the argument that the public support cuts. But this is why it's such a great shame that we failed so horribly in arguing that the cuts were damaging to everyone in society, and more importantly that they weren't necessary. Our chosen path prior to 2015 was a mixture of staying silent and using our public platforms to send mixed messages about the effects and desirability of cuts, in the end this probably served no purpose other than to contrbute towards our own negative image. I've been glad to see many of the leadership candidates take on the myth that Labour caused the 2008-09 recession, however only Corbyn is making the positive message about the economy that we should have been making since 2010. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to hear Corbyn say more that the cuts directly damaged the wages of the middle class through lowering GDP, and that these people haven't just indirectly suffered through damage to health and welfare protection that they may one day require. But aside from this I think Corbyn's orchestrated his message very well, Labour should be maximising its public exposure to make strong moral and economic arguments against the Conservatives' deliberately oversimplified ideology, and at the minute Corbyn is the only candidate who I'm convinced is up to this task.
5 - The economy isn't in a healthy place, it needs reforming
As well as having the right approach when it comes to perception, Corbyn is also appreciating the full scale of change that the economy currently requires, this will probably necessitate a wider attitude change and as such won't be achieved in one term, but progress needs to start somwehere. I might struggle to write this paragraph without sounding depressingly pessimistic, but to be clear I'm not making a prediction that the economy will crash before the 2020 election, or at any point for that matter. I don't want to take my arguments about the need for reform too far. However on the other hand - despite all the talk from across the political spectrum of recovering growth, the economy is still in a fairly parlous state. There are fears amongst some that confidence is still too low in the financial system, which may in turn cause the present small bubble of growth, up until now financed by the inflation of asset prices - to burst in the not too distant future. Others are particularly worried about Britain's current account deficit, which could be the potential source of a future crash if the foreign investors subsidising this deficit through their contributions to the UK's capital account see this as a problem and as such refuse to continue their investments. This problem is somewhat representative of Britain's over-reliance on the finance sector, which seems to have only become apparent to many after the '08 crash. You don't have to be Minksy to see that it may not be sustainable or desirable for the UK to continue pursuing the 1980s dream that a large share of GDP and tax revenue should be based upon the financial sector. It may be an issue that doesn't fit into electoral cycles particularly well, but it's my view that the public sector should play a large part in this rebalancing through infrastructure spending and a comprehensive industrial strategy, only Corbyn is prepared to do this. So when people argue that "any Labour government is better than the current Tory government" it's worth wondering (on top of everything else I've said about this argument) whether or not they're taking for granted that another crisis such as the recent recession can't happen again, even if another crash before 2020 is unlikely I think it goes without saying that the economy needs change far beyond what much of the Labour establishment is willing to consider. It's also worth noting that while policies such as benefit sanctions are cruel and un-necessary even in today's economic conditions (the fact that Corbyn's the only candidate to unequivocally support the abolition of sanctions is one of the main reasons I'm supporting him), the fact of the matter remains that every British man, woman and child could currently be better off by £4000 a year each if the recession had not happened in the first place. I'm no fan of the Tories and I'm sure that no matter what the economic context is there will always be those who the party refuses to represent, but overall the vulnerable individuals Labour seeks to stand up for would have probably been on average better off under a 2015 Tory government had the crash not happened than a post-crash 2015 Labour government.
In dealing with crises Labour also needs to consider new methods of kickstarting growth without resorting to "deficit fetishism". The one unconvential expansionary policy which occured during the last recession was QE, and while it did help the government to borrow easier at lower interest rates it also had its flaws. QE seems to have failed in reinvigorating bank lending and economic growth in the fashion that was originally hoped. The Bank of England has injected £375bn of newly created money into the economy (equivalent to 20% of GDP), but the Bank itself predicts that these measures only boosted the economy by 3% of GDP, with evidence also suggesting that 40% of this £375bn ended up directly in the hands of the richest 5% of the population, mainly due to the fact that much of this new money manifested itself in the form of rising asset prices predominantly owned by the well off. QE may well have still been on balance a worthwhile policy for allowing the government to issue debt easier, but in my view it should in future be joined by other more equitable policies. Corbyn advocates a form of helicopter money in the event of a future crash, which in my view is a more effective and more equal form of economic stimulus than QE on its own. The only downside of this stimulus relative to regular QE is a risk of higher inflation - which unlike in regular QE can't be undone purely by selling the bonds used to create the new money. But it should be considered that in all likelihood any resultant inflation could be relatively easily offset by the BoE raising interest rates or through the government raising taxes/ issuing more debt. Although in my view this policy should manifest itself in a slightly different form than the one Corbyn suggests, it's good that he's at least talking about innovative economic policies that could help alleviate suffering in the event of another crisis, even if by his own admission they're sketchbook policies at this moment in time. Arguably even more importantly Corbyn favours a slower pace of deficit reduction than the plan Labour supported in 2015, this probably won't be particularly relevant come 2020 unless there's another recession, but if another recession does occur Labour shouldn't accept the same policies enacted by Osbourne, which as previously mentioned cost everyone in the country at least £1500 per year. On top of all of these previous issues Corbyn is tackling the issue of low productivity head on in the form of investment, workers' rights and a National Education Service. Increasing productivity is the only way to consistently raise the stagnating wages of the British workforce, and quite honestly I'm surprised that these sorts of positive supply-side ideas haven't been adopted by the centrist wing of the party, but as things stand when it comes to sustainable pro-growth policies Corbyn is the only candidate I could say I have confidence in.
So in conclusion while there's been a lot of hysteria surrounding the possibility of a Corbyn victory I would urge you to have strength in your convictions and your ideas, the future of the party is far more complicated than simplified analogies about how to beat the Tories. Of course a Corbyn vote is a bit of a risk, if for no other reason than the fact that it's a step into the unkown. However we have five years until the general election, and with Corbyn striving to make sure that the position of leader becomes more accountable to the party membership the risks involved may well be fairly minimal. On top of this, while poll data should always of course be treated with scepticism and is never definitive, but polling recently released indicates that Corbyn could be even more popular amongst the general public at this stage of the electoral cycle than even his most optimistic supporters could have imagined. Labour is a party that can't afford to stand still, this isn't a case of idealism versus pragmatism but instead a choice about how we will in the future rectify the failings of our previous leaderships and go on to provide a clear and beneficial alternative for everyone in society.
