A Very Civilised Leader

I’ve been watching the Labour party’s leadership debate with a mixture of fascination and bemusement. For the most part these kind of debates are as dull as dishwater as the party faithful mull over which Machiavellian stuffed suit is best placed to make trite soundbites for the next few years – all in the name of making their party “electable”. This time it has been rather different as the centre of the media storm has been about Jeremy Corbyn who, although I was vaguely aware of him, I didn’t really know much about prior to this campaign. Having heard him speak a few times over the last few weeks I’m actually rather taken with him but not necessarily for his general political stance.

Corbyn wasn’t even meant to be standing as leader but a few of his fellow Labour MPs put his name forward so that they could keep the left wing fringe of his party happy. As it turns out, a majority of the Labour membership have embraced him with open arms. Who’d have thought: those with a left of centre leaning are actually members of the Labour Party! Of course there are those who have recently paid their £3 to participate in the vote and it is possible that there were a few mischief makers amongst them but he genuinely seems to have chimed with rank and file members as well as those who have been dispirited with the British political monoculture.

So why do I like him? It’s not necessarily his politics even if they do seem more in line with my views compared to the morass of unprincipled power graspers. It is not even so much that he actually has principles (the same could be said of tyrants like Hitler or Mao so it is not necessarily a good thing). It’s actually the considered, thoughtful way he seems to answer questions: not soundbites, not parroting party policy, but actually thinking what would be an appropriate response that a civilised man in a civilised society should be making. The frightening thing is to think of how few politicians are now left in this country that seem to have any regard for civil society. I could think of no more than a handful in any of the main political parties and oddly enough the last British political leader that seemed to behave this way was the former conservative Prime Minister, John Major.

It’s this concept of civility that I think is most lacking within modern politics. For me the primary aim for any politician of any political persuasion should be to maintain civil society. They may have differing outlooks and perspectives, as one would expect from different backgrounds, but their ultimate aim should be to maintain that civility. The alternative is too horrific to contemplate but we have seen so many examples of tyranny, civil war and bloody revolution that the concept should never been taken lightly. However, what we now seem to have moved towards is a system of government that has no regard for its citizens welfare provided that it can merely cling to power. I don’t see that ending well and we need someone in authority to call them out on it. Corbyn could well be that man.

So is Corbyn electable? According to the perceived wisdom of the Labour Party he doesn’t stand a chance but remember that this is the same Labour Party that managed to lose an election with the moderate Ed Miliband in charge. With their focus group sieved policies designed to appeal to the aimlessly weak minded they lost and lost badly. I don’t blame Miliband for this but the Labour Party in general as it seems clear that they wouldn’t give their full support to their leader and I think that was telling. I can see this happening even less now but I am actually far more minded to vote for a Corbyn led party than whatever ill-conceived Tory-lite option that they somehow feel to be preferable. I’m wondering if others feel the same?

I actually think Corbyn could win the next election but it rather depends on him surviving the threat from those in his own party that seemingly would prefer to mimic the Tory party than offer a well thought out alternative. The reason I think he could win is that he could appeal to the largest single section of the electorate: not left or right or the tiny and reducing number of floating voters, but to the 1 in 3 people who never vote in an election at all. The precedent is there in Scotland which has gone from being one of the regions with the lowest turnout to one with the highest, simply because one party, the SNP, has chosen to engage with those that have traditionally been disenfranchised by the political system. The result for them was remarkable.

If Corbyn can engage with the disenfranchised and has the sense to seek common ground with those civilly minded people of a different political persuasion we could find that he is a force to be reckoned with. Of course the losers in this would be the Machiavellian back stabbers, economic parasites and intolerant thugs who have run this country for too long. I’m actually hoping that they leave in a huff – we would really be far better off without them.