Tony Blair doesn't get it

In a piece for the Guardian Tony Blair wrote about Jeremy Corbyn, who had been recently elected leader of the Labour Party (2015):

The Corbyn thing is part of a trend. So Donald Trump leads the field of Republican candidates with thousands at his meetings, despite remarks about women and Mexicans that you might think would be a disqualification in a nation where half the voters are women and Latinos, the fastest growing group of voters.

Bernie Sanders is wowing the Democrats on a platform that wouldn’t carry more than a handful of states. The SNP win a landslide in Scotland after the collapse of the oil price means that the course they advised the Scottish people to take last year would have landed the country in the economic trauma unit.

The former Greek prime minister led in the polls on a bailout programme significantly harsher than that of the government he put out of office precisely on the issue of the bailout. Marine Le Pen rides high in France advocating an extreme nationalism combined with a quasi-socialist economic policy, with small business appeal, when, let us say, the historical precedents for such a combination aren’t exactly comforting.

There is a politics of parallel reality going on, in which reason is an irritation, evidence a distraction, emotional impact is king and the only thing that counts is feeling good about it all.

So when people like me come forward and say elect Jeremy Corbyn as leader and it will be an electoral disaster, his enthusiastic new supporters roll their eyes. Neil Kinnock, Gordon Brown and I have collectively around 150 years of Labour party membership. We’re very different. We disagree on certain things. But on this we’re agreed.

Well, on connait la chanson: Left is right, and being somewhere slightly right of the centre is the new left.  The sheer arrogance of the equation is stunning: All the 'populists' who respond to the discontent of the population are charlatans, providing a 'parallel reality', voters of Le Pen and Corbyn follow the same illusions, and Le Pen and Corbyn fish in the same lake? This attitude is good tidings for the likes of Le Pen.

The social democratic parties, thoroughly at work for their self-destruction all over Europe, have joined the (other) centrist parties long ago and have been claiming since that "there is no alternative" to what they are doing. Consequently, the ungrateful populace has decide that there is an alternative to having social democrats destroy what is left of our social legislation: Have the conservatives do it or try out the neo-fascists.  Renzi, Schröder, Blair, Hollande have made their parties redundant.  The disappointment was perhaps deepest in Germany where Schröder followed a Christian Democratic goverment (Kohl) that was reluctant to cut the welfare state and to touch the long established compromises between capitalism and workers' interests in the Wirtschaftswunderland. Whereas in GB, after Margret Thatcher, Blair necessarily would appear the Saviour, and would need many years to spoil this advantage.

In the Alice in Wonderland world this parallel reality has created, it is we who are backward looking for pointing out that the Corbyn programme is exactly what we fought and lost on 30 years ago, not him for having it.

So apparently Ed Miliband lost in May not because he was too left wing but because he was not too anything. Thus the public wasn’t “inspired” and so voted Tory. This again is absolutely familiar to students of Labour’s past (oops, there I go again).

I have analysed all the different published polling and focus group evidence about Labour’s defeat, most recently the one by the BBC’s Newsnight and the one by Jon Cruddas. They all say the same. Labour lost because it was considered anti-business and too left; because people feared Ed in Downing Street with SNP support; and because he didn’t have a credible deficit reduction plan. They didn’t vote Tory because they thought he was “austerity-lite” but on the contrary because he didn’t seem committed enough to tough economic decisions.

 Please observe the sudden shift of motives. The "reason" invoked in the first part is like "reason" in "reasonable politics" but the second like "ratio" in "rational choice of programme in order to attract voters." Blair oscillates between "We do this because it is best." and "We do this because that's what people want to hear"; this lack of clearness justifies suspicion.

Blair, of course, implies, that both motives are identical. However reality proves him wrong as to the popularity of "tough economic decisions".  In fact, they were never popular, but with obvious traitors in the Labour Party and Conservatives and Liberals equally commited to the sacred cause of capital, there was nothing to vote for for a critic of austerity.  Some workers, of course, have been bullied into believing that "only the toughest measures will save my job", and there indeed, reason is superseded by fear-mongering. Blair continues:

The explanation for this parallel reality is something to do with people feeling empowered by their ability through it, to “fight back” against “the system”, the traditional ways of thinking about politics with all its compromises, hard decisions and gradual increments. It is the clarity of full-throated opposition versus the chin-stroking nuance of: “What would we do if we were in government?”

It’s a revolution but within a hermetically sealed bubble – not the Westminster one they despise, but one just as remote from actual reality. Those in this bubble feel good about what they’re doing. They’re making all those “in authority” feel their anger and their power. There is a sense of real change because of course the impact on politics is indeed real. The Labour party is now effectively a changed political party over the space of three months.

However, it doesn’t alter the “real” reality. It provides a refuge from it. Because Trump and Sanders aren’t going to be president; Scotland did vote No and even if it votes Yes in the future, the pain of separation for all of us will be acute; Syriza may win but only by switching realities; and Jeremy Corbyn is not going to be prime minister of the UK. And Le Pen as French president? Let us hope not because that collision with “real” reality will be brutal for all of Europe.

So the voters of Corbyn (and Corbyn) are driven by pure Ressentment? And out of touch with reality?  Blair has to claim this. He has besmirched his reputation before history with participation in illegal wars and failing to rebuild the social fabric from the ruins left by Margret Thatcher.  And we hope that the books to be written will tell how wrong he was on the wishes of the voters.

Unfortunately, there is little chance to disprove the first part of his statement in a practical way.  Austerity is going to be continued under May, Merkel, Macron.  The fact that their actions do not have much of a theory to back them does not help. An alternative policy remains a phantom until realised. Even if Corbyn became PM, he would still have little chances to do what he promised, as long as his enemies are strong in the Labour Party. These enemies have much to lose if the Labour Party succeeds in changing the country for the better: It would definitely prove them 1. wrong, 2. liers, 3. traitors.   (Blair recommended strategical votes for the Conservatives in constituencies where the Conservative candidate is pro-EU: He very much wanted Labour/Corbyn to lose.)

When politicians die, obituaries use to be mild - de mortuis...  Kohl wasn't the "father of reunification", but happened to be chancellor when it came. He bore responsibility for how it happened. Giving away the property of the GDR and allowing large parts of the industrial landscape to fall waste is part of his legacy.  Remember to remember Blair the way he deserves it, when the time cometh.