On Tilt

I had no intention of becoming a ‘blogger’ when I opened this Medium account. I’ve been introduced once as that “that Scottish Labour blogger” and I winced with embarrassment. I could not have felt more like a noughties throwback if I was asked for my Bebo account details, or what I thought of the latest Kate Nash album.

I wrote my first Medium blog, because I believed that Scottish Labour’s relationship to Scottish Nationalism was unhealthy. I thought that if the party was going to win again, it had to better understand the success of the SNP, so it could successfully reach out to its voters.

I’ve continued to write the occasional blog. Not only because my deluded egoism is nourished by my readership of ones and ones of people, but also because I believe in a politics that is empathetic and inclusive. As a citizen, I think this approach creates a more civilised politics, and as a Labour member, I think it might help us win again. Effective campaigning is about understanding the views of others so they might be persuaded to change them. I fail as much as I succeed, but that at least, is the spirit in which my pontificating screeds are intended.

But on that basis, if attempting to reach is out important for elections more widely, then surely this applies for internal contests as well?

That brings me to the blog I wrote for Labour Hame last week. It was lazy and self indulgent writing. I’m not going to throw my hands up and say I was wrong. I don’t think I was. But it was ultimately counterproductive. I cannot think of any soft Corbyn supporters reading that and having their minds changed. It wasn’t written to upset those who intend to vote for Jeremy Corbyn, but I can understand why it might have.

Poker players do not play well when they are on tilt. If riled up by fortune or by foe, they become emotional and begin to play in a rash and counter-productive fashion. I felt personally offended by Diane Abbott’s comments on the radio, got riled up and wrote something more likely to harden the convictions of soft Corbyn supporters, than change them. I failed my own litmus test.

Ultimately, I am ‘Anyone but Corbyn’ Labour. Owen Smith is anyone so I am for him. It is a negative and reductive position, devoid of much romance . I will be voting against Jeremy Corbyn. Yet my own blog criticised him as a political leader for merely being against things, without articulating what he is for. I’m not oblivious to this tension.

Fractious twitter arguments won’t change the current balance of this contest. Blogging to the converted won’t either. This has to be about broadcasting a signal that cuts through the cacophonous noise, not just adding in extra angry voices. If like me you want a new Labour leader, then don’t repeat my mistakes.

We need to think about the types of Corbyn supporters who might change their minds, why they think as they do, and then win them over on these terms. This is likely to be found in providing positive reasons to vote for Owen Smith, and not just repeating the negative case against Jeremy Corbyn.

The odds are already stacked against us, and going on tilt won’t help.