Scorpions and Frogs: Part One

A scorpion asks a frog to carry it across a river. The frog hesitates, afraid of being stung, but the scorpion argues that if it did so, they would both drown. Considering this, the frog agrees, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed lash out and sting the frog, dooming them both. When the frog asks the scorpion why, the scorpion replies that it couldn’t help itself. It is in its nature.

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The Times printed a very interesting opinion poll today that has generated understandably energetic comment and debate. If like me you haven’t subscribed to The Times, even though I know I probably should, @SamCoatesTimes on twitter had some of the headlines. (I’m waiting till they give some free fancy device away again.)

· 66% of party members etc think Corbyn doing “well”.

· 86% of ppl who voted for Corbyn think he is doing “well”.

· 57 per cent of Labour members think Mr Corbyn should take the party into the next election, against 28 per cent of the public.

As Stephen Bush writes in a great New Statesman blog, this poll tells us two things. Jeremy Corbyn is probably going nowhere, and if there was another leadership election, the closest to Corbyn candidate almost certainly wins. (Assuming the PLP doesn’t keep a Momentum candidate off the ballot, but that’s a whole other can of worms.)

The reaction to the poll has been less forgiving than Topman skinny jeans.

In a characteristically punchy and brilliantly written piece Alex Massie writes that “…the people who voted for Corbyn don’t care that he is leading the Labour party to disaster.”

Now, I appreciate I know bugger all about polling, but I’m not sure this poll tells us this at all. In fact, I always think it is a dangerous game to draw firm conclusions about exactly what each respondent thinks. This poll doesn’t necessarily tell us that all Corbyn supporters think he is leading the party towards disaster and don’t care. It might be that they don’t think that he is on the wrong direction at all, certainly not in the long term. Of course we have opinion polls that tell a different story, but these respondents aren’t necessarily oblivious to opinion polls. It might just be that they think Corbyn needs more time, or that other factors are contributing to Labour’s rickety numbers.

Particular attention is being paid to the fact that 71% of Corbyn supporters agreed with the second of these two statements.

“Policies that allow them to win elections, even if it means compromise.”

“Policies that they really believe in, even if they prevent them from winning elections.”

From this, the line has emerged that Corbyn supporters don’t even care about winning elections.

Let’s look at those two statements. Does this poll tell us that respondents don’t care about electability at all? Or are Corbyn supporters actually answering that they think policies they can believe in are more important than compromise? I’m not saying I think there is nothing alarming about this poll, but I’m cautious about drawing hard and fast conclusions about what vast swathes of the Labour membership think about electability so firmly. The graphic on this You Gov blog illustrates my point. I suspect that for a lot of Corbyn supporters this question is asking them to balance idealism and pragmatism, and they balanced in a certain direction.

Indeed, for some Labour moderates, I’m seeing an application of pragmatism that is curiously one sided.

One of the very important points that Labour moderates have made since the General Election is that we have to think about Tory voters. We don’t need to necessarily pander to, or agree with them, but we do have to think about the motivations and concerns that made them vote the way they did. Demonising vast swathes of voters as inherently selfish and gullible isn’t likely to be an effective way of getting their votes next time. So if it is important to understand and empathise with one bloc of voters, why doesn’t this argument cut both ways?

Jeremy Corbyn received 251,417 votes in the last leadership election. Dismissing all of these voters in their entirety as stupid and detached from reality is not going to make them more likely to change how they think about the future of the Labour Party. We also need to remember that this isn’t a homogenous swathe of people. For every Andrew Fisher, there are likely to be a dozen young voters who voted for Corbyn because he represented change and they wanted to change the world.

The fact that Labour politics resembles The Three Stooges directed by John Woo means that serious reflection on Corbyn’s victory has come to a premature end. This is a problem. Corbyn didn’t win because of his connections with Stop the War; I suspect that for many he counter intuitively became a blank canvas upon which party members could see their own hopes and dreams. In short, it was a movement.

The thing about political movements, even small ones, is that they have the tendency to pull people along with them. Individuals enjoy the positive swells and currents. I’m still not so sure how much of this was ever about nuanced policy positions, I think that backing Jeremy Corbyn was as much about what people felt as what they thought.

This is why I think that for many members they simply won’t be moved by, or even aware of much of the furore that has surrounded Corbyn’s leadership so far. Some of it, the ephemeral and contrived nonsense like how much he bowed is more likely to make them sympathise with him. I’m not sure how radically different Liam Byrne’s and John McDonnell’s recent speeches about economics are to people that don’t have a decent sense of political economy. And how many of the less politically obsessed Labour members actually know why the Stop the War coalition is so controversial? My sense is that much of the controversy surrounding Corbyn is simply not yet fully grasped and will take time to cut through, even amongst relatively politically engaged people.

Resent Corbyn, yes. Resent the team around him, sure, but don’t let this become resentment with every single member that voted for him because it is both unfounded and counterproductive. Because if and when there is a Labour Leadership election there are two ways a moderate can win. Either they can enthuse an enormous number of new members to join the party, and that will be near impossible from the backbenches, or they can change the minds of the members already inside the party. Sneering and belittling them unfairly and excessively won’t help.

Labour moderates are vocal that we cannot change the country without winning an election. However electability cuts both ways, because we cannot win an election without winning the party. So we must beware lashing out because we just can’t help ourselves, because we’ll all end up drowning that way.