Labour people are optimists, but this time Polly Toynbee sees no hope
As a lifelong Labour Party member, I share Polly Toynbee’s despair. I have never known a time in my 46 years of party membership when i thought that Labour was less likely to win the next General Election.
Toynbee begins an article for today’s “Guardian” newspaper as follows:
“This is the bleakest midwinter of Labour’s misfortunes. Those emotionally invested in the hope of a future Labour government have never faced such dark days. Ahead lie years of a hegemonic Conservative era, free to do what they like in pursuit of driving the state below the size of anything attempted by Margaret Thatcher.”
Later in her piece, she picks up on the absurdity of making party policy by inviting e-mails from party members:
“Compromise with the voters will be far harder with Corbyn’s pledge this week to let party members decide policy … The 1% who join parties are not like other voters. Both memberships [Labour and Conservative] are far from the centre, Tory members even further away than Labour’s.
May’s law of curvilinear disparity shows voters are more centrist than party activists, and MPs are closer to voters than are their party members. Labour will only win when its members decide it’s worth compromising to oust the Tories from power, as they finally did after their fourth miserable defeat in 1992.”
This surely is the key issue: does the Labour Party want to be a movement that is mainly concerned with making its supporters feel good or above all one that wants to win power to create a fairer and more equal society?