Regardless of their party affiliation, politicians say little but talk a lot. And the more they talk, the greater the statistical likelihood that they’ll say something that makes sense.
The odds of that happening improve en route to the right end of the political spectrum, but even a left-wing demagogue may surprise you by sounding reasonable for a second or so.
That’s how long it took Jeremy Corbyn, the likely future leader of the Labour Party, to suggest that Tony Blair’s 2003 foray into Iraq ought to get him tried for war crimes.
For those of you who are as unfamiliar with Corbyn as I had been until a couple of weeks ago, he’s our leftmost MP whose political views place him somewhere between Harold Wilson and Kim Jong-un.
Corby is a bit like Gorby in other words. By comparison, Ed Miliband comes across like Attila the Hun’s military advisor, but Ed is no longer the party leader.
The party is in the throes of a leadership contest, and Comrade Corbyn (he addresses his audiences as ‘Comrades!’) has appeared out of nowhere to find himself so far ahead of other contestants that his appointment is practically a cinch.
The Tories are jubilant: Corbyn, they say, will move his party so far left that it’ll stay out of power for the next century and eventually disintegrate. Some intrepid Tories are even tricking their way into voting for Corbyn in the Labour contest, to make sure he gets to lead Labour to perdition.
That, to me, looks like a total misreading of the situation, for Corbyn is at least as likely to destroy the Tories. He has clearly united every strand of the hard left by enunciating views they all share but for the last 20 years have been afraid to make public.
That one of Britain’s two main parties is about to be led by a rank communist is a national problem, not a Labour one. This development suggests that the whole political spectrum in the country is shifting leftwards, and it takes rather lamentable naivety to believe that the Tories will benefit.
It’s a political truism that it takes the ownership of the middle ground to win a national election. Yes, but the site of the middle ground isn’t fixed – it’s constantly shifting.
For example, the middle ground Margaret Thatcher claimed in 1979 would these days look like extreme right, while Attlee’s all-out welfarism would today place him left of the middle.
If history is anything to go by, Dave’s focus groups will confirm the tectonic leftward shift, and he’ll respond the only way he knows how: pushing his party in the same direction, although one hesitates to see what more he could do to achieve that goal.
Possibly completing Britain’s unilateral disarmament could do the trick, or perhaps legalising interspecies marriage, post-natal abortions and enforced euthanasia would send the right, or rather sufficiently left, signals.
Meanwhile, by attacking Labour’s most successful election-winner ever, Corbyn has made clear that Labour no longer has to pretend being Tory in disguise.
“We went to war,” he said, “that was illegal, that cost us money, that lost a lot of lives, and the consequences are still played out with… refugees all over the region.”
All true, while Tony’s defence makes no sense at all: “Saddam Hussein,” he says, “wasn’t exactly a force for stability, peace and prosperity for his country.”
No doubt. But neither are the leaders of at least 100 other countries. Does this constitute casus belli, as far as Tony is concerned? Should we attack them all even if such belligerence goes against our national interests?
The Hague clearly beckons, though my personal preference would be to try Blair not for war crimes, and not in international courts, but at the Old Bailey for treason.
In evidence I’d submit Lord Mandelson’s frank admission that Blair’s government deliberately imported hundreds of thousands of Muslims to skew elections the Labour way. That subverted the electoral process and, much worse, dealt a blow to our social fabric from which it may never recover.
Iraq and Afghanistan, where 633 British soldiers died and many more were wounded, could be latched on to the indictment to guarantee a long custodial sentence. But I’d prefer the charge of manslaughter, rather than war crimes. Let’s wash our dirty linen at home, shall we?
However, that Corbyn said one thing that’s both intellectually sound and aesthetically gratifying shouldn’t obscure the fact that his ascent creates the danger of Britain falling in the hands of the hard left.
As PM, Corbyn would destroy every traditional institution, from the monarchy to the House of Lords, from free trade to the rule of law. And make no mistake about it – if the cookie crumbles a certain way in five years’ time, he may well find himself at 10 Downing Street.
All it may take is a timely collapse of our phoney prosperity created by exactly the same methods as those that culminated in the 2008 crisis. Combined with at least half the population already resenting Tory ‘austerity’ (which is also phoney, but most voters don’t realise this), this may well create a wave on whose crest Corbyn will surf to power.
By all means, let’s shout ‘Hear, hear’ when the possibility of sending Tony down is mooted. But let’s pray at the same time that we’ll be spared a hard left state run by Corbyn. To avoid that I’d even agree to see Tony at large, much as it pains me.