How exactly did Jeremy Corbyn and his merry band of idiots lost the most crucial election in a lifetime? There’s been a lot of noise about what can actually be learned from the spectacular failure of Corbynism. I think the lessons are much more pragmatic — and simple — than is thought.
They go like this.
Saint Jeremy and his crusaders chopped off the head of the Labour Party — and then gave it a lobotomy. But the result wasn’t a revolution. The result was a zombie politics. A party that spoke like it was on the left, really believed it was on the left, professed to be on the left — but wasn’t, really. Instead, it accepted and endorsed the goals of the hardest of the hard right. Corbynism failed because it was what I’ll call zombie politics.
Corbynism was the intellectual and philosophical suicide of the British left. It offered the nonsensical, idiot’s proposition of a…national socialism. Yes, really. I’ll come to that. It’s organizational wing, Momentum, was the matricide and patricide of the leadership of the British left. It was made of rank amateurs, playing at student politics…who cost Labour a professional, well-run, effective campaign…in surreal and astonishingly ways. The result of these mistakes — the lobotomy and the decapitation — was the most devastating defeat for the left in modern history.
Let me begin here. A political “message” isn’t the simplistic thing the left often thinks it is. It is a simple message, often condensed into a slogan — but it must contain a theory of causes and effects, which resonate, which speak to people’s growing fears and thwarted chances and frustrated aspirations. A political message must win the war of ideas.
The Tory message was dead simple. What went wrong in society? All those dirty, filthy people who don’t really belong here. Muslims. Arabs. Blacks. But mostly, Europeans. Brits were taught, all over again, to look down on Europeans, to hold their noses, to revel in a kind of atavistic colonial superiority.
So: the Tory message. What’s the cause of our decline, your falling standard of living, your shrinking income and savings, your plunging happiness, the fact that your life seems to have gone into reverse? It’s their fault — those hated, alien others. Simple, easy to digest, absorbed in a microsecond, a little bit fascist, an absurd lie — but absolutely devastating, because it was easy for frightened, broken, abandoned people to believe. And it was easy to spread, too, in a world where competition for attention is brutal: because it’s easy to take in, people have to expend little cognitive or social energy on it.
Now contrast all that with Labour. What was Labour’s theory of causes? What cause did it assign to what had gone wrong in the UK, resulting in a long, slow collapse? Bizarrely, incredibly, surreally…Corbynism pointed to the very same cause as the Tories. The cause of Britain’s problems were really — at the deepest level — all those dirty, filthy Europeans. Why else back Brexit? So by backing Brexit, Labour was effectively legitimizing the theory, the notion, that those hated others, notably Europeans, were responsible for the mess the UK was in. Because it backed Brexit for years, Labour was effectively saying to people: “The cause of your problems isn’t really the Tories. It isn’t really their vicious austerity. It isn’t complete economic mismanagement. Nope — it’s those dirty, filthy Europeans!” Labour was backing the most conservative idea of all: extremist nationalism. Wait — was it really a left party at all anymore?
Backing an arch-conservative idea was a mistake Labour could never, ever recover from. Instead of blaming the Tories…who’d been in power for more than a decade…and driven the economy into the ground…Labour effectively failed to challenge them at all, at the level of cause and effect, at the level of ideas. Do you see how ruinous this choice was? Not to challenge your opposition at the level of ideas? Not to fault them, to say they caused the problems — not those poor Europeans? How can you possibly win a war you won’t even fight?
Hence, whenever Labour did try to say the problem was the Tories, and their endless austerity, it was left in a mess and a muddle — because it has already conceded they weren’t the problem. How could both things be true? How could the problem be Europeans…and Tories? It was just not a credible position. Nobody believed it. Why would they? The average person was left baffled: wait, hadn’t Labour just said the real problem was those dirty, filthy Europeans? So how could it be the Tories or austerity? Why back Brexit so ardently if the real problem wasn’t those dangerous, conniving Europeans? Labour had undercut itself, undermined itself. Without an internally consistent theory of causes, its proposition to the average voter was a mess: a contradiction, which made no sense, and resulted in a shattering lack of appeal, mass bewilderment and defection.
Now, if you’re going to blame dirty foreigners for all your problems…you’d better be a conservative party. Because you can’t play that game and win being on the left, really, because you’re supposed to be kind, decent, humane, gentle, and wise. So Labour undermined even it’s fundamental virtues and values by backing Brexit — not just made a mess of its proposition — and the result was a wave of bewilderment, alienation, and disappointment. Not just because Labour backed Brexit — but because Labour’s entire theory of what had gone wrong in Britain was a contradictory, muddled, inchoherent mess, which appealed to precisely no one, because it couldn't.
Except, of course, the bizarre, childish fringe left. They had come to run the Labour Party by now, seizing power in a kind of putsch. And it’s crucial to underline just how astonishingly, breathtakingly stupid this clique really was.
It’s hard to see from outside the UK, but Labour had been taken over by a certain kind of person. You know the kind of college leftist who’d condemn you for not being a perfect comrade, communist, socialist, vegan…even though you basically believed in healthcare and education for all…you just made the mistake of liking a nice meal or wearing a nice outfit once? And then they chastised you for it, like little Torquemadas or Cromwells, forever? That kind of person.
Labour had been taken over by puritanical fools — people playing at being leftists…but who were too dumb to know what they had really been doing was…appeasing the hardest of the hard right…all along. See the crucial catch? They were people who believed themselves to be radical communists and glorious leftists — but they weren’t anything close. They were not really leftists at all. I don’t mean that in some kind of sophomoric no-true-Scotsman-way. I mean it in a simple, lethal one. They were so childish, so incoherent, that they were literally unfamiliar with the most basic, elementary beliefs of even Marx, Engels, or Lenin, their self-professed heroes.
What do I mean? Saint Jeremy and the Radical-Chic Communists of the Revolution actually believed that the path to socialism…is through extreme isolationism and nationalism…which is an arch-conservative belief. Wait, what? Literally the fundamental point Marx and Engels make is that if there is to be a glorious socialist revolution, it must be worldwide, and therefore, international solidarity is crucial, otherwise, the capitalists go on winning, dividing and conquering the proles. These weren’t even leftists — they were just college-politics puritans: they really, deeply thought they were morally and intellectually superior to everyone else, pure and wise — but the truth is that they weren’t remotely that, and they were too dumb even to know it.
This fringe of extreme self-described “professional communists” who now ran Labour with an iron fist…were so painfully, incredibly dumb…they didn’t even understand that…isolationism and nationalism are the most antithetical things to the values of socialism there can possibly be… because they are the elemental right wing beliefs of tribalism and supremacy. After all, socialism is a philosophy of equals — not “We Brits are better than those dirty Europeans!!” Now, I don’t say all that to score points, but to highlight a crucial truth.
The people that had come to run Labour, were, by now, to put it kindly, massive, unbelievable, jaw-dropping fools. They might have had Guardian columns and made appearances on Question Time and the BBC and posts teaching at universities. But they literally didn’t understand even the most elementary tenets of the ideas they claimed to stand for. So what were they good at? Well, if you don’t care much about the larger ideas you’re actually there to stand for, what do you have left? Turf wars, basically. Ownership, power, dominion. Hence, the only thing they were really good at was student politics. It’s infighting, cliquery, purity testing, hectoring, nastiness, and venom. Labour became a mafia of idiot children pretending to each other to be radical communists…because it was fashionable…all the while not even understanding the most basic, elementary aspects of their own politics…so what could they really offer people at all?
This is the crucial point, so I want to say it again. Labour wasn’t too extreme, or too “far left.” It wasn’t really left at all. So what was it?
It was the bizarre, nonsensical, idiot’s contradiction of a nationalist…socialist…isolationist…leftist…party. Wait — a what? It was run by radical chic faux leftists, nightclub communists who didn’t understand anything much about leftism at all, really, and so they ended up offering the average voter an absurd **** sandwich of a contradictory mishmash: a socialist revolution…by way of isolationism and nationalism. The socialist revolution was to happen by leaving the world’s most successful social democratic political bloc. What the? The simple fact was that Labour had been captured by the bizarre paradox of people who genuinely, actually, vehemently thought they were radical communists and revolutionary leftists…yet were too dumb to understand what they actually backed was ultra-right right nationalism…and so the fools who ran it were now proposing the spectacular oxymoron of an extreme right-wing politics, married with tiny elements of left-wing appeasement. It wasn’t too far left. It was too far gone down the express train to Crazy Town: Labour had become an aspiring party of the oxymoronic absurdity of right wing extreme nationalism above, beyond and before any semblance of left wing socialism .
(Hence, in the end, the average voter found that to literally strain belief. They literally didn’t believe it. And so when Labour released their “fully costed” manifesto, the average voter was like: “Sorry, I don’t buy it. We’re poor! We must be. You told us yourselves! We have to leave the EU to be able to have nice things again!! It’s their fault! You said so!” See the problem?)
The average voter was quite correct to reject Labour’s bizarre, gruesome, nonsensical idiot’s politics of nationalist radical-chic socialism. They literally didn’t make any sense. And the average voter didn’t have to run spreadsheets in their heads to get it. It was instant and intuitive that it didn’t compute. If our problems were the fault of those dirty, filthy Europeans…why did we need more socialism? What did nationalizing this industry and that have to do with the real cause of our decline, which was those dirty, filthy aliens? Didn’t we therefore need less socialism, and more, well, fascism? Duh. Labour had committed a kind of profound philosophical suicide.
By now, this astonishingly asinine set of contradictions — ultra-right wing nationalism naively, idiotically believing itself to be radical socialism — had come to be known as “Lexit”. Short for “Left Brexit.” The bizarre idea that leaving the EU would result in socialist paradise. Wait — the EU, as in modern history’s most successful social democratic project, ever? Leaving that was going to result in…communist utopia? What the? But Lexit and the Lexiters reigned for three crucial years. Three years during which nobody — and I mean nobody — was allowed to point out how painfully, surreally stupid this political proposition was, how it was doomed to fail and destined to lose. Anytime — anytime — any one of the adults pointed to Saint Jeremy and the Student Union Communists now running this debacle…how impossibly foolish this line of logic was…they were shouted down and attacked, viciously, by baying mobs. The dogs of Momentum were loosed upon them.
Wait. Momentum? What’s that?
That brings me to the next chapter in the story. If the first one is about how Labour self-destructed philosophically, the second one is about how it destroyed itself practically.
Instead of professional marketing and branding and strategy, Corbynism relied on a movement called Momentum. It was run by and for the most extreme of the fringe left, discussed above.
Now, they imagined they could build some kind of organic, glorious, peoples’ revolution, comrades doing it for themselves. They didn’t need grubby, dirty professionals, and their impure real-world practicalities. They’d take it to the digital streets! And the people would choose the revolution!
But what happened instead was the polar opposite. They became something like digital shock troopers — purging, attacking, and vilifying anyone that wasn’t extreme enough and pure enough, even if they were friends and allies. Offer some constructive criticism of the above? Bang! Momentum would come and pay you a little visit. Question Saint Jeremy in any tiny way? The digital secret police would come and knock at your door. Point out the obvious error in all the above? The mob of screaming idiot college leftists would come after you. Didn’t you know the path to true communism was through…fascism?!! Wait, what?
You know the kind of college leftist that would attack you for wearing nice shoes or liking the wrong kind of fashion and art and music…lecturing you about what Lenin thought about what Trotsky thought about what Che thought about…even if you basically believed in a decent society with healthcare and education for all..thus causing you to walk away and roll your eyes? That was the kind of poisonous atmosphere Momentum bred.
To the party’s extremists, it’s fringe of weirdo leftist comrades who were too dumb even to understand nationalism is the opposite of socialism, this — control of major political party — was heaven. It was what they’d always dreams of. But to everyone else, it was hell. Labour’s heartland is — was — the industrial north. What did some unemployed factory worker single mother in the sticks care about…the finer points of…Leninist self-criticism? What did she care about Momentum’s shock troopers attacking some poor sod for not prostrating to Saint Jeremy in the appropriate fashion? What the? Momentum therefore had three fatal results.
First, Momentum became something like a toxic brand. Insiders loved it. Guardian columnists, academics, self-described “professional communists.” But everyone else rolled their eyes the second it was mentioned. And yet because the insiders were now all cheering each other on — they really believed that they were leading some kind of glorious revolution, in which Saint Jeremy would be anointed…even while the masses were walking away, rolling their eyes.
Second, all the adults left the room. The professionals. The ones who had these basic, grubby skills, like communication, strategy, tactics, marketing, branding — even counsel, advice, direction, and guidance. The revolution didn’t need them, after all. Comrades, doing it for themselves. And everytime any adult tried to step in — they were forced out, Momentum’s dogs unleashed.
Momentum was something like a revolution. It had used a digital guillotine to chop the old, wise head off the Labour Party — and replaced it with the infantile brain of a college leftist, which, as we’ve already discussed, was so dumb it was appeasing the hard right, without even knowing it. And so without adults in the room, how could Labour run a professional, effective…adult..campaign…that had any hope of appealing to anyone outside its shrinking bubble of radical-chic faux communists? It couldn't. And it didn’t. That was the third problem.
What happened next? The Tories had adults in the room — professionals from media, advertising, campaigning, etcetera, who had real world skills. That resulted in an actual, professional, strategy — a dead simple one, used to absolutely devastating effect. It was an evil and cruel and terrible one, sure. It went like this. One, lie. Two, use Facebook etc to turn those lies into “ads.” Three, target them at frightened people. Four, hammer those lies home, over and over again, every possible second, relentlessly.
So there was Labour, in it’s happy daydream, imagining that an idiots’ revolution was going to fight a well-planned strategic movement …meanwhile, the people had already walked away from the college leftists running that debacle…while the Tories were bombarding them with literal propaganda, like a virtual Pearl Harbour. Who do you think was going to win that battle?
The Tories absolutely crushed Labour, because Labour literally had no idea what it was doing strategically or tactically, since there were no adults in the room. True — there were professionals, who bought Facebook ads by the bajillions…90% of which were found to be lies. But this strategy was so simple — so simple — that it’s literally the first thing — the very first thing — any decent media, PR, ad, communications, or whatever agency would have said to do. And yet Labour was totally befuddled by it, broadsided by it, ambushed by it — destroyed by it. What the? That shock of encountering the real world and its vicissitudes is vivid proof there were literally no adults left in Labour’s room. They had all been putsched or purged, guillotined or excommunicated, forced out.
Meanwhile, Momentum was still driving people away en masse. There was some irritating idiot college leftist, spouting Lenin at you, calling you a bad comrade for liking decent wine and eating meat and taking your kids to the mall and buying them nice things every so often. What do you think the average person would do? Sit there and take it — like a good little Leninist — or walk away, rolling their eyes? Who do you think was going to win this war?
Obviously, Tories. But — and this is the point — what the hell was Labour thinking? Why didn’t they get a dire need for real world strategy and tactics — let alone grand philosophy? Because they couldn’t. Anytime anyone tried to tell them, because by now its leadership had ossified into a little tribe of fringe leftists…nobody could hear it. Instead, those who tried to warn of this disaster were attacked and purged for trying to help. That is why there were no adults left in the room.
The Tory’s professionalism led to a simple, devastatingly effective three word message: “Get Brexit Done.” Labour’s reliance on rank amateurs, in contrast, led to them having…nothing…no message…no slogan…no brand…no simple, compelling statement of what Labour actually stood for. The result was that nobody actually did know what Labour stood for. Again, a “slogan” isn’t just some clever ad copy. It’s the distillation of a theory of causes and effects. Only Labour didn’t have one. That’s because even Labour didn’t know what Labour stood for. So what did it stand for? Nothing at all, by now — just a mess of contradictions, a muddle, that led to the most devastating defeat in modern history.
Corbynism is a textbook example of what I’ll call zombie politics. A politics eaten from the inside out, that doesn’t even have the brainpower left to understand it has been captured by its opponents from the very beginning, much less the willpower to do anything about it. Corbynism imagined itself bringing the glorious socialist revolution about…by the means of hard-right ultra nationalism, demonization, dehumanization, walls, borders, tests. What the? That’s not leftism. That’s zombie leftism.
Labour was by now a bizarre, lurching Frankenstein monster, neither dead nor alive. It was run by and for people who thought — really thought — they were radical communists, but were literally so childish they didn’t understand that backing extreme nationalism is right wing politics, not left wing politics. They were so naive they didn’t understand they’d been captured by the hard right before they’d even begun. They had blamed the Europeans all along — not the Tories and austerity — so how could they win what they wouldn’t fight again?
Hence, they offered, finally, too late, something even more bizarre: the mishmash of a vaguely socialist manifesto…under a hyper-nationalist orientation, worldview, philosophy. Labour offered the British people the appalling choice of national socialism lite. What the? And yet nobody was left to point out that this was going to result in inescapabe, inevitable disaster. Because that is a proposition so full of contradictions, so internally incoherent, so nonsensical, that even somebody desperate for bread will walk away.
The real lesson of Corbynism isn’t that it wasn’t too far left. It’s that it wasn’t really left very much at all. It was zombie leftism. The idea that we can only have leftism after we’ve appeased the ugliest and most violent elements of the hard right, expelled those dirty aliens, blamed those subhumans, exiled those filthy foreigners. Sound left to you? Not to me. That’s zombie leftism.
The UK didn’t really have a left party this election. It had a zombie left one. One that was on the hard, extreme right, long before, and far deeper, than it was ever on the left — and too astonishingly dumb to even know it. College leftists, student politics, self-described professional communists — who never appeared to have read a page of Marx or Engels, let alone Lenin or Badiou. Saint Jeremy and his disciplies were so foolish they thought — and still think — the path to the global socialist revolution lies through extreme nationalism and proto-fascism…so vehemently, they destroyed their very own party over it, chopped off its head, and lobotomized its brain. What the? The British public was quite right to reject all that. I don’t fault them at all. Their choice was wise. Nobody should have been on the side of Corbynism’s bizarre, gruesome, idiotic contradiction of a national socialism lite.
That, my friends, is the lesson of Corbyn’s failure. Zombie leftism. What is is. How it thinks. How it comes to be. And that it will always, always lose against the right, because the right offers a living, breathing version of the very same fundamental ideas. And yet zombie leftism something we’ll see afflict more and more societies, as extreme nationalism and fascism rise. The moral of the story is simple: if you appease the ultra right before fighting it…if you internalize its beliefs…if you stand for what it does…what are you really fighting against…and so what can you really win?
