Listening to the radio this morning I had an experience I realised I’d almost forgotten. It was the sound of a Labour politician being combatively quizzed on Radio 4 by Today’s John Humphrys in the key 8.10 spot and giving confident, articulate answers in return. When did I last hear that, I wondered?
What follows here isn’t a party political broadcast for Owen Smith. For the first time since Labour’s glittering leadership contest to succeed Harold Wilson in 1976 – Callaghan versus Healey, Foot, Crosland, Jenkins and Benn – he’s a leadership contender whom OAP Mike doesn’t really know.
I’m beginning to think of him as Labour’s Sir Anthony Meyer. A largely forgotten Tory backbencher, in 1989 he played an important walk-on part in Conservative history. I’ll come back to that. It’s not fair to Corbyn’s much more substantial challenger, but bear with me.
Many people who do know Smith tell me he’s not quite the right man to be the next party leader, even though many immediately add that “he’d be a lot better than Jeremy Corbyn”. Talking last night to some Welsh politicos who have been friends or contacts for years, they say he’s clever but a bit cocky. “Of course, you need that,” added one.
Without being asked, Smith has brushed aside brave and decent Angela Eagle, toured the country “like a lunatic” (as one critic put it) in the seemingly hopeless cause of ousting the People’s Jeremy and, in doing so, has shown one crucial quality: a courageous willingness to lead, not follow.
Listening to him battling with Humphrys on Radio 4 (a bit of South Wales needle there between the professor’s son and the manual worker’s scrappy boy?) reinforced that impression. Smith talked fluently to make his case for a second referendum or a general election to be staged on the Brexit terms that Theresa May’s Three Musketeers achieve from the EU, if they don’t first turn their muskets on each other. As a vote-winning strategy I’m not convinced by that either, but at least I know what Smith’s EU policy is: he thinks the Brexit vote will hurt British workers (I agree) and that they should be given the chance to rethink that 52% to 48% vote – one based, he put it, on “fibbing”.
A good word, “fib”, it’s softer than “lie”, and we need less harsh language in the divisive, angry year of Donald Trump, or “Mr Brexit” as he called himself in a recent tweet. Smith is actually sometimes careless with his language. He used a rugby phrase about knocking May back on her heels and appeared to liken Corbyn to that “lunatic” (he was referring to himself). He gave Humphrys an unembarrassed apology to anyone offended and promised to be “slightly less colourful”.
But the point is that he kept going and didn’t sound as if he were weighing every word. He even sounded quite human. Corbyn’s three former rivals – Burnham, Cooper and Kendall – didn’t pull off that trick in the 2015 contest. Jeremy was the one who sounded authentic which he is, for better and (mostly) worse. The 2010 contest wasn’t much better. David Miliband and Ed Balls could pass the Today programme’s 8.10 test, though both were burdened with the baggage of high office.
Not a problem Jeremy has ever had (or will have). This morning’s front pages find him entangled in another silly row that makes me cringe. Unlike so many phoney Fleet Street attacks on politicians (he should know who Ant and Dec are, but it really doesn’t matter as long as he doesn’t feel obliged to apologise) the row with Virgin’s Richard Branson over crowded trains was self-inflicted.
I didn’t much care for Corbyn’s video (Jeremy’s courteous downbeat style lacks the energy to warrant calling it agitprop) last week complaining about the “ram-packed” coaches from his seat on the floor heading north towards Newcastle. But it will have resonated with many who make that journey and ones like them more often than I do.
But if you’re going to pick a quarrel with a serious street fighter such as Branson you’d better get your story straight and stick to it. As Smith craftily told Humphrys, the Corbyn camp’s version keeps changing. It was a “legitimate point” to make, but the CCTV cameras seem to suggest there were free seats, he added mildly. Ouch!
Labour’s former deputy leader, Harriet Harman, put it another way when she said Team Corbyn might sensibly have booked Jeremy a seat. That puts a finger on much of what this is about. At the weekend Chi Onwurah MP followed Sadiq Khan, Kezia Dugdale and many others – not “Blairite stooges” of leftie legend – in saying Corbyn simply isn’t up to the job. I’ve said so often – here’s a sample – but elective politicians have a greater duty of care to colleagues.
Team Corbyn’s failure is partly organisational. They must run on a shoestring, it’s very tough. But they seem to think that getting Jeremy in front of large and enthusiastic meetings of people who already agree with him is a priority, the way to win. It sounds a bit Hugo Chávez to me, the opposite of Blair’s “masochism strategy” of meeting critics. But according to countless ex-shadow cabinet witnesses it means there’s less time to meet and thrash out policy.
That’s easily explained. Jeremy doesn’t really do policy, never has. He’s a campaigner who takes his cues from others. Hence his off-the-cuff mistakes over triggering article 50, or preventing large companies from distributing dividends if their staff don’t get the living wage. They’re points easily mocked and brushed aside.
In this sense Jeremy is more like El Cid, the medieval Spanish hero, propped up on his horse by loyal supporters to go into battle after he had inconveniently died – at least in the Charlton Heston movie version ). El Syd? El Jez? You decide.
I won’t labour the point, let alone address intimidation/reselection issues. If you don’t much care about actually winning power and doing things, preferring Corbyn as a “man of principle” (or a battering ram for the real socialist revolution) you won’t be persuaded. But I suspect that more and more Corbyn supporters (and senior trade union leaders) are reluctantly admitting, if only in private, that “he’s a lovely guy, but ... ”
It will take more than next month’s leadership election to get them to the point where they openly own last year’s mistake. My current hunch is that Corbyn will win, but not quite as well as his cheerleaders hope. It may prove to be a pyrrhic victory.
In any case the whole process has been botched by Ed Miliband’s idiotic reform of the election rules – the £3 member and supporter rights – done in the illusory name of “wider democracy”. What a shambles. Rafael Behr makes some very good points here.
But Smith’s not going to win on 24 September. That’s where the Meyer analogy comes in. Meyer was a Tory toff, a well meaning, old-fashioned MP with passionate pro-EU views as many Etonians (not you, Dave) were in his generation. Meyer had been badly wounded in the 1944 invasion of Normandy, as Nigel Farage was not.
As Tory dismay rose over Margaret Thatcher’s growing unpopularity Meyer challenged her for the leadership in the autumn of 1989. He was billed as the “stalking horse” for Michael Heseltine’s lurking ambition. Everyone mocked him as a “stalking donkey” but Meyer took 33 votes off her (plus 27 abstainers or spoiled papers). He had kept his dignity and winged the Iron Lady. Things were never quite the same again and within a year she was gone.
The Tories are as ruthlessly good at that sort of thing, just look at Theresa May’s brisk succession, as Labour is not. But El Jez versus the much-mocked Welsh Stalking Donkey? Interesting times ahead.