The tears of anger, frustration, incomprehension and horror of the hyped up Corbynistas will soon turn into an anti media snarl of, ‘we was robbed’, by Murdoch, hedge fund managers and of course, ‘friends of the state of Israel’.
To the Momentum hordes, Labour’s disastrous local election showing is proof that there is a conspiracy of bankers and the press to thwart the will of the people. A very good reason that there should be more controls over them. Freedom of speech is precious and therefore must be rationed.
But the truth is pretty obvious. In London Labour did fantastically well at the last local elections. It was delusional to think they could do significantly better this week. And UKIP is now not just not fit for purpose, it has no purpose at all, apart from being airbrushed out of political history. It is just about possible that Farage could crawl back if he can gain traction with the fantasy that May is betraying the people’s Brexit. But Brexit is going to happen, just not in a the way that the purists want it.
The trouble with Labour is that they inhabit an echo chamber of chanting crowds screaming offensive and futile slogans. All Tories are scum, but moderate Labour are far worse. Red scum and class traitors. Blairites. And what a monster he was.
They feed off each other’s belief systems and have as a reedy cheer leader Corbyn re ratter, Owen Jones, running after the mob which he hAs convinced himself is leadership. It’s rather sad to see an intelligent left winger who I always thought was a decent enough guy spouting the most appalling and dangerous nonsense. His credentials are in tatters. What a shame.It’s easy for commentators like me to say that it is all down to poorly managing expectations. Actually it’s not. Brandon Lewis, the Tory party chairman, has shown himself to be a man to watch, a big beast off the leash. Fluent on the telly, rarely a foot wrong and was so convincing that the Tories were going to have a terrible night that most of the cabinet believed it. And he has a Wilsonian air of man of the people. Another serious leadership contender is in the incubator. He’ll be the next in line for a big job.
The tectonic plates of politics have begun to move. Momentum seems to be infested by a middle class who know best. And their kids, Harry, Freddy and Ros no longer spend their gap year building African schools, they go on marches. They dwell in the cities. In the rest of the country those who aspire are moving back to the Tories. A lesson for Corbyn which I doubt he will learn is that voters will be reluctant to vote for a party that they are scared of. And Labour has become a gothic horror story.
I am not going to bother with the problems of anti semitism, intolerance, bullying and the councils that Labour should have won as it’s all so painfully obvious. But what may trouble him is that he commands the largest political army in Europe who outnumber the Tories to a massive scale. To what avail? Madame has lost four cabinet ministers, Brexit is a fiasco and the scandal that is Windrush has nor even begun to fade away. Labour should be twenty points ahead in the polls.
Well, Madame should treat herself to a few large craft gins this weekend. This decent and rather awkward woman appears to be winning the grudging respect of the public for her dogged determination and sheer courage in putting up with some of the ghastly creatures that inhabit her party.
I suspect there will be a rather different and more confident approach from now on. This is her time to tell her Brexit mobsters to put up or shut up. Of course they won’t shut up. But they won’t put up either.
If you can feel a slight breeze, it is a wind of change that will be gently be wafting though Number 10.
But on the political stock market I’d buy shares in Brandon.