Bernard Ingham: Labour torn apart by mob as May takes up its cause

You cynics will dismiss this as routine: “They always say that, don’t they?” Indeed, they do. But no Tory leader has ever laid it on with a trowel as May did on taking up office. She instanced whole areas of inequality before repeating the promise to make Britain work “not just for a privileged few but for every one of us”.

Again, you cynics will say that she was after the mainstream Labour vote. And why not? After all, where else has it to go? Moderate Labour MPs opposing Corbyn are being abused by the Left as closet Tories.

Theresa May will have to deliver greater equality rather than just promise it before she has any impact on mainstream Labour. And she may never be able to deliver enough.

But she – and only she – can possibly secure any improvement. Corbyn can’t – and if he ever had the chance to try, he would defeat himself.

This is the cruel dilemma facing Labour moderates whose philosophy, unlike Corbyn’s, truly owes more to Methodism than Marx. They are decent people who want to help their fellow 
men but are invariably handicapped by an economic policy that owes more 
to Marx than Methodism. They have 
yet to rid their politics of the taint of 
class war.

May is not fighting a class war. Her aim is to enlist all branches of society, including the haves, to raise the general quality of life for all who are prepared to help themselves.

I doubt whether the general public quite realises the dire nature of Labour’s condition. They may think it is all an unholy mess but that somehow it will be resolved, if not in time for the next general election in 2020.

I fear that as things stand they are fated to remain a rabble, quarrelling among themselves and entirely neglecting their supposed role as HM Loyal Opposition.

That in itself is bad for the country. What is an opposition for if not to hold the Government to account?

The reason for my dire forecast is the nature of Corbyn’s backing. It owes next to nothing to traditional Labour. Instead, it lies in the very people who Neil Kinnock defeated in the 1980s. I have seen these fanatics at work. My ear was clipped by a free range potato on a 1980s visit with Margaret Thatcher to Liverpool.

Whether you call them Trotskyists, Far Left, Hard Left, Momentum, anarchists or trade union leaders not above intimidating employers in disputes by picketing their homes, they are in the business of brute power.

They would strenuously deny this, of course. But I believe their democracy is one of manufactured majorities for the purposes of control.

Many are middle class who some might excuse as idealists but in my book have warped minds.

These minds are now being visited on Labour activists and MPs – especially women MPs – to try to secure Corbyn’s re-election as leader. The social media has greatly increased their menace as well as confirming how vulgar and obscene their methods can be.

With the tragic killing of Batley MP Jo Cox, it would be a brave – nay foolhardy – Labour MP who ignored threats.

Of course, Corbyn condemns this abuse of the democratic system but does not do much about it.

I am not aware that he has reined in his Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, who took comfort at a North London rally that Labour moderates “plotting and conniving” against Corbyn were “f****** useless” at it. Nor Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS union, who had the same audience roaring when he said “f*** you, Tony Blair”.

Nor the militant, reacting to the smashing of a window at former leadership candidate Angela Eagle’s Wallasey constituency office, who said “it was only a f****** brick”.

This tells you all you need to know about the Corbynistas’ politics. They are empty because their souls are empty.

Corbyn has spent decades in North London listening to Lefties saying 
what he wants to hear but has nothing to show for it but an economic policy, like the SNP’s in Scotland, that would impoverish Britain and a politics that would seek to hold power by intimidation.

Unless the Labour Party in its current leadership election rejects Corbyn and chooses freedom, British politics will be in deep crisis. The mob will have won.