Corbyn loves an election. Shame he's stuck in 1983

[Recursion]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/commentisfree/2019/jun/02/general-election-jeremy-corbyn-labour-tories-brexit

Jeremy Corbyn really wants a general election. He blows hot and cold on a second referendum, but he’s always up for an election. I don’t think it’s a tactical thing – after last weekend’s European election results, his grounds for optimism are pretty shaky – I think he just likes general elections. “Let’s get back into the fray and stick it to the Tories!” is the feeling. I reckon it relaxes him. It’s a simple scenario: he knows which direction to strive in and to strive as hard as he can. He can stop losing at political chess and get back to the tug of war.

At heart he’s such a conservative. Small “C”, I hasten to emphasise. I’m not saying he isn’t leftwing. But he’s old school leftwing. He’s determined to find a way of winning the 1983 general election for Labour – it’s his Kobayashi Maru and he’s going to crack it. He’s a sincere reformer, a progressive, a socialist – it’s just his starting point doesn’t happen to be the current date. It’s like he wants to live in an Amish community and expend all his energy trying to persuade them to get a steam plough.

There’s a chance he’ll get his wish (the election, not the steam plough). With nearly 10% of the people who voted Tory a week ago now standing for the leadership of the party, you could be forgiven for thinking the Conservatives would avoid going to the polls, but I’m not so sure. The increasingly extreme no-deal rhetoric of most of the contenders suggests to me that, the party’s disastrous showing at the European elections notwithstanding, they’ve spotted an electoral opportunity.

It was when Jeremy Hunt got into trouble that I started to suspect. He said that a no-deal Brexit would be “political suicide”, but refused to rule it out if he became leader. Interesting that he sees political suicide as a viable option for his party – it would certainly get my vote. But more troubling was the fact that his unenthusiastic view of a no-deal outcome caused him to start haemorrhaging the support of moderate Conservative MPs – the ones desperate to find some alternative to either Boris Johnson or, for those who like a less charismatic and intelligent maniac, Dominic Raab.

[mwooldri]

1. IMO Jeremy Corbyn is Michael Foot reincarnated.

Not literally of course but the ideology, the man, the style. It's too similar for me. The Tories and Labour of the 1980s made me a Liberal in the SDP mould.