WHOOH BOY! What a day for the Right! Not so much Game of Thrones’ “Red Wedding” (although there certainly was a lot of blood) but the day when Labour’s “Red Wall” fell beneath the blows of a battering-ram called Boris.
Unquestionably, this is Boris Johnson’s moment. His decisive Conservative Party victory is one Margaret Thatcher would’ve been proud to call her own. More importantly, he has dished out defeat to Jeremy Corbyn on a scale not seen for nearly a hundred years. Yep, “Jezza” did even worse than the hapless Michael Foot. (Another ancient lefty in odd socks!) But, in 1983, Foot at least had the excuse that Maggie had just kicked the Argies’ arses in the Falkland’s War. All Comrade Corbyn can offer is: “It was Brexit wot won it!”
Which is true – as far as it goes. But there’s more to this than Brexit. Former mining towns like Blyth valley don’t abandon 80 years of voting Labour on account of the European Union. Voters only abandon that sort of loyalty when they have lost all faith in the values their parents swore by. When the promises of the party they had trusted for so long have worn so thin that even its most dyed-in-the-wool supporters can see right through them. When they finally realise that not only is the supposed “party of the workers” incapable of giving them anything better than the party of the bosses, but also that, when push comes to shove, it can’t even give them something as good. Not all of them feel that way, of course, but enough for long-held seats to fall.
“But Johnson!”, the Left wails. “Seriously? Johnson!” How could Labour people vote for such an utter tosser? For a posh prick connected to some of the oldest royal families in Europe? An aristocrat’s aristocrat? A £50-note burning member of the notorious Bullingdon Club? How could they?
In the same way, Comrades, that former auto-workers in Michigan, and iron-ore miners in Wisconsin, could vote for a New York reality-tv-celebrity and property billionaire with connections to the Mafia (Italian and Russian!) whose daddy was a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan. In the same way that someone who’s lived with a certain kind of person all their adult lives, only to discover they’ve being cheated on, throws themself into the arms of somebody as different from their former partner as they can find. Because, when the person they’d always thought of as being “nice” turns out to have been nasty all along, then maybe – just maybe – the people they’ve been told are nasty might actually be a lot nicer than their friends have let on. And, anyway, what the hell have they got to lose?
This is the mindset that goes to the heart of the political cancer that’s eating-up the Left. When the love has gone – how do you get it back? To be fair to poor old Corbyn, he gave it his best shot. His 2017 manifesto, “For the Many, Not the Few”, was about as close as British Labour has yet come to saying “Look, I know I’ve been a lying, cheating bastard, but I’ve changed. Really. I have. Take me back and I’ll prove it to you. I’ll be the sort of bloke I was in 1945 when I gave you the NHS, a nice council flat, and a good job down at the car-plant. Honestly, I will. I promise!”
It nearly worked. In 2017 Labour picked up dozens of seats, and Jezza started getting all kinds of seriously flirtatious texts. But then, it all started to go wrong. He simply couldn’t decide what he wanted to do: go with Leave, or stay with Remain. He had to pick one or the other – or lose both – but he just couldn’t make up his mind. The fire seemed to die in his eyes. In the end, he just looked tired and sounded old. The texts stop coming.
I’m wondering now if the two young Kiwis, Sean Topham and Ben Guerin, who have been managing the Conservatives’ social-media effort, didn’t pick up on this betrayed lover theme themselves – and a lot sooner than I did. Certainly, when I saw their (I’m assuming it was theirs) brilliant take on “Love Actually”, with Boris playing the role of Mark, I knew it was all over. Because, let’s face it, when you can make the punters smile, let alone laugh, the battle’s won. And, hell, watching Boris’s bravura performance, even I laughed!
It’s exactly the sort of stunt Benjamin Disraeli would have pulled-off if there had been social media to use in the middle of the nineteenth century. Boris may have written a big book about his hero Winston Churchill, but it’s Disraeli he most resembles. Both of them were writers. Both of them hungered for recognition and power. Both of them were the most appalling show-offs. And now, in 2019, it looks as if Johnson is going to have to shoulder exactly the same burden which Disraeli shouldered on behalf of the Conservative Party in the 1870s – that of making one nation out of two.
One nation out of two? I’ll let Disraeli explain. The following, oft-quoted, passage is taken from his political novel “Sybil”:
“Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws . . . . THE RICH AND THE POOR.”
Closing the gap between THE RICH AND THE POOR is a big ask, but, after he’s taken Brexit out of the microwave and dished it up to the long-suffering people of the United Kingdom, it’s the magic trick which Boris Johnson must perform. If he doesn’t, then all those newly seduced Labour voters will start feeling dirty and guilty and wander back to their husbands and wives. Disraeli enthralled and distracted the British working-class with the grand magic of empire. What Boris’s solution might be is anybody’s guess. All that can be predicted with certainty is that it will not lack for bounce.