Krugman: Corbyn and the Cringe Caucus

[T_i_B]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/corbyn-and-the-cringe-caucus/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto&_r=0

I haven’t been closely following developments in UK politics since the election, but people have been asking me to comment on the emergence of Jeremy Corbyn as a serious contender for Labour leadership. And I do have a few thoughts.

All the contenders for Labour leadership other than Mr. Corbyn have chosen to accept the austerian ideology in full, including accepting false claims that Labour was fiscally irresponsible and that this irresponsibility caused the crisis. As Simon Wren-Lewis says, when Labour supporters reject this move, they aren’t “moving left”, they’re refusing to follow a party elite that has decided to move sharply to the right.

What’s been going on within Labour reminds me of what went on within the Democratic Party under Reagan and again for a while under Bush: many leading figures in the party fell into what Josh Marshall used to call the “cringe”, basically accepting the right’s worldview but trying to win office by being a bit milder. There was a Stamaty cartoon during the Reagan years that, as I remember it, showed Democrats laying out their platform: big military spending, tax cuts for the rich, benefit cuts for the poor. “But how does that make you different from Republicans?” “Compassion — we care about the victims of our policies.”

I don’t fully understand the apparent moral collapse of New Labour after an election that was not, if you look at the numbers, actually an overwhelming public endorsement of the Tories. But should we really be surprised if many Labour supporters still believe in what their party used to stand for, and are unwilling to support the Cringe Caucus in its flight to the right?

[daleanime]

1. K&R....

[Ford_Prefect]

2. Some animals are more equal than others ...a case of the natural order asserting itself.

Neo-liberals unite! You have nothing to lose but your elitist privileges.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Fits with the observation by Ken Clarke

that was linked to in your UK group thread on Corbyn:

In an exclusive interview with The Huffington Post UK, the former Chancellor warned his Tory colleagues that Mr Corbyn’s branch of left-wing populism would be hard to campaign against.

Mr Clarke, who also served as Home Secretary and Health Secretary, claimed the Islington North MP is not as left wing as former Labour leader Michael Foot, who led the party to its disastrous 1983 defeat.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/08/03/jeremy-corbyn-ken-clarke-labour_n_7925964.html

[T_i_B]

4. Well....

I do actually think that Corbyn couldn't win, and that a lot of what his policies are too left wing for me, never mind swing voters in Tory marginals.

However, as much as the Corbyn campaign struggles with the electability question, he does offer something that Labour have been crying out for. Positive policy proposals, expressed clearly and simply. I'm not seeing that with Burnham, Cooper or Kendall.

And I don't see any of those three winning a general election either. Albeit for very different reasons than for Corbyn.

The big fear the right wing has about Corbyn is that he could achieve something more fundamental than Blairite triangulating ever could, which is to move political debate in this country away from the horribly spiteful and ideological right wing place it is in now.