Jeremy Corbyn may have reclaimed the leadership but it’s REAL Labour voters who are going to lose
Sun columnist says Labour party has deserted the 'moderates' who must wondering what on earth has happened to that great institution of theirs
BEWILDERED Labour “moderates” can be seen this week wandering around Liverpool wondering what on earth has happened to that great party of theirs.
For many, it’s like returning to a childhood home and finding it derelict, occupied by squatters, with burst mattresses hanging out of the windows.
They might blame the Loony Left for breaking and entering and imposing Marxist hero Jeremy Corbyn as cult leader.
But Labour hasn’t been home for millions of voters — including Sun readers — for a very long time.
It long ago abandoned the working classes, retreated to its public sector stronghold and left what Theresa May calls the “barely-coping” to struggle on their own.
Moderates are now the new rebels, wondering whether to stay and fight or make a break for it and set up a new rival party. Both options are doomed. Labour is out of power, perhaps forever.
Setting up a rival party from scratch requires big personalities with big policies. But there are no giants left in Labour, certainly none with top-level experience in the great offices of state.
They’ve all fled or been driven out, apart from Alan Johnson, who has never, ever, wanted to be leader.
As for vote-winning policies, Labour has been bereft for more than 50 years — apart from the exotic flowering of the Blair decade.
It learned little from the bleak 1970s and the Winter of Discontent when trade unions treated ordinary hard-working voters as cannon fodder.
Labour slavishly supported a vast and unaffordable welfare state, the stronghold of its union paymasters, but frequently at the expense of ordinary voters.
It even backed the job- destroying European Union and uncontrolled mass immigration in the face of ferocious protest from the working classes it claimed to represent.
The first sign the party was over came with Labour’s extermination in Scotland, leaving only the Tories as opposition to the rampant SNP.
Then came the Tories’ stunningly popular welfare reforms, with Labour voters cheering as feckless families were forced to look for work.
And the classroom revolution that offered to help ALL children read and write after 11 years of full-time education.
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These should have been Labour policies. After all, they were mostly invented by Labour’s Frank Field. Instead, there was hysterical opposition.
Finally, Labour raised two fingers to the working classes on immigration and Europe, branding voters “racist” and taking Brussels’ side against Britain in the EU referendum.
Jeremy Corbyn is not as nice as he looks
No wonder more than half of Labour voters who voted OUT have now ditched the party altogether, most citing Mr Corbyn as their reason for going.
Shamelessly, the once-fervent pro-immigration, pro-EU Chuka Umunna, now manoeuvring as a future Labour leader, has turned turtle and demanded an end to free movement.
He even wants us to quit the EU single market if we are not allowed to curb migration. Well it’s a bit late now, Chuka. A Sun poll puts Labour 15 points behind the Tories. With the party on the brink of civil war, that assessment is perhaps too optimistic.
The real working classes, unprotected by public sector unions, are the hapless victims of those same unions who cripple the railways and paralyse the NHS.
They are deserting in droves.
Many, like Corbyn-admiring Bradley Wiggins — a dyed-in-the-wool Labour man until now — are impressed by Tory PM Theresa May. The cycling star said yesterday: “I think Theresa has done a fantastic job in stabilising the country.”
They are dismayed by calls from Unite’s over-mighty Len McCluskey for wider industrial chaos. Many support a strike ban on essential services.
And as Momentum stormtroopers threaten to rape or behead moderate Labour MPs like Yvette Cooper, they wonder what can justify their continuing support for this once-great party.
Jeremy Corbyn is not as nice as he looks. He is what the Soviet Union used to call a “useful idiot”, an apologist for terrorism, anti-Semitism, Russian adventurism and Arab extremism.
Mr Corbyn spent more than 30 years as the hard-left MP for Islington doing his best to sabotage the Labour Party from the backbenches.
Now as its unassailable leader, he can complete the job at his leisure.
By the way . . . who was Owen Smith?
EX-CHANCELLOR George Osborne is a fervent pro-EU cheerleader who not only backed the wrong side but deeply damaged his cause and HM Treasury’s reputation for integrity in the process.
After his preposterous Project Fear – some might say Project Blatant Lies – few will trust an official Treasury or Bank of England economic forecast again, even when it is vital we do so.
But the biggest threat to Mr Osborne’s premiership dream is that by the time a vacancy arises, Britain will be back where it belongs as a flourishing, thriving, prosperous, free-floating world economy.