Corbyn as leader is definitely a good thing!

A new direction for Labour under Corbyn?

In case you have missed the news Jeremy Corbyn has been elected as leader of the Labour Party and this is something to be celebrated.

Celebrated? Really Chris? Why would a LibDem be celebrating this?

A fine set of questions to which the answers are; Yes, really and it is a long complicated rant so buckle up....

Firstly, I am a big fan of democracy and political theory - it is one of my vices and I'm a HUGE fan of Hobbes "Leviathan". I studied the evolution of Political theory at university for a semester and found this evolution fascinating and for a time I flirted with Marxism. To be fair I worked for MacDonald's at the time and it seemed to be a fair leap.

Anyway - at this point I was ripe to be attracted to a strong Labour movement and the Labour Party there was just one thing in the way.... New Labour.

New Labour has always struck me as a Diet Tory movement which was geared to winning elections and that was it. Throw in my opposition to the Iraq War and other policies such as ID cards etc and I found myself realising that beyond my radical reaction to my employer I had no real socialist beliefs and that liberalism was where my heart truly lay.

However I have always maintained that the Labour party should be a working class party and that for me and many others it had long ceased to be that.

Can I back up this assertion?

Why yes.

The rise of third (and fourth) party politics is a massive clue to this. In 2010 the Liberal Democrats attracted a large amount of votes from people who were looking for something different rather than the two same old parties who seemingly offered us nothing different. In 2015 following the Coalition that saw us being lumped into the same boat as Labour and the Tories the working classes flooded to UKIP seeing Farage as someone new and out of the Westminster bubble. Indeed according to our intel, streets that had been historically Labour were turning to UKIP instead. Why? Because Farage seemed to be voicing the working family's fears and beliefs rather than Westminster protocol and edited press statements.

What has this got to do with Corbyn?

Jeremy Corbyn is of the old school of Labour, a genuine Left winger who will (hopefully) steer the party away from the middle ground and actually represent the working classes again. No more of this abstaining on key votes as they did under Harman recently. The Party membership are obviously vexed with this New Labour fad and want to return to their old core values, the values the party were founded on, the very values and voters who were that much more extreme than the Old Liberal party back in the 1920s that saw the party rise to prominance. This is the same shift again almost a century on.

Finally there will be a gulf between Right and Left which will give the voters something to get behind.

There have been a lot of smug Tory tweets claiming walkover in 2020 and that we are looking at another five year term of Conservative government based on today's Labour leadership result. I wouldn't be so sure... After all if Corbyn can steer the party left and actually start representing the working classes again then they will draw a massive amount of support away from UKIP (always a good thing) and if he stands on anti-austerity (and means it) then he will gain even more votes and we could see the rise of the Labour party.

It also means that dissatisfied centralists in the Labour party may come looking for a centre party and join the LibDems(?).

So what about Medway?

Well on the council level it is too early to say. Many people have predicted the Conservatives losing seats in the last two elections and they've still walked away with a massive majority. I think it is too early to say for 2019.

I will predict that Corbyn's tenure (if done right) coupled with the absence of Mark Reckless, will see the end of Medway UKIP's showing on the council and (hopefully) see a massive fall in their vote share across the wards.

For the LibDems locally it won't make that big a difference with us still campaigning on our strengths and strong work ethic.

As for the 2020 General election - it is way to early to call that... IF the right candidate (and my money is on Naushabah Kahn) is against Rehman Chishti then we could see a swing to Labour. Sadly I fear the same might be true in Chatham & Aylesford IF the right candidate comes along and the voters of Chatham go back to Labour rather than UKIP then not even Tracey's record could save her but that is a pretty BIG IF!!!!

Though these predictions are, as Joey from Friends once said; Moo ("Its like a Cow's opinion - it doesn't matter"). I stand by my belief that Labour will now return to its roots and represent its core supporters - the workers which can only be a good thing for British politics having a clear divide between Red and Blue.

1922 spells resurgant Conservatives

Mr Baldwin, legendary Conservative PM

It would be easy to Caricature the Conservative party as the Galactic Empire, Lord Cameron reporting to Baroness Warsi's throne room at the pinnacle of Millbank towers and being reassured that;

Soon the Rebellion will be crushed and young Clegg will be one of us.

Their MPs an army of grey clones who are desperate to privatise everything and make as much money as humanly possible at all times crushing the will and rights of the common voter but this is simply not the case.

Ed Milliband can spout the platitude Same old Tories... as much as he likes but its just simply not the case.

Prior to 1997 the Conservative Government had not really spent that much time out of power during the Twentieth Century (save from the Liberal administrations of Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith) and had a tireless record of fiscal responsibility where as Labour tended to have a better record on reform having taken over that mantle from the Liberals. Thus a sort of brake and accelerator quickly re-established itself after the turmoil of The First World War and the crash of 29. The Middle ground seemed to evaporate (along with our share of the votes) and a sort of class war was played out and slowly settled.
The Conservative party had no need to change - it only had to play the waiting game before it moved in to retake its seats from Labour four maybe eight years later. You voted Conservative because it was safe and you knew what you were getting.

New Labour posed a problem though. It was like a fuzzy cuddly Conservatism, right but left as well and approaching long overdue reform. Their leader was charismatic and spoke to the people where as Conservative leaders seemed to speak to a bygone age. Haig would have made a fantastic Conservative Prime Minister just not in the late 90s, Ian Duncan Smith and Michal Howard likewise were Conservatives from pre-Blair and had no hope of breaking through the aura that was Tony Blair and talk to you and me.

Something really needed to be addressed and the Conservatives have addressed it. David Cameron was from the same mold as Blair and outshone the old Labour Brown, he offered a brand of Conservatism that sounds a bit like New Labour in its spin. Traditional values that are at the core of the party; a return to traditional values, fiscal responsibility and a big Society stay firm but there seems to be a growing move towards the centre.

2010 brought an influx of Conservative MPs who were not of the same mould and were interested in improving things. This is why the Coalition agreement was so easy to forge and why the Libdem negotiating team worked so well with the Conservative team as they were willing to be flexible (where as David Lawes says Labour were very inflexible and it was Gordon's way or the highway). The road-map of the Agreement is very progressive for a Conservative government that doesn't really need us as much as we think they do and David Cameron and a wedge of these fresh MPs were more than willing to adopt a good chunk of our policies because they shared the views and had similar ideas.

Of course their were wings of the traditional party who were unhappy about the levels of involvement and direction that the party seemed to be heading and that Clegg et al had far too much influence over policy. For them the Coalition was a sell out and almost a perversion of what the party Should stand for. This consisted of traditionalist Conservatives, generally from safe seats like Nadine Dorries who made her feelings about the Libdem involvement very clear and even those from marginal seats like Peter Bone who regaled the House with the opinions of Mrs Bone on a few occasions and her opinion on whether the Deputy Prime Minister might be pulling Mr Cameron's strings.

Last week the Evening Standard ran an editorial written by Matthew D'ancona, saying that the Conservative backbenchers were in trouble and really need to modernise and get with the program if they want to survive. Ditching political dinosaurs and outspoken critics of the Coalition  had to be silenced and ousted and a united front behind Dave was needed for a good public image.

Well... they've done it.

The 1922 committee, a traditional forum for backbench Conservatives to raise their point of view away from the frontbenchers and an arena for policy formation voted in a new committee last night. The majority of new members come from the 301 group (the amount of seats needed for victory in 2015) and old guard Conservatives like Bone and Chope are out of the executive committee! The 301 group appear to be mainly new MPs who are a lot more progressive and break the mold some what.

They want government in 2015 and they are going to continue the Cameron revolution. They've already published Life after the Coalition and now Iron Ladies (a collection of essays from new up and coming female Conservative MPs) and are showing a new set of colours. They are showing the traditional backbone but with a more caring front and dare I say it Liberal way of thinking. More importantly they are getting behind their leader en masse, they don't want to repeat the leadership splits and cracks they suffered under Thatcher and Major.

Labour talk about taking the centre ground - well the Conservatives will steam roller it and only one thing looks set to stop them and that is if the Coalition doesn't achieve economic stability and growth. It appears that both our party's destinies are entwined on this one target. Even then it would be easy for them to blame the Libdems for getting in the way.

As the Tory brand is packaged and sold to a growing audience, which would sky rocket if we can consolidate the deficit, they can afford to lose the far right wingers and "little Englanders" who are a slowly dying breed, to the likes of UKIP and still gain massive support from people in the middle like myself. As a Liberal Democrat I find it concerning that more of our core demographic could be eroded by this but as a political commentator I find it interesting to see the Conservatives branching out like this and will watch them grow and carry on. I think we need to go away and do a similar amount of rethinking as unfortunately Orange Book Liberalism has not achieved the backing we hoped it would from the electorate. Like wise if Labour are really intent on appealing to the masses they need to go away and define themselves and their direction rather than defining themselves as "Not the Coalition - their policies are not ours"

If I could stretch to a prediction, I'd say that if the deficit isn't reached Labour will get in in 2015 in an anti Austerity ticket but I believe that Ed Milliband, who in my opinion isn't much of a leader, and his cabinet will make a bit of a pigs ear of it and a completely rejuvenated Conservative party will landslide in 2020 and hold on to power for a decade at least.

The grand old party is far from dead, its future shows a lot of promise but still is held in check by the deficit.

Smudging Party lines :- The changing face of the Conservative and Labour Paries.

During our party conference Dr Vince Cable said that the far Tory right were the direct "descendants of those who sent children up chimneys." It is something that can raise a chuckle and when you picture Peter Bone you could possibly believe it, even the rabid quasi rant that Nadine Dorries indulged in the other week was reminiscent of an Evangelical Victorian School mistress.

No matter what you think of them though, the  Conservative party have changed. David Cameron is not the grinning face of evil and his ministers do not look like the defendants bench at Nuremberg. Despite Ed Miliband's rhetoric of "The same old Tories" they have a new slant and their fresh MPs show great promise. The opposite seems to be true of Labour, they've also changed but they have drifted away from the Trade Union members and sympathisers towards an almost Conservative position. The once gaping void that had existed between left and right is now more of a quagmire where each can sink into with in the disputed middle ground.

What of us? I'd like to say that the Liberal and Lib Dem party have remained constant since Balfour's government was ousted by Campbell-Bannerman. Liberalism is a philosophy that does not appeal to a demographic or political spectra but is a broad brush stroke that encompasses let and right which tends to make us a centralist group. I think because we don't have a demographic that people don't know what we stand for.

After all Labour represent Urban Working class values where as the Conservatives represent rural and upper class values right?

Well if you look at the Constituencies then yes. There is no way Maidstone and the Weald will be Labour controlled and I doubt very much that inner city Manchester will become Conservative.

But the parties have changed since the fall of Mrs Thatcher. Labour under Blair did drift away from the Unions and strike action and tried to broaden their appeal to the middle - New Labour seemed to be a diet Conservatives but still drawing on the unions, there was a mix of Union presence like John Prescott vs. Mandelson and Blair himself.

The Conservatives have also changed. Thirteen years of opposition will do that, after all after every election defeat you've got to address why and party image. Old Conservative values are no longer as popular as they once were. I could sit here and criticise Conservative MPs like Priti Patel - who I think is an opportunist who vocally supports the party line, or Peter Bone, some what of a Political dinosaur or Nadine Dorries...
There are others- and I'm sure that party members in other parties could throw plenty of snide comments at LibDem MPs but that's just wasting time for futile one upmanship.

There are, however MPs who seem to buck this stereotype. Ken Clarke was labelled as a Lib Dem Minister by Nick Clegg in his address at the Conference rally, Penny Mordaunt pleaded with Theresa Villiers for her constituents to be relieved of high Train fares, Tracey Crouch reminded Theresa May of the good social networking sites did during the riots and urged against Government censorship of them. - Just to briefly share an anecdote from a Medway Libdem meeting; A colleague said of Miss Crouch after the last General Election:
"You won't see her in Chatham again until the next General election. Her support base is in Aylesford so that is where she'll concentrate."

I'm happy to say that she has proved them wrong.

Indeed this new brand of Conservatism is a lot more fuzzy and comforting. In the darkest days of the Tuition fee crisis I considered just going the whole mile and turning blue - I mean, at the time I was starting to believe we had anyway!

Some Lib Dems would argue that it is our influence over policy that has made them more attractive but do we have that much influence? After all we are but 8% of Parliament and could easily be over ruled! Also Nick has said that he and Mr Cameron have agreed on a lot of policy and both parties had a lot of common ground. There are differences in the form of the Human rights act, NHS reform, Trident etc but other ground that has become communal and communal by choice not by force. Lets be candid... If they really didn't share some of our policies do you really think we would have got as much done?

So why are they still hated? Apart from a small collection of relics and some of their links to big business etc there is one factor and I quote my good friend Caroline Bell:

Under Labour everyone has a good time, there is a lot of public spending but eventually the money runs out and the electorate turn to the Conservatives to fix the situation. The problem is the Conservatives make all the hard decisions and become unpopular so Labour get in. it's a cycle.

Before this parliament it was easy to dislike the Conservatives. I grew up at the time of Thatcher and the collapse of the Economy under Major - Blair's victory in 1997 was a huge change and New Labour was a breath of fresh air.

I guess what my course less meandering is trying to say is that the Conservatives have changed and that they and Labour are fighting over the same demographics for the majority of their support. This new Conservative party deserves a chance and shouldn't be judged on just its austerity measures but its other reforms too.