Picture: Why this shouldn’t be the Tory reaction were Labour to elect Corbyn.

Governments lose elections, oppositions don’t win them – A recession & no Cameron could hand the election to Corbyn.

There are those, inside and outside of the Labour party, who think by electing Jeremy Corbyn as leader, Labour are committing the greatest strategic blunder since Emperor Palpatine allowed the Rebel Alliance to know the location of the second Death Star. By electing Corbyn Labour can say goodbye to taking power in 2020, but is that assumption correct?

The economy will dominate the next general election, just as it did at the last general election, if the performance of the economy declines over the next five years, then one of the main reasons for voting Tory will be nullified. An advantage Jeremy Corbyn possesses is that it will be very hard for anyone to blame or associate him with the past economic record and legacy of the last Labour government, so that Tory attack line will also be neutered.

After a decade of ‘austerity’ perhaps the country will want to try something different, particularly if it is felt that austerity contributed to a future recession. If you’re a Scottish Nationalist, you might want to skip the next paragraph.

We saw in the Scottish Independence referendum, it is possible to garner (and hold on to) the support of 45% of voters, even if your economic policies are incoherent, lacking in any economic or fiscal reality, so long as you can sell a vision that your plans are better than the status quo. 45% might not win a referendum, but under FPTP it can lead to a landslide in a general election. One of the things the SNP have managed to do brilliantly is get people who haven’t voted in the past to come out and vote for them, something Labour haven’t been able to replicate, Corbyn might be the man to do that with a different, bold vision.

Last night we saw some of that vision last night, when it was said “a future Corbyn-led Labour government will reserve the right to bring [privatised companies] back into public ownership with either no compensation or with any undervaluation deducted from any compensation for renationalisation.” Remember that nationalising the railways is popular with the voters so other renationalisations can also be popular with them, especially if Corbyn can say it won’t cost the taxpayer a penny.

The other factor why the Tories shouldn’t be confident about the election and why Labour shouldn’t be despondent, the Tories will be fighting the next general election without their strongest asset, David Cameron. After a particularly fraught EU referendum, the Tories could elect someone who is the antithesis of David Cameron’s One Nation Conservatism. All those voters in the marginals that backed the Tories, and the gains the Tories made from the Lib Dems might be at risk. Even if the referendum doesn’t damage the Tory party, I’m not sure there is anyone in the Tory party who can appeal to these type of voters in the way David Cameron can. As the 2001 Tory leadership election showed, the Tories can make horrifically bad leadership decisions too.

The Tories only need to lose around 20 to 25 seats, for a rainbow alliance headed by Jeremy Corbyn to take power in May 2020. Jeremy Corbyn’s route to becoming Prime Minister is a lot easier than some think and the Tories should not underestimate him.

TSE

PS – It is thought that some of Corbyn’s friends could cause him problems, but again that might not be the case. He can point out when it comes to the IRA/Sinn Féin, he was merely ahead of his time. Now even the Queen meets the like of Martin McGuinness, and Corbyn’s always been open and honest about meeting them, unlike for example Sir John Major, who told the House of Commons, face-to-face talks with the IRA ‘would turn [his] stomach’ whilst his government was secretly talking to the IRA.

He can argue the people he meets now, will be the people who British Governments deal with in the future, just like his meetings with Sinn Féin.