Handy excuses for why Corbyn ultimately loses, in case he wins

The widely anticipated victory of hardline left-winger Jeremy Corbyn in Labour’s leadership contest presents a new dilemma for his fans. While they will savour victory in seizing the control of the party they will no longer be able to blame future election defeat on Labour being insufficiently leftwing. If he is as unelectable as party elders say, Labour’s left is going to need to think carefully about how to explain away the ultimate electoral defeat.

Here then, is a handy cut out and keep guide (usable with minor modifications in many nations) for leftwingers to explain the real reasons why Jeremy Corbyn failed to become prime minister.

1. Jeremy was sold out by Blairites: From the moment he won, New Labour neoliberals sought to undermine him in the media and the party. This disloyalty was compounded by their opposition to his hugely credible economic policies.

2. Jeremy was sold out by voters who refused to understand that they were wrong and failed to see the wisdom of his settled socialist agenda. These feckless “electors” were too seduced by the materialist society to understand that their desires for an iPhone 7, a nice car and a new kitchen were symptoms of their own corruption by consumerist capitalism.

3. Jeremy was sold out by militaristic electors who were too closed-minded to see the other side of the argument when one of his “political friends” said that he viewed the death of British soldiers as a “victory”. These insular and jingoistic British voters refused to understand that a desire to kill British soldiers needs to be viewed through a wider geopolitical prism. They needed to “check their privilege”.

4. Jeremy was betrayed by greedy voters who selfishly did not want to pay more tax to fund the pensions of public sector workers with a large union base in the party.

5a. Jeremy was sold out by leading figures who served in his shadow cabinet but tried to water down all his bold initiatives

5b. Jeremy was sold out by leading figures who refused to serve in his shadow cabinet.

6. Jeremy was undermined by the international Zionist conspiracy. Jeremy’s moral opposition to Israel roused the dark forces who secretly control the country and who joined forces with the CIA and Mossad — the same people behind 9/11 — to undermine him.

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7. Jeremy was betrayed by railway trains which turned out to be no more reliable once renationalised.

8. Jeremy sold us out. Having won the leadership, Jeremy put party unity ahead of true socialism, betraying his comrades by trying to win over Labour centrists instead of purging them and other subversive neoliberal red Tories like Gordon Brown and Neil Kinnock.

9. Jeremy was too nice. His innate personal decency blinded him to the need to eliminate all opposition.

10. Jeremy was smeared by the Rupert Murdoch and other rightwing publications like the Guardian. No one could have predicted this. The rightwing press buried our faithful leader with relentless and utterly irrelevant personal attacks which drew undue attention to his meetings with holocaust deniers. These outrageous smears distracted voters from his anti-austerity message and after all, who among us has not shared the odd platform with a holocaust denier once in a while?

11. Jeremy was also denied a fair hearing by the London-centric mainstream media and the BBC whose leaders are so far removed from the gritty real world of Islington. These institutions persisted with the spurious claim that he was unelectable turning it into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

12. The military industrial complex worked hard to undermine him because it feared his message of peace.

13. Jeremy was sold-out by nationalistic Scots who did not appreciate that his election meant they no longer needed independence.

14. Jeremy was sabotaged by international finance and currency speculators who deliberately engineered market instability in order to prevent his assault on their business practices and lifestyle.

15. It was all America’s fault.

robert.shrimsley@ft.com

Letter in response to this column:

US supreme to a fault / From Paul Drexler