Mick Hartley

Tom Peck, on Corbyn's anniversary as Labour leader – How Jeremy Corbyn destroyed the Labour Party in 365 days:

Can it really only have been a year? The reshuffle alone surely lasted five.

Just a year since – strong message here – the Labour Party came together and decided it was no longer in the business of seeking to win elections?

But it is indeed a year since that historic moment when Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party. Historic in the sense that, until that point, Labour was still at least theoretically devoted to taking part in history.

So much crammed into 12 short months. A year in which police officers shouldn’t shoot to kill Isis terrorists, a year of not singing the national anthem, a year of not doing up your tie or putting on a proper suit, a year in which nuclear submarines should no longer carry nuclear missiles.

A year in which, three eighths of the way through the world’s slowest reshuffle, a minor MP called Barry Gardiner walked past some journalists and went to the toilet outside Jeremy Corbyn’s office, prompting a presumed instant elevation to the shadow cabinet. (This was considered amusing at the time. Now he’s Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade).

A year in which his old mate Ken Livingstone was accosted on live TV by a fellow Labour MP bellowing, “You’re a Nazi apologist!” in his face. That was serious enough to launch an investigation into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party by Shami Chakrabarti, which was branded a whitewash even before its author was rewarded with a seat in the House of Lords.

It’s doubtful whether historians will bother to record that David Cameron resigned as an MP on the first anniversary of Corbyn’s Labour leadership. They will have more seismic events to be getting on with. Cameron has been yesterday’s man for three months. Corbyn has been yesterday’s man since the mid-eighties….

Or there's Alex Andreou – Jeremy Corbyn: A Disastrous Year:

Today marks a year since the day Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader with an overwhelming 59.5% of the vote. Since that day, the Labour Party has engaged in a concerted campaign of self-destruction with depressing gusto….

[A]lmost any discussion about Corbyn on social media, even with his most polite supporters, ends in the implication that not supporting him somehow means you support neoliberal politics and Iraq-like wars. Responses to every article are crawling with scathing criticism of someone who hasn't been leader of this party in a decade. We have managed to codify our achievements throughout that period into one easily digestible pellet for the entire electorate: LABOUR BAD.

And more than that, my impression from many hundreds of discussions, is that post-Iraq, all competence and charisma has become a confused proxy for ruthlessness and deceit. To manage is to engage in "managerialism". To win is a sign of immorality. And that, I think, is the true source of my impasse with many Corbyn supporters. I see his incompetence and intransigence as fatal flaws; they see them as guarantees of purity.  It becomes pointless then to debate this circular magical thinking. Pointless to point to polls predicting total electoral olethros. They are dismissed as either propaganda or the result of the "PLP coup". Pointless to explain the fact that Labour had never actually been ahead on average, throughout his tenure. That we have been sliding in the polls since mid-March, long before any MP resigned. Pointless to say that evidence shows Labour would receive a 12-point boost if he resigned, or that the 10 point deficit between Labour and the Tories, actually increases to 15 points when Corbyn is mentioned by name. Pointless to point out that his approval rating is just as disastrous with those declaring a voting intention as it is with people unlikely to vote – the demographic we are told will flock to the voting booth to save us. Pointless to reiterate data that on key issues the distance between his positions and those of average Britons, whose vote Labour would need, is unbridgeable. Pointless to explain that even Labour voters rate Theresa May more highly than their own leader. Pointless to explain that if Labour managed to win every single Green vote it would put us on 198 seats to the Tories' 328. 

They believe Corbyn will prevail, because they believe. I am the enemy, simply by not believing. It is a threat even to entertain dissent. As if a Fairy dies every time one applies critical thought. And so the protective circle becomes impenetrable and the excuse for oncoming oblivion in 2020 (or next spring, I suspect) is already rehearsed to explain away bad ratings and fully formed before it's even needed: "Corbyn lost, not because of his flaws, but because his critics pointed them out."…

Labour is a party plagued by Magical Thinking. Reality has disappeared from view. Oblivion beckons. Construct your own narrative, by all means, about why this happened. That this happened on Corbyn's watch, however, is undeniable.