Unintended Consequences<\/strong><\/p>\n For non-UK readers let me try to summarise. In a classic example of unintended consequences, two weeks ago Corbyn was elected by a landslide after the Labour Party enabled almost anyone to become a member and get a vote in choosing the next leader. (Ed Miliband, his predecessor, resigned after a heavy defeat in a General Election earlier this year).<\/p>\n A long term campaigner as an obscure back-bench MP on (mainly) universalist \u2018causes\u2019, a left winger and serial rebel against the \u2018Party line\u2019, Corbyn was seen by 90% of Labour MPs as unelectable in any General Election, should he be put before the British public. \u00a0Thanks to the change in rules, the unthinkable has happened and amidst much internal chaos, Corbyn is now presiding over his first Labour Conference as Leader. Thanks also to a relatively recent change in UK rules, we have fixed term Parliaments and the next election won\u2019t be until 2020.<\/p>\n More Popular Than Expected<\/strong><\/p>\n I make no great claims to prediction but right now Corbyn is winning far more public approval than many media commentators and politicians expected. People from all shades of opinion and degrees of political interest or disinterest have warmed to his \u2018difference\u2019, his patent authenticity, his emphasis on \u2018principles\u2019, his refusal to be packaged and spun as a \u2018professional\u2019 politician, and a series of small but significant gestures of political unconventionality. At his first Prime Minister\u2019s question time he read out questions sent in by the public. He looks \u2018badly dressed\u2019. He makes a virtue out of differing views, publicly stated, in his Shadow Cabinet.\u00a0\u00a0 He came on stage at the conference modestly, and without fanfare. In a society where politics is hidebound by Parliamentary tradition and convention this is a big deal.<\/p>\n So like many other \u2018populist\u2019 politicians making a virtue out of playing to a \u2018non-mainstream\u2019 values base, Corbyn looks and sounds \u2018different\u2019 from those who play to the \u2018mainstream\u2019 or the \u2018centre\u2019 because media and research professionalism says that\u2019s the only way to win, and end up all \u2018looking the same\u2019 (something many people in the UK claim to hate) . In motivational values terms Corbyn is at the Universalist polar opposite to Nigel Farage of UKIP (authoritarian, appealing to the Power\/ Materialism base).<\/p>\n Conventional wisdom may have it that this will simply drive the Labour Party into a smaller political ghetto (in values terms, mainly Pioneers \u2013 see this previous blog<\/a> for data), leaving the middle ground (mainly occupied by Prospectors who Labour critically failed to retain support from at the General Election) free for Conservatives such as George Osborne. But I think that Corbynism could do real damage to the Conservatives, and partly because he has five years in which to do it, even if he himself doesn\u2019t last that long as leader.<\/p>\n Damage to the Tories<\/strong><\/p>\n Here\u2019s why: simply because his victory was so unexpected, Corbyn is receiving huge media attention. This means that his \u2018radical\u2019, \u2018left wing\u2019 and \u2018progressive\u2019 views are receiving huge exposure in mainstream. Lots of people, especially young people too young to remember the politics of say the 1960s \u2013 1980s, are hearing such political ideas for the first time. This is generating an air of excitement and youthful energy around a political leader in his sixties whose views the labour Party had long buried as political suicide because they would alienate the aspirational middle ground, or \u2018Thatcher\u2019s Children\u2019 (as values research shows, mainly Prospectors<\/a>).<\/p>\n Should these views become almost in any way fashionable, Corbyn\u2019s newly acquired star status might even start to attract these \u2018aspirational voters\u2019. He\u2019s not much talking to them or at them but more to his base yet simply being a \u2018star\u2019, a political celebrity, could be enough to win some over. It may well not be enough to win a General Election but very few people (not least Prospectors) vote by analysis and calculation, much more by intuition, Kahneman\u2019s System One. By being the first prominent politician who has made many of them interested in politics, it is likely that some will vote for him on that basis alone.<\/p>\n Social Mobilisation<\/strong><\/p>\n If he and his allies succeed in pulling of the accidental \u2018trick\u2019 of social mobilisation that brought him to power as the leader of a party, and use it to build an army of activists prepared to campaign in a General Election, he could reverse the \u2018hollowing out\u2019 of British politics.<\/p>\n If that still seems impossibly unlikely, what is much more probable is that the \u2018airtime\u2019 the views of his team will receive, for example talking about renationalising the railways (something polling shows many Conservatives even approve of), and policies essentially designed to redistribute wealth and increase fairness and reduce inequality, will lead to these ideas re-entering the mainstream of British politics.\u00a0\u00a0 For decades Labour didn\u2019t talk about them, leaving an opportunity for the Greens and the Scottish National Party to do so.<\/p>\n What could really hurt the Conservatives though is that Corbyn could be recalibrating British politics. Last night I saw the editor of The Guardian<\/em> pointing out on tv that Corbyn is talking a lot about changing how British politics is done (for example by ruling out personal attacks) and not about changing how Britain is governed (once you are in government).\u00a0 In so doing Corbyn is aligning himself with the public.<\/p>\n If there is wide public resonance with this \u2018narrative\u2019, Corbyn could force the Conservatives to compete on his terms not theirs. If his proposals come to frame the questions that the media put to all politicians, as the media do not like to be out of step with popular opinion, he could shift where \u2018the centre ground\u2019 lies. If Government v Opposition debates start to be run about \u2018fairness\u2019 as well as \u2018affordability\u2019 for example, the Conservatives may find it harder going.<\/p>\n Part of that public opinion is simply about liking. There are quite a lot of people \u2013 I have no idea how many \u2013 who say they quite like this strange man Corbyn because he seems different, authentic and honest, even if they disagree with many of his views. The Conservatives, not Tony Blair, will look out dated.<\/p>\n Finally, if he continues to talk pointedly and openly about wealth, privilege and abuse of both, Corbyn is likely to alert many people to the reality that the current British Conservative Government is indeed run by a highly privileged elite of landed aristocrats and very rich men and women, who do not appear to be experiencing the austerity they impose on the rest of the country. If their authority is also weakened by being seen to be on the wrong side of improving how politics is done, Corbyn could make the Conservatives look a lot less socially attractive.<\/p>\n For generations British political analysts have puzzled over why many British voters seem to vote for parties whose policies seem to disadvantage them, especially economically. Corbyn could win back some of those (the \u2018lost\u2019 Old Labour vote especially) but if his star continues to rise in terms of simply being liked and receiving a lot of attention, he really could change British politics.<\/p>\n Side-Stepping the Ghost of 1976<\/strong><\/p>\n Generations of Labour politicians have been haunted by the memory of the 1976 \u2018IMF crisis<\/a>\u2019 when confidence in Sterling collapsed and Britain had to be bailed out by the International Monetary Fund. It paved the way to the emergence of Thatcherism and then New Labour and the political conventions of pitching to the \u2018middle ground\u2019 of voters that Corbyn seems to reject, in a style he definitely rejects, and with fiscal conservatism that (like Syriza)\u2026 he appears to accept.<\/p>\n Since that time the London media has used business or market opinion as a yardstick of credibility against which to instantly \u2018measure\u2019 government economic policies. Conventional wisdom says a Corbyn programme would instantly fail such a test. Yet it may no longer be so simple, because the wisdom of the markets (think Banking Crisis) and the authority of Big Business (think VW) are themselves diminished. That might not count for much once in government but that in turn might not worry voters who simply want to see a different type of politician being given a chance to \u2018have a go\u2019.\u00a0 At least for the time being, it’s campaigning, not politics as you know it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There seem to be some big things that Britain\u2019s media and political classes don\u2019t get about the new Labour Party Leader, Jeremy Corbyn and his ‘kinder politics’.\u00a0\u00a0 One is that they are judging him as a politician but he\u2019s acting … Continue reading