Suicidal Political Leaders

It tells us a lot about the failing political institutions that despite the different ideologies of the Conservative and Labour parties, they are both currently in turmoil for exactly the same reason; a cynical, hypocritical – and serial - manipulation of democratic principles that went terribly wrong.

In the case of the Conservative party, David Cameron did not add the referendum to the party election manifesto so as to give the country a vote, but simply as a political trick to outflank UKIP and a group of eurosceptic Conservatives. His cynicism continued with the pretence that his negotiations with the EU had resolved the issues that had concerned the country (you could even see Cameron smile with knowing embarrassment when a member of the public likened him to Neville Chamberlain waving his paper claiming ‘peace in our time’). But it reached farcical levels with Project Fear and the proposed budget response to any Brexit by George Osborne – which became a subject of ridicule within hours as Conservative MPs announced they would never vote such measures through.

But it all backfired. Such was the hyperbole of Project Fear and the decision of Cameron to make this the centre of his campaign – rather than concentrate on the details of his renegotiations (thus confirming to many that even he did not believe they amounted to anything) - that his credibility was destroyed and so his words fell on deaf ears.

Cameron’s cynicism destroyed his career and might still destroy the Conservative party, although Theresa May (a Remainer promising to respect the Brexit vote) might still save the day.

However, one doubts that the Labour party can survive its own serial cynicism and manipulation - driven not by one man and one issue, but by a whole cabal of posturing egotists.

The first act of cynicism was when people such as Frank Field and Margaret Beckett nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the 2015 leadership contest (without whose votes he would not have made the candidate list) not because they wanted him to win, but on the basis they thought he was bound to lose. Driven by egotism, they thought it was a wonderful opportunity show what open-hearted people they were. The same careless attitude to democratic principles led to opening the vote to anyone who cared to pay the nominal fee to do so. These two acts of manipulation combined to produce a leader who was immediately rejected by the MPs he was supposed to lead.

And now in 2016, Harriet Harman, Angela Eagle and so many others now want to throw out the democratically elected leader in a way that ensures that the members of the Labour party have no say in the matter.

This will also backfire, but in this case the party cannot survive. If Corbyn is excluded from the coming challenge vote, his supporters will simply take over many local constituency party structures and any future national cohesive party structure will be impossible. If Corbyn stands and wins, many of the MPs who have opposed him will be de-selected for the next general election and an unelectable group of extreme leftists will take their place.

The insoluble problem is that the new influx of ‘members’ and the majority of sitting MPs have completely different and irreconcilable programmes. Worse still, neither group seems to know or care what the millions of Labour voters actually think, which will inevitably be in many cases become “a curse on both your houses”.

So two parties under threat and one almost certainly doomed just because our clever political representatives turned out neither to be so clever nor so representative as they pretend. In each case the damage was self-inflicted; the result of internal arrogance and self-regard rather than any external cause.

But will political elite learn the lesson of these disasters. Few expect it.