9 Sep 2015

Corbyn jitters, Trident and Tory extinction

There are some jitters in the Corbyn camp as close of polling approaches. Did they peak too soon? Should they have given the rallies a rest? Is low turnout amongst affiliated trade union supporters a worry and is late turnout amongst full party members a sign of people pulling back from Corbyn?

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You hear similar thoughts in other campaign teams where one old hand thinks it could be a victory of less than 2 per cent, whoever gets it. But the registered supporters are thought to have delivered as much as 70 per cent of their voters for Jeremy Corbyn.

Quite what would follow a possible Corbyn victory is a matter that I’m not sure even the Corbyn high command truly understand. There has been talk around the top of the Corbyn camp of the need to prioritise two or three totemic policy changes and Trident could well make it into that list.

It is coming down the track anyway with a Commons vote due early in 2016 on whether the final go-ahead should be given for Trident renewal. One poll of Labour candidates before the general election suggested a big majority against Trident. No-one’s quite sure how a similar poll amongst current Labour MPs would go but you could imagine a majority willing to back a review and maybe even a majority backing the Corbyn line.

On other areas, like whether the UK should remain inside Europe, you could imagine Jeremy Corbyn letting his MPs go their own way depending on conscience.

When I pressed him this week on whether he’d let Labour MPs support military action against Syria if there was a vote in the Commons he repeatedly said he would hope to persuade them and seek consensus.

Around him though are figures who more readily say that policy should be made by the party (members old and new and partial) and then implemented by the parliamentary party. Jeremy Corbyn’s language is notably more conciliatory and free of disciplinary talk. Will he hold that line or will a tougher approach to changing the party take hold?

Owen Jones in today’s Guardian ponders the long recorded history of left wing firebrands embracing the Right with zeal in older age.

No danger of that happening with Jeremy Corbyn, aged 66. But he might be interested to hear about some research that the Tory MP Chloe Smith has been working on for the Party Chairman, Lord Feldman.

I hear that after poor showing amongst younger voters in the general election, the Tories commissioned a study to try to find out what is going on. What’s alienating younger voters from the Conservatives? Are they worryingly dependent on much older voters? Will they be saved in the long term by the old adage that younger voters get more right wing as they grow older?

I hear the research suggests that we’ve seen certain cohorts of clusters of voters who were more right wing than usual in their youths working their way through the ages and staying fairly right wing (like the early 90s younger generation whose parents might’ve owned their own home for the first time or aspire to). But the data doesn’t suggest that younger voters in general automatically get more right wing as they get older.

Even as the Tory MPs cheered Jeremy Corbyn getting to his feet to ask a backbench question of the PM on Monday, back in CCHQ they’ve started talk again of the “extinction curve” and the real threat to the Tory party over time. A reminder that just when you’ve confronted one great political shock there’s always the possibility of another one around the corner.

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