Jeremy Corbyn is fuelled by principles but a sense of direction is sadly lacking

Jeremy Corbyn is not the cause of all of Labour’s problems, but is nonetheless central to them, writes Terry Prone.

ONE of the eternal verities of politics, here and in Britain, is that the ruling party can never be expected to win a by-election.

They never do, because the process allows ratty voters to give the finger to the Government without endangering ongoing progress of which they might generally approve. As well as that, those who support the Government of the day often don’t bother getting out to vote because they know it’s not going to make a difference to its onward march.

Those factors alone would have let Theresa May off the hook if the Conservatives had lost last week’s by-elections in the constituencies of Stoke-on-Trent Central, in the Midlands, or Copeland in Cumbria, close to the Scottish border. On the face of it, the chances were high that the two constituencies would be lost to the Government, given the fact that both, going into the election, were Labour strongholds.

It might also have been expected that voters might be jittery about a Tory leader who campaigned vigorously for staying in the European Union and did the mother of all U-turns following the Brexit referendum. Some might also have been offput by the pictures of May holding Donald Trump’s small hand on her visit to the White House.

As it turns out, Ms May has no need to be let off any hook, the Conservatives having narrowly lost Stoke and resoundingly won Copeland. The relatively little attention paid in Ireland to these results speaks to the vast change in attitude to British politics on this side of the Irish Sea. Within living memory, political activists, particularly of the left, made themselves available to the British Labour Party coming up to elections, particularly general elections, and went into something of a decline when results were not good. Only “something of a decline,” though. It never felt terminal. A Labour setback was just that — a Labour setback.

Last week seemed to be much more than a mere setback, but the Irish left didn’t seem that bothered. More accurately, it didn’t seem that interested.

Maybe that was the safest option, particularly for the traditionalists, who never much liked the glampop of Tony Blair even if they were mesmerised by its payoff at the ballot box. After Blair came a period where the Millibands fought with each other, where one emigrated and the other should have, and the Labour vote collapsed.

The light at the end of the tunnel, for the kind of Labour supporter who never used the phase “New Labour,” was Jeremy Corbyn.

A man of integrity. A man of immutably left-wing views. A man filled with authenticity. A man beloved of the grassroots. An unpretentious man who wouldn’t know an Armani suit if it rugby-tackled him and who would never need media training or PR planning because he fearlessly tells it as it is — as opposed to President Trump, who fearlessly tells it as it isn’t. The light at the end of the tunnel went out last week.

Copeland and Stoke-on-Trent are the latest in a long line of disasters suffered since the Labour Party, grassroots and all, elected Corbyn as leader. Stoke-on-Trent was held by Labour, just about. What’s significant about Copeland is that it is only the fourth by-election to be won by the governing party since the middle of the last century. Oh, yes, and it’s been in Labour hands since 1931. As of last week, it’s in Tory hands. Not that Labour voters decamped en masse to the Conservatives. Instead, a substantial number of those who would normally vote Labour defected to Ukip.

Ms May was cock-a-hoop over what she called “an astounding victory for the Conservative party,” going on to propose that it is her party, and only her party, “that can truly call itself the party of working people...driven by the interests of ordinary working class people”. This woman may not be able to negotiate a short flight of steps without the guiding tiny hand of Potus, but she certainly knows how to do a simultaneous land-grab and re-brand.

Over on the other side, the guys at the top in Labour had a number of explanations for what happened. The weather was bad (True. Seriously bad); fake news had been put out (True, probably. It has ever been thus, going right back to the days of the leaflet — remember the guilt-by-association attacks in this country on Adi Roche’s impregnable reputation during her bid for the presidency?); the “corporate-controlled media” were to blame (Partly true, but another case of a permanent reality that simply has to be coped with). Some Labour defenders even tried to suggest Copeland wasn’t that bad a loss, since the Tories won by only a couple of thousand votes. Ah, here, lads.

Then, after the Labour leader gave a speech about Brexit in London (where, according to the voters in Copeland, he spends way too much time) an ITV journalist moved away from the theme of the speech. “Last night the opposition lost a seat to a government party for the first time since the Falklands war,” he told Corbyn. “Have you at any point looked in the mirror and thought, could the problem be me?”

No, came the swift answer. “Why not?” “Thank you for your question,” came a second swift answer.

In that exchange lies so much that is sad about Corbyn, a man never given to examination of or doubt in his own certainties. No matter how frequently those certainties may be rejected, he sees them as defining and justifying him. The problem is that his own no longer agree. Many of his shadow cabinet have given up on him, and some of the big trade unions on which Labour depends are indicating that, while they haven’t given up on him, they urgently need an indication from him that he gets what happened in the by-elections and has some plan to rectify the situation.

Mr Corbyn is not the cause of all of Labour’s problems, any more than any other party leader is singularly causative of his or her party’s woes. But he is, nonetheless, central to them. Precisely those factors which brought him to the leadership in the first place are now the traits which are likely to bring him down. Authenticity in a political leader should be a basic prerequisite. A firm grip on personal principles, ditto. In motor mechanical terms, the structural integrity of the vehicle is fundamental.

But without the capacity to inspire, to set a direction and to give grassroots members the conviction that the direction is worthwhile, it doesn’t matter how authentic or principled is a party leader, he still isn’t going to take his party anywhere. Without fuel and a chosen destination, even the best-engineered car is going nowhere. Mr Corbyn and Ms May were both given their chance to inspire.

May took it, with resolution and energy setting out to take the Conservatives down a road she would never have chosen. Corbyn did not. Because he cannot.