Right now we need an effective opposition more than ever. Whether or not Mr Cobyn is pro-Brexit is neither here not there. A bungled Brexit has severe consequences for all of us - and if it's one that hits UK trade badly then it scuppers any future spending agendas. Labour has picked the worst moment possible to vacate the field.
Whatever your views on Brexit, if you have understood the gravity of it, you know that it is the single most important issue on the horizon. Labour, though, has other priorities. It is singularly incapable of connecting with what matters much less forge a coherent position on it. Politically it is a dereliction of duty.
What's worse is that the party has never in my lifetime been so short of talent. I didn't like Blair's gang but David Blunkett, Gordon Brown, Jack Straw and Margret Beckett were at least people you could take seriously. You didn't have to like them or their politics but they were titans contrasted with the human detritus offered up by the current incarnation of Labour.
Moreover there isn't even a common agenda. McDonnell is a revolutionary psychopath, Thornberry is is a bossy housewife, Abbott is thick as a box of hammers and Corbyn is a shifty old man with deeply dodgy associations. David Lammy is an obnoxious race baiter and the hard left influencers these days tend to be know-nothing children.
What they all have in common is that they have virtually nothing in common with the average voter. The average voter is not obsessed with Israel and is not salivating at the thought of overthrowing capitalism. All the while the "moderate" faction of Labour is a distinctly out-of-touch middle class London liberal constituency mainly motivated by a desire to remain in the EU. Given the splits in the Labour demographics, this is an unbridgeable divide.
The party, therefore, is caught in a pincer movement between the standard tribal opposition from Tory activists and its own liberal wing - gradually eroding the cult of Corbyn. Some have suggested the party is poised to split, but I don't see that happening. These days the parties are just trademarks and without a mainstream trademark a breakaway movement gets nowhere. Labour moderates will cling on to the last, waiting for the opportunity to steal back the trade mark.
This is the essential problem in our politics. Politicians don't feel the need to build movements or spell out policies based on credible research. So long as they have a known trade mark all they have to do is wait until the public are sufficiently sick of the incumbents. If Corbyn becomes the next PM it will be through an accident of numbers, mostly a result of voters staying at home. I know I will if the choice is between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn. They are equally repulsive and both will open the door to uniquely damaging policies. In all respects what is true of Labour is also true of the Tories.
Right now anybody remotely sane is not planning on voting at all so the next election will come down to whoever the broader public hates the least. Everyone I talk to wants an alternative but nobody can say what form it will take or where it will come from. There's plenty of chatter about a new party but that's either going to be a deadbeat liberal europhile effort or a foaming right wing populist movement. Neither can win because we are still hopelessly trapped in the two party system and first past the post.
For the foreseeable future the outlook for British politics looks bleak. Even remaining in the EU wouldn't fix this. Brexit has exposed the fault lines. Where policy is concerned the cupboard is bare and no politician stands untarnished. Even those we thought were good eggs have turned out to be either duplicitous or out of their depth completely. We're now so desperate that any functioning adults would do.
This is where I see Brexit as a healthy process. For years we've had relatively stable government and for the most part we dodged the bullet of the financial crisis. It could have been a lot worse than it was. Ever since though, we've had tiresome prattle about "austerity" exploiting edge cases to paint a picture of a broken Britain teetering on the brink of destitution. Meanwhile the Tories have been cowed by the progressive orthodoxy, too afraid to assert anything like a conservative agenda.
Our politics has become self-involved and timid and we've slipped into tiresome routines of manufactured conflict between equally cretinous extremes. Since the status quo only really requires managerial adjustment, politicos can pretty much abandon policy to indulge their hobby horses. Brexit will sweep them out of the picture the moment it becomes obvious that these people have nothing worthwhile to contribute and no answers to difficult questions. People will want to know why things aren't working.
I take the view that Brits do not yet know what they want from politics in a post-Brexit Britain. But I do expect they will know it when they see it. As much as Brexit has exposed many of the political fault lines it will also expose some of the structural defects in governance which is only just holding together. When things start breaking down anyone with coherent answers and new ideas will have our complete attention. It's not going to come from Labour and it won't come from the Brexiteers. All we know is that this political vacuum cannot last forever.
In a way we should be glad that no party presently enjoys the backing of the country. It tells us that the average voter is better than what our politics offers. We are not taken in by the Brexiter fantasies any more than we buy into Corbyn's throwback socialist ideas. Britain does want to break from the status quo but we're no fools. When something worthy comes along we grab it with both hands.
Britain is on the verge of a new era. The turmoil we are now experiencing is democratic correction. We have lived for thirty years under a consensus regime where the authentic voiced of Britain has been silenced. We now need to go through the process rediscovering who we are as a country and seek a new, more inclusive settlement.
Brexit is not the cause of this turmoil. Brexit is a symptom of a political order artificially held in place for too long and one which has, by more than a decade, outstayed its welcome. In that time there have been transformative changes which changed Britain beyond recognition.
Twenty years ago we didn't have Amazon. Ten years ago we didn't have smartphones. These innovations have transformed high streets and our homes. Instead of having a hi-fi, a PC, a VCR and DVD player and a telephone, it's all now in the palm of our hands. The traditional bank branch will soon vanish and retail as we know it will be dead. Soon our supermarkets will be fully automated. The next major revolution is only around the corner.
Even the order of 2008 is vanishing as traditional modes of retail dies. Our towns and cities are changing. Internet has changed the way we socialise and do business. It is changing the nature of work. We are reverting to a state prior to mass employment. Our working modes are no longer sustainable. We have different expectations and different preferences to the previous generation. We want flexible hours and working from home.
All of our labour laws are obsolete, as are our political institutions and community facilities. Something more seismic than Brexit is happening. Something wonderful and terrifying in equal measure. The internet multiples our influence and we now have a weapon against media manipulation and political lying. Nothing stays a secret for long and we know where the bodies are buried. They can't pull the same stunts anymore without us getting wind of it.
As much as the EU isn't capable of responding with the kind of tailored policies we need - and certainly not inside a decade, Westminster isn't either. This is why a new party isn't the answer. We do our politics through an ancient institution with habits and procedures stemming back to the bubonic plague. Our political machinery simply isn't cut out for the digital age when we demand more say in what happens to us, more transparency and more control. We get to elect a representative once every five years and if you live in a safe seat you might as well not bother voting. This isn't meaningful democracy.
In the last three years I've had thousands of conversations about Brexit with remainers and leavers alike. I've had furious arguments with both over the nature of government and democracy, and if there is one thing nearly all of us can agree on is that the UK's so-called democracy is nothing of the kind. If the people we elect act without a legitimate mandate then our participation in the EU cannot be democratic either. It is that lack of democracy which drives the fundamental disaffection and apathy.
This current breakdown of politics is the death throes of a system that simply isn't appropriate for this new era and its denizens are never going to be able to fix the problem because the one notion truly off limits for them is that they are the problem. If you put six hundred and fifty ambitious sociopaths in the same room and give them power without being accountable in any meaningful sense, they will do exactly as they please and sign away vital powers if it suits their vanity.
Politics as we know it has a way to go yet before it is entirely expired but Brexit is going to give it a little shove off the end of the pier. The status quo has for some time been propping up a zombie economy and the EU has propped up our zombie politics. Of course they want to put the genie back in the bottle, but nearly everyone knows we cannot go on like this. If we are to rebuild Britain we must first rebuild our politics from the ground up. Unless we do we face only stagnation and decline.
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