I don't like Jeremy Corbyn. He is perhaps the worst Labour leader in history. He is a woefully lousy and uncharismatic orator, a man who would lead Labour to painful defeat even if the entirety of the PLP united behind him. His electoral strategy of appealing to the young and non-voters is a risible joke, he has no way of appealing to Tory or UKIP voters, and 2020 will be a bloodbath. His responses to the online abuse faced by MPs have been disgracefully inadequate. His own beliefs and previous associations are deeply questionable. He refuses to acknowledge the importance of having a majority of the parliamentary party behind him, even though Labour's constitution explicitly sets out how the party pursues the parliamentary route to socialism, rather than, say, the protest march route. He must go - now.That being said.The Corbyn leadership does have some redeeming features - some that are very helpful and valuable indeed. They don't cancel out the bad points, yet as the Corbyn leadership is an immutable fact, I want to reflect upon what we have gained from it. Whatever happens to Labour in the years to come, it will survive. Consider how Labour went from the longest suicide note in history to Blair's landslide in just fourteen years. No matter how badly 2020 leaves us, we can come back from this. And so, why not take a constructive revisionist approach to the Corbyn era as it's happening'Now, I'm not going to pretend that Tory retreats on tax credits or PIP are thanks to him - Conservative criticism, alongside the House of Lords, was far more instrumental. But Corbyn has contributed something in the way of opposition: that is, making Labour a distinct party again. If we consider Ed Miliband's weaknesses - leadership, economic narrative, trust on welfare and immigration - Corbyn has certainly exacerbated most, yet there is one area where the current leadership is an improvement: clarity of vision. Under Miliband, Labour opposed cut after cut, but then happily concluded that austerity would have to happen anyway - albeit, more nicely. This austerity-lite narrative made the party's programme rather unclear: veering awkwardly from "One Nation Labour" to the "cost of living crisis", offering a disparate jumble of policies rather than a powerful narrative like the Conservatives did, Miliband failed to offer an effective opposition. At least Corbyn has given purpose back to the Labour Party: now, we know what we stand for, and stand against. Indeed, Corbyn has enabled Labour MPs to be candid about their anti-austerity instincts, and if Smith somehow beat him, a very positive aspect of Corbyn's legacy would be this. Has he articulated it effectively' No. The Conservatives utilised the appealing metaphor of a household budget and exploited existing fears of "benefit scroungers", building a communicable fairy tale upon the back of the Great Recession which resonated powerfully. Labour needs to do more than oppose austerity, but craft a similarly compelling story, using anecdotes rather than statistics and also, as Owen Jones has wisely suggested, appealing to the self-employed and those on middle incomes, rather than simply focusing on the worst off. But for all its imperfections, we should be thankful that Corbyn has offered a real alternative to the bogus economics of the Tories, in a way that could be far more fruitful than some reversion to Blairism.Indeed, a reversion for Blairism would have been woefully misguided. Tony Blair is far, far more responsible for Brexit than Jeremy Corbyn: he took safe seats for granted, leading to the rise of the SNP and UKIP, and there's no way of simply reheating the 1997 formula in the current political zeitgeist. (Just imagine trying to appeal to Ukippers with the Blairite position on immigration). The fact that Corbyn has finally, definitively killed off Blairism is another positive, if we're keeping score. Certainly we should emulate Blairism in the sense of trying to appeal to Tory voters, moving to the centre ground and being led by someone charismatic, yet the actual ideological content of Blairism is anachronistic. Perhaps as a result of Corbyn, we will never have to offer economic policies that are simply austerity-lite or watered-down Thatcherism again, but instead argue for something better.As a result, Corbyn has accomplished what Miliband could not: unite the Left. Blair lost anti-Iraq War voters to Kennedy's Liberal Democrats and Miliband was helpless when it came to the Green surge; in contrast, Corbyn has been able to bring all lefties into one big tent. This isn't some minor consolation prize, but something incredibly important. Whereas the Conservatives have long united the Right, the Left has always had a self-destructive tendency to splinter. There is more work to be done in making overtures to Liberal Democrat supporters, not to mention the SNP (which none of the anti-Corbyn candidates last summer would have been able to cope with either) and UKIP, but it's a start. Moreover, for the same reasons, Corbyn has galvanised the grassroots in an extraordinary fashion. This is perhaps his most obvious achievement, but it's worth lauding the fact that by simply offering a real opposition to the Tories, Labour has enjoyed an influx of tens of thousands of new members, generating a vital cash flow at a time when the Tories are striving to reduce our funding from the unions.Furthermore, although he is unelectable, he is not catastrophically so, as the increase in the vote share in the Oldham by-election demonstrated. More impressively, under Corbyn's watch, Sadiq Khan became London mayor with 1.3 million votes, the greatest personal mandate for any politician in British history. Although some might argue Khan succeeded in spite of Corbyn, this is unfair. Remember, after all, how well Miliband did in London, and how the voters who Corbyn can best appeal to live there. If the rest of the country resembled London, Labour would be considerably more electable than it is now.It's also worth noting how, despite what many have suggested, Brexit is not the fault of Corbyn. Does anyone really think that a bland Milibandite automaton like Cooper or Burnham could have appealed to anti-immigration Labourites more successfully than Corbyn did' Yes, he was frustratingly unenthusiastic, but the real roots of Brexit and indeed Labour's current electoral impotency go far further back than Corbynism. Moreover, at least Corbyn managed to get a majority of Labour's 2015 voters to support Remain, in stark contrast to Cameron's tragicomic attempts to sell Remain to Tory voters.Indeed, Corbyn is in some ways just a considerably worse version of Ed Miliband, but with a number of positives here and there. He has made Labour a real opposition again, he's united the left, and he's brought tens of thousands of young people into Labour. Is this enough to win an election' No. Should Corbyn remain as Labour leader' Certainly not. But Labour's problems go beyond Corbyn, and he has in some ways begun to solve them. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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