Why I voted for Jeremy Corbyn

I was brought up to vote Labour.  My parents were socialists, pacifists, anti-apartheid – good people who cared, a lot.  I remember my Mum being in agonies because she had accidentally picked up a can of South African peaches in the supermarket.  And my Dad took me to my first demo, about Rhodesia, although he whisked me away pretty sharpish when things got messy.  We always talked about politics, over tea time, half an eye on the BBC News and another on the Guardian front page.  These days we don’t always agree with each other, but we do all believe that politics is important and that its not just about pragmatism but about what’s right and what’s fair.

I was a Labour Party member for a while in Sheffield, in the days when Kinnock/Hattersley looked like a dream team.  The Militant boys always sat at the back, sneering and occasionally heckling, but mostly automatically gainsaying.  And then I moved into the only Tory constituency in the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire.

Labour stood no chance of dislodging John Osborn, or Irvine Patnick who followed him.  When things started to shift, it was clear that it was the Lib Dems who could do the job, and they did, in 1997 – Labour polled 6k in that year, against the Lib Dem 23 and Tory 15.  So tactical voting it was, until 2010 when Nick Clegg stood in the rose garden with David Cameron.

I am certain that the Lib Dems made a difference and moderated some policies that might have been implemented in the last Parliament, and probably will be in this one.  Given the electoral position at the 2010 election I can see why they agreed to go into coalition.  But one of the outcomes was that the Opposition was feeble and ineffectual.  The Lib Dems were signed up to what was being done, however much some of them may have argued against it, or privately loathed it.  And Labour was failing, time and again, to take the argument back to the Government, to challenge them and harry them and call them out.

Owen Jones interviewed me along with other Clegg constituents, a little while after the election and I said then that I would not vote Lib Dem whilst they were in coalition with the Tories (that headline should read ‘I’d consider voting’, not ‘I’d vote’.  Bloody journalists).

No more tactical voting – I’d vote with my heart, vote for what/who I believed.  The problem was, my heart was heavy when I thought of Labour.  The good things they’d done in power had been utterly tainted by the war, above all.  I wanted to believe in Ed, I really did, but it never quite happened, and I voted Labour in 2015, in (faint) hope rather than expectation.

I rejoined the party almost immediately after the election.  That’s where my heart is, always has been.

I can’t argue with people who say that Corbyn is unelectable – I can’t prove he isn’t, any more than they can prove that their chosen candidate is.  Probably none of them are just now.  But Corbyn alone amongst the candidates has inspired real excitement, and presents the possibility of mobilising some of those who couldn’t be arsed to vote last time because they did the time before and look what happened, and reigniting the fire in some of those in whom it had been well and truly doused over the years.  Young people, too, going against the received wisdom that the young won’t trust anyone over 30.

I have concerns, on foreign policy particularly – on the EU and more particularly on Hamas et al.  I don’t agree with everything Corbyn says, but then I don’t agree with everything anyone says (including myself).  The welfare bill was the clincher though – Corbyn was the only leadership candidate who voted against, who voted with his conscience and convictions rather than with expediency.  Whatever rationales have been offered by Burnham and Cooper for their abstention, I cannot, cannot accept that in this context abstention is anything other than a cop out.  And the last thing we need right now is more cop outs.

We’ve got five years to make a difference, to present a credible, passionate Opposition that speaks for the people who can’t speak for themselves.  Five years to challenge the narrative that the Opposition since 2010 seemed to have passively accepted, on the economy, on welfare and on immigration.  Five years to get people believing that politics can make a difference, that they’re not all the same.

Read why Mike Press voted for Jeremy Corbyn.   Our story is a bit different (I am not now nor have I ever been, etc), but we came to the same conclusions, in the end.

Will he make a credible Prime Minister? I’ve no idea quite honestly, but for me and for Labour that’s not really the priority. The priority is for the party to ask itself why it exists. If it exists to gain power and be good managers, then fine — count me out. If it exists to make a better future, then I’m still in. And for me Jeremy Corbyn is the only person saying this. And Stella.