Why would a Corbyn supporter change their mind?

I saw this tweet this morning. In response, here’s a bit of possibly ill-thought-through material that’s part of an effort to take the people I disagree with seriously…

Here are the things you’ll hear when you listen to Labour opponents of Corbyn. Corbynistas won’t listen because they are a “post-truth” community, immune to reason and rational thought, they’ll say. Corbyn’s fans are tied into an emotional, visceral movement of virtue-signalling and this leaves them incapable of rational thinking. These people, you’ll hear, don’t care about winning. They’d rather be moral than actually make a difference. They’re well-off middle class voters who won’t actually stand to lose anything if Labour stays out of power for a decade. They completely fail to recognise the achievements of New Labour and the vast gulf between the policies of those years and the Tory government of today. They’re a cult.

Look, you can argue about these points as much as you like. An effective political movement undoubtedly has to be about both principles and the strategy to put principles into practice, and you can certainly construct a plausible case for saying that the Corbyn agenda is too focused on Labour’s internal struggles to ever deliver wider electoral success. It happens to be a view I agree with. But whether you agree with it or not, I think it’s only fair to admit there’s a counter-argument that can, and is, being made by the Corbynistas. Things that anti-Corbynistas point to as proving Corbyn’s failure — the loss of support of MPs in parliament, the poor polling data — can be explained away as either sporadic data points or as a product of conservative resistance to change. And, as Tony Blair showed with his disastrous intervention in last year’s Labour election, arguing that one needs to think strategically about political viability can easily be presented as arguing that you have to give up on what you believe in. To be fair, that’s not actually what Blair said. Still, Corbynistas are right when they say there’s no point seeking power if in doing so you abandon your principles.

More important, though, these arguments are all ones that work better for preaching to the converted than understanding the loyalists. They’re the same category of arguments that Remain supporters levelled against Leavers in the election, and which in part contributed to their defeat. They’re the kinds of arguments that were thrown at Scottish Nationalists during the IndyRef: an election that was won, but an argument that was lost. In terms of thinking about how the world looks from Corbynopolis, they’re not only unenlightening, they’re probably quite unhelpful. We can find things profoundly silly and self-indulgent about the “social movement” discourse that surrounds the Corbyn movement and it’s very tempting to mock — I’m undoubtedly guilty of this — but let’s not delude ourselves that the disparagement of those we disagree with makes the slightest difference to a convinced Corbyn supporter.

For someone who supported Corbyn to stop supporting him, none of these arguments matter. For someone who supported Corbyn to change their mind, things are much more simple. To give up on Jeremy, two and only two things must be true:

• Jeremy must be failing
• Another candidate must offer a greater chance of putting their ideals into action

Let’s be clear: both of these must be true. If your guy is failing but there’s no better alternative, then they, like most of us, will just go down fighting.

It may be that some supporters from last year have concluded that Jeremy is failing. People who observe parliamentary politics closely, who believe that leadership is about bringing together a diverse coalition behind a shared political agenda and about communicating this message effectively, these people may have lost faith with Corbyn over the past nine months. There’s some evidence to suggest that the people out door-knocking are aware of how unpopular Corbyn is with the wider electorate, and how his messages are failing to get through. But the vast majority of Corbyn supporters do not believe Jeremy is failing, on these terms or any others. The period in which Corbyn has been in power has seen a series of moments when Tory policies were rolled back, and elections in which the Labour party has either won or not done disastrously when its critics were warning much worse would happen. There was a major defeat on Europe, but most supporters of Jeremy would refuse to accept this had anything to do with him; indeed, they would argue that his half-hearted attitude to Europe better represented the British public’s view than the attitudes of the official Remain campaign. Again, there are all sorts of points that could be offered to challenge the logic of these arguments. Still, it’s clear there’s insufficient concrete evidence of failure right now to justify turning the heads of people who are signed up to the project.

And whatever problems there may be with the Corbyn project, for most people who voted for him last year there’s definitely not evidence enough to justify jumping ship when the only other ship around seems leaky.

And here’s the rub. Why should someone who supported Jeremy last year, perhaps someone who even joined the Labour Party because of him, support someone like Owen Smith, whose pitch seems to be that he’s just like Jeremy but gives better TV interviews? Why should someone in that situation believe the people who have, for a year, been attacking them as idiots and fools and post-truth activists, when they promise that Smith will deliver the priorities they want?

This is why running against Corbyn in the Labour selectorate right now is such a sticky wicket. What can Smith point to that would justify a leap in the dark? Either you say that you disagree with Jeremy on key issues, and risk alienating those people who supported him (i.e. the bulk of the party and of the registered supporters), or you say that you basically agree with Jeremy on everything and in so doing make the idea of replacing him seem pointless. All you’re left with is a relatively small group of people who would be willing to abandon their political community and sign up to a new and untried leader because of issues like “understanding the policy-making process”, “management of the parliamentary party”, and “message discipline.” Don’t get me wrong, I think these things are vitally important, but I hope I have enough self-awareness to recognise that they hardly add up to an inspiring program of hope and change.

Anyone with a long track record to point to is likely to have had to compromise politically (see Eagle), and that will be held against them. Anyone new enough to not have a track record of decisions capable of parsing (Smith) will for that very reason also have very little to commend them.

In short, right now, I can see no convincing reason why Corbynistas would change their minds, at least not in sufficient numbers to deliver defeat in the election. And the only evidence likely to reach that threshold — crushing defeat in a general election — could end up potentially also delivering a fatal blow to the Labour Party’s hopes of being a party of government at any time in the next decade, perhaps even of being a viable political party at all.