Got Woke; Went Broke

Normally, I do not allot very much space to political events in foreign countries. And yet, the recent elections in Great Britain have been so momentous, so cataclysmic that they deserve serious note.

You see, the American left was convinced that Boris Johnson would lose to a radically woke leftist by name of Jeremy Corbyn. They saw the Labour Party resistance against Brexit as of a piece with the Democratic Party resistance to President Trump. And they were persuaded that their coalition of the oppressed would naturally rise up to overthrow the usurper.

In all that they were wrong. 

In today’s report from Great Britain, Toby Young explains that Jeremy Corbyn, being as woke as woke can be, was exactly what Great Britain could not abide. Among other reasons, Corbyn, like certain American political leaders, suffered a patriotism deficit.

Before he became Labour leader in 2015, he was an energetic protestor against nearly every armed conflict Britain has been involved in since Suez, including the Falklands War. He’s also called for the abandonment of Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent, the withdrawal of the UK from NATO and the dismantling of our security services—not to mention declining to sing the National Anthem at a Battle of Britain service in 2015. From the point of view of many working class voters, for whom love of country is still a deeply felt emotion, Corbyn seems to side with the country’s enemies more often than he does with Britain.

Young added this:

It’s also worth noting that Corbyn’s interests and appearance—he’s a 70-year-old vegetarian with a fondness for train-drivers’ hats who has spent his life immersed in protest politics—strike many working class voters as “weird,” a word that kept coming up on the doorstep according to my fellow canvasser in Newcastle. He’s also presided over the invasion of his party by virulent anti-Semites and Labour is currently in the midst of an investigation by Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission thanks to his failure to deal with this. One of his supporters has already blamed the Jews for Labour’s defeat.

For our interest he quotes a tweet from the impressive satirist Titania McGrath. I trust that you recall that McGrath is a pseudonym. 

Following tonight’s devastating election results, it’s time for the left to reflect. 😞

We have clearly failed to win over the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens.

The obvious conclusion is… we didn’t call them racist often enough. pic.twitter.com/rUbnDlvdFK

— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) December 13, 2019

Clearly, American leftist have been using the same tactic for over a decade now. We shall see how well it works next year.

It is time, Young added, to see that low income voters are not just dupes being led around by Russian election Facebook ads and Fox News. Has anyone remarked that the argument for election influence makes conservative voters into idiots… and that insulting the electorate is not a great political strategy:

Plenty of better writers than me—Douglas Murray, John Gray—have debunked the notion that the only reason low-income voters embrace right-wing politics is because they’re drunk on a cocktail of ethno-nationalism and false hope (with Rupert Murdoch and Vladimir Putin taking turns as mixologists). It surely has more to do with the Left’s sneering contempt for the “deplorables” in the flyover states as they shuttle back and forth between their walled, cosmopolitan strongholds. As Corbyn’s policy platform in Britain’s election showed, left-wing parties now have little to offer indigenous, working class people outside the big cities—and their activists often add insult to injury by describing these left-behind voters as “privileged” because they’re white or cis-gendered or whatever. So long as parties like Labour pander to their middle-class, identitarian activists and ignore the interests of the genuinely disadvantaged, they’ll continue to rack up loss after loss. Get woke, go broke.

Of course, we might imagine that the American Democratic Party will learn a lesson from the Labour party defeat. But, never overestimate the intelligence of our intellectual elites:

Will the Democrats learn from Labour’s mistake and make Jo Biden the candidate—or even Pete Buttigieg? I wouldn’t bet on it. The zealots of the post-modern Left have a limitless capacity to ignore reality even when it’s staring them in the face. 

Rather than do the people's business, our woke left is solemnly involved in shooting itself in the head over its hokey impeachment circus.