Aggressive Corbynistas are handing CCHQ a new generation of volunteers
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The official election campaign hasn’t even begun, and already, I’ve had two texts from right-leaning friends telling me about abuse they’ve received from Corbynistas. One, a student at Manchester University, messaged me last night to tell me that a course mate had left her in tears, after shouting at her – for 15 minutes straight, in public – because she’d once worked for a Government minister. The other, a teacher, was the subject of similar abuse, having been “outed” as a Conservative in the staff-room by a malevolent colleague who’d remembered her mentioning her voting intentions in 2017 (back when she was still naive enough to think that a polite political discussion among colleagues was possible).
Of course there are plenty of workplaces where it has been socially unacceptable to be conservative for decades; academia, social work, and large swathes of broadcast media, to name just a few. But vitriol against Conservatives has gone mainstream in the past five years.
Why?
In short, because a dangerous narrative has crept into Labour discourse that Conservatives – who in the minds of the far left represent “privilege” – are so fundamentally bad that the rules don’t apply when it comes to tearing them down. They are not just ignorant or greedy, they are evil – and they deserve everything they get.
This narrative wasn’t written by Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum, but their ascendance has made it ubiquitous. Behind the chants, the t-shirts and the vague talk of love, there has always been a darker side to the movement. As the “For the Many not The Few” slogan made plain, the noble desire to get justice for the downtrodden is matched by an equal and opposite desire to get revenge on the rich. “For the many, not just the few” or simply “for the many” would both be powerful slogans, but both would only convey half the message. “For the many, not the few” says it all: “the few” are the enemy, and we are against them.
Take the hard left’s response to Grenfell as an example. Before any investigation into culpability had even begun, the “Nobody likes a Tory” Facebook page was gleefully reporting that the Conservative deputy leader of the council, Rock Feilding-Mellen, had been forced to flee his home with his young family after receiving death threats. A few weeks later, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell was encouraging people onto the streets for a Day of Rage protest to “get the Tories out” – while Emma Dent Coad, the local MP, pointedly explained that the people of Grenfell were her real constituents, and that she was not in the business of representing “the posh Kensington down the road”.
Of course it’s a genuine cause for righteous fury that an avoidable tragedy like Grenfell could happen in such a wealthy area, and it’s understandable that consideration for the councillors was eclipsed by concern for the victims.
But the problem is that the Grenfell response was a symptom of something bigger, and more toxic: brainwashed by angry Momentum, a small but very vocal minority of young people genuinely believe that those who are privileged – or else has had the temerity to vote for a party which they consider privileged – are immoral, unworthy of respect, and ripe for “cancellation”.
For Conservatives on the receiving end of the bile, that’s bad news. But for Labour it’s much worse. Thanks to hardcore Corbynistas, vaguely right-leaning swing voters are being transformed into a new generation of CCHQ volunteers before their very eyes. People, on the whole, don’t take well to verbal abuse, and are unlikely to start supporting Jeremy Corbyn because a red-faced colleague told them not doing so is wrong-headed. So instead, they double down on their original beliefs, and flock to the Conservative Party.
Of the two friends who’ve messaged me this week, one a cautious, Remainer Cameroon who had settled on voting Lib Dem in the 2019 general election, has now decided to vote Conservative. The other has signed up to campaign for the Conservatives in a marginal seat.
They won’t be the only ones.
