Will Oldham change the Labour narrative?

Until yesterday, the media narrative for the Labour party since the general election has been one of unparalleled disaster.  This only increased with the election of the very left-wing Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, a man whose main political work was as a serial rebel and protest march speaker.  Wholly unelectable, rejoiced the largely right-wing media in mock-sepulchral tones.  And he didn't do the things that politicians should do, like pander to the media march - this is a leader who committed the cardinal sin of failing to turn up to an Andrew Marr interview.  Honestly, where were his priorities?

Corbyn hasn't been much of a hit in the Commons, the place where the Westminster village gathers, and has rather annoyed regular Westminster watchers by taking the sting out of Prime Minister's Questions.   He doesn't even seem very interested in Westminster occasions, as if somehow they don't really impact upon his own supporters and voters in the constituencies.

Then, of course, there came the disaster of the Syrian air strikes debate - or more accurately ISIS air strikes debate (or Daesh, or IS, or whatever acronym we choose in the fond belief that they're really very interested in what we call them).  Corbyn, a man of principle even if he does look eternally miserable on television, remained opposed to strikes and wanted his parliamentary party to join him.  An undeniably inexperienced leader, he failed to properly bring his colleagues on side by largely ignoring them, and his media management remains atrocious. He gave a poor if honest speech in the debate, was eclipsed by his own shadow Foreign Secretary but helped by David Cameron's ludicrous mis-step in having spoken about terrorism's fellow travellers.

Yet while the largely hostile media revelled in Mr. Benn's fine speech (most OTT love letter was probably that of Labour refusenik Dan Hodges in the Telegraph) the voters in Oldham West were preparing to deliver a more significant verdict - that of Labour's heartland voters.

Oldham is an early test of Mr. Corbyn's electoral potency.  This may be a man who won a huge grassroots majority in his election as Labour leader, but the depreciation of his image and apparently hopeless attributes as leader have been consistently trumpeted by a hostile media.  Even yesterday, there were serious hopes that Labour would be cuckolded by UKIP in Oldham - take this piece by the Spectator's Sebastian Payne (soon to move to the FT).  Payne even visited Oldham, escaping the Westminster bubble for a day, and his finely tuned village antenna revealed these truths.  That "Corbyn's leadership appears to be dragging the party towards electoral oblivion", that there were signs on the ground that "all is not well for Labour", that UKIP's John Bickley could be the party's second MP and believes "he has struck gold with Jeremy Corbyn".  On it went.  Despite visiting Labour headquarters in Oldham young Mr. Payne still reported that UKIP could win the seat, Corbyn was a disaster on the doorstep, every time John McDonnell spoke he turned more voters towards UKIP.

But who can blame the Spectator's correspondent?  He was hardly alone in his assessment or in his Westminster assumptions that Corbyn was simply not proving up to the task, and a single visit north was not going to alter that.

Then the voters had their say.  It wasn't a big turnout, but at around 40% it was not disastrously small either.  Labour won, and won handily with a 10,000 majority.  And Labour's share of the vote actually increased.  So Jeremy Corbyn, the man who won the Labour leadership with the largest popular vote ever granted a party leader, can actually win parliamentary elections too it seems.  It's almost as if he might actually be in tune with the thinking of supporters of a left-wing party.

The vote on air strikes, too, was instructive.  While there were some headline Labour figures opposing their leader's stance, and much of the media narratvie has been about a wretchedly divided party, only 8 of Labour's 53 new MPs supported air strikes.  The vast majority agreed with Corbyn.

Labour is undoubtedly a party in turmoil.  But their new leader's key attribute is that he reaches well beyond the confines of an insular Westminster village, and the civil war on his parliamentary benches may well be more of an indication of how out of touch the more traditional, or mainstream, MPs are than any suggestion of Corbyn's own isolation.  A Corbyn led party has won a by-election that the common narrative said would be very close or potentially a disastrous loss.  He has won it well.  He keeps the loyalty of his newly elected MPs - and the majority of his shadow cabinet, and the majority of his other MPS - in a highly divisive vote.  When we next read about Jeremy Corbyn in the press, if the narrative doesn't change as a result of Oldham we should at least be highly sceptical of any stories projecting him as an inevitably election losing catastrophe.

And the Tories should sit up and take notice.  While their party gets deeper into revelations of bullying leading to suicide in their retrograde youth movement, they cannot take any comfort from the complacently driven canard that the next general election is theirs for the taking.

The Struggling Leaders

David Cameron can bestride the British political scene at the moment, calmly dispensing advice to other world leaders at Davos, with relatively little concern about being outmanouevred by the other party leaders. With the exception, perhaps, of Alex Salmond, and even he has had to force the pace of the Scottish Independence debate thanks to a Cameron tactical strike. But the two major English party leaders, Clegg and Miliband, are united only in the poor publicity, and hence public profile, that each has. Add in the lack of a serious opposition figure (as opposed to some of the collective opposition) within his own party, and Cameron can afford to be relaxed.

This can't last, especially not in the midst of a long and relentless recession - today's headlines about Stephen Hester's bonus show just how febrile the atmosphere actually is - but Cameron should enjoy the experience while he can. As to the other two, can they improve their position?

Nick Clegg is both the first Liberal leader in generations to be in government, but is of course similarly hidebound by that very arrangement. He has, in many respects, managed it very well, exercising real influence at the centre thanks in part to his positive relationship with Cameron, and managing to put out a distinctive Lib Dem message in more recent months. Politics Home's Paul Waugh observes the tactical success of Clegg's recent TV Sofas campaign on lower taxes for poorer earners, and it is worth emphasising that Clegg specifically, and the Lib Dems generally, have never been able to depend on any heavyweight media support. He is also a helpful lightning conductor for discouraged right-wing Tories who prefer not to attack their leader directly. Much better to direct frustration and blame towards Clegg, and never forget that the Tory media fields some very heavy, and very effective, guns in the British polity. There is an element of the old medieval tactic of not criticising the king but savaging his dispensable advisers instead. Clegg may yet emerge intact, and politically stronger, from his coalition experience if he can stay the course and keep perfecting the art of Liberal message making.

Miliband seems to be a worse case. For an opposition leader not to be making inroads at a time of economic convulsion is the sort of achievement no politician really wants to their credit. Even the Republicans have some credibility in the US political debate, and look at their cheerleaders. The latest Miliband interview, by Paul Waugh (again!) in the House magazine still shows him as strangely relaxed and optimistic, but whether his personal stoicism is enough to keep fending off grumbles from within his own party remains to be seen. If Yvette Cooper keeps sweet talking the Labour MPs, and Miliband keeps being duffed up by the bully Cameron at PMQs, no amount of zen-like relaxation will rescue him from the abyss. It must be Cameron's sincerest hope that his opposite number survives - somehow I think he'll find Cooper a far more difficult opponent both publically and in parliament. "Calm Down, Dear" only works once.

David Cameron's New Pledge

The day in politics has seen a flurry of attacks related to David Cameron's apparent change to his proposed spending plans. He has now said that he would wait a year before implementing the significant cuts that the party has already said are necessary (but hasn't yet defined). As such, he brings his party into line with both Labour and the Liberal Democrats in not wanting to choke off a perceived recovery in its first year. This may seem to be a sensible political tack on Cameron's part, but it is hardly going to convince the electorate of his consistency, and it will once again store up trouble with his hardline spending cutters. That diminishing poll lead may be panicking him a little.

Tory Hatchet Job

The Tories normally reserve their venom for their political opponents, but all may not be as well as it should be at Cameron HQ. The political magazine Standpoint have published a highly personalised attack on Cameron's chief strategist, Old Etonian Steve Hilton. You may not have heard of Hilton, but he occupies something of the position that Campbell and Mandelson occupied under Tony Blair. As such, he clearly generates enemies amongst the party apparatchiks, one of whom may be the author of the Standpoint piece. Entertaining though the piece is, however, if you like a bit of personal vitriol with your tea and toast, its credibility is somewhat emasculated by being published anonymously. So the most we can say is that one, relatively articulate, person, possibly at Tory HQ, doesn't like Hilton. And that's it. Nonetheless, it does give a bit of an insight into politics behind the scenes, and the editor of Conservative Home, Tim Montgomerie, sometimes suggested as an adviser for Cameron himself, did at least leap to Hilton's defence.