If Labour lose, don't let blame Jeremy Corbyn

If there’s a disappointing result for Labour today, there will be lots of people (centrists) blaming Jeremy Corbyn, but I fail to see how this will be justifiable. Of course, he is not perfect (who is?), but for sure, he‘s the most down-to-earth, decent, principled politician to have come this close to becoming PM, maybe ever? The man has dedicated his life to fighting for the rights of ordinary people, and spends his spare time volunteering at homeless shelters. He's pretty awesome. And he has really been quite amazing in putting up with an onslaught of attacks for 4 years, from the media, and also physical - he was punched in the head by a far-right thug earlier this year.

The problem for Labour is not Jeremy, without whose determined, democratic leadership, there would be no radical manifesto to address poverty, war, climate change, NHS privatisation, etc - the main problem is that our country is dominated by an oligarchy who profit off all that, and who have the power to keep making it work in their interests, using media to get the underpaid and overworked to vote against their interests.

Whatever happens, unless you believe in making compromises when it comes to the climate crisis, war, ending homelessness/poverty, etc, there’s no choice but to continue building the movement for change. Thanks to decades of neoliberalism, there’s extreme cynicism at the possibility of change; of creating a society for the many. We’ll have to keep fighting to make people see that another world is possible.

There can be no return to centrism, which fuelled the far-right, and enabled all the capitalist destruction; the war, the ecocide. With a potential hard right Brexit on the way, a radical movement in opposition will be needed more than ever.

If Labour do badly in today's election thanks to Labour leavers punishing them (for backing a second referendum), then the only possible criticism of Corbyn, in my opinion, is that he should have resisted backing that second referendum. But given the IMMENSE pressure on him to do so, and given that he is a total democrat, it would have been impossible for him to get the party to oppose it. And if this is the case, it is going to be extremely frustrating if Labour centrists start blaming it on Corbyn. It is those centrists who alienated those voters via decades of neoliberalism, and then by immediately rejecting their EU vote, and insinuating that they're all a bunch of racist morons.

(Hopefully I’m being pessimistic, and we get a good result later!).