Labour's priority is not to win the general election – so what is the point?

Rhea Wolfson thinks clinging to nationally unpopular principles is more important than offering suffering people legitimate political alternatives

Labour members overwhelming voted in Corbyn as their leader last year (Getty)

I almost feel sorry for Rhea Wolfson.

Hunter S. Thompson once wrote ‘when the going gets weird, the weird turn professional’, and for the past few weeks (or should that be decades?) the Labour Party have been doing their level best to embody this prophetic observation. It doesn’t take much wracking of memory to rekindle those mental images of moribund Ed Miliband doing… well, anything and everything, to illustrate this point. These days, however, things are getting really weird. The aforementioned Ms. Wolfson, for example, the candidate handpicked to replace Ken Livingstone on Labour’s NEC, has some very odd opinions.

Last week’s Livingstone furore, topped only by the John Mann incident mere minutes later, seemed almost beyond farcical. Yesterday, however, the Blog Guido Fawkes published an excerpt from a post on the London Young Labour website from 2015, in which Ms. Wolfson, parachuted in to replace beleaguered Comrade Ken, stated "My belief is that winning 2020 should not be the priority of the Labour Party".

Just take a second to re-read that a couple of times. Really let it sink in.

That is the view of the candidate for Labour’s National Executive Committee saying, in no uncertain terms, that winning a general election and forming a government, the reason political parties exist, should not be a priority.

This comes at a time when millions (and it really is millions) of people are being assaulted by a government that believes it can get away with policies even its own side think are reprehensible, because there is no viable opposition. Junior doctors are being dragged through a spiralizer. The criminal justice system is in the process of bleeding to death, having had its kneecaps blown off by an Uncle Fester tribute act. The Minister for Work and Pensions has resigned over cuts to his department.

Yet a Bright Young Thing in the Labour Party doesn’t think winning the 2020 general election should be the priority.

Instead, she thinks clinging to nationally unpopular principles is more important than offering suffering people legitimate political alternatives. She would rather let a marauding gang of pseudo-conservatives have an easy ride for four more years of pillaging and carnage, and then run the risk of letting them in for another five if the country is still not on board with Momentum and its view of the world. Then, presumably, another five if we still haven’t learnt our lesson.

Last week I stated that I couldn’t bring myself to vote Tory again, but in its current, self-loathing state, Labour is certainly no alternative. That is Labour’s own fault, and the fault of people, like Rhea Wolfson, who put party before country; who put ideals above the needs of real people. This past fortnight has thrown up accusations of rampant anti-Semitism in the party, whilst a petition to have BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg sacked for coverage of Jeremy Corbyn’s reshuffle was removed on account of a cacophony of sexism.

Are these Wolfson’s principles? Of course not. They are, however, rife among so many of her peers, and her ascension to a position of authority does nothing to address them. Besides, the consensus was that the Corbynistas were unelectable before these nasty tendencies came to the fore, because preserving a far-left platform on which to run was more important than being sensible. Heaven knows where they are now.

It’s so very weird that so many party members remain so convinced that Corbyn is going to win in 2020, but then again, just remember how sure they all were that Ed Moribund was going to win too. Perhaps Wolfson, then, is just a realist environed in a wilderness of the delusional, but I doubt it. I’m mystified as to how these weirdos got here, but get here they did. Ms. Wolfson thinks that winning in 2020 shouldn’t be Labour’s priority? Well, for as long as people like her run the party, the public will agree. In searching for a sane alternative to this government, Labour winning in 2020 won’t be their priority, either.