@colinzealuk Iām moving this to the Corbyn thread.
I donāt even know where to start with your first paragraph. I really wish it were the case, but I donāt think a single assertion youāve made is actually what would happen. The day after he conceded on Trident renewal is the day Tonybe rounded on him for not even holding out an olive leaf, much less a branch to his MPs or public opinion. If thatās what people in the media who are on Labourās side were writing when he did make a move towards the centre, imagine what those against Labour would have written in a situation where he repeatedly said ācentre groundā in a speech that called for nationalisation of key public services, redistribution, greater corporate taxation and so on.
So Lewis, the actual MP with a service record, is gone from Defence and it looks like that olive branch was actually a mistake to be rolled back. Itās also worth bearing in mind that the day Lewis took a consensus position on Trident was the same day that Corbyn once again kept mandatory reselection alive. At this point even Jon Lansman is saying itās unhelpful but Corbyn keeps saying that most MPs have nothing to worry about. I didnāt read that as conciliatory.
Look, Iām not saying this is easy but itās also not impossible. If I didnāt think Corbyn could do it I wouldnāt waste my time thinking about it. You say he canāt deliver a speech on nationalisation that can be recognised as a pitch to the centre ground, but the majority of the nation supports renationalising the railways and has concerns over Hinkley point. You could hit British values, resilience, and practical state craft in one go by promising to set up private and public competition to prove that nationalised railways work, and point to East Coast railās brief time in public control as the example. You then criticise the Hinkley point plan across the board and pledge to invest in British nuclear design because it turns out the thing weāre actually good at is designing, smaller, flexible reactors, which are actually better for the grid. And fortunately everyoneās cool with state investment now too.
His biggest problem isnāt framing a debate for the centre ground, itās the fact that heās still hopelessly isolated. Thatās the other reason Toynbee can take shots at him - because no one she likes is standing next to him. He needs the cover of allies and the issues. Once he gets that the infighting will drop a little and heāll start to get personal traction. Hopefully thereās something still to come in the reshuffle because at the moment the senior figures in the Cabinet are a north London ivory tower that no one has a problem throwing rocks at.
