After election ‘taken over by Brexit’, Corbyn to step down as Labour leader in early 2020

Take a look at the figures in the 42 seats Labour lost. On average 5,000 votes at most made the difference. That is, about 250,000 voters made the difference. Had they stuck with Labour, Johnson would not have a majority. 250,000 out of more than 30 million. That gives the Tories a headache: if they lose the support of this narrow tranche, they’ may have had it.
Why did these people vote Tory or Brexit? Because they have lost touch. It is as if a man is sleeping rough and along comes a philanthropist who says: “I’ll give you a house, a job, make sure you have a doctor, a good school for your kids, the chance for them to go to university and work abroad, care in old age and even free broadband…” And the rough sleeper replies: “Fuck off, I just want to leave the EU.”
People have been bamboozled. They imagine leaving the EU will solve all their problems. They have been left behind and they are resentful, afraid and confused. They seek a simple answer: foreigners. If only we can be free and independent. Hence they become monomanic: leaving the EU is the only issue. Of course, they feel their vote was ignored, but by whom? It was May who failed to agree the cross-party consensus which could have had us out of the EU fast. But in the EU or out, climate change is our greatest threat. In the EU or out poverty is destroying communities. The EU is lousy in many ways, but leaving it is not a panacea.
250,000 votes. They have delivered us up to five years of pain. BJ will follow his instincts and they are appalling. What is needed is political education. Grimsby is not falling into a black hole because of aliens or fairies. Nine years of Tory battering is the cause. So why did people in Grimsby vote Tory? Because the basics of political consciousness have withered. The basic is this: great individual or corporate wealth is an affront to democracy because it can buy more power than millions of votes. If Branson rings BJ tomorrow they will speak. What if you try to ring? Money is not a thing, it is a relationship. If a few have huge wealth, the rest will suffer and those at the bottom will suffer most. Yes, leave the EU if that is what you want, but don’t take your eyes off the crucial relationship. In or out, democratic equality requires that wealth be evenly distributed and that is just, because it is the work of the common folk which produces it. Adam Smith knew what matters: The wealth of nations, not of individuals. He said the pursuit of personal wealth is “a delusion” and he castigated what he called “the vile maxim of the masters of mankind”: “everything for ourselves nothing for anyone else.” BJ has had to defend the NHS and public services to avoid failure but he no more believes in them than in faithful monogamy. The vile maxim of mankind is his creed. Why didn’t those 250,000 voters understand that? Because they have lost their political bearings. We need to educate them in the basics. Democratic equality is the doctrine which serves their needs.