![Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Kendall. Behind [the criticism] 'is a sense that this uppity pair are bad bets electorally, and then a leap to the idea that their expression of their view is therefore unseemly in itself'.](http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/6/17/1434537750625/cc5376ca-c046-4ffb-bd0f-7139f52e97a9-460x276.jpeg)
The political sport of the moment seems to be the evisceration of Labour leadership candidates by observers, their own party, and each other. Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper have been dismissed for their ties to recent Labour party history. Liz Kendall has been condemned for her tilt towards the centre. And Jeremy Corbyn, a gently principled veteran with an old-fashioned enthusiasm for baker boy hats, has been derided for presuming to run at all.
What’s striking about all this is that the abuse heaped on the quartet is by no means limited to their tone, or strategic vision for the revival of the party. It is aimed squarely at their opinions, as well. Labour’s problem at the moment is that every possible stance seems to align with some faction of the party that has been discredited: New Labour, old Labour, and new old Labour. We therefore witness the weird phenomenon of candidates being angrily written off for being on the left, right and centre of the party, quite often in the space of one article. This does not breed optimism about the chances of a rapid recovery for Labour.
In Corbyn and Kendall’s cases, particularly, there’s a sense that it was an act of weird temerity to run at all. Witness the incendiary briefing, from a source described as being close to the Burnham and Cooper camps, that Kendall’s campaign was the last croaking of “Taliban New Labour”; or the general hilarity at the idea of a man with a beard, and one of those leftie beards at that, daring to imagine he might lead his party – even if, in an interview published today, he explained that he is only running because he and some colleagues had had a chat, and “unfortunately, it’s my hat in the ring”.
Behind it all is an unexamined confusion of strategic wisdom and principle: a sense that this uppity pair are bad bets electorally, and then a leap to the idea that their expression of their view is therefore unseemly in itself. More often than not, their critics don’t address the substance of what they say. They just wish they’d shut up.
Kendall, when she speaks, does not particularly come across as a centrist suicide bomber; Corbyn, for his part, seems the very model of self-effacement. Inside the Labour party, they may each represent some strand of thinking that another faction finds unconscionably evil. But when such views are the main reflection of the race that filters through to the press, no ordinary person reading would think that the candidate in question must be a monster, and that another one is therefore wonderful. They will simply conclude that the Labour party is still in the grip of a self-immolating lunacy.
At the root of all this fruitless brutality, I guess, is a deep and existential anxiety that Labour stakes out a plausible position from which to win the next election without losing its soul. To do so requires careful triangulation, because that’s the only way to build a broad enough coalition for victory. But it’s madness to take that wider understanding of the reality of life for a political party, and transpose it to a prescription for a particular politician – particularly before they have even got the job, when they have no obligation to represent anyone but themselves.
By all means loathe the party if it winds up choosing the candidate that you think mistaken; but it is absurd to loathe the candidates themselves. Labour has to be a broad church, yes. But if Jeremy Corbyn or Liz Kendall try to turn their own heads into broad churches, they may find that their brains fall out.
