Was it really Corbyn's fault?

A whole lot of left-leaning commentators are laying the blame for Boris Johnson's massive victory in the UK election at the feet of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.  Here, for example, is Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee going straight for the jugular.  I'm not sure that's fair.

A couple of weeks before the Brexit referendum of June 2016, I was in the UK on vacation. We got together with my cousins, who all live in rural areas a couple of hours outside London. I discovered to my horror that they all intended to vote for Brexit, based on the wholly false but widely held belief that the EU was imposing all manner of petty rules and regulations on the UK in a highly undemocratic way. It was clear to me then that if their views were in any way typical of the non-metropolitan electorate, the referendum might, unthinkably, favour Brexit. And so it turned out.

Going into the recent election, a lot of journalists and pro-remain commentators on social media were comforting themselves with the fact that almost all opinion polls were showing a majority of voters in favour of remaining in the EU.  Maybe so, but people like my cousins were still vehemently pro-Brexit, with that vehemence only heightened by their perception that the opinion they expressed in the referendum had been ignored and scorned by politicians.

The vote for Brexit in 2016 largely reflected the opinions of voters in smaller cities and rural areas of England. Boris Johnson's strategists rightly divined that those voters still wanted Brexit, and thus focused their efforts on those areas, despite the fact that many of them had voted Labour without fail for many decades. It worked, and on election day we had the remarkable spectacle of hardscrabble former coal-mining areas kicking out Labour incumbents and electing Tories.

Where does Jeremy Corbyn fit into this?  It's true that his position on Brexit has never been particularly clear.  He may well have voted Leave back in 2016, and his pledge during the election campaign to hold another referendum but not to campaign for either side struck many voters as bizarre. His party's manifesto was a valiant and ambitious attempt to turn the focus of the campaign away from Brexit toward pressing domestic issues, including the health service and income inequality.

Nobody was listening, but what choice did Corbyn have?  Coming out strongly against Brexit would have done nothing to win over the former Labour voters who were as determined as ever to ensure that this time, their desire to leave the EU would prevail.  Coming out in favour of Brexit would have lost the support of the large number of Labour voters, particularly in an around London, who favoured remain, while almost certainly not winning back much support in pro-leave areas, which would still have seen Johnson as the more reliable path to a swift Brexit.

In short, Corbyn may not have performed well in the election, but it's hard to see how he could have done much better.  The Brexiteers turned out en bloc for the Conservatives while remainers divided their votes among the other parties, delivering Johnson a clear path to victory. BoJo should enjoy his triumph while he can; it probably won't be long before people realize that "getting Brexit done" is going to take a lot more than one simple vote.