I supported Jeremy Corbyn, but now it’s time for him to go

He’s completely unelectable, and he’s making Labour a laughing stock

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Jeremy Corbyn has betrayed the students who voted for him, is thought of as incompetent by his closest colleagues, and is now a national laughing stock. It’s time he left the Labour party alone – it’s better off without him.

I liked Jeremy Corbyn. My flatmates liked him. He came into our lives like a wee socialist whirlwind who turned the Labour party on it’s head. He got friends of mine who couldn’t give a damn about politics to care – and brought even more into the Labour party fold.

He was everyone’s new hot crush, with his older, rebellious look. After all, there’s no rebel like a Labour party rebel.

His policies were exciting, interesting, and appealed to young people around the country. Renationalising the railways makes sense, everyone hates austerity (including the economists), and forgiving student debts was never going to go down badly. So far so good.

We all knew that Corbyn was going to get slaughtered in the press, but that’s what the Daily Mail and Telegraph do – they exist as Tory attack dogs. The idea was, ride it out and build a popular movement, a left-wing open house that appealed to people up and down the country.

Except what has happened is a clusterfuck. Instead of going from the hot new guy on the block, to the long-term boyfriend, Jeremy Corbyn has instead become the creepy guy who won’t leave you alone in the club. He’s angry, annoyed, and feels entitled to something that was never his to begin with. And I want nothing to do with him.

I live in Wiltshire and I go to university in Scotland. I know the challenges the Labour party faces to get elected – Corbyn is not the man to meet them. There’s dozens of different incidents I could pick up on. His failure to effectively deal with the anti-semitism row, the intimidation at local Labour levels, his cowardly EU referendum campaign, his failure to get his MPs to support him, his failure to support Kez Dugdale in Scotland, his failure to expand the party’s electoral appeal – the list goes on.

Let’s look at policy: the railways and student debts. Core, central promises of Corbyn’s campaign to become Labour leader. While abolishing fees was Corbyn’s first ever campaign promise, he also promised to deal with current student debts – and as someone who will graduate with over £50,000 in debt, that got me pretty excited. Except, as Private Eye reported earlier this week, dealing with student debt has been quietly dropped from the party’s policy commissions.

That may sound boring to you – but if you promise something, you’ve got to find a way to do it. Corbyn isn’t even bothering with that. Corbyn has betrayed thousands of students who voted for him, betrayed my friends, and fellow Labour party members.

Fortunately, he still wants to renationalise the railways – except now the nation is laughing at him. He sat in the cubicle between carriages on a busy Virgin train according to his team, and we loved him for it. Except now, Virgin has posted footage of Corbyn walking past empty, unreserved seats.

Corbyn’s railway policy isn’t a policy anymore, it’s a punchline. I’d love to see the re-nationalisation of the railways, and Corbyn is right – far too many are too busy and too expensive. But becoming a laughing stock is not the best way about it, especially when it’s so painfully self-inflicted.

I’ve voted in every election I was eligible for. In all bar the first, the EU parliamentary elections, where I voted for the Greens, I have voted Labour. I’m not going to stop voting Labour anytime soon. I joined the party this year. But for a party to be able to hold the Tories to account, let alone govern, it has to be able to organise its MPs into a credible opposition.

One of the questions Corbyn had to answer was: how was he, as a man who voted against his colleagues over 500 times, going to marshal them, and put together a team? He didn’t. He failed. He’s the leader of the Labour party, yet he failed to gain even his closest colleagues’ confidence. He’s ensconced in a life-long Labour safe seat – he doesn’t have to fight hard battles out on the doorsteps like his colleagues. He doesn’t have to worry about losing his job. Compared to his colleagues, he’s entitled.

The fact is, I trust the vast majority of Labour MPs far more than I trust Jeremy Corbyn, especially after his abject EU referendum campaign. Each of them knows the process of politics and government far better than most of us ever will. They know how hard it is. I believe the Labour party belongs in power, like every other Labour party member. But in order to get into power, we have to have a Labour leader who is actually electable – Jeremy Corbyn isn’t. It’s beyond naive to pretend that Jeremy Corbyn is the next Prime Minister in-waiting.

People like Jeremy because he is supposedly like the rest of us. He’s decent, he’s honest and he sticks to his principles, like human rights. He isn’t, and he doesn’t. He’s a 62-year-old man who’s ridden a generational wave to a comfortable job for life.

He pretends to understand problems he’s never experienced – his generation didn’t have to deal with student debt, and then goes behind your back. He’s taken money from Iranian state TV, after it was banned by OFCOM for being complicit in torture. He tells us he’s not like the other politicians in Westminster. He is – he’s just sold himself better.

Jeremy Corbyn is devoid of authority or discipline, he’s arrogant in his dismissal of fair criticism, and he’s utterly unelectable. He was supposed to reinvent the Labour party as something exciting and modern post-Blair.

Instead, he’s shown himself to be a dinosaur from the 1980s, betrayed young people and failed to organise an effective opposition.