The neuroscience of Jeremy Corbyn

Robert Colvile is a freelance journalist and global fellow at PS21, formerly head of
comment at Telegraph and news at BuzzFeed UK. He tweets at @rcolvile.
Theres a simple theory which helps explain why he wonand why hell probably
lose.
As I listened to the Labour leadership announcement on the car radio, there was a
sentence that jumped out at me. It wasnt from Jeremy Corbyn, in his victory
speech, but from his new deputy, Tom Watson.
In the Tories second term, Labour is the last line of defence for the millions of
people who suffer in their hands, said Watson. Only Labour can speak for the real
Britain on behalf of the millions who need us, we are the guardians of decency
and fairness, justice and equality in the United Kingdom.
Who suffer in their hands. That single phrase helps to explain so much about British
politicsand why the Corbyn insurgency happened in the first place. Because it
reflects a critically important difference in worldview.
To put it bluntly, Tories believe that Labour supporters are stupid, and Labour
supporters believe that Tories are wicked.
You can see this in your typical op-ed or leader column. A columnist on the Right,
writing about Corbyn, will generally structure the argument as follows: He is
obviously a decent man, who has devoted his life to his beliefs. Its just that those
beliefs are completely wrong. His Left-wing equivalent, writing about David
Cameron, will instead say: Can no one stop this horrible man doing these horrible
things?
This isnt an original insight: Daniel Hannan, for one, has been banging this drum for
a while. Its also, inevitably, a generalisation. But I think its a useful one. It explains,
for example, why many on the Left feel quite so comfortable being quite so rude
about their opponents: as Tim Montgomerie recently wrote on CapX, because many
on the Left feel they are doing the work of God (or Marx) they feel even the worst of
behaviour is ultimately in service of a good cause.

Its in this context that the Corbyn victory makes perfect sense. Most Tories couldnt
believe Labour could be so stupid as to actually pick someone with so many glaring
electability issues as their leader. But when youre fighting a religious war, who do
you want in chargesomeone who promises to lay about the infidels with a flaming
sword, or someone who accepts that they have a few good points about past
overspending?
This also, of course, explains why picking Corbyn is such a terrible strategy
electorally. Castigating the Tories as heartless monsters certainly whips up your
base. But its also saying to anyone whos voted Tory in the past (and especially
those who switched from Labour in 2010 and 2015) not that they made a
regrettable and understandable error, but that they made a deal with the devil.
Theres actually some interesting neuroscience behind all thisas laid out in the
book Hannan refers to, The Righteous Mind by the social psychologist Jonathan
Haidt.
Haidt argues that there are six key values people look for in political leaders: care,
fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority and purity/sanctity. The evidence shows that
those on the Left are motivated primarily by care and fairness: they want a more
just and equal world, they stand up for the oppressed and the underdogs. Those on
the Right often share those concerns, but balance them against others: for example,
the need for personal freedom, opportunity, social order and moral decency.
One consequence of that is that it literally makes it harder for Left-wingers to see
Right-wingers point of view than vice versa. The result, as William Saletan says in
his New York Times review of Haidts book, is that liberals dont understand
conservative values. And they cant recognize this failing, because theyre so
convinced of their rationality, open-mindedness and enlightenment.
This is a pretty good way of thinking about politics. When the Tories made
themselves unelectable in the 1990s/2000s, for example, it was because they
doubled down on liberty, loyalty, authority and above all purity/sanctity and forgot
about the other two. And Labour are now making their own version of precisely the
same mistake.
To see this at its most explicit, all you need to do is compare Corbyns victory
speech yesterday with Camerons from 2005.
The most obvious thing is that Camerons is much better as a speech: its much
shorter, its got a beginning, a middle and an end, a structure and an argument.
Its also explicitly aimed at agnostics rather than believers. As he says in his
conclusion: To those watching at home, if you have a passion for positive politics,
come and join us. If you want to build a modern, compassionate Conservative party,
come and join us. If you want me and all of us to be a voice for hope, for optimism

and for change, come and join us. In this modern, compassionate Conservative
party, everyone is invited.
But whats equally interesting is how many of Haidts psychological buttons
Cameron presses. He talks about looking after the elderly, family breakdown, the
need for more women MPs, but also about safer streets, school discipline, peoples
duty to the community. The only value he doesnt stress is ideological
purity/sanctityprecisely because the public were fed up of hearing Tory leaders
bang on about them. Corbyn, by contrast, is operating in a much narrower
spectrum.
The great irony of all this is that, a few months back, many Tories I talked to had
convinced themselves that the 2020 election was Labours for the taking.
The flipside of the wicked/stupid thing is that Labour, even under Ed Miliband, were
still viewed as well-meaningwhat let them down was their perceived ability to
govern, and especially to run the economy. But the Tories, even after 10 years of
Cameron, still havent shed the Nasty Party tag: their schtick is competence, not
compassion.
So yes, the argument ran, the Tories had a great election. But it relied heavily on the
unique threat of the SNP, and the unique uselessness of Ed Miliband.
All Labour had to do was to appoint a new, competent-looking leader who
apologised for the economic errors of the past and promised not to repeat them
Chuka Umunna, say, or Dan Jarvisand theyd be competitive again:
compassionate and competent, just like under Tony Blair. In other words, theyd tick
all the Haidt boxes.
Instead, they went for Corbyn. Good luck with that.
This article originally appeared on Medium.com on September 13, 2015.
PS21 is a non-national, non-governmental, nonpartisan organization. All views
expressed are the authors own.