My week trying to understand Corbyn’s biggest fans and toughest critics – and why it is time for us to come together

It’s a grey morning and a queue in my local coffee shop gives me time to scroll through Facebook and Twitter, meaning I spend the next three minutes reading cries from those on the Left who are lamenting the fact that Labour “will never win” because of Jeremy Corbyn. It’s a fear I struggled to understand during the leadership election last year and I decided I want to understand it this time.

I make a vow to myself in the queue, phone still in hand to research Labour, its leader, and people’s complaints against them more than I ever have done before. I give myself the next seven days to leave no stone unturned in the ether. Over the next seven days:

• I find almost all sources, from The Canary to The Times, are biased and I wonder whether I can use any of it.
• The Daily Telegraph claims that 100 MPs are plotting to leave the party on June 8 in a bid to oust Corbyn and create a centre-left party. I search through Labour’s policies under Corbyn and find nothing wildly radical.
• The Labour manifesto is leaked in its draft form and, in the interest of brevity, it entails sound, left-wing policy for a progressive future for the many not the few. The slogan is not empty.
• Responses to the manifesto leak include: “that will cost too much,” “that can’t work,” and “austerity has been necessary all this time because the Tories said it was, right?” (I made that last one up.) Left-wing social and economic policy appears too good to be true.
• ComRes publish that British adults are “more likely to support than oppose” the policies in Labour’s draft manifesto but also that “56 per cent of adults say that Jeremy Corbyn would be a ‘disaster as prime minister’.” I am furious at the disastrous image that has been created and go on a bit of a rant, only to regret it afterwards, as I wanted to spend this week being neutral.
• I look at Corbyn’s recent public appearances, reminiscent of the rallies last summer, from which Labour grew to become the biggest political party in Western Europe.
• I lie awake for nearly a whole night. I have something about the Corbyn debate on my mind and it overtakes me, my thoughts, my ability to close my eyes and go to sleep.

At night I laid awake – it had been a week since I started spending every moment, outside work – and including times when I should have been asleep – researching whether or not Corbyn is a detriment to the Labour Party while trying to stay as impartial as possible. But what if I had been using the wrong method? I’d been looking to find “right” and “wrong” and, if Corbyn was right, then going against him, I thought, must be wrong.

Well, maybe there was a third way for the Left — one in which pro- and anti-Corbyn groups were both right and both wrong. This is what I wrote on my phone at 3am: “The pro-Corbyn camp are excited. They can see a future with Corbyn as leader, can see viability in left-wing policy, integrity in Corbyn’s history, and they are up for the fight. They are also immensely frustrated, to the point of being infuriated, that the rest of the party can’t see it, won’t immediately jump on with them, and aren’t instantly excited as well.

“The anti-Corbyn camp look at the enthusiasm of the pro-Corbyn group and remember, with misgivings, their own early enthusiasm for Blair. They also maybe genuinely didn’t sign up to the Labour that Corbyn is promoting — Labour were not particularly left economically until relatively recently — in which case they’ll legitimately feel as though the party has been hijacked by Corbyn (and his supporters), leading to feelings of anger and even fear.”

Under Corbyn, young adults have been joining the Labour party and signing up to vote in their hundreds of thousands. It is a demographic that is historically vital for a Labour win and the wider public has accidentally found out they approve of the party’s new left-wing manifesto. That’s good —  that’s incredible — but some things must change.

Those who are pro-Corbyn must increase their respect for the party. They must find out what Labour stood for 10 or 20 years ago or more, and understand that without the work of the MPs who dislike Corbyn, Labour would not even exist as a viable platform for Tory opposition.

Those who are anti-Corbyn must refrain from basic character assassination. They must look at policy, look at how he is able to pick up younger voters who are notoriously difficult to reach and leave the Tories to insult the party leader during a general election for us.

If the two factions on the left come together  —  both in the lead up to the general election, and after it  —  then we will move forward to an inspiringly progressive future.