For one - and this is a trivial point perhaps - what the internet creates, the internet can just as surely destroy. You can be a meme, go viral, one week and the next be stale buns. Social media is adept at creating phenomena, but phenomena don't necessarily last.
Secondly, it is very hard to imagine that the Tories could run a more incompetent election campaign than theirs of 2017.
A more subtle point however is that the longer Corbyn remains Labour leader the more the public finds out what he and his Momentum friends are like. This week's storm about Corbyn's contact with the Czech "diplomat" may well not prove that he sold or gave spies to Britain's enemies - it's hard to think of information he might have had which wasn't freely available in an open society - but his willingness to consort with people whose professional aim was to subvert the British government says a lot about him. It is moreover all of a piece with his flirtation with Jew-hating Arabs and Irish Republicans, his oft-expressed admiration for brutal and repressive failed Socialist states and his enthusiastic espousal of the kind of state interventionism which would rapidly take Britain back to the 1970s.
Ah, you may say, but JC's admirers don't care about these things. They're too young to remember the 70s, they're not interested in the realities of Britain's fiscal position (precarious) and they're indifferent to the plight of the poor in places like Venezuela which once promised so much but now, conveniently as their failure has been made manifest, seem to have dropped out of Corbyn's Overton window.
This may be true, but, as Tony Blair will tell you, Labour cannot get elected on the votes of just their core support. The hardcore supporters may be enthusiasts (although others will be holding their noses and others still walking away from the Party altogether), but what about the general public? What about the working class? The reality is surely that many working class voters will be contemptuous not only of the sheer nastiness of much of Momentum's public manifestations ("Tory scum" amidst a shower of spittle), but also the trigger-warning, cisgender snowflakery of its PC-gone-mad faction.
Labour may have something to say to the political interests of the working class, but it has almost nothing whatsoever to say them culturally. This for me represents a wedge which the Tories could drive home with a big hammer. It's an open goal.
The craven folly of (most) Labour MPs is becoming more and more apparent. Some of them - even the sainted Frank Field, one of their best - let Corbyn onto the ballot paper, failing to grasp that a process which enfranchised the organisation's enthusiasts was likely to elect someone who closely represented their proclivities. Having committed this error, they see the new leadership beginning to compete with the Tories for the title of "The Nasty Party". And what do they do? They hang onto their seats, and hope.
Only 18 months ago a vote of No Confidence in Mr Corbyn was passed by 172 to 40 members of the PLP. That did not shame him into resigning; the Hard Left is nothing if not Hard Faced. The PLP could have set up an alternative opposition, but MPs fear for their jobs and pensions. They remind me of Groucho Marx - "These are principles! And if you don't like them - I have others!" What a contemptible shower. Some are Hard Leftists like him and revel in their new found eminence. The rest however are fellow-travellers, lacking the courage to derail the train.
Labour's best chance would seem to be a collapse of the government amidst Brexit bickering. It's possible that Tory Remainers could so lose their sense of proportion that they will embrace the risk of a Corbyn government to avoid Brexit. In those circumstances it's possible to imagine a successful Labour campaign on a platform of a competently managed departure. But if Labour lose next time it is likely the party will by then have been so thoroughly transformed into a Hard Left SWP facsimile that a new Centre Left party could sweep Labour to oblivion.
