At what point was the Labour Party actually lost?
Historians may make an argument for the moment of madness
in which Sadiq Khan, Margaret Beckett et al lent Jeremy Corbyn their charity nominations in 2015, allowing
him on to the leadership ballot paper.
Maybe it was the actual election of the veteran leftist a
few months afterwards?
Or perhaps it was when Jez won for a second time in
September 2016? (This was my own personal watershed and when I decided I could no
longer give money to the party for the first time in 30 years.)
Everyone has their own lines in the sand. The disgracefully
lacklustre campaign against Brexit. The whitewash over anti-semitism. The coup in
Haringey against Labour’s most senior female figure in local government.
But if anyone had any doubt that the party now belongs
irrevocably to the far left, the departure today of general secretary Iain
McNicol should clear it up. Whoever it is that ends up replacing the outgoing
official, we can be certain they will be entirely loyal to Jeremy Corbyn and
his ongoing mission to substitute an ugly and incoherent populism for mainstream
Labour Party politics.
On the same day that McNicol left, news of a meeting was
circulating on Twitter in which a speaker from Momentum in north-west London is
to join members of the Communist Party of Britain to discuss ‘co-operation’ with
Labour. The cover story we’ve been told about Corbyn – that he’s actually a
moderate European social democrat – is now wearing very thin indeed, isn’t it?
Social media is full of Jezuit cheerleaders trumpeting
McNicol’s departure and seeing it as a stepping stone to yet further consolidation
of power. So the question for moderate Labour parliamentarians is this: when are
you going to have the bottle to stand up for principle and expose the Corbyn
and McDonnell Labour Party for what it actually is?
Of course, there’s no hope for people such as John Prescott,
Emily Thornberry, Baroness Chakrabarti and so on. They are the types who go
with the prevailing wind and they have decided to throw their lot in with the Corbynite
left. When the project finally crashes and burns, they will have absolutely nowhere
to go.
But what of the Ben Bradshaws, Wes Streetings, Yvette Coopers,
Liz Kendalls and Chuka Umunnas? When exactly are they going to realise that the
Labour traditions they champion have no place any more in the party which carries
the Labour name?
There have been various competing attempts over the past
year to set up the moderate centre-left party the UK so desperately needs. Sadly,
however, they lack a focus and they lack figureheads.
Of course, the argument is always that the Gang of Four in
1981 split the anti-Tory vote with the formation of the SDP. But they gave the
public the kind of political choice any healthy democracy deserves. And their success
in terms of share of the popular vote in 1983 was instrumental in bringing
Kinnock to power within Labour. What followed was a long process of reform and
reconstruction that eventually led to three election victories under Tony Blair.
If the UK is to be rescued from rightwing and leftwing extremism,
the work starts now. Isn’t it time for a few brave figures to stick their heads
above the parapet? We can argue when exactly it happened, but Labour is now
lost. Which means the moderate lawmakers have absolutely nothing to lose.
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