07 Aug 2019

Left Behind? It is difficult to see Labour recovering under Corbyn leadership

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For the past two months, the focus of British politics has been almost entirely other than on the Labour Party. Attention has been placed overwhelmingly on the contest for the leadership of the Conservatives and then the actions of the new Prime Minister and Government since then. This has been amplified by the sharp shift in policy and in tone towards the UK’s departure from the EU. The official Opposition has appeared to be something of an irrelevance. Even the Liberal Democrats, with a new leader in Jo Swinson and a by-election victory in Brecon and Radnor, have looked more viable.

There will be many within the ranks of the Labour Party who will be, nonetheless, relatively content with this era of enforced anonymity. For if the spotlight falls too intensely on Labour right now then what would be witnessed would hardly be an enticing offering. The party is not merely all but marooned tactically at present, it is also facing its most severe strategic challenge since Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters first snatched control of the party almost four years ago.

If there is an answer to the questions which face Labour, they lie in the current Government opting for an extremely hard Brexit on 31 October and then assuming that the immense public blame for what follows is of an intensity that Boris Johnson implodes and a general election occurs at a timing that suits the Labour leadership. This is not an impossible scenario but it is not one which it should anticipate.

That is because there are clearly both the numbers in the House of Commons and the procedural mechanism (the hitherto somewhat obscure device of a Standing Order 24 debate) to make the kind of kamikaze Brexit described above extremely difficult to impose in practice. It is more likely that Mr Johnson would seek to leave the EU ‘do or die’ and ‘come what may’ but then find himself blocked and have to take a short extension of Article 50 (to 31 December perhaps) and call for an election at which to seek a mandate for a no-deal Brexit if necessary.

The chances are that he would be able to secure the vast majority of the 2016 Leave vote behind his colours while the Remain electorate would be badly split between Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and the various nationalists. The odds on a Labour victory, or even it being the largest single party, would be long.

The strategic vulnerability that Labour is facing is actually much deeper than this short-term malaise. The party is confronted with a leadership crisis, an impossible Brexit stance and very bitter divisions.

Corbyn’s personal polling ratings are now back to where they were before the 2017 election

Most of the opinion polls taken in the past fortnight or so have shown a Conservative lead over Labour. Two of them have recorded a double-digit advantage. That is not in itself wildly surprising. The norm in British politics is for new Prime Ministers to have some sort of honeymoon period with the country and to benefit from the initial contrast between themselves and their predecessor. The length of this stretch of popularity can vary considerably and is always open to interruption by the course of adverse events. There is nothing in the current figures in the polls that should of itself be of intense concern to anyone in the Labour Party. All it can do is put itself on an election war footing.

It is Mr Corbyn’s personal polling ratings that should be the source of real fear inside Labour. Even as Theresa May was being politically consumed by the dispute over the Withdrawal Agreement in her own parliamentary party, Mr Corbyn’s relative standing was not getting better but worse. With her out of the picture, his numbers are even more disturbing.

A typical example comes from MORI last week which asked whether the various party leaders had the qualities required to make a good Prime Minister. Just 20% of those surveyed though Mr Corbyn satisfied the criteria to be a good PM while 65% disagreed. By comparison, the voters were evenly split about Boris Johnson on the question, with 38% seeing him as a potentially able Prime Minister and 43% disagreeing.

Mr Corbyn’s admirers will insist that he started with very bad personal polling ratings in 2015 that continued to be similarly dismal until May 2017 but that in the election campaign he staged a rally in his fortunes that carried Labour to the brink of an upset victory. History will repeat itself whenever the next election is called, they assert.

This rather optimistic thesis depends on the Conservatives repeating all the dire mistakes that they made in 2017, such as failing to decide on a dash to the voters early enough, having a leader who turned out to be utterly robotic on the stump, and coming up with a policy for social care which was so disastrously loathed from day one that it had to be (sort of) abandoned almost as swiftly as it was announced. It is possible, but rather improbable. So, Mr Corbyn is destined to remain a liability for Labour but he is not one they can realistically dispose of.

Labour is in an utterly desperate position on its Brexit policy

Labour’s position on Brexit has evolved from being merely convoluted to absolutely contorted. In so far as it can be divined (and it is not a straightforward exercise to do so) it is now that in the event of there being either a ‘Tory’ Brexit or a no-deal Brexit, then there should be a referendum before it can be applied at which the alternative to either of the above would be to remain in the EU and the Labour Party would support continued membership.

If, however, there were to be an election and a Labour Government, then it would negotiate a much nicer Brexit (somehow) and that new improved Brexit would be put to the people, presumably with staying in as an alternative, and the Government would make the case for the arrangement that it had been able to win with Brussels to quit the EU.

This is total nonsense. As a thesis it contains so many impossibilities that one does not know where to start. It would not survive five minutes if seen on the hustings. It is the lowest of lowest common denominators in terms of a policy compromise. Yet it has a bizarre and surreal logic to it.

Labour is completely trapped on Brexit. If it moves any further towards a more coherent position of sticking by the referendum result then it will bleed middle class support to the Liberal Democrats. If it is to edge even closer to embracing a second referendum, and campaigning for Remain if such a plebiscite were held while the Conservatives were in office, or pledge to opt to hold a second referendum itself and to champion Remain if it were to win an election (which is probably where it will end up but only after it is far too late to be a politically consequential switch), then it will suffer serious losses to the Conservatives and The Brexit Party (if it survives the next few months) in working class heartlands. This is essentially an impossible dilemma to resolve. The best that can be done is damage limitation.

The next few months will witness intense factionalism over candidate selection and re-selection

If all that were not enough, Labour is about to ‘enjoy’ a blood-bath over the re-selection, or not, of sitting MPs who are hostile to the Corbyn leadership, and the selection of its new candidates in seats where an MP is standing down or which they hope to seize at the next election.

This is going to be an unbelievably brutal and ugly process. Yet if the Corbynites do not engage in it now, then they cannot be sure of such absolute control over the party that they can replace him with one of their own when Mr Corbyn does stand down as leader.

Those MPs who are purged will not be discarded quietly. There will be defections to other parties, the risk of by-elections with those MPs standing against the official Labour contender and the accusation of entryism by extremists.

The row over anti-Semitism in the ranks of the Corbynites has been, in many regards, the opening battle in the bruising war to come and it has hardly been an appealing spectacle. But once again, it is very difficult to envisage how Labour can avoid this feud in the months to come or ever benefit from it.

Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA


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