Red Mist. Labour is a lot further from power than it appears to think it is

Although it is his third as Labour leader, this Labour Party conference has been the first to have a truly distinctive Corbynite stamp on it. In 2015 and 2016 most of the delegates who attended were long-standing party and trade union activists rather than the outsiders recruited to support Jeremy Corbyn in the 2015 leadership ballot, courtesy of rules which virtually encouraged entryism. As a result, those two assemblies were awkward affairs with a leadership and a conference somewhat out of sympathy with one another. This was so much so that Momentum (the entity created to sustain the Corbyn cause after his elevation) actually held its own conference in Liverpool alongside the main event rather than be exposed as having a minority voice in the mainstream occasion.
There was no need for such shadowing this time. The Labour tribe in Brighton was notably larger in numbers than in previous years and the new delegates were overwhelmingly of a Corbyn stripe. The location probably helped, in that the surge in Labour membership over the past two years has had a notable geographical bias with London and the South East now responsible for more than a third of the total holding cards. The coffee emporia of Islington must have been empty this past weekend.
In many instances, these individuals have been members for barely two years, but in a well-organised operation have already taken control of their local party committees. The atmosphere was thus one of a party in more senses than one, with this alternative version of new Labour notably more youthful than the traditional stalwarts and strikingly more upper middle class in accent and demeanour. Good news for the more up-market end of the Brighton restaurant trade then, if a disappointment for the more down-scale numerous fish and chip and burger outlets along the seafront.
The other element that was different this time was the distinct absence of fatalism that often hangs over the Labour Party conference and private conversations late at night, which often have revealed how little confidence the party faithful have in the British electorate as a whole to embrace anything that means a serious redistribution of wealth and opportunity to the poorest fifth of the population.
The Corbynites, buoyed by their unexpected showing in the 8 June election, teetered on triumphalism. History is on their side. It would just take further organisation and a little patience before Theresa May and her Government collapsed as did the Mensheviks in October 1917 and let the Soviets in. Team Corbyn is now convinced that it has cracked how to do left-wing populism effectively and that theme ran through the speech of John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, on Monday with his high-profile crackdown on credit card interest rates and it will doubtless run through the address that the Leader of the Opposition is about to deliver like words in red throughout a stick of Brighton rock.
Whether we are truly on the verge of a British form of regime change is, however, as the moderate faction of the Labour Party was spluttering in the conference sidelines, really highly disputable.
The notion that the Government is about to implode allowing an early election is fanciful
In so far as there is a precedent for what many in the Labour Party high command have convinced themselves is possible, it comes from the very early years of the 20th century. Back then, a majority Conservative Government and its allies in the Liberal Unionists tore themselves to pieces over the issue of Tariff Reform (the introduction of protectionist measures against goods imported from outside of Britain and its Empire). This division was so intense that the Prime Minister and his administration actually resigned, despite their numbers in the House of Commons, and invited the Liberals to form a minority administration in December 1905 in the belief that that party would cut itself to shreds on the question over which it was badly split, namely Irish Home Rule. The Liberals proved smarter than that, side-stepped the Irish question, called an election and won in a landslide.
The chances of this repeating itself are close to nil. The Conservatives have the numbers in their own ranks, through their accord with the DUP, and via the self-interest of the Liberal Democrats and the SNP to carry on to 2022 if necessary. Party management of the Brexit process will be challenging but as the internal response to the Prime Minister’s speech in Florence showed, one can split differences in a manner that keeps all of the Cabinet on board, and without a senior figure bolting the Cabinet to offer an alternative stance on Brexit the vast majority of Conservative MPs will stick together.
The glue that binds them, ironically for Momentum, is the fear that the Corbyn thesis might be right. Even the most hardline Tory Brexiteer does not want to leave the EU at the price of letting him in.
The longer the Parliament continues, the deeper the divide within Labour will become
The surprising outcome to the election does not alter a fundamental fact of British politics. The two sides of the Labour Party – the recast membership and MPs plus more long-serving supporters – absolutely hate each other. For strategic reasons, the Corbyn lobby did not choose to press home its advantage at this conference, moving instead to change the rules for future leadership elections and alter the composition of the National Executive Committee, but not launch an all-out assault on MPs over their autonomy or on policy. If by next September, though, no 1905/1906 (or better still 1917) transition has occurred, it will be a different matter. A much bigger shift in authority from the PLP to the mass membership will be undertaken and a form of de facto mandatory reselection of MPs will be on the agenda as well. The trade unions, who in different circumstances might have been cool on such a coup d’etat, will either be intimidated into backing it or bought off with enticing policy items.
Before we even get to that point, the Labour Party is likely to find itself at daggers drawn over Brexit. In an inverse of the Conservative situation, the very top of the Labour Party is the least bothered of any layer about the withdrawal from the European Union as it removes an obstacle to true socialism. Mr Corbyn essentially made that argument in his interview on Sunday with Andrew Marr when he suggested that while he wanted the maximum possible access to the single market because this was “good for jobs”, he wanted to be free of State Aid restrictions that might impede renationalisation. There is not much chance of anyone in Brussels signing up to the UK having an EEA status à la carte. As this is the question on which moderate MPs have allies among the trade unions and amongst the young idealists who back Mr Corbyn, it is the right (only?) place for them to draw a line in the sand.
Vince Cable could become a player of significance as the inevitable Labour civil war intensifies
The new Liberal Democrat leader could become a factor in Labour’s civil war in a manner which the hapless Tim Farron could never have accomplished. Sir Vince has his personal roots in the Labour Party and then the SDP thereafter. He understands the moderate section and its present torment. He has hardened his line to that of ‘exit from Brexit’, overtly seeking a second referendum which, in truth, is what large numbers of Labour MPs wish that they could call for as well.
If, as seems likely, the current incoherent Labour position of favouring membership of the single market and customs union for a transition period of unspecified length but not afterwards falls apart, politics could become polarised between those who favour something akin to ‘Canland’ (the most likely end Conservative preference) and those determined to stay as close to the EU as is possible. If this is compounded by the sense that moderate Labour MPs will be picked off if they remain where they are, then Sir Vince could offer at least some of them a form of political refuge inside his party. It may be, despite the Brighton zeitgeist, that we are closer to 1981 than 1905/1906, never mind 2017.
Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA