The slowest car crash in history? Three scenarios for the Labour Party between now and 2018

The 30,000-word Labour Party manifesto for the 1983 General Election was dubbed by a senior Shadow Cabinet member as “the longest suicide-note in history”. The attempt to remove Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader must now be viewed as the slowest car crash in history. The bid to eject him started with a wave of Shadow Cabinet resignations which began barely 48 hours after the EU referendum result was known, an outcome that many Labour MPs blamed squarely on Mr Corbyn for his manifest indifference about the campaign beforehand and his instant call on the Government to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty immediately thereafter. Some three weeks ago, the Parliamentary Labour Party passed a vote of no confidence in their leader by 172 to 40.
Matters were then put on hold while Tom Watson, the Deputy Leader, sought to talk Mr Corbyn into stepping down of his own volition. It briefly seems as if the man himself might have been ready to contemplate the idea but his Shadow Chancellor and the hard-left team he has assembled in his own office would not allow him to walk the plank even if he had wanted to. With Angela Eagle, the ex-Shadow Business Secretary, waiting somewhat impatiently in the wings, it was only last week at which the formal challenge to unseat Mr Corbyn could be started.
There then followed a lengthy meeting of the National Executive Committee at which it was determined that a sitting leader had the automatic right to be on the ballot if challenged and did not need to be re-nominated (although the Labour Party’s own legal advice and the precedent of the 1988 Kinnock-Benn contest indicated the complete opposite). A second potential challenger in the form of Owen Smith, former Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, then emerged to compete with Ms Eagle for the right to take on Mr Corbyn. Parliamentary nominations opened yesterday and will close later today. That situation has at least resolved itself with Ms Eagle making way for Mr Smith to be the sole rival to the leader. The election itself will not finish until 24 September (the Saturday of the Labour Party conference).
The contrast with the ruthless speed with which the Conservative Party saw David Cameron resign and be replaced in just 19 days by Theresa May (with the rulebook swerved and the wider party membership ignored to ensure a swift transfer of authority) is striking. The Labour Party has instead seemingly opted to hang itself with piano wire. The anguish and mutual loathing is such that the NEC has felt obliged to suspend most meetings of constituency party branches across the country for fear of an atmosphere of intimidation if they were to take place as scheduled. It is utterly extraordinary. To all intents and purposes the country does not have an Opposition, as the Shadow Cabinet consists of the twenty or so individuals who are willing to serve (some of those only out of a sense of duty). Where will all this end? Painfully is the short answer but with one of three plausible scenarios for it.
Corbyn is defeated in this election
The swiftest end to this saga would be if Mr Corbyn were defeated in a democratic fashion. The new Leader of the Labour Party would have to endure howls of hostility from Corbyn supporters with the complaint made that some of the rules had been rigged so as to prevent his re-election. The NEC has made it less challenging to depose him by insisting that only those Labour Party members of at least six months standing are entitled to vote and that ‘registered supporters’ must in 2016 pay £25 (not £3) if they want to participate and that registration has to occur in a rather tight timetable. If all these terms had been in force last year, then Mr Corbyn would probably have won but it would have been far harder for him to have a secured an outright majority on the first round as he did in 2015, and so would have required the second preferences of those who backed another candidate initially.
It is not inconceivable, therefore, that a single challenger could defeat the sitting leader. It is not incredible that, during the course of the coming campaign, the sheer political impossibility of there being such little parliamentary support for a party leader combined with fear of the electoral appeal of Mrs May, plus the rhetoric and the activities of the Leader and his Momentum followers, is such that some of those who voted for Mr Corbyn last time will change their minds on this occasion.
This is, however, something of a long shot. As of today it looks like at best a 40% prospect. The mainstream membership has clearly moved to the left over the past 18 months and there are various means by which Corbyn supporters outside of the formal membership will still be able to be registered at rates lower than £25 if they are sufficiently organised to do so (and discipline does not look as if it will be difficult). The working assumption of most Labour MPs is that Mr Corbyn will win but it is their hope (and it is only a hope, not based on any evidence) that his margin will be smaller.
Corbyn is challenged again in 2017 and defeated
Many Labour MPs regard the forthcoming campaign as essentially a dress rehearsal. They think that Mr Corbyn will survive this time but might be wounded. Some of those who left the Shadow Cabinet in recent weeks will ‘respect his mandate’ and be ready to return to it but most of those who quit will not do so. Mr Corbyn will have to continue with a skeleton of a Shadow Cabinet. The argument that he is a nominal Leader of the Opposition will continue. His poll ratings will plunge even further.
The real showdown will then come over Trident. Nuclear disarmament is an absolute article of faith for Mr Corbyn personally and one of the highest policy priorities for his supporters. For a majority of Labour MPs, by contrast, as the debate over the issue in the House of Commons on Monday shows, the party will blow itself up if it opts to reject Trident. The internal policy review will be finalised and a decision taken on this matter next year. Crucially, many of the key trade unions who endorsed Mr Corbyn in 2015 and are sticking with him this time do not agree with him about Trident. There are large numbers of trade union members whose employment is conditional on this submarine system. If Mr Corbyn presses ahead on it (which he is almost compelled to do), then there will be another set of resignations from his frontbench, a new challenge to him in summer 2017, and he may be ousted.
Corbyn is clearly set to remain as leader until the next election
It is, nonetheless, perfectly possible that Mr Corbyn either avoids another challenge by finding some sort of compromise on Trident or he succeeds in delivering a switch of policy here and brushes off whatever challenge is made to him as a consequence. By October 2017 it might be obvious even to the most die-hard ‘Blairite’ Labour MP that further challenges to the leader would be futile. It will be seen as a settled fact that Mr Corbyn will take Labour in to the next election and probably lose it.
At that point, Labour reaches its real nightmare scenario. What do Labour MPs do? Do they agree to sit in the Shadow Cabinet in the hope that they can be a restraining influence and limit the damage done to their party at the election? Or do they stay on the backbenches, await the thumping that the party might well endure from the electorate and then move to take control of the leadership back on an ‘I told you so’ basis (assuming that they themselves have not either been deselected or sent packing in their constituencies by the voters)? Or does Labour split into two competing versions of itself much like the old Liberal Party did in the 1920s between backers of Asquith and Lloyd George?
All of this awaits the Labour Party conference, to be held this year in Liverpool. Yours truly and a small BVCA team will be there to witness it. We chose our hotel well. We are staying at The Titanic.