Encouraged by their leader today, Corbynites
are peddling the narrative that now Mr C has won again, and with an even bigger majority than last time, the party must unite and get behind their leader
in order to attempt to form an effective opposition to the Tories.
I think this is highly unlikely to happen,
and nor should anyone actually want it to happen. The Labour Party is made up
of a variety of politicians – some on the hard left, some centre left, and many
in between – and whether you share their views or not, they are views that are
fervently held and that form the basis of their beliefs and goals.
Except by some shadowy pretence, many Labour
MPs can’t, and shouldn’t, claim to be behind a shadow cabinet and a set of
policies they are not. Divisions of this magnitude exist for a reason, and they
cannot ‘unite’ in their goals any more than a vegetarian and a meat eater can
unite to share a chicken and bacon pizza.
The group that has taken the party this far
to the left has created an irreconcilable impasse that won’t be resolved by
everyone in the party pretending to be of the same voice. Given that the
members have effectively taken the party hostage, and have made it very
difficult for any non-Corbynite to secure enough votes to be the next leader
after Corbyn, it seems to me that the non-Corbynites have three realistic
options:
1) Look to split the party.
2) Mince around for probably two more
election catastrophes until even the Corbynites get fed up with embarrassing
losses and realise that the electorate won’t vote for a hardline socialist, and
then put forward a more electable candidate.
3) Somehow try to get hundreds of thousands
of new anti-Corbyn members to pay up and join in order to outnumber the
Corbynites and swing the party back to being electable again.
Almost everyone involved won’t fancy 1 or 2
very much, so it seems to me the only recourse is to look for a few hundred
thousand people to sign up and add numbers to the anti-Corbyn side of the vote.
