There we have it. As most people expected from the moment he was allowed on the ballot, Jeremy Corbyn has been re-elected as leader of the Labour party – securing an even larger percentage of the vote than last year’s election. For many Labour members it feels like game over. Labour has a leadership that is inward-looking, authoritarian and is seemingly uninterested in winning a general election. It is anti-internationalist, and when Corbyn went on television following the Brexit vote stating that the United Kingdom should immediately trigger Article 50, he handed Brexit to Ukip and the right of the Tory party on a plate. It is a hard position to be in for Labour moderates. But the game is far from over, and the fight is far from being lost.
If Owen Smith’s campaign has achieved anything, it has brought the soft-left and Labour moderates together. Neither can prevail on their own, and if Labour wants to seriously turn its worst period of polling in its history around, and make the party a parliamentary force for change and a government in waiting once again, then we need to work together to bring this failed experiment to an end.
On the eve of the leadership election result, ‘How to leave the Labour party’ was the most searched question about the party on Google; with a recent poll finding that 29 per cent of Smith supporters could resign their membership should Corbyn be re-elected.
There is no beating around the bush here. Labour faces a potential exodus of its more centrist and moderate supporters. Should that happen, the mountain Labour needs to climb in order to become credible and electable once again suddenly gets a lot steeper – if not near impossible.
Why should someone on the soft-left or the moderate side of the party like myself stay? It is a question I have kept asking myself over the last few months. From the daily barrage of abusive messages – some even being death threats – for simply speaking my mind about the leadership, to being labelled as ‘Blairite vermin’ – a term that has since become synonymous with my name since a certain picture that I tweeted when passing by a pro-Corbyn rally earlier this year became viral – to being told that my brand of Labour is ‘toxic’ and what is wrong with the political establishment, to having falsified personal attacks thrown at me to damage my credibility, to being told that all I care about is evading the truth and managing spin, that I am unprincipled, and that ‘people like you’ are suppressing the 99 per cent of the country.
For the first time in our history, Labour members of parliament are having to get additional security put in place both at home and at work, they are having to install panic rooms in their constituency offices, and having to bring bodyguards to protect them when attending party conference. We have become a toxic and dangerous party to be in. It is certainly not a desirable place to be.
So why? Why should moderate members like myself stay?
It comes back to why we are Labour. Why we are a part of the one per cent of the population who are members of a political party. We all have our reasons.
For me it is simple. It was a Labour government that gave me free school meals when my family were struggling, it was a Labour government that gave me the opportunities in life to make me the first member of my family to attend university, and it was a Labour government that invested in the National Health Service at a time when I was an ill child and needed life-saving treatment the most.
The Labour party is more than Corbyn. More than his ever so precious mandate, even.
I believe in Labour’s values, I believe in Labour’s historical track record, and remaining in the party will help stop them from being abandoned. Corbyn is not taking Labour back to its roots. He and his hard-left team are attempting to pull up the roots and plant anew.
Let’s remember that it was the Labour party of Keir Hardie and Nye Bevan that gave us a NHS, free at the point of use and a beacon for decency across the globe. It was the Labour party of Clement Attlee that was instrumental in the founding of Nato – cementing our proud internationalist roots – and it was the Labour party of Tony Blair that brought us the minimum wage and lifted tens of thousands of children out of poverty. Under Corbyn’s leadership, the rose may be shining that little bit redder but the grass certainly is not any greener. With him as leader the party will face electoral oblivion. We know this. The public knows this. 71 per cent of those who will not vote Labour again blame Corbyn as the reason why.
The notion that Labour should unite around Corbyn and that MPs who resigned from the shadow cabinet have to return is simply unworkable. The MPs did not have confidence in him when they resigned, and they certainly do not now.
Instead of threatening to unseat Labour MPs who voice their concern, Corbyn’s team should be focussing on unseating Tory MPs at the ballot box and replacing them with Labour ones. For them it is not about getting into government straight away, it is about taking over the machinery of the party in order to turn it into a hard-left protest group. Labour voters cannot afford that, and loyalty to a leader does not come through fear, loyalty comes through credible, inspiring, and competent leadership – with Corbyn lacking all three.
For working people, our party is more important than ever before. With the Tories negotiating our Brexit negotiations, virtually no opposition from Labour’s front bench, and the Labour leadership focussed on purging all non-believers, now is the time for Labour’s soft-left and moderates to unite and fight, to find a solution to the problems our country currently face, and to stop the hard-left completely taking control and turning our party into nothing more than a protest movement.
Leaving the party is what Momentum and the hard-left want. Every moderate member that leaves makes it easier for them to deselect hardworking Labour activists in order to replace them with someone who only cares about their own narrow ideology. We have thousands of fantastic Labour members, councillors and MPs across the country who are fighting for what the party stands for and what they believe in – and they are at risk – I will be staying and fighting for my values and for them, and you should too.
———————————
Lewis Parker is a member of Progress. He tweets @LewisParkerUK
———————————
This article reflects my feelings exactly. Cannot see how the two sides (as that’s what it’s become) can unite – and actually can’t see the point of it. What would a falsely united Labour Party have going for it? Very sad days for Labour. Anyone for a new social democratic party of some kind?
Such a disappointing article to start the new period.
If the snipping is to continue it will just encourage are most hostile into further democratic selection demands.
This personal indulgence surely has to stop. Should Progress should set a lead in this?
Are you moderate enough to have opposed from the start Tony Blair’s extremist privatisation of England’s public services in general and NHS in particular (the root cause of its current financial woes), as well as his continuation of the previous Conservative Government’s extremist assaults on civil liberties, including the extremist evisceration both of the House of Commons and of local government continuously since 1979?
Are you moderate enough to have opposed the extremist and abandoned austerity programme of the sacked extremist, George Osborne, unlike the Liberal Democrats until May 2015, unlike the Labour front bench until September 2015, unlike the Conservative Party until July 2016, and unlike 172 Labour MPs to this day?
Are you moderate enough to have opposed every extremist military intervention of the last 20 years, unlike the Liberal Democrats on all but one occasion, unlike the Conservative front bench and almost all Conservative MPs on each and every occasion, unlike the Labour front bench on every occasion until Jeremy Corbyn became Leader, and unlike one third of Labour MPs even after that?
Are you moderate enough to accept the outcome of the EU referendum (whatever may or may not result from it in practice), like most Labour Party members, but unlike most Labour MPs, extremists that they are?
And are you moderate enough to support Theresa May on workers’ representation, on the restriction of pay disparities, and on the Orgreave Inquiry that is inevitable now that the idea has been floated, all of which are opposed by the extremists who massively predominate in the Parliamentary Labour Party?
Lewis, a well thought through article, that reflects the reality on the ground amongst the 38% who didn’t vote for Corbyn. Verity, you can in theory select who like you like as a Labour Party candidate, but without a leader who can sustain an upward shift in poll ratings, and Jeremy cannot, they won’t be getting elected any time soon, in fact anytime at all, so all a bit pointless really. Still, I and many others will continue in the party and after 2020, when we’ve been walloped we can pick up the pieces and hopefully elect a leader who can gain the national confidence again and actually win a general election.
Matt, disappointed but determined, London
It seem you consider anyone to the left of progress part of the hard left. you really need to widen your circle of contacts and reading.
It would also help if you developed some self awareness of the nature of your words and comments. I have seldom seem more vitriol and abuse handed out to anyone than that which Corbyn has faced from the self styled moderates in progress. and you continue it in this nasty article.
A final comment, I am surprised you mention Bevan and Hardie. You do know they were considered ‘hard left’ in their day. It is MacDonald and George Brown you should reference.
Thank you Lewis, extremely helpful article.