What Labour needs now
JEREMY Corbyn’s second leadership victory is as disheartening as it is predictable. The leader of the British Labour Party was always likely to emerge victorious from a challenge and his position is now secure for the foreseeable future.
Corbyn has an even larger mandate from the membership and he will continue much as before, building a party of protest. While Labour has sunk in the opinion polls and drifted towards parliamentary irrelevance under his watch, it has also become one of the largest political parties in western Europe thanks to an influx of radical young supporters. The challenge from Owen Smith was lamentable. Faced with this insipid choice, members stuck with the leader they knew.
Corbyn has talked of unity and healing the party after a bruising contest. But he must first rein in the most voluble of his supporters, many of whom continue to bully those opposed to his political project. He also needs to dispel the noxious whiff of anti-Semitism that hangs around Labour. It is not enough to mouth platitudes about tolerance; he must demonstrate from the top that there is no place in his party for such views.
The relationship between the leadership and the parliamentary party, the majority of which does not support Corbyn, also requires serious attention. He must show he is serious about offering an olive branch to Labour MPs.
Whatever Corbyn does, his restless backbenchers face difficult decisions. Having thrown down the gauntlet and failed, dissident MPs have learnt the hard way that it is not enough to sit back and argue that Corbyn is unfit to lead the country. They cannot simply be critics. They must think how to win the hearts of party members.
Corbyn’s opponents must reconsider how their social democratic values can appeal to a more radical membership, while also considering the seismic shifts among traditional Labour voters as a result of Brexit.
In the past, this paper has called on Corbyn to resign, and nothing in this contest has suggested that his leadership will provide Britain with an effective opposition. Moderates should not give up. More than ever, British politics needs a strong centre-left party — to hold the government to account and to curb the excesses of the right. There are still many talented figures in the Labour Party and they should not have a collective nervous breakdown at Corbyn’s renewed mandate. They must begin work on an alternative political programme — to show there is life beyond Corbynism and relevance for Labour. London, September 24 2016.