Politics heats up in summer of division

OVER the summer, politics usually takes a back seat.

However, not this year, for there is a new Prime Minister, surrounded by a changed cabinet, anxious to prove they are right on top of their briefs.

Neither is there to be much of a break for the Labour opposition, torn between either confirming their approval of the present leader, Jeremy Corbyn, or the challenger from obscurity, Owen Smith.

I believe democracy is better served with a well-led opposition, which sadly Jeremy Corbyn has utterly failed to achieve.

Some 172 members of his Parliamentary party have rejected him outright – but Corbyn refuses to budge on the grounds that he has the overwhelming support of Labour party members in the country.

What the membership also to ponder is what will happen to the Labour party if they re-elect him again. The suggestion by one member of Labour’s national executive that the rebellious majority should resign and offer themselves for re-selection is ludicrous.

The fact is that Corbyn and the left wing of the party have a totally different view of socialism than the bulk of elected MPs.

The membership will have to make up their minds over the next four weeks.

Will it be compromise or the inevitable split in the Labour party akin to that in 1981 when David Owen, Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers quit to form the Socialist Democrat Party?

The contention then was unilateral nuclear disarmament.

Today, it is the philosophy of socialism that is the issue which, by a timely quirk of fate, has the rebels voting for the renewal of Trident and the Corbynites dead against such a measure.

I am certain a split will take place if Corbyn is re-elected and that will generate much bitterness, doing nothing to see the formation of a well-led probing opposition, so necessary in any democracy to keep government on its toes.

Politically, what with Brexit and the Labour election, this is a busy summer. Russell Luckock is chairman of Birmingham pressings

firm AE Harris