The Labour Party itself will be destroyed if Corbyn does not stand aside
AS I went to vote for the motion of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, I met another Labour MP, one of my more Left-wing colleagues, She was in tears.
“I never ever thought I would have to vote to get rid of a leader of the Labour Party,” she said, “but he just has to go, for the sake of the party and the country.”
Despite that reluctance, 172 MPs voted for him to go. He now has the support of just 40. That’s not enough to fill a double-decker bus and it’s nowhere near the 95 he needs for a full front-bench team. With more than 50 resignations, Jeremy cannot even pretend to be leading an alternative government in waiting. He and John McDonnell have even offered to double and treble up and fill vacant roles themselves.
Jeremy’s intransigence is rapidly making him a laughing stock. There is something unsavoury about the refusal to accept such a result. If a council leader were to lose such a vote of confidence, they would be out.
If a headteacher loses the confidence of the staff or the governors, they resign. And if the Commons delivers a vote of no confidence, the government falls and the prime minister steps down. That is the honourable, decent, honest thing to do. Can you imagine Attlee or Wilson, Arthur Henderson or George Lansbury not doing the honourable thing if their colleagues had voted against them? Of course not.
The primary job of a leader is to unite the party, both the parliamentary party and the membership – and this vote proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that Jeremy cannot do that. That alone makes his position untenable, but there’s another problem. The EU referendum was a test of Jeremy’s leadership and campaigning skills. He failed. Either deliberately or ineptly, he undermined the Remain campaign. I fear that a Labour general election campaign will be every bit as bad.
I don’t know whether Jeremy’s aim is to bring the whole temple down with him like Samson in the Bible, but that is what he is in danger of doing.
Samson had already been blinded by his enemies, the Philistines, and was determined that they should die with him. In this case it’s not the Tories who will be destroyed, but the Labour Party itself if Jeremy won’t stand aside.
If he does so, history will look kindly on him. If not, he will be remembered as the man who broke the back of the party.
We had a glimpse of this when Jeremy and Mr McDonnell decided to join a demonstration outside Parliament. We all warned him against it. Some begged him not to go. But there he was in a small crowd of Socialist Worker Party activists and members of the Communist Party with a scattering of trades unionists and party members. Several wore T-shirts that said “Eradicate the right-wing Blairite vermin”. These weren’t Labour people. Many probably never voted Labour in their lives, and if any of them are members, I doubt they have ever delivered a leaflet or knocked on a door for the party. Yet that’s the company Jeremy prefers to keep.
This country is in crisis. Millions are looking for an alternative to the Tories for whom they can vote with confidence. Labour can be that party, but only with a new leader who knows how to unite, lead and inspire.