As the hard Left tighten their grip, ministers are at the mercy of MPS

Not since the trade unions in the 1970s have outside organisations exerted so much power over Labour

Labour of Love, a new play by West End wunderkind James Graham, tells the story of the ideological tensions within the “People’s Party” over the past 27 years. He takes as his starting point the fall of Margaret Thatcher in 1990, when Labour imagined it was on the verge of power only to lose at the polls again two years later.

That defeat paved the way for the rise of New Labour – though only after the death of John Smith, a more traditionalist leader who was wary of the modernising drive promoted by Blair, Brown and Mandelson. Who knows how Labour would look today had Smith lived? It would surely have won in 1997 but probably without the massive majority and the Cool Britannia trappings. Perhaps the hard Left might have reached an accommodation with a Smith-led party which they adamantly refused to countenance with the Blairites.

In any case, it didn’t matter. Represented in Parliament by a few dozen Campaign Group MPS and on the outside by activist organisations trying to keep the revolutionary flame burning, the Left were an irrelevant rump, ignored and unloved. Well, they may still be unloved but they can no longer be ignored.

To get a full picture of their long march to power we need to go back 10 years before Graham’s story opens. Labour was in the grip of civil war triggered by the 1979 election defeat, blamed by the Left on the treachery of the leadership. The public face of the insurgency was Tony Benn, who almost grabbed the deputy leadership of the party from Denis Healey in 1981.

Two of Benn’s lieutenants were Jeremy Corbyn and Jon Lansman, the latter an organiser with a shadowy body called the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy. It worked assiduously behind the scenes, drawing up and promoting conference resolutions to subject Labour election candidates to party decision-making or face removal.

We all know what happened to Mr Corbyn but what of Mr Lansman? He is now the chairman of Momentum, the Labour leader’s ideological Praetorian Guard and is shortly expected to be elected to the party’s ruling National Executive along with two colleagues from the same outfit.

Gradually the Left’s grip on the party tightens. It was reported at the weekend that Momentum is asking parliamentary candidates to sign a contract committing them to “revitalise the Labour Party by building on the values, energy and enthusiasm of the Jeremy for Leader campaign”. One unnamed Labour MP called this “Stalinist”; and it certainly has the alien feel of a political cult.

Momentum is also said to be orchestrating an “aggressive purge” of centrist councillors across the country and replacing them with Left-wingers. One ousted London councillor said his local party was “inflamed with division, distrust... and real hatred.” Another spoke of “de-selections on purely factional grounds occurring around the country”.

Why is anyone surprised? This is how the Left operates. They believe the party is supreme, discipline is paramount and personal conscience anathema (unless, of course, it is being exercised by someone on the Left, like Mr Corbyn who rebelled more times against his party than any other MP).

This all matters now more than it did in the early 1980s because the Left are conceivably one election away from taking power, a prospect that the US bank Morgan Stanley regards as “much more scary from an equity perspective than Brexit”. Moreover, Theresa May’s Government, deprived of a parliamentary majority, is at the mercy of the legislature in a way not seen for decades. Ministers cannot even retain the confidentiality of internal Whitehall EU papers whose publication they say would compromise the national interest, a basic executive prerogative.

These are dangerous times. At the very moment the Conservative government is vulnerable, the hard Left are consolidating their position inside the Labour Party. Moderate Labour MPS, cowed into silence after the June election failed to pack Mr Corbyn into oblivion, need to fight back or they are doomed.

One thing they are especially keen to avoid is the proposed reduction in the number of MPS from 650 to 600 which would give Momentum the opportunity to pick them off since every seat would have to be re-contested. To that end, on Friday the Commons will debate a private member’s Bill intended to stop the process in its tracks. Boundary reform is aimed at equalising the size of constituencies, which currently are biased in Labour’s favour, and a new system is due to be in place from next year. But it is opposed by the DUP on whose votes the Government relies for a working majority; and since many Conservatives don’t much like the prospect of their seats being abolished either, this measure is likely to bite the dust – ending Tory hopes of fighting the next election on new, and more favourable, constituency boundaries.

We are, therefore, seeing something new in recent British politics. Extraparliamentary forces like Momentum are exerting considerable influence over the policy and organisation of a party with a realistic chance of power. The last time this happened was in the heyday of the trade unions in the 1970s. Meanwhile, inside Parliament the executive’s writ runs no further than the end of next week’s business, depending on what is on the agenda.

The Government is having to resort to procedural chicanery to head off threats to measures in the Finance Bill which enacts the Budget. After the election in June, ministers had to change standing orders to ensure they retained a majority on Bill committees despite not having one in the Commons. In addition, so-called Henry VIII powers contained in the EU Withdrawal Bill, giving ministers the authority to overturn laws almost by decree, face defeat either in the Commons or in the Lords.

Its detractors accuse the Government of a power grab; and yet all these shenanigans are functions of weakness, not strength. How long can it continue? This House, another of James Graham’s plays, documented how a minority Labour administration clung to office in the late 1970s for the best part of five years. Given its difficulties, this one would do well to last another five months.