Fate worse than May

At the height of Theresa May’s near-death moment in the Commons last week, Government whips told Remainer MPS thinking of voting against the Prime Minister that a general election could be the consequence. The unsaid threat was that the Conservatives could lose power and Jeremy Corbyn would be installed in Downing Street. For many Conservatives the prospect of losing their seats were there to be an early election is increasingly real. The polls show Labour consistently ahead, albeit not by much.

But keeping Mr Corbyn away from No 10 is about more than holding on to a seat at Westminster. It is an essential national endeavour. We have long warned of the dangers of a Labour government led by Mr Corbyn and the shadow Chancellor John Mcdonnell. But while such misgivings might be dismissed from those who are not Labour’s natural allies, they should be listened to when they come from those inside the party.

John Woodcock, the MP for Barrow in Furness, resigned from Labour last week. He has had a long running dispute with the party over the way it has handled harassment allegations against him. Leaving aside his personal difficulties, Mr Woodcock is a consistent opponent of the hard-left takeover of the party. He has resigned declaring that Mr Corbyn is a threat to national security. A more damning assessment of a would-be prime minister could hardly be offered yet you would have been hard-pressed to hear this amid the brouhaha over Tory Brexit divisions. We know that more than half of Labour MPS wanted Mr Corbyn to go yet he was saved by the hard-left membership. If his own MPS do not want to be led by him why should they foist him on the rest of us?