MPS must follow Frank Field’s lead

Labour has changed. Many times in the past it has sunk into civil war or wandered from the mainstream – but this time, truly, things are different. The resignation of Frank Field told us so. Mr Field has been an MP since 1979. An honourable man of independent views, he has gone into battle with both the hard-left and New Labour – but remained utterly loyal to the mainstream, working-class tradition of the Labour Party. And yet this week he felt compelled to resign the whip. How did things get to this point?

Comparisons are made with the Eighties, but things were different back then. The hardleft activism of Militant or the National Union of Miners was extreme and dangerous, but fundamentally economic and rooted in class. Labour’s ruling soft-left was a mix of middle-class intellectuals and working-class socialists drawn from the trades-union movement, reflected in the leaderships of Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock. And the party as a whole was balanced between idealism and pragmatism, with victory largely going to the latter thanks to those level-headed men and women who had been shaped by the Second World War. It was the unions who often broke the Left: it was veterans like Denis Healey, a former Army major and Oxford double-first, who defeated Tony Benn. Mr Benn, a friend and hero to Jeremy Corbyn, shared that generational experience and had himself served in the RAF.

Today, the tradition of patriotic democratic socialism is gone, and it wasn’t just the loony Left that did for it. Tony Blair’s New Labour experiment tore out the party’s traditional values; parts of the working-class ceased to vote. In the Noughties, the party became stuffed with careerists who, if they believed anything, were liberals. “We might not be romantics,” they said, “but we do know how to govern” – yet Iraq and the credit crunch proved them wrong. It’s no wonder that when these hollow men opened the party up to outside supporters and loosened the leadership rules, the hard-left won. It’s reported that when one Labour MP recently updated his mailing list, he found that his local party was at an all-time high of 300 members, and yet 200 members had quit since Mr Corbyn’s takeover. That’s not just a victory. It’s an enemy occupation.

Reading between the lines, that’s why Mr Field walked away – because Labour has been conquered. By what? Not just economic socialism, which after years of austerity was always going to return, but also mob tactics and sinister cultural politics. Mr Corbyn, for example, believes that Nato was created to promote a cold war. He has shared platforms with extremists. Mr Field says that Labour’s leadership is becoming a “force for anti-semitism”. It’s no wonder he decided to leave. And how have Corbynites reacted? To call him a closet Tory, to say he jumped before he was pushed – so much for that “kinder, gentler” politics. And yet many MPS, including the deputy leader, have implied they are sad rather than angry that he is walking, because he is so venerable and, we infer in some cases, because they know he has a point. If so, will they follow him?

They should, but many won’t – because the lingering curse of the New Labour years is cowardice and a dearth of principle. Nothing could have stopped Healey from fighting; the Gang of Four had the courage to walk away and found the SDP; former minister Reg Prentice even crossed the floor and joined the Tories. If Labour’s Remain MPS really believe that Brexit is the worst thing to happen to Britain since the Black Death, and that Mr Corbyn is to blame, why don’t they all resign and sit as independents or join the Lib Dems? Because, ultimately, their parliamentary careers come first.

How fascinating, how revealing that it has taken a 76-year-old backbencher from the maverick wing of the party to take a stand against Mr Corbyn. More MPS must grow a backbone and do the same. Not just to revive a sane, honourable Left-wing tradition but to represent Labour’s heartlands with moral integrity – and offer the nation’s voters a real choice at the next election.

Labour has been conquered not just by economic socialism but also mob tactics and sinister politics