We are in crisis but a new party is doomed
IT IS understandable that following the referendum result, our attention has been on the Conservative Party.
Theresa May is now in Downing Street and One Nation Conservatism in the ascendant.
A rather posh wedding could have descended into a bloody brawl but instead a dignified transfer of power was effected and the ruthlessness with which the table plan was reordered met with the general approval of the guests and calmed rather than excited further tensions.
Mrs May will now enjoy a deserved honeymoon. It was, in the end, a very civil marriage.
And now, with a heavy heart, our attention turns to the broken windows and broken hearts of the Labour Party since Hilary Benn was slung out of the Shadow Cabinet following the Brexit result.
No attention has been paid to
Labour’s position on the huge issues facing the country but on the struggle for power within the party itself.
Never in the long history of the Labour Party has a leader stayed in place after losing a vote of no confidence from his MPs. Never before have the Labour peers functioned independently of the party leader. Mr Corbyn has even described his parliamentary party as ‘constitutionally irrelevant’.
He now faces a leadership contest with Angela Eagle or Owen Smith and if Mr Corbyn wins that election there is high-level talk of a breakaway party of MPs who oppose the direction of the party under his leadership.
I think that such a party would be doomed. It would be part of the problem and not the solution as it would be based on the progressive politics that led to the rupture of trust between the Labour Party and the working class in the first place.
Labour is having an identity crisis because it has lost its identity. The Labour Party has been an enormous blessing to our country and its potential destruction should be a cause of grief and concern.
It has been a party that pursued the common good, healed divisions and developed a leadership drawn from the communities they represented.
Instead of fracturing into a new Blairite identity, Labour needs to once again draw its inspiration and leadership from the working class.
I supported Brexit with all my heart. I think the EU is hostile to democracy and has a contempt for the settled life of modest people. The free movement of labour has exerted a relentless pressure on the lives of working people.
That is why the poorest areas voted to leave. It was the Labour vote that swung the referendum.
The party should not now treat Brexit voters with contempt. Labour needs to return to its core purpose of ensuring that workers are represented at the tables of power in the politics and the economy of our country.
Talk of a Labour split is meaningless because there is nothing to split into.
In order to save itself Labour must not split, but become itself once more.