Owen’s a champion loser

ED MILIBAND famously had his ‘35 per cent strategy’ – the belief that if he could secure that percentage of the vote in last year’s Election he would become PM. Now, I am told, Owen Smith is pursuing a new version – the ‘40 per cent strategy’.

Although the official line from Smith and other Labour rebels is that he is still pushing hard to defeat Jeremy Corbyn, in reality few people believe that is a realistic possibility.

Instead they have identified a threshold of 40 per cent of the total votes, which they believe is the minimum he must achieve for his challenge to be a ‘success’. The thinking is that this would leave Labour MPs ‘within striking distance’ of Corbyn, paving the way for a fresh leadership challenge some time next year.

It would also make it unlikely that Corbyn and his allies would be able to mobilise sufficient activists to mount a concerted attempt to deselect MPs in revenge for the coup.

This is because while Labour ‘supporters’ may cast a vote for the party leader, only full members get a say in selecting MPs. According to insiders, Len McCluskey’s Unite union is currently setting up affiliated branches in several Constituency Labour Parties with a view to inflicting ‘punishment beatings’ on the rebels.

But unless Corbyn can himself break the 60 per cent barrier, the feeling is they will not have sufficient strength to unseat many sitting MPs.

‘The fact is, Corbyn doesn’t have the numbers to throw out any half-decent constituency MP,’ said one former Shadow Minister. ‘Unite can organise, but then we’ll just get the GMB to counterorganise. And then it’s stalemate.’

So stalemate beckons if Owen Smith’s 40 per cent strategy works. And that’s quite a big ‘if’. Just ask Ed Miliband.