Jezza v Chuka
THE BATTLE FOR LABOUR Corbyn elected again – with even bigger majority Party insiders predict ‘exodus of moderate MPs’ But rising star Umunna tipped to challenge him
CHUKA Umunna was last night predicted to mount a challenge to oust Jeremy Corbyn before the next General Election – just hours after he was returned as Labour leader with a crushing majority.
The former Shadow Business Secretary is being pushed by allies to stand as the only Labour leadership hopeful with a ‘realistic’ chance of winning the 2020 poll. Otherwise, senior party figures predict an ‘exodus’ by moderate Labour MPs who despair of being locked out of power for a generation.
The fightback is likely to include an effort to combat Mr Corbyn’s massed ranks of activists by setting up a ‘moderate’ Momentum to rival the grassroots hard-Left organisation that backs Corbyn.
The Labour leader declared yesterday that he wanted to ‘wipe the slate clean’ over feuding in the party after beating rival Owen Smith with nearly 61.8 per cent of the vote – just above the 59.5 per cent when he won the leadership a year ago but below what ardent Corbyn supporters were expecting.
Mr Corbyn made clear he hoped the result would put an end to the plotting against his leadership, telling supporters in Liverpool: ‘My mandate has been renewed with a big increase, considerably more than a year ago. I think we should recognise that.’
Speaking as the party conference got under way in the city, he pleaded for an end to the infighting.
‘We have much more in common than divides us,’ he added. ‘Let us wipe that slate clean from today and get on with the work that we have to do as a party.’
But the win, which came after tens of thousands of his supporters joined the party, has led to fears among moderate Labour MPs that they will be targeted for deselections in their constituencies.
At the same time, centre-Right MPs claim their leader’s ‘dire’ poll ratings could lead many of them to quit the Commons anyway to pursue other careers. One senior Labour MP said: ‘Many Labour MPs are sick and tired of the abuse, intimidation and extremism that has come to define Corbyn’s Labour Party. You may see an exodus of moderate Labour MPs announce they want to stand down because they know Corbyn has sentenced the party to a generation in futile opposition and that we face a near annihilation at the General Election.’
However, sources close to Mr Corbyn said he expected his emphatic victory to mark the start of a truce in the party.
Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, who had previously insisted Mr Corbyn could not unite the UK party or win a General Election, seemed to agree. She said: ‘Jeremy can unite the Labour Party but he needs to want to unite it. That means he needs to work with both the party across the country, and MPs, to provide an effective opposition to the Tories in Westminster.’
Mr Umunna used a television interview yesterday to set out his vision of what Labour had to do – and made clear the limits to Mr Corbyn’s victory.
He said: ‘When you hear all this talk of de-selection of good, hardworking Labour MPs, I think that’s completely counter-productive. Jeremy should be very clear that’s the end of the matter.
‘The task we have of uniting the party is reconciling the mandate that’s been repeated today – similar to the last one that Jeremy got from the membership – with the mandate that Labour MPs elected under a different leader have from 9.3million Labour voters.’
He also emphasised ‘the 40 per cent of the electorate in this contest who’ve also said they’ve had concerns about the leadership’.
Mr Umunna, MP for Streatham in South London, piled on the pressure for the Labour leader to agree to return to an elected Shadow Cabinet – seen as the only way to get leading anti-Corbyn MPs to serve on Labour’s frontbench.
Although he pulled out of the 2015 Labour leadership contest complaining about press intrusion, when asked earlier this year if he would run against Mr Corbyn, Mr Umunna replied: ‘If a vacancy came up, I certainly wouldn’t rule it out.’
One of his allies last night said: ‘This is early days but Chuka is definitely back in the game and up for this in the future.’
Mr Corbyn’s triumph yesterday
‘Labour MPs are sick of the abuse and extremism’ ‘Now it’s up to him to get his act together’
was greeted with dismay by moderate Labour MPs. Barrow MP John Woodcock said: ‘Jeremy has decided he won’t quit despite dividing the party and presiding over a historic collapse in the polls.
‘We are up the proverbial creek but I’m sure some Corbynistas will be able to knit us a paddle made out of organic hemp. Now it’s up to him to get his act together or this will go down in history as the day a Tory landslide became inevitable.’
SIR CRAIG OLIVER’S memoir of life inside Downing Street during the referendum campaign is vivid, instructive and, at times, deeply troubling.
Most alarmingly, we learn that Boris Johnson was glibly dismissing the chance of a Brexit victory just minutes before coming out publicly to back the cause.
Oliver, who wrote his book in the heat of the Brexit battle, risks the accusation that his is a partial account and an exercise in score-settling.
But he speaks with the authority of someone who had the ear of David Cameron for more than six years.
The Foreign Secretary, who played a pivotal role in the Leave campaign and is now central to our negotiations with Brussels, does not appear to know his own mind on the matter.
Oliver’s recollections – effectively the first draft of Brexit history – also shed an intriguing light on Theresa May.
David Cameron begged Mrs May to campaign for the Remain cause on numerous occasions. She agreed, grudgingly, just once, leading Cameron to believe that she was positioning herself for a leadership bid.
No 10 dubbed her the ‘submarine’, because while Boris Johnson and Michael Gove fought a poisonous and public battle, at times being economic with the truth, she was steaming silently towards power.
Cameron, understandably, felt deeply frustrated by this approach.
But Mrs May’s calm, discreet, unshowy style could be an asset in the coming years, as she leads the country’s Brexit negotiations. She has also been bold and impressive in domestic policy, such as her plans to bring back grammar schools south of the Border, and her one-nation Tory message.
Oliver argues that Remain lost because they relied too heavily on economic scare tactics, and failed to address voters’ concerns about immigration.
But it was legitimate for Cameron to emphasise the risks which Brexit posed. It will not be certain that we have escaped these threats for several years.
That is why it will be so important for Mrs May to demonstrate the better qualities of a ‘submarine’: tough, resilient, purposeful and effective.