You will never take party name, Corbyn tells rebels

Jeremy Corbyn has warned rebel MPs they will never take the Labour Party’s name if they force a split.

The Daily Telegraph reported this week that dissenting MPs were preparing to elect their own leader and launch a legal challenge for the party’s name and assets if Owen Smith failed to win the leadership contest. Mr Corbyn called the idea “bizarre”.

He said: “There’s no alternative, there’s no other party, we are the Labour Party, and I’m very proud to be the leader of the Labour Party.”

Were the Labour Party a rock group, it would be a tribute to a band from the Eighties. And it would be on the brink of splitting. Dissident, so-called “moderate” MPs are said to be considering secession if Jeremy Corbyn wins the leadership ballot. It sounds like a revival of the old soft-Left vs hard-Left rupture – Roy Jenkins vs Tony Benn – with one notable difference. In the Eighties, Labour eventually came to its senses. This time around, Bennism has the upper hand.

The choice between Mr Corbyn and Owen Smith is a false one. Mr Smith’s experience of high office is almost as paltry as Mr Corbyn’s, while his capacity for gaffes looks just as boundless. It is said that when he worked as a radio producer, he was ordered to get a comment for a story from the police – and he dialled 999 to ask for assistance.

His naivety might be forgivable if he offered a genuine alternative to Mr Corbyn’s absurdly Leftwing manifesto. But despite having once been an enthusiastic Blairite, the elastic Mr Smith has contorted himself into a hard-Left, if soft principled, position that offers almost no contradiction with Mr Corbyn. It is true that he would keep Trident. But he also proposes raising the highest rate of tax, introducing a wealth tax and spending huge amounts on public services. So the only real difference from Mr Corbyn is that Mr Smith believes he can make Corbynism electable.

On this basis, an alien visiting Earth would surely wonder why there is any tension within Labour at all. Corbynism has certainly injected a thuggishness into Left-wing politics, along with authoritarianism. But in many regards, Mr Corbyn simply articulates honestly and openly what the vast bulk of Labour MPs probably believe – and his overwhelming victory in the last leadership election indicates that he retains deep reserves of support among critical demographics.

Indeed, the fact that Mr Corbyn has performed so poorly yet still enjoyed around 30 per cent support in national polling suggests that Labour, no matter how mad it becomes, will never go away. And with the Tory majority presently so small and politics so uncertain in the post-Brexit era, sensible people have to keep on guard lest hard-Left ideas infect the body politic. We doubt Mr Smith can do it, but, for the sake of democracy, someone has to rescue Labour from its decline into irresponsible, populist socialism.