Return of the hard-left?
What happened
Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign for the Labour leadership suffered a surprise setback last week, when judges barred 130,000 new party members from voting in his contest with challenger Owen Smith. Overturning an earlier ruling, the Court of Appeal decided that Labour’s National Executive Committee had the power to exclude all party members who’d joined since 12 January. Most of the new members are thought to be left-wing Corbyn supporters, and a spokesman for his campaign denounced the court’s decision as “legally and democratically wrong”.
As the civil war in the party intensified, Corbyn launched an open attack on deputy leader Tom Watson, after the latter claimed that Labour was being infiltrated by “Trotsky entryists” who were “twisting the arms” of young Labour members ( see page 8). In reply, Corbyn accused Watson of knowingly “talking nonsense”.
What the editorials said
The Corbyn campaign has little to fear from the court ruling or the spat over “entryism”, said The Herald (Glasgow). With the overwhelming support of party members, his victory over Smith looks assured. But they should be worried by the reaction of the wider public. Many voters remember the bitter battles of the 1980s, when hard-left groups such as Militant sought to dominate the party. “Voters are unlikely to be kind to a Labour Party that looks vulnerable to such tactics again.” And the hard-left – with Corbyn’s blessing – is already busy in the party’s grass roots, said The Daily Telegraph. Moderate MPS have been threatened with deselection, and Corbynites are hoping to control bigger cities by winning the new regional mayoralties. It’s the 1980s all over again.
Labour’s “self-defeating” civil war has to stop, said the Daily Mirror. There has been far too much “internal squabbling, court cases, web trolling and bitter name-calling”. It’s a distraction from what should be the party’s focus: “fighting for its people” at a time when the Tories are cutting public services and forcing the NHS “deeper into crisis”.
What the commentators said
Corbynites accuse Tom Watson of peddling “conspiracy theories”, said John Harris in The Guardian. But it is undoubtedly the case that the “great wave” of new party members includes some “Trotsky entryists”. I have seen a few myself at Corbyn rallies, and talked to party members who are being driven “quietly mad by their trademark displays of righteous belligerence”. Their ideology and tactics are very similar to those of Militant in the 1980s: insinuating their way into positions of power in the party in order to push their own radical agenda. But Corbyn is “surely right” too, said Sean O’grady in The Independent, when he insists that the 300,000 new party members can’t all be from “the revolutionary-left”. Most are just “decent and honourable people who think that Corbyn is the sort of principled man who will not let them down”. They may be misguided, but they are not all “finger-jabbing Trots” of the type “wearily familiar to some of us with long memories”.
Labour “has to split”, said Philip Collins in The Times. The latest bout of infighting shows that it is no longer “a tenable party”. Its divisions are so deep that Corbyn now only communicates with his deputy, Watson, by letter. And how can it hope to win an election with Corbyn at its head when 172 MPS say they have no confidence in him? Bookmakers now give him only an 18% chance of becoming the next prime minister, the worst ever figure for an opposition leader. The precedents for a breakaway party are unpromising, said Bagehot in The Economist. When dissident Labour MPS formed the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 1980s, they made little headway at the polls. But that shouldn’t deter today’s moderates. Voters have changed. As the rise of UKIP shows, they are far more willing to drop old allegiances and vote for smaller parties. Indeed, there’s now every chance of building a “formidable electoral force”, if antiCorbyn MPS can only find the courage to ditch their “tribal commitment” to Labour.
What next?
The five new party members who brought the original court action seeking the right to vote in the leadership contest say they will not appeal to the Supreme Court against the latest judgement. They now face legal costs of at least £80,000, but hope to raise the money through crowdfunding.
Corbyn and leadership challenger Smith are scheduled to meet for five more head-to-head public debates before the deadline for voting on 21 September. The result of the election will be announced at the Labour Party conference later in the month.