‘Lennonists and Leninists’ – Labour divided

LABOUR MPs have given up attempts to sack Jeremy Corbyn as leader, creating the impression that the party’s civil wars may be over.

But battles taking place at the party conference show that Labour is still far from united.

Factions including Labour First and Progress are waging war against Momentum, the left-wing organisation which grew out of Mr Corbyn’s leadership campaign.

In a furious message to supporters, Labour First Secretary Luke Akehurst described Momentum as a mixture of naive “John Lennonists” and “extremely cynical Leninists”.

There is anger at the way Momentum has used a smartphone app called M.APP to instruct supporters, many of them young, how to vote at the conference.

So-called Labour moderates believe this helps explain why there will be no conference vote on Brexit. Instead, members chose to hold debates and votes on housing, rail, the NHS and pay.

Labour First held a conference rally on Sunday where speakers included MPs Stella Creasy, Ruth Smeeth, Chris Leslie, Wayne David, Vernon Coaker and Yvette Cooper.

It has been characterised as the vanguard of the old Labour right.

But it has made common cause with Progress, a group associated with the Blairites who controlled Labour for much of the 1990s and 2000s, and Progress Director Richard Angell also spoke at the Labour First rally. Writing in a daily conference briefing email to Labour First members, Mr Akehurst said Momentum had “denied members the chance to vote on Labour’s position on Brexit”. He said: “Momentum factionalists are just looking for ridiculous fights over anything. They thrive on conflict so they are trying to provoke division and infighting on conference.” And he claimed that amid many ‘decent idealists’ who have been politically energised by Corbyn – ‘John Lennonists’ – there were a ‘minority of cynical’ Leninists.