Labour MPS have no reason to stay

While the new party remains defined by its commitment to the EU, it will limit its appeal among Labour defectors

Until yesterday, the factor that united every Labour MP who left the party this week was opposition to Brexit. Ian Austin, however, who represents the West Midlands town of Dudley, voted for Theresa May’s withdrawal deal. His farewell letter spoke of a “culture of extremism, anti-semitism and intolerance” taking over the party, saying Jeremy Corbyn and John Mcdonnell “cannot be trusted with our national security and would undermine our democratic institutions”. Mr Austin accused them of backing dictatorships, and even supporting the IRA “when they were planting bombs and murdering people”.

So why not stay in the Labour Party and fight the barmy army? Mr Austin has concluded that it is too late. The war is lost. “I think Jeremy Corbyn has completely changed what was a mainstream party into a completely different party with very different values,” he told his local newspaper. “The hard-left is now in charge.”

This claim is supported by the change in membership; the influence of Len Mccluskey’s Unite union; the backroom role of radicals such as Seumas Milne; the new power of conference; aggressive online activism; and, most obviously, attempts to deselect moderate MPS. The Left has used Mr Corbyn’s four years to reshape not just the policy of Labour but its organisation, and there will probably be no going back. Even if Mr Corbyn resigned the leadership tomorrow, who doubts that a Corbynite would stand and win in his place? Labour is becoming a vanguard party primarily answerable to Left-wing activists, rather than their MPS’ constituents.

What are the remaining soft-left MPS going to do about it? Tom Watson, the deputy leader, described Mr Austin’s departure as a “serious blow to my party”. He said Luciana Berger, a Jewish MP, was driven out by racists. Barry Gardiner, the shadow international trade secretary, said she had been “bullied” and that Labour has “let down” British Jews. If one accepts that Labour is now home to anti-semites

– if one accepts, as Mr Austin does, that Labour has been captured for good – what else is there to do but walk away? The road has been opened by this week’s resignations. There is no excuse for any true social democrat or democratic socialist to stay in Mr Corbyn’s party.

There is still the old appeal of the party’s name, which for some is a badge of class loyalty: Labour, the party that supposedly lifted up the workers and built the welfare state. This myth is a strength for the Left – it gives it a near-religious zeal – but also its greatest problem. Labour is blinded by a rather pathetic sentimentalism, as demonstrated by MP Lloyd Russell-moyle’s use of the word “scab” to describe his colleagues who resigned the whip, as though this was 1974 and he was a shop steward. In fact, the Labour movement has made countless mistakes before now, usually at the expense of the people it claims to represent: mass nationalisation, the Winter of Discontent, the Iraq war, over-spending, and the control-freakery of the Blair era. The present grassroots revolution is a response to Labour’s last, disappointing, morally dubious period in office – and thus the Blairites and Brownites must concede that they have sown the seeds of their own disaffiliation.

Walking away from a party is one thing; establishing a coherent alternative is another. Mr Austin’s intention to sit separately from the new Independent Group proves it. So long as that group remains defined by its commitment to the EU, it may attract disaffected Tories but, ironically, it will limit its appeal among traditional Labour voters fleeing the Corbynites. There are a lot of Britons, many of them working-class, who don’t want to be ruled by Brussels, don’t believe Shamima Begum should come back to Britain to receive “some support” (in the words of Mr Corbyn), don’t think the police should be obsessed with hate crimes and don’t want welfare to be dished out to all, no questions asked. Who represents them? Ideally, the Conservative Party – but until the Tories pull themselves together, a large swathe of the electorate will remain homeless.