Labour must rebuild to avoid extinction

Electorate have rejected Corbyn’s brand of leftism too often for party to doubt the need for change

Not so very long ago, there were constituencies across the United Kingdom which Labour could be expected to win, no matter which way the political wind was blowing.

Solid, “heartlands” seats across Scotland and the north of England gave the party a bedrock on which to build and, when the tide turned away from the party, ensured Labour would always have a strong parliamentary presence.

But the days when the joke ran that Labour could stick a rosette on a monkey in some seats and it would get elected are now long past.

The Labour Party’s fortunes in Scotland have been on a downward spiral since 2007, when the SNP won its first Holyrood election.

A failure to keep ahead of the constitutional debate in Scotland saw Labour all but annihilated at the ballot box. The party now sits a miserable third, behind the Conservatives, at Holyrood.

Now the Labour Party south of the Border is learning that constitutional argument can be very dangerous, indeed.

Leader Jeremy Corbyn’s pitifully weak position on Brexit – spun as an attempt to bring together a divided nation but, in reality, a reflection of his heartfelt Euroscepticism – was greeted by voters with contempt in last week’s European parliamentary elections.

Unimpressed by Labour’s confusing message on a second referendum – the members wanted one and the leader seemed rather cross about the idea – voters threw their support behind parties with a clear position on Europe.

Yesterday, the Labour Party was fully bogged-down in damaging in-fighting. Alastair Campbell, spin doctor to Tony Blair during his years as prime minister, was expelled from the party after revealing that he voted Liberal Democrat last week.

Meanwhile, two members of the party’s Holyrood front-bench – leftwinger Neil Findlay and centrist Daniel Johnson – resigned their position to sit on the backbenches. Neither of these resignations looks like much of an endorsement of the leadership of Richard Leonard, the Corbyn loyalist who took control of the party in Scotland in 2017.

We have now seen “Corbynism” tested in elections to Holyrood, Westminster, and Brussels. On each occasion, Labour’s brand of unreconstructed leftism has been roundly rejected.

If Labour is to start rebuilding – and it may be too late for that – then it simply must remove Mr Corbyn from his leadership role.

Made utterly irrelevant by terrible leadership decisions during the biggest debate of our times, Labour is on the brink of extinction.