Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour party, is trying hard to reconcile the different factions within his party, as he knows that a house divided against itself cannot stand. And if he wants Labour to win the next general election and fulful his desire of becoming the prime minister of Britain, he has to unite the party.
Corbyn’s supporters believe that if only the party would present a united front behind him it has a reasonable chance of winning a general election, despite having lost most of Scotland to the SNP.
In a recent YouGov poll only 19 per cent of the public said Corbyn would make a better prime minister than Theresa May. For the new Tory prime minster, however, she hopes Corbyn will stay leader as long as possible because parties with deeply unpopular leaders like him don’t win elections.
But despite his unpopularity, Corbyn has beaten the populists at their own game, at least on one level. Under his stewardship, Labour’s membership has ballooned to 515,000, which is more than all Britain’s other parties put together.
One volunteer, Mumtaz Khan, says that the Labour party in his north London ward, Fortis Green, has grown enormously due to Corbyn’s leadership. “We used to have 150 members, now it’s more than 500. The meetings were six people around a coffee table. Now it’s 50 people and we can’t find a space big enough.”
In the two months of campaigning, support for Corbyn has been more vocal, visible and visceral. “The turnout at rallies has been even bigger than last year,” says Manuel Cortes, general secretary of the TSSA rail union.
However, the ongoing structural impasse between Labour MPs and members is almost unprecendented in British politics. “You can’t have a political party that is alienated from the party members to such a degree,” says Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former Tory foreign secretary.
About 13,000 new members who joined after January have been stopped from voting in the leadership contest unless they become registered supporters at a cost of 25 pounds.
The relations between Corbynistas and anti-Corbynistas have become so fractious that most local party meetings have been halted until after the leadership election.
Polls suggest Labour could win as few as 153 seats in the next election, worse than in its previous lurch leftwards in the 1980s.
“The purity of perpetual protest offers only the road to electoral annihilation,” warns Dan Jarvis, a centrist MP.
Lord Kinnock says Labour was facing the “greatest crisis” in its history. The former Labour leader has predicted the party will not win another general election in his lifetime.
As a leader, Corbyn’s lack of management skills became quickly apparent. In early December when MPs debated bombing jihadis in Syria, Corbyn, a former chair of the Stop the War Coalition, offered his party a free vote but then failed to stop his allies abusing dissenting MPs online. Also, Corbyn’s shadow cabinet reshuffle in January lasted just three days, his performance at PM’s questions were indifferent, he seemed slow to get tough on anti-Semitic comments by some members.
If Corbyn does remain leader, Labour faces more imminent problems. The party still lacks a full shadow cabinet, with several figures filling multiple positions. “It is like fog. It will all clear up once the leadership is decided,” says Manuel Cortes of the TSSA union.
Paddy Ashdown, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, says, “With Labour it does not matter who is the leader, Labour cannot win a general election for the foreseeable future, perhaps forever, by themselves, because of the rise of Ukip and the SNP, they have no option but to work with us.”
One Labour MP says the fight will not end with Corbyn’s re-election. “This is an engagement within a battle within a war.” Some are already discussing when to launch the next leadership challenge. Corbyn himself used to be a fan of annual contests. “The only way to do this is to have a charismatic candidate who can bring in new members from outside the bubble,” says one former shadow cabinet member.
Meanwhile, Labour deputy leader Tom Watson is trying to push through a deal that would allow party MPs to pick who is in the shadow cabinet.
Watson will raise the proposal at the ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) on Tuesday (September 20) in a bid to get it on the agenda at next week's party conference.
However, Corbyn wants discussion of the proposals delayed until next year as part of a wider reform of “party democracy”.
Watson has put forward two proposals: one that would see MPs chose the shadow cabinet and the other that would split the decision evenly between MPs, Corbyn and the party members.
If the NEC agrees the party will vote on it at its annual conference in Liverpool which begins after the leadership decision is announced on Saturday.
