Nothing corrodes like victory. Ukip’s triumph in the referendum has triggered its near-complete breakdown. The success of Vote Leave resulted in its biggest brain, Michael Gove, immolating both his career and the prime ministerial hopes of the campaign’s biggest star, Boris Johnson. A similar fate has befallen Momentum, the organisation born of Jeremy Corbyn’s first successful bid for the Labour leadership and the motor for his second landslide in succession. Victory over Corbyn’s rivals in September has been swiftly followed by infighting.
The seeds of the discord were planted at Momentum’s birth. Its founder, Jon Lansman, entered politics as Tony Benn’s back-room fixer. He knew that Corbyn’s leadership would be challenged in parliament by sceptical MPs, and at the grass roots by more centrist activists. Momentum’s early guarantors in the labour movement – the transport union TSSA and the Unite mega-union – also saw its purpose as being to rebuff such efforts. And so Momentum came into being as a cudgel for the party’s left. It was designed to be a power base for the leadership, just as Labour First and Progress had been for the party’s right.
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