Corbynism forever? That’s the general verdict on the consequence of Jeremy Corbyn’s big victory on Labour’s ruling executive yesterday, as the NEC passed proposals to reform the party’s structures. The big ticket items: an expansion of the number of trade union and membership places on the NEC, and a reduction in the number of parliamentary signatures required for candidates for the party leadership, from 15 per cent to 10 per cent of the PLP. (That’s 28 MPs and MEPs or 26 MPs if the next leadership election takes place if/when Brexit has happened and there are no MEPs.)
“Forever” is an awfully long time, and you don’t have to remember that far back to a time when one member, one vote was meant to ensure that the likes of David Miliband would be elected leader forever. “Forever” turned out to mean “not at all”. Labour has an amusing tradition of its constitutional quirks not quite working out the way its architects hope, and it may well happen the same way this time.
The far more interesting story is what these rule changes say about Jeremy Corbyn and his senior team. They’re getting better at games of “you scratch my back, I scratch yours” with the trade unions. The leadership also backed the Jewish Labour Movement’s motion giving the party tougher powers to kick anti-Semites out and released a statement about it, too. As well as being the right thing to do, there’s a crude electoral argument here – if Labour can repair its relationship with the community, its dominance in the capital and elsewhere will only increase.
All in all, the Labour leader is taking the challenge of winning more seriously and his team are increasingly streetwise. His internal opponents, well, they seem to be going in the opposite direction.
You don’t have to agree with it to see that there is a good principled case to be made against weakening the right of MPs to help select the party’s leader. Making it might even help Labour’s Corbynsceptics, as one of their biggest problems is that Labour members see them as unprincipled. Yet instead of making it, they’re criticising the move as “a power grab”, and one that divides Labour when they should be uniting against the Tories. Bluntly, Corbyn grabbed power once in September 2015 and again in September 2016 and consolidated it in June 2017. And the problem is, it’s only divisive because Corbynsceptics are opposing it.
(Also, let’s face it, if June 2017 had ended in a Labour rout, you better believe that whichever Corbynsceptic MP emerged as leader would be changing the hell out of the Labour party rulebook right about now rather than focusing on beating the Tories.)
Although there are significant exceptions – Bridget Phillipson’s recent longread for the New Statesman is one – it’s all too rare to hear a senior Corbynsceptic argue from principle rather than expediency. And until that changes, Corbynites will, indeed, remain in charge of Labour forever.
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