Post Corbyn scenarios

Whatever happens in the labour leadership election, the party will probably never be the same again. There, though, are a number of scenarios that spring to mind. Let’s start by assuming Corbyn wins – not a given especially in view of the recent poor performance of opinion polls, but it looks increasingly likely. What will happen? Here are the possible outcomes: 1. If there are extensive legal challenges to the result. These will drag on for ages and destroy the party making it totally unelectable for a generation. It is really an unthinkable scenario, but it could happen. 2. If the result is accepted there remains the question, how will the Labour MPs react? It seems likely that many of them will simply not follow Corbyn and will not accept him as the parliamentary leader. We then have two Labour Party groups in Parliament. The non-Corbyn group will have to choose a leader and this will be either Burnham or Cooper. 3. If this split continues it might become formalised and we have two main opposition parties. 4. A strong possibility in this circumstance could be negotiations between the non Corbyn Party and the Liberal Democrats. This effectively mirrors the circumstances of the mid 1980s when the Liberal Democrat Party was formed from an alliance between the Liberals and the breakaway Social Democrats. 5. Fast forward to the 2020 election and we have a possibility of two Labour Party’s fighting each other for seats. If they have any sense (not much has been shown so far) they will engage in electoral pacts to avoid them standing against each other in winnable seats. The Corbynites would contest seats in Scotland, the North of England, parts of London and the Midlands, while the non Corbyinites, now joined with the Liberal Democrats would contest the rest of England and Wales on a centrist/centre left ticket. 6. The Conservatives would win such an election, of course (barring strange events in the meantime) but the left of centre would at least have re-aligned itself on rational lines. If Corbyn does not win Labour looks set to drift on towards inevitable defeat in 2020, with a mass of defections among the grass roots membership. What OUGHT to happen if Corbyn does not win, is the party should consider carefully why he has proved to be so popular, in other words undertake a sensible debate about why the Corbyn message chimes with so many people and act on it. I suppose the real problem is that neither the Corbyn plan or the Burnham/Cooper position can win an election. The best Labour can hope for is to shore up its existing support, so the question is which position is most likely to do this. The answer is that, in some places – Scotland and deprived areas of England and Wales – the Corbyn plan would win seats, while in others parts of the North, Midlands and London, it is the centrist position that can win. This suggests two different parties which may well be what happens. Happily for Conservatives and sadly for Labour even this partnership does not add up to more than three hundred seats. The key may lie with the Liberal Democrats. Let’s not write them off yet.

The Corbyn Effect

If nothing else happens in the Labour leadership contest Jeremy Corbyn’s intervention has already had its effect. This is revealed in Andy Burnham’s ‘manifesto’, recently unveiled. We have to believe that such measures as rail nationalisation (albeit gradually), a bigger rise in the minimum wage than even Osborne proposes and the replacement of tuition fees with a graduate tax would not have been on Burnham’s horizon had Corbyn not found such traction with his extreme left agenda. Burnham now looks set to win the contest on second preferences, always assuming that Corbyn can’t make 50% or near on first ballot. The real point is that there is a large constituency which feels unrepresented by the main parties in the UK. That Labour will not win the next election, barring unforeseen disasters for the Government, is not in much doubt, but at least there will at least be a powerful voice in parliament speaking up for the low paid and the young with limited horizons and mountains of debt. In other words Corbyn and now Burnham have learned the SNP lesson.

Why are we surprised by Corbyn's popularity?

It is interesting to see the huge convulsion that Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘charge’ has caused both inside politics and in the media. There seem to be four explanations for the phenomenon. First, The right wing press assume that it is the ‘true’ heart of Labour being revealed after many years of Blairism. In other words, since the early 1990s Labour has only been pretending to be a centrist party. The left, lurking in the unions, in dark corners of urban local government and at the universities, has used the opportunity of Labour’s defeat to reveal itself. This chimes with their obsession with ‘entryism’. Second, the more thoughtful elements in the media, such as Andrew Rawnsley in his excellent article in today’s (August2) Observer, point out that Labour has always been a divided party, between the Blairite centre and the left. The Blairites are perceived to have lost and so party members want the left to have a go. The same happens with the Conservatives. Whenever they lose an election, their right wing gains the ascendancy (look at Howard’s brief leadership). There is a third explanation which comes from the left itself. This suggests that a large proportion of the country is effectively unrepresented when Labour takes up a centrist position. These are union members in traditional industries, people on low paid jobs who have to rely on benefits and the young who see their opportunities to be limited. The prospect of massive postgraduate debt, poor job opportunities and unaffordable housing, inevitable drives this last group into the arms of the left. This group must have been dismayed to hear Labour’s leaders accepting welfare benefit caps, high tuition fees, lukewarm policies on jobs for the young and very modest house building ambitions. In Scotland they had somewhere to go – the SNP - but no such luck in England. Small wonder they are flocking (sorry to use an animal based verb, I hear they are no longer pc) to the Corbyn camp. A fourth explanation comes from all quarters and is that Corbyn is authentic, is principled and says what he believes, while other politicians say what they think the centre ground of the electorate want to hear. Of course Labour used to have such a candidate, but he has, for whatever reason, ruled himself out. That is Alan Johnson. The doom mongers on the left are probably right. Labour cannot win another election for some time to come but it won’t be Corbyn’s fault, it will be caused by the absurd electoral system we use and the paucity of suitable, dominant and charismatic figures from the centre of the party. Even if David Miliband does ride over the horizon to try to pick up the pieces in two or three years time, the damage done to Labour may well be unrepairable. The centre left in British politics is fragmented and the centre right is not. There is no getting away from that. For those who take up a centrist position on politics, there is one crumb of comfort. Now that the Conservatives look set for a long period in power, they are showing every signs of avoiding a lurch to the right, so whether we have a Cameron/Osborne government in the years to come (which now looks a certainty), or a Cooper/Burnham one (which looks very unlikely), most people will not be able to tell the difference. It is the Corbyn constituency that needs to worry.