Labour’s existential crisis has been knocked out of the headlines by the internal politics of the Tory party. But it is no nearer a resolution. As reporters rushed to witness Andrea Leadsom’s self-immolation, the former shadow business secretary Angela Eagle launched her much-delayed challenge to Jeremy Corbyn. Whether it will resolve the bitter impasse between the parliamentary Labour party, the leadership and party members will depend a lot on how much the two sides genuinely want it to, and how far one or both sees it as a play on the road to a split in the party that they already regard as inevitable or even – catastrophically – as desirable. It is courageous of Ms Eagle to challenge Mr Corbyn, but she will need to do much more than she did at her launch to engage with the scale of the disaster that is threatening the party.
On Tuesday Labour’s national executive, the body that represents the whole party, will rule on the terms of the contest. That will include the key judgment of whether Mr Corbyn has to secure the nominations of 50 fellow MPs before his name can be on the ballot. Only 40 backed him in last month’s no confidence vote. There are people, passionately committed to the party and a Labour victory, who believe that unless Mr Corbyn can win the nominations required then the coalition on which the party depends, balancing the PLP with trade unions and members, no longer functions; the current standoff will just go on. Legal opinion, like the NEC, appears balanced. Lawyers say that if a court were asked to decide, it would be likely to support any NEC decision unless the decision itself were palpably unfair.
The very idea of a Labour leader going to law to settle an internal row, even one as significant as this, is outrageous. Mr Corbyn is the properly elected party leader; he won the election, and he has a mandate from the membership in accordance with the party’s constitution. The contest is necessary, because the standoff cannot continue, but it will settle nothing unless his name is on the ballot. To exclude him now, in this perilous and fragile political era, would be a betrayal of half a million members who are entitled to a say in their party’s future; and it would destroy any claim Labour might have to be the party of fairness and justice.
Now the job of the challenger is to engage with the Labour selectorate and with Mr Corbyn’s appeal. To do that, Ms Eagle – assuming it is she – will have to show that she understands the political optimism that thousands of new members have projected on to him as a leader who offers a different, more principled kind of politics. She needs to get out and win the argument.
But no one should be under any illusion that a new leader will end Labour’s difficulties. It is easy to look at the polls showing the party trailing the Tories – a governing party in crisis – and imagine that a new leader will make all the difference. It won’t. Consecutive election defeats indicate a deeper malaise, a party that has lost touch with the people it was set up to represent and allowed the structures that once provided communication and purpose to wither away. It’s not a problem unique to Labour. But arguing over who is in charge may come to be seen as mere displacement therapy, an alternative to finding the answer to the much bigger and harder question of the kind of politics that is needed for the 21st century.
