Labour is heading for an inevitable split, according to front page reports in three national titles on Wednesday: the Times (“Labour risks bloody split after Corbyn beats rebels”), the Independent (“Labour fears party will split after Corbyn ruling”) and the Daily Mirror (“Uncivil war could split Labour for ever”)
None of the articles produced hard evidence of a split following the decision to allow Jeremy Corbyn’s name to be included “automatically” on the leadership ballot paper. But they are, surely, correct in their speculations.
The Times believed that “the prospect of a Labour party split” is now “more likely amid rumours at Westminster that rebel MPs are considering setting up a new centrist party if their coup fails.”
The Mirror, basing its report on the possibility that “rebel MPs” will desert the party should Corbyn win the leadership vote, did not identify the rebels.
Instead, it quoted an MP, said to be “close to tears”, as saying: “This is an absolute disaster. It honestly could be the end.”
And it also mentioned another (or possibly the same one) who was said to have told the Mirror she believed the party was certain to split if Corbyn wins the vote.
In a separate piece, the paper’s political editor, Jason Beattie, cast a little more light on the nature of rebellion. He wrote: “It is agonising to watch the slow, painful demise of Labour”, and continued:
“The poison in Labour’s veins is so deep, so toxic, that nobody can see a way of this ending harmoniously.
An organisation which prided itself on solidarity and camaraderie is now steeped in bitterness, where bricks are thrown through windows and bile spewed on social media.”
Accepting that Corbyn will be re-elected as leader, Beattie thought he would be “unable to command the support of the majority of MPs.”
If so, “rebels could either try to form their own opposition or peel off to set up another party.”
The Mirror’s leading article reinforced its opposition to Corbyn: “Labour must learn from the Tories and quickly pick a leader to steer it from the very dark place it finds itself in after the mirthless pantomime of recent weeks.”
The party could become “fatally deadlocked” should Corbyn win again.” It is, of course, fatally deadlocked already.
And that, of course, is the point. As I wrote last month, reiterating what I had said in December last year, the Labour party is now irretrievably divided. It is, as Beattie, wrote “steeped in bitterness.”
This bitterness is due to a dormant political volcano having erupted in September 2015 with the election of Corbyn as leader. His victory was the result of people on the left - young and old - giving practical expression to their pent-up frustrations.
Suddenly, a long concealed ideological fissure emerged into the daylight. Tony Blair’s modernisation of Labour had not, after all, had the effect of changing the hearts and minds of many thousands of people.
Unreconstructed left-wingers, such as Corbyn, John McDonnell, Ken Livingstone and Diane Abbott, plus various trades union leaders, were able to transform their dreams of power into reality.
In the Blair years, they knuckled down but they did not go away. They held on to their beliefs and to their hopes of edging the party back towards more socialist policies.
Altogether more surprising, and entirely unexpected (I suspect to the old left as well as to everyone else) was the way in which Corbyn’s cause was taken up by the young. The reasons for their enthusiasm have yet to be properly explored and explained.
Clearly, in the aftermath of the Blair project (as amended by Ed Miliband), they felt the party did not represent their aspirations. Why?
I suspect they were informed by a mixture of an anti-Westminster, anti-centralisation, anti-authority (and, of course, anti-Tory) agenda. But I cannot be sure.
It would be far-fetched to imagine that young people in cities across Britain have been influenced by a cadre of former Trotskyists preaching revolution in secret in schools and universities.
Running in parallel has been a transformation in the attitudes of older people who once voted Labour as a matter of rote. Those formerly loyal working class voters were already pulling away before Corbyn was elected, with many deserting for Ukip.
They did not identify with the views of the “middle class” right-of-centre Labour MPs who represented them. And it is highly doubtful that they will feel any more comfortable with Corbyn.
So there it is: a series of splits that appear to be widening with each passing day. Compromise is surely impossible and “saving Labour” in such circumstances is out of the question. It is only a matter of time before the party implodes
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