Whether or not to serve on Labour’s frontbench is a question of the same order of asking whether the deck chairs on the Titanic should face north or south. But Labour MPs do have to work out what’s best to do while their ship is being captained by Jeremy Corbyn – and we’re starting to see signs of splits within the moderate camp on how best to do this. This evening, centrist MP Johnny Reynolds is reported to be returning to the Labour frontbench as City Minister, which may mean Labour actually holds meetings with people in the City as opposed to ignoring them. But it is also a completely different approach to that being mooted by a number of his like-minded colleagues.
I understand the the chairs of the backbench committees now plan to work as a formal shadow shadow frontbench, holding policy inquiries and publishing reports, asking Urgent Questions in the Commons and planning their own lines of attack at departmental questions. They would develop what they see as being sensible Labour policies on matters such as airport expansion and business policy, partly to give Labour a stronger voice in Parliament and partly to show up their official frontbench.
This is a constructive way of using time and means that the government might not be able to relax quite as much as it has been doing. But it will make no difference to Labour’s standing in the country: the public will see a divided party led by a man they don’t think can be Prime Minister and whose stances on key issues such as the economy and national security they see as wrong. And as some of their moderate colleagues rejoin the Labour frontbench, believing that to be the best way to serve the party even under the leadership of a man they wanted gone, they will be working not just against the Corbynites, but against their own allies.
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