Jeremy Corbyn was insistent this morning on the Andrew Marr Show that he isn’t going anywhere. More than that: he insisted that Labour is ‘changing the way politics is done’. His opponents in the party would agree, as it happens. Corbyn is going nowhere, certainly not anywhere near to Number 10, but also nowhere near being a functioning Opposition leader. And he is changing the way politics is done, by making it more and more difficult for Labour to ever get into power.
The interview itself was proof that under Corbyn, Labour cannot function as an Opposition. Even those in the party who support the direction in which he is taking Labour must acknowledge that Corbyn had to spend most of the 20 minutes talking about the challenges to his authority, the holes on his frontbench, and how he would deal with a leadership contest. When Marr asked him whether he was stressed, Corbyn retorted that real stress was being unable to feed your family. But the Labour party cannot speak on behalf of those people when it is in such a terrible mess that all the focus is naturally on its internal dynamics, not its external policy positions.
Corbyn is determined that he is going nowhere – and he is determined that Labour members will have the chance to vote him back in, telling Marr that he would go to the courts if the party’s National Executive Committee rules that he needs 51 nominations from MPs in order to get back on the ballot paper. ‘I will challenge that if that is a view they take,’ he said. ‘I would just ask anyone in the party to think for a moment – is it really right that the members of the party should be denied a decision, a discussion, a choice in this?’
Corbyn is confident that if he gets back onto the ballot paper, the members will re-elect him. Some of his opponents are trying to recruit new members who support their view of what Labour should look like as a party, but they did try this during last year’s leadership contest, and it didn’t work out all that well. So it looks like before a bitter leadership contest in Labour (to accompany the bitter one that’s underway in the Tory party), there is going to be a bitter legal battle, too.
Comments