As well as the rather big problem of how to get rid of a leader they think is unpalatable to the general voting public, Labour MPs also have to work out how to protect themselves from deselection. Simon Danczuk seems to be the only member keen to talk about the former, claiming today that he’s happy to be a ‘stalking horse’ if Labour performs badly in next May’s local, London and Holyrood elections. But without many colleagues backing him and the leadership contest rules and party membership remaining the same, Danczuk could find that his intervention drops like a dead donkey.
On the second question – how to prevent the new Corbynite membership from ousting non-Corbynista MPs when some constituencies are being re-allocated as a result of the boundary review – one of the party’s new and gloriously outspoken MPs Jess Phillips shared her thoughts with Pienaar’s Politics earlier today. Asked about the new ‘grassroots movement’ Momentum, the Birmingham Yardley MP said:
‘I’ve met some of the people from Momentum and they seem like two very normal individuals with very little agenda other than doing some good and I will be spreading that message among the PLP.
‘What I would say to those members that are worried is work now getting to know all the new members. These people will only be able to deselect you if you take your eye off the ball. You have to love them rather than be scared of them and if you love them, they’re less likely to deselect you.’
This lovebombing approach also means MPs can argue that they have done everything they can to accommodate these new members, rather than allow grievances to build. Another non-Corbynite MP tells me that the only way to convince these new members that Corbyn is not the man to win a general election for Labour is to organise regular doorstep sessions where they actually talk to voters and find out what they think and what they want.
This sounds very sensible, but it does have a number of flaws as a strategy. The first is that many Labour members who were knocking on doors this May were convinced that Ed Miliband was going to win it for them and that voters were on board.
The second, which is really the reason for the first, is that knocking on doors can end up with campaigners just telling voters what those voters want, rather than the voters getting a chance to say much, and if the voters do say much, it is tempting for those campaigners to think that the voters are either in a minority in wanting controls on immigration, for instance, or are awful racists who should be re-educated.
This was Arnie Graf’s beef with Labourites in the run-up to the election, and unless those MPs trying to work out how to work with Momentum and their new CLP members also work out how to change those doorstep conversations into something that teach the activists about the voters, then the party could end up doing what it did this spring, which is holding five million conversations where it only heard what it wanted.
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