Why have Jeremy Corbyn’s allies drawn up a list ranking Labour MPs according to how hostile they are to the leadership? It’s not the first list that categorises MPs: I revealed in the Times recently that the moderates who are plotting to destabilise the Labour leader had drawn up their own list that ranged from the ‘signed-up Corbynistas’, the ‘nervous soft left’, the ‘organisational left’, ‘centrists’ and the moderates.
It might be that the Corbynites are simply trying to understand the Labour party a bit better and finally improve their parliamentary operation. This would be a smart move given so many Labour MPs are distinctly wary of their leader, though it would have been smarter to start doing this when Corbyn was elected to the job back in September, rather than go through months of MPs feeling he was avoiding them.
But the view of the moderate MPs is that actually this list isn’t about Corbyn trying to shore up his support in the party, but his allies trying to tell those plotting to remove the leader that they have enough MPs to protect him, and that the plotters should back off. It’s a Brownite-style move that the moderates believe comes as a result of the recent addition of Damian McBride to the Labour spinning operation. One moderate MP mutters: ‘Straight back to the brutal Brownite survival operation, no matter how much damage it does to the party.’ Indeed, the combination of a Brownite operation and the Corbynite habit of sparking rows on fringe-left issues to divide the party will have a potent effect on Labour.
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