The Labour party has a troubling recess ahead of it. Many of its members just won’t know what to do with themselves. This is because for the first time in two years, there is no leadership contest. Those who had eschewed beach holidays in favour of spending their summer recess in windowless rooms listening to contenders for the top job fight over who would really, really nationalise the railways now have nothing to do.
Even before Labour lost the election unexpectedly well, few anticipated an immediate challenge to Jeremy Corbyn. He and his allies made it clear that he would stay on whatever the result, and even those who predicted a decimation of the party in the snap election realised that they had squandered their chance in last summer’s leadership contest and that the Labour membership was still furious with them. But now he is firmly in place as someone who started Labour’s return to power, not the man who killed the party as his critics claimed.
But can the party unity really last? I’ve explained before that there are still fundamental differences between the leadership and Labour MPs, which could quite easily spill out if Corbyn takes a position on any number of things that members feel are too important to stay silent on. Foreign policy, whether it be Europe or Isis, is one of the key flashpoints, but then so is defence, and other issues that most MPs don’t think about on a daily basis because they believe their party’s policy on them has long been settled, such as sex workers, which Corbyn caused a surprise row on last March.
Another flashpoint will be what the leadership decides to do about the party’s structures. There have already been heavy hints that changes are to come, but it’s not clear whether Corbyn and his allies have worked out what it is that they want to do.
There is the rumour of mandatory re-selection, something which has been floated by Chris Williamson, a fervent Corbyn ally who returned to Parliament in the snap election. When I spoke to Williamson about his support for mandatory re-selection of Labour MPs, he explained that this was a ‘personal view, really’, but equally he is unlikely to do anything that would undermine Corbyn. Williamson argues that the current process, whereby a rival candidate stands against a sitting MP for the votes of their local party, is too ‘hostile’:
‘The vast majority of MPs would get re-selected but if you just had a process where people are endorsed within each term of office, it’s kind of a neutral process whereas if it’s a trigger ballot mechanism, the implication is that people have got a problem with their member. A mandatory re-selection process is neutral. It’s not about de-selecting anybody. If you look at any other democratic institution, or right down to the smallest periodical community group like a bowls club, it’s no more of less than that.’
There are local parties where the MP appears to be under threat. Luciana Berger’s Liverpool Wavertree party was recently ‘taken over’ by the hard left, though she has publicly said she will work with them. One new executive committee member, Roy Bentham, threatened that she must apologise for opposing Jeremy Corbyn before the election, or face de-selection – though other members on the committee distanced themselves from this, and Momentum, which has hosted him as a speaker at its conferences in the past, said he was not a member. Bentham is also on Unite’s Executive Council.
It’s not just about MPs, though. One of the most hostile relationships is between Corbyn’s team and the party’s headquarters. Former Corbynite spinner Matt Zarb-Cousin referred to this in an interview about his time working for the party, saying ‘there were endless leaks from Southside, which makes it incredibly difficult to function in a professional way’. Many working in HQ are already looking for new jobs, knowing that the leadership will want to bring its own people into the building to replace them. And why shouldn’t Corbyn’s team do this? This is the sort of thing Tony Blair did to ensure that the party worked properly. Though Corbyn hasn’t actually won an election, he has won the argument in the party for the time being.
One senior Labour source says the plans for HQ have ‘never been a rank and file thing. It’s more about having control at the top, at directorate level’. The party’s current General Secretary Iain McNicol has long been the target of briefings from those around Corbyn. He and other senior staff are unlikely to be able to relax this summer.
But Corbyn’s aides insist that he is not focused on re-selections and other matters. He is not getting involved in rows such as the one around Berger’s local party, but continues to have ‘zero tolerance towards abuse of anybody’. A spokeswoman for the leader says that his focus is ‘about building on the relative success of the general election campaign and taking the fight to the Tories.’ He plans to visit around 70 marginal seats before the parliamentary recess is over (so that allotment isn’t going to get weeded any time soon), and is on a permanent general election footing.
As for what the centrist opponents of Corbyn propose to do, well, they do need to keep their heads down and show some humility for getting their election predictions wrong, even if, like the boy who cried wolf, they eventually turn out to be right. But one Labour source points out that ‘there is a very small group who are diametrically opposed to the leadership. The rest of the PLP just want to get on with it’.
Even if there aren’t re-selections in the offing, some MPs will be furious that the leader isn’t coming to their aid in rows with their local party. One MP says: ’If this was an industrial dispute going on, Jeremy would be sticking up for the workers. But within the PLP, you’re on your own.’ Corbyn’s allies might retort that he’s been on his own in the PLP for a while too, given the level of opposition to him from his own colleagues.
The risk for Corbyn is that in pursuing greater power within his party, he undermines his bid for power in government. It will be much more difficult for the Labour party to get its message across if the press – local and national – is full of stories about attempts by Labour party members to oust sitting Labour MPs, or indeed rows between the factions in the party. If he is serious about winning an election, and his plans for the next few months suggest that he is, he may have to abandon some of the reforms that his own allies are pushing him for.
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