Will the Labour membership ever change its mind about its leader?

Labour’s famously vocal moderates have been awfully quiet today, given one of their number – Jamie Reed – has just been replaced by a Tory in a hugely embarrassing by-election defeat for the party. The centrist wing of the party, now almost exclusively a backbench club, has taken a vow of silence because it doesn’t want to be accused of salivating at the loss of a seat or of conforming to the ‘Bitterite’ stereotype of MPs undermining the Labour brand. This is particularly important given some Corbynites are still blaming last summer’s attempted coup by the Parliamentary Labour Party for any catastrophe it encounters, including losing Copeland.

That coup didn’t remove Corbyn. But what it did do was remove the ability of the moderates to speak out with much authority. They blew the leadership contest that followed Jeremy Corbyn by putting up an unsuitable and unappealing candidate and – as they did in 2015 – misreading where the Labour membership was.