Is the Labour Party heading for an existential crisis?

If newspaper headlines are to be believed it has been a hard summer for the Labour Party. It has apparently been overtaken by “Trots, Stalinists and communists” (Joan Ryan)¹; is led by a “fucking racist and anti-Semite” (Margaret Hodge)² and has unleashed “dogs” to “purge” the Party of those who disagree with the Leadership (Chuka Umunna)³. It has been described as “institutionally racist” (Chuka again)⁴ and of “tolerating anti-Semitism” (Board of Jewish Deputies)⁵.

Members of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) are openly discussing breaking away to form a new centrist party.⁶

There has been a relentless campaign of negative stories around Labour and, in particular, Jeremy Corbyn. 

Despite a relentless campaign of negativity polls over the period May - September show Labour's vote share remaining steady at around 40%. Even if the polls are inaccurate as they probably are the trend is clear, the negative stories are not damaging Labour sufficiently for it to be regarded as crisis territory.
If there is a “crisis” it is grounded in a clash between the PLP and the membership. It was widely expected, particularly among the PLP and even his own supporters, that when Jeremy Corbyn stood for leader he would lose, as left candidates had been wont to do for almost the entire history of the Party. As The Guardian reported he was a 100-1 outsider.⁷ When he won it was to the dismay of the established power group in the Party who had expected a centrist candidate to emerge to steady a floundering ship. That there was no stomach for unity in the PLP was evidenced by first, the resignations from the Shadow Cabinet⁸, then the vote of no confidence (proposed incidentally by Margaret Hodge)⁹ and then the leadership challenge.¹⁰ All of these were desperate attempts by a group of parliamentarians to reassert their authority. All failed. 

One can only imagine how frustrating it must have been for Corbyn’s enemies within the PLP that faced with an overwhelming vote of no confidence he refused to simply step aside.¹¹ 

The most significant reason, however, why the PLP’s campaign to oust Jeremy Corbyn was doomed to failure was that they seriously under-estimated the mood amongst the Party’s membership. The second leadership campaign saw Jeremy Corbyn overwhelmingly endorsed winning 61.8% of the vote (up from 59.5% a year earlier)¹². Although the defeated right wing of the party vowed to be loyal to the result, the fact was that they were licking their wounds safe in the knowledge that Labour would be wiped out in the General Election and that would have to trigger a leadership contest in which the members would surely have come to their senses¹³. It was, after all, around this time that Tony Blair reminded all those saps who had twice supported Jeremy Corbyn that they needed a heart transplant.¹⁴ 

As is now well documented the General Election did not go the way the right had planned or hoped¹⁵. The face of MP Stephen Kinnock on election night gave the game away¹⁶. The last thing they wanted was Labour wiping out the Tories majority and receiving the biggest vote since 2001, and only marginally less than had won the 1997 General Election for Tony Blair.¹⁷ 

Much has been written about the General Election and it is true that Theresa May perhaps ran one of the worst election campaigns in living history, but the reason why Labour was able to prove the polls wrong (apart from the obvious deficiencies in the polls themselves) was that for the first time in memory there was an organisation on the ground – Momentum – with the skills and numbers necessary to target swing seats.¹⁸ It was not enough to secure a Labour victory, but it wiped the smiles off the faces of the Tories and the Labour right. For a while after the General Election it seemed that the daggers had been put to one side. Everybody was on team Corbyn now.¹⁹

But, it is necessary to see this from the perspective of those who had held office in the Blair governments, those who saw themselves as pragmatic, rather than idealistic socialists, and those who still held to the shibboleth that left-wing policies could not win an election, to understand why that loyalty could not last^20 21 22. Having controlled and dominated the party for, nigh on, thirty years they were never going to give it up without a fight. It was not just that they thought Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters were deluded or fanciful, it goes much deeper than that. It is a hostility to the left and ideas which they see as vote losers. The battle which has been fought in the press and broadcast media over the summer has been waged not simply to undermine Jeremy Corbyn but, in their terms, to save the Labour Party²³.

Jeremy Corbyn's achilles heel was thought to be his foreign policy interventions, particularly those supporting the rights of Palestinians ²⁴

Although the Labour right continue to dominate the PLP, their grip on the party apparatus has been severely weakened ²⁵. 

During the current round of NEC elections as it became obvious that the membership were going to overwhelmingly support the Momentum slate, the tactics became increasingly desperate. The leaking of a taped recording of lifetime socialist and anti-racist campaigner Peter Willsman to the Jewish Chronicle²⁶ and the campaign video produced by the Progress slate had all the hallmarks of the ‘dark propaganda’ which had been a feature of New Labour’s term in office. They backfired as the Momentum #JC9 were all elected, albeit after Momentum withdrew support from Peter Willsman. 

Labelling Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters as anti-Semites appears a desperate act of a grouping who cannot win politically or democratically. Whether there is anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is the subject of debate. What is certain is that ordinary voters, as they struggle to make ends meet, don’t seem to care too much about a wreath laid five years ago. 

If there is an existential crisis in the Labour Party, it exists within the PLP. Ordinary members continue to be excited by a programme which retains the support of a large number of ordinary voters²⁷. It is those members who have recently supported no confidence votes against sitting MPs who they feel no longer represent them²⁸. To some in the PLP any attempt to remove a sitting MP translates as "bullying'²⁹. The truth is most voters could not name their MP, they are voting for a party and its policies.

MPs are the embodiment of the policies of a party. Of course, they are representatives not delegates and should also be allowed to disagree and vote with their conscience. But, when an MP no longer supports the values of the party, for example when they describe a party whose members have been at the forefront of anti-racist initiatives as “institutionally racist” then they should either move aside or be prepared to be moved aside by those who campaign to get them elected in the first place. The existential crisis amounts to a changing of the guard as the right of the party are being replaced by those who represent what the party is now, not what it was twenty years ago.