The EconomistJune 1st 2019 Britain 27H
.l. menckenis said to have defined a politician as “an animal
that can sit on the fence and yet keep both ears on the ground”.
By that definition Jeremy Corbyn is failing in his vocation. The
European elections bulldozed Mr Corbyn’s fence by giving the La-
bour Party just 14% of the vote in the country as a whole and 9% in
its former stronghold of Scotland. They unleashed a furious debate
that was ostensibly about the party’s stance on Europe in particu-
lar but also about Mr Corbyn’s leadership in general.
Senior figures such as Tom Watson, the deputy leader, and Emi-
ly Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, were quick to blame
Labour’s dismal performance on its refusal to offer wholehearted
support for holding a second referendum and staying in the Euro-
pean Union. Others, particularly from the party’s working-class
wing, were equally quick to push back. Gloria De Piero, mpfor Ash-
field, urged her colleagues not to let a single issue—Brexit—
“wreck” the party. Len McCluskey, head of the Unite trade union,
accused supporters of a second referendum of trying to launch a
coup against the leader. Mr Corbyn did his best to rebuild his fence
and climb back on it. He promised that “we are ready to support a
public vote on any deal”. But he stopped short of offering Remain-
ers what they want: unconditional backing for a second referen-
dum whether or not there is an eudeal on the table, and a firm
commitment to turning Labour into a Remain party.
There is actually a good strategic reason for Mr Corbyn’s posi-
tion on Europe. Labour risks alienating large numbers of voters,
particularly in its working-class heartlands, if it turns itself into an
overtly Remain party (most of its mps sit in constituencies that
voted to leave). And fudging may be a much more successful strat-
egy in a general election, which will be fought over lots of issues,
than in a European poll. But the party’s Euro-failure is only one of
many. Labour has failed to pull ahead of a Conservative govern-
ment that is doing everything it can to commit suicide. The forth-
coming Peterborough by-election may see a Labour seat go to the
Brexit Party. Labour is also likely to waste yet another summer in a
row over anti-Semitism that can only do it harm. On May 28th the
Equality and Human Rights Commission announced that it is
launching a formal investigation into whether the party has un-
lawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised people be-cause they are Jewish, a measure that it last took against the far-
right British National Party. Mr Corbyn is in his weakest position
since taking over as his party’s leader in 2015, and his problems are
mounting by the day.
Senior Labour figures are increasingly willing to criticise his
leadership. There is nothing new about Mr Watson’s hostility to Mr
Corbyn. But the days when the deputy could be denied a platform
at his own party conference are long gone. He has formed a centre-
left group of 80 mps and 70 peers to argue for more mainstream
policies, and played a starring role at the People’s Vote march. Ms
Thornberry harbours leadership ambitions of her own. She is also
worried about the growing strength of the Liberal Democrats in her
Islington South constituency. Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit
secretary, is increasingly a force in his own right rather than just a
lawyer for hire. For their different reasons close allies such as John
McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, and Diane Abbott, the shadow
home secretary, are critical as well. Mr McDonnell is determined to
win power at any cost, and Ms Abbott represents a constituency
that voted 80% to remain.
At the same time Mr Corbyn is becoming the prisoner of his
closest advisers, who are odd creatures even by the standards of
Britain’s increasingly eccentric politics. They are all, in various
ways, closely allied to Mr McCluskey, Labour’s most pro-Leave
trade-union baron. Two of them, Seamus Milne and Andrew Mur-
ray, are privately educated Marxists who have a soft spot for the So-
viet Union. Mr Murray was a member of the Communist Party for
decades before his recent conversion to democratic socialism. Mr
Milne, a ruthless dialectician, exercises a particularly tight hold
over Mr Corbyn, a man who managed only two Es at A-level and
who, after four years of intense intra-party battles, is beginning to
seem worn out.In the bunker
Mr Corbyn is no stranger to challenges to his leadership: an at-
tempt by mps to remove him in 2016 only left him stronger. But the
current wave of criticism is unusually damaging for two reasons.
The first is that it undermines his claim to be a champion of the
people against the elites. Mr Corbyn is in the uncomfortable posi-
tion of resisting calls for “people power”, in the form of a second
referendum, a ballot of all party members or a special conference
on the Brexit question, and instead defending a policy of triangu-
lation and prevarication cooked up by a sinister cabal of advisers.
The second is that some of the fiercest attacks are coming from
normally loyal allies on the left. Paul Mason, a commentator, has
raised the possibility of a “Corbynism without Corbyn” and called
for “the officials” who masterminded the party’s Euro-elections
strategy to be “removed from positions of influence”, perhaps
opening the way to Britain’s very own replay of the battle between
the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks.
In most ways Mr Corbyn could not be more different from Brit-
ain’s departing prime minister, Theresa May. She was the dutiful
grammar-school girl who went to Oxford whereas he was the re-
bellious private-school boy who dropped out and plunged into the
Islington of Che Guevara posters and Irish rebel songs. But Brexit
makes odd bedfellows, and in strange ways he is beginning to re-
semble her. Isolated in a bunker of close advisers, criticised by for-
mer allies, determined to avoid alienating both Leavers and Re-
mainers, he is beginning to look tired, tainted and out-of-touch.
To survive, Mr Corbyn needs to prove that he is both more flexible
and more ruthless than his fellow ageing baby-boomer. 7Bagehot Enemies within
Jeremy Corbyn is increasingly isolated in his own party