Britain - The Labour Party

The surreal strength of Jeremy Corbyn’s party

IF AN opposition MP were asked to come up with an ideal backdrop for the parliamentary recess, he would surely set out the month just endured by Theresa May. Two senior cabinet ministers resigned. Support for the prime minister’s Brexit plans dropped like a stone. Grassroots Tories started baying for her head. A tired government looked close to exhaustion.

Yet even as the government creaked, it was Labour that seemed the more likely to splinter. A row over anti-Semitism entered its most poisonous phase, with the shadow cabinet in open revolt against Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s far-left leader. A summer meant to be spent discussing big ideas for a future Labour government and hammering Mrs May’s record has instead been overtaken by a bitter internal fight.

Despite it all, Labour still has a decent chance of forming the next government. None of its self-inflicted wounds is fatal and each has a potential fix. Its poll numbers, which at around 40% are slightly ahead of the Tories’, have held up. Labour resembles a drunk falling down a staircase, cracking his head on each step, only to gather himself up at the bottom and somehow stagger on.

Anti-Semitism has brought the sharpest blow during this drunken descent. Labour has added the definition of anti-Semitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) to its code of conduct, but omitted some of its suggested examples. The party insists that this is to allow legitimate criticism of Israel. Yet many Labour MPs, as well as Jewish groups across the country, virulently disagree, accusing Mr Corbyn of turning a blind eye to offensive statements made by his own allies about Israel that crossed into anti-Semitism. Margaret Hodge, a long-serving and respected backbencher with a Jewish background, has labelled Mr Corbyn a “racist” and an “anti-Semite”. But rather than put out the fire, Mr Corbyn’s allies poured petrol on it. Ms Hodge found herself being investigated by the party.

This is a strange hill for the leadership to plant its flag on. In other areas Mr Corbyn has shown remarkable ideological flexibility. The long-standing critic of NATO has gone quiet. The former vice-chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament campaigned on a manifesto pledge to maintain Britain’s nuclear deterrent. Yet when it comes to anti-Semitism, the campaigner for Palestinian rights has reached his limit.

It took a shadow cabinet rebellion and two weeks of public outcry before proceedings against Ms Hodge were dropped. The code of conduct has at last been put out for consultation with Jewish groups. Many shadow ministers are demanding that the IHRA definition be included in full, including its examples. There is a chance of a U-turn, particularly as those around Mr Corbyn demand an end to the war.

Chief among those calling for peace is John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor and a close ally of Mr Corbyn’s. Their approaches reveal different perspectives. Before being catapulted into the leadership, Mr Corbyn spent three decades as a placard-waving MP in Islington, lending his name to causes such as fighting against apartheid and for Palestinian solidarity. By contrast, Mr McDonnell spent his early career running things. He was an important figure in the left-run Greater London Council in the 1980s, overseeing a budget that ran into the billions in his early 30s. “John is a machine politician,” says one MP. “Jeremy is a protest politician.” For a man desperate to be painted as a chancellor in waiting, internal fights are a decidedly unwelcome distraction.

The sucking sound

Big policy initiatives have already been suffocated by the anti-Semitism row, much to the chagrin of Mr McDonnell, who tightly controls Labour’s economic programme. A promised experiment on universal basic income was announced but generated little coverage next to the torrent of news over the party’s position on Jews. Nor is Mr McDonnell alone. Jon Lansman, who founded Momentum, a 40,000-strong far-left grassroots organisation that supports Mr Corbyn and is himself Jewish, tweeted: “If only [Labour] could find a way of not having to spend so much time on certain other things, attacking the Tories might actually be quite productive.”

Even without its self-inflicted blow over anti-Semitism, Labour has struggled to land punches on the government. A weak shadow front bench has let the Tories escape censure for a recent jump in violent crime and a bungled introduction of universal credit, a reform of the welfare system. Not all of the backbenchers who are long-standing critics of Mr Corbyn are political giants. Some were insignificant junior ministers in the dog days of Gordon Brown’s Labour government. Yet few would argue that today’s front bench, where loyalty too often trumps talent, represents the best that the party has to offer.

On Brexit, Labour demonstrates a calculated cowardice. Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit minister, has gradually shuffled the leadership into a softer position, promising to stay in a customs union with the European Union, for instance. But Mr Corbyn is a Eurosceptic who voted against every EU treaty as a backbencher and whose pro-Remain campaigning in the referendum was tepid at best. Even so he leads a party whose MPs, members and voters are overwhelmingly pro-European. Support is starting to build behind a push for a “People’s Vote” on any Brexit deal, which could offer a neat way of squaring this circle without permanently alienating Labour’s Leave-supporting minority. But such a radical idea risks being buried by the internal fight over anti-Semitism.

Threats by anti-Corbyn MPs to quit and create a new party have, so far, proved empty. It requires heroic optimism to believe that a cabal of former shadow ministers from the reign of Ed Miliband, the previous leader, could succeed where Roy Jenkins, the most influential home secretary of the 20th century, failed in the 1980s. “Some of them are that stupid,” comments one old party hand. “You can never rely on people not being that stupid.”

But most of those who hate Mr Corbyn have no intention of leaving. Ms Hodge spoke for many when she pledged to stay, even before the investigation against her was dropped. “I am going to fight tooth and nail to bring [Labour] back to the values that brought me into it,” she promised. Politics is tribal. MPs are loth to quit just because they do not like their chief—even if they think he really is an anti-Semite.

This means that Mr Corbyn should be strong enough to shift ground. A reversal on the IHRA wording would heal most remaining wounds. Allowing former rebels into the shadow cabinet would help the opposition to harass the government. Softening further on Brexit would do little to alienate Labour voters. Mr Corbyn has total control of the party machinery. He has the lure of power in front of him as an incentive to keep going. If he can only rediscover his ability to compromise, he may yet end up in control of a government.