The post you are reporting:
Matthew Parris summing things up well in the Times.
Frank Field is not the answer. Labour’s return to sanity must begin somewhere else and with someone else. But voices crying in the wilderness have a decent pedigree in history, and something can be learned from his brave stand. Were others to mutiny (Mike Gapes, a more clubbable figure, is reported to be considering it) the mutiny’s complexion would change. I know Mr Field slightly. He has courage, intellect and (rare in politics) great learning. He’s on the side of the angels but he is not one of them: Frank is stubborn, difficult to rub along with, sometimes wrong, and slightly touched by the Joan of Arc syndrome. He has too often found it easier to dissent than co-operate with people, and there will be enemies in his constituency of Birkenhead whom he didn’t need to make.
Field’s views on antisemitism in the Labour Party are so passionately shared by so overwhelming a majority of his parliamentary colleagues that there was every reason to believe this battle could be won and now he has quit the battlefield. As for his fiercely Brexitish opinions, when Leavers tell me that people like me should get out of the Conservative Party I know my response. We stay and fight. Frank could have too. But here’s what’s most worth noting: Frank Field may well have despaired of being reselected as his party’s candidate at the next general election. He may fear he has nothing to lose. He would not be alone among former colleagues, but may be the first to respond.
Labour is heading into horrible terrain. The latest YouGov polls may show only a slight lead for the Tories but few can disagree that Labour would be doing so much better if the party looked like a viable government-in-waiting. On antisemitism, voters are not overwhelmingly convinced that Labour is institutionally antisemitic, but the polls show overwhelming agreement that it has got itself into a nasty mess. They show, too, that among former Leave and Remain supporters alike, Theresa May’s government is widely believed to be making a hash of the most important move our country has contemplated for 40 years: leaving the EU.
An opposition unable to capitalise on a government’s embarrassing failure in its central task is an opposition in deep trouble. What’s to be done? Like almost all Tories, I’ve never understood the Labour Party. Its byzantine procedures, its uneasy coalition of interests and groupings, its buried bodies and troublesome ghosts, its strange rites and inexplicable loyalties . . . these things are to me a closed book. And so they are to perhaps 99 per cent of our population, including the millions who actually vote Labour. Like most of them (if I’m honest) I don’t really understand what a “composite motion” is at a party conference, or why it’s pronounced “compo-sight”. I keep forgetting the relative voting powers of the trade unions, the membership and the MPs. I don’t exactly know what the NEC does, or indeed is. And when I read the helpful briefings provided by knowledgeable Times colleagues, my eyes keep slipping out of focus.
So should we ask the experts? People who understand Labour? We do ask them: they tell us how much more difficult it will be than we’d suppose to deflect that hapless party from its apparent path to self-destruction under Jeremy Corbyn. Do we, then, nod wisely and concede that all is lost? Lost so fast and so soon after getting within spitting distance of kicking out the Tories at the last election? Is “they can see why they should but nobody thinks they can” really an adequate answer to the rest of Britain? Perhaps it’s time for the ignoramuses to have a go. Time for commentators like this one to look in from the outside and perhaps see the wood where those in the forest see only briars and trees. One sometimes does better to start from what must be done, then work backwards to the how.
What must be done is to remove Mr Corbyn. Why waste my breath or your time by reciting the unanswerable questions about his competence or his directions? He’s dim, he holds spiteful opinions and his prescription for our future governance is lunatic. Some always knew this but since the last election he has been well and truly found out. Enough said. My analysis is shared by most of his parliamentary colleagues, many of the trade unions, almost every former Tory voter, including many who are out of sympathy with their own party, and (according to a YouGov poll in July) nearly a third of Labour voters.
If this is the opinion of those prepared, despite it, to vote Labour, where could the party be in the polls if led by a credible potential prime minister? Cut to the chase: if Labour had a decent, centrist leader, this Conservative government would be toast. That scenario terrifies the Tory party. Doesn’t almost everybody know as much? Can it really be impossible for Labour to proceed from this certain knowledge to the obvious next step? Oppositions exist to form governments, and here is how this one undoubtedly could.
Imagine Yvette Cooper became Labour leader tomorrow. I know, I know: she’s ultra-cautious, rarely says anything original and can be irritatingly clichéd in her language. But she’s safe, humane and experienced. She has dignity and on occasions passion (look at her Commons responses to the Windrush scandal) and she speaks with intellect and authority. I mention Ms Cooper, a centrist, only because she may have crossed the radar of many who do not follow politics, but there are others. It might be someone from the centre-left. But a shadow cabinet that included an unmuzzled Cooper, Clive Lewis, Keir Starmer, Hilary Benn, Angela Rayner and a range of other grown-ups who at present must devote their energies to mitigating the impact of their own leader could blow the present cabinet out of the water. How might this revolution be organised? Somebody has to step forward. Yes, that’s been tried, Angela Eagle stumbled and Owen Smith was slaughtered. But a new wind is blowing. The antisemitism has been shaming; Brexit is poisoning the wellsprings of Corbyn’s support among the young in Momentum. And we’re entering a season of huge uncertainty for Mrs May’s administration. This could be when Labour strikes. If it could precipitate a general election then under any credible leader it would win. Isn’t it time for others to ask, as Frank Field has, what’s left to lose?