JEREMY Corbyn took the biscuit this week. When asked the famous Mumsnet question about his favourite biccy, the 67-year-old politician insisted he was “totally anti-sugar”, ate very few biscuits, but, if he had to choose, noted: “It’s always a pleasure to have a shortbread.” This from a famous jam-maker.
Later today, the Islington Leftie will indulge in what politicians love to do – have their cake and eat it – when he will, barring some unexpected joke by the political gods, ascend the Labour throne once more.
Mr Corbyn will announce that he will press the reset button and call on his Labour detractors at Westminster to put aside their previous criticisms, show loyalty and turn their minds from internal backbiting to attacking Theresa May’s terrible Tories.
The appeal for loyalty and unity may, for some MPs, stick in their throats given their colleague has spent most of his political life rebelling against the party leadership from Neil Kinnock to Ed Miliband. Indeed, Labour’s opponents joke that over the years Jezza has spent more time in their lobbies at Westminster than his own party’s.
But what will happen to Labour if, as we all expect, Mr Corbyn continues to wear the red crown? Will the party’s 172 MPs, some 80 per cent of its Commons contingent, who just three months ago made clear they thought their leader a loser, suddenly realise how woefully mistaken they were and try to convince the public that he is, in fact, a prime minister-in-waiting?
Unlikely? Impossible? Crackers? This week, the leader’s loyal lieutenant Barry Gardiner, the little-known shadow international trade secretary, did little to calm fears of deselection among parliamentary colleagues when he suggested those Labour MPs who refused to back a re-elected Mr Corbyn should be "out of the party".
Labour staff, who do not genuflect in the chief comrade’s presence, fear they are also for the chop; the great purge may about to begin. Realistically, there seems little doubt Labour’s civil war will continue, meaning disunity and defeat await.
Just how the left-winger can convince people who voted Tory in 2015 to see the error of their ways and follow Labour’s Pied Piper on his road to the socialist revolution is hard to see.
Earlier this month, an opinion survey showed 45 per cent of people regarded themselves as “in the centre”; when those who thought they were either on the centre Left or the centre Right are included, this jumped to 77 per cent. Only 10 per cent described themselves as left-wing.
Given it seems impossible for Mr Corbyn to move an inch to the Right, Labour’s electoral epitaph appears already to have been written.
As Nicola Sturgeon noted at FMQs this week that the continuing Labour divisions mean only one thing: Tory policy will continue unabated. It also means the prospect of another Conservative victory in 2020 looks a dead cert with all the constitutional consequences that could mean for Scotland and the UK.
Today’s result in Liverpool will be a sweet moment for Mr Corbyn and his army of zealous supporters but, as the vote numbers are read out, the dull thud of sinking hearts and stomachs among sickened Labour moderates will be heard across the land. Their political indigestion will go on.
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