Democracy 1, Labour Plotters 0

I suggested the other day on Twitter that TV detector vans had better be an urban myth, because it's hard to think of a more self-defeating use of licence fee money.  But I think I've found something even more self-defeating - how about using Labour membership fees to launch a costly legal appeal to attempt to prevent Labour members from exercising their right to vote in a leadership election, which is one of the main reasons many of them joined the party in the first place.  It's really not a great look, is it?

Something I have never understood from the word go is why registered supporters, who paid a one-off fee a few weeks ago for the sole purpose of voting in the leadership election, have supposedly demonstrated a greater commitment to the Labour party than people who paid to become full members several months ago.  And yet that is seemingly the logic of the rules that the Labour plotters are trying to reinstate at enormous expense.  It would be nice if at least one journalist gets around to asking them to explain that to us.

Three simple reasons why the Labour plotters will be more responsible than Corbyn for a heavy general election defeat

1) Even in southern England, there is one factor that is a far bigger voter-repellent than a radical left party leader - and that's disunity.  According to YouGov, Labour went from enjoying a 3% lead in late April to being 11% behind by mid-July.  Corbyn was leader in both the 'before' and 'after' photos, so self-evidently he's unlikely to be responsible for the slump.  The only things that have changed since April are that Theresa May is enjoying a honeymoon period, and the right-wing of the Labour party have needlessly started a civil war.

2) Some of the plotters claim that they have no problem with Corbyn's policies, but only with the man himself.  If that's genuinely the case, an obvious deal was available that probably would have been acceptable to all sides - a change in the leadership nomination rules to allow Corbyn to step down (perhaps in a year or two) safe in the knowledge that a more charismatic alternative left candidate like John McDonnell or Clive Lewis would have no difficulty getting on the ballot paper, and would probably become leader.  The fact that none of the plotters seem to have even seriously contemplated that possibility tells you all you need to know - this isn't about electability, it's a destructive ideological crusade against the radical left.

3) For all the mythology surrounding the 1983 election, the Labour right actually have a much longer and more ignominious track record of losing elections than the radical left.  It was the right, not the left, that lost the 2010 and 2015 elections.  The right were also responsible for the landmark defeats in 1979 and 1992, and arguably also in 1987 (Neil Kinnock was midway on his journey from the soft left to the right by then, although admittedly he was still nominally in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament).  And the right can't entirely escape responsibility for the 1983 calamity either - it seems undeniable that the Tory majority would have been much more modest had the SDP split not taken place.

*  *  *

It takes a strong Westminster Bubble angle before Mike "can't be arsed" Smithson will pay the slightest attention to a Scottish poll, and sure enough he's beside himself with excitement about a new full-scale Scottish poll from YouGov showing that Jeremy Corbyn has worse personal ratings among people who voted Labour in 2015 than among the electorate at large.  But for my money, this poll tells us far more about the character of Labour's rump support in Scotland than it does about Jeremy Corbyn's prospects.  Corbyn actually has comparatively good ratings among people who voted SNP in 2015, which is perfectly logical, because that group contains many traditional Labour voters who had switched to the SNP for the first time ever.  It's clear that Corbyn's leadership hasn't been sufficient to bring them back into the fold, but the idea that they're more likely to be won over by a New Labour-type leader is fanciful in the extreme.

It's also telling that Ruth Davidson has much, much better personal ratings among 2015 Labour voters than Nicola Sturgeon does, in spite of Sturgeon's impeccable social democratic credentials, and the fact that she's more popular than Davidson among the general population.  That makes no sense at all unless the legacy of "Jackanory" Jim Murphy's leadership has been to transform Labour's support into a narrowly-based, centre-right, hard-line unionist sect.  (I hesitate to use the word 'cult', but...)

Theresa May's showing in this poll is being portrayed as reasonably good, but you have to be very cautious about polls conducted during a political honeymoon.  For example, an early Scottish poll after John Major replaced Margaret Thatcher showed Tory support back above 30% for the first time in many years, leading Bernard Ingham to obnoxiously claim that everything was back to normal and that the only reason for the Scottish Tories' travails had been the sexism of voters north of the border (including female voters, presumably).

You don't have to look far to spot the warning signs for May - even at the height of her honeymoon, more Scottish voters say she is dislikeable than say she is likeable.  Perhaps the most significant finding is that 54% of respondents say she will either be a worse Prime Minister than Cameron, or no better.  When you bear in mind how awful Cameron's personal ratings in Scotland have been, that may be a clue as to where she is headed in the not-too-distant future.

Mother Theresa

Just to prove that this blog can match the respect for democracy shown by those whoopin', cheerin', laughin', seamstress-mum-lovin' Labour plotters, I am delighted to report that these are the results of a poll I've just run on Twitter...

Should the title of my next blogpost be 'May Day' or 'Mother Theresa'?

'May Day' : 76%
'Mother Theresa' : 24%

Congratulations, Theresa May, on being confirmed as the next Prime Minister of your country. Just a gentle reminder : we no longer want to be part of your country.

* * *

I'm sure we were all moved by the constant claims during the US primary season that "only in America can the son of a penniless Cuban immigrant become a candidate for President". But frankly, who cares? Surely Britain is the only country in the world where the daughter of a seamstress can front an establishment coup. This is the real land of opportunity.

* * *

Clarification is being urgently sought on whether Theresa May's mother was a seamstress. Her position may yet be untenable by the end of the day.

* * *

Nigel Farage declared on the morning after the referendum that a "Brexit government" was required. Odd that he then declared his life's work to have been achieved and vanished in a puff of smoke before bothering to find out whether there was even going to be a Brexit Prime Minister.

* * *

Until today, there were real concerns that the Tory party might end up looking fractionally more democratic than Labour by the end of the summer. Happily, that calamity has been averted.

Labour coup attempt : have we just seen the most ludicrous misrepresentation of an opinion poll in history?

There's a new YouGov poll of Labour members which contains relatively good news for Jeremy Corbyn, even if it suggests he's no longer as wildly popular as he was last summer.  It shows that he has a healthy lead in any head-to-head leadership contest against Angela Eagle, Tom Watson or Dan Jarvis.  Perhaps surprisingly, Eagle does best of the three, but still loses by 50% to 40% - and remember that's only among full party members.  Registered supporters also have an equal say in the election, and they're probably even more likely to vote for Corbyn.

By a narrow majority (51% to 44%), members say that Corbyn should not resign.  That's only a qualified endorsement, because roughly one-fifth of the people who say he should stay also think he should step down at some point before the next general election.  But words have meanings, and the simple fact is that a majority of members don't want him to resign now - which is exactly what the coup plotters are demanding he must do.

So you might think it would take a special kind of talent to present this poll as somehow being a disaster for Corbyn, but our old friend Mike "can't be arsed" Smithson is up to the task.  Just as Lucy Powell did on Twitter last night, Smithson cynically ignores the 10% of the sample who want Corbyn to remain in post on a time-limited basis, and claims that there is a 44% to 41% plurality who want him to resign now.  There isn't.  There just isn't.  To repeat : members oppose his resignation by 51% to 44%.  

If Corbyn turns out to be "doomed" as Smithson risibly claims, it'll only be because he's fallen for a gigantic con-trick which Smithson has now made himself an active part of.  As this poll unambiguously shows, it's unlikely the Westminster/Bedford elite will be able to displace Corbyn by democratic means, so their only hope is to use psychological techniques to convince him that his very healthy position somehow looks "increasingly untenable" (never forget the "increasingly", folks).  If his inner circle can help him keep a proper sense of perspective and he successfully stands for re-election, where do the conspirators go from there?  They can't pull this stunt every year, so they'd either have to unite behind him or leave the party.  Either way, Corbyn would have established complete authority over whatever remains of official Labour.  It really all depends on whether he can hold his nerve - and I don't know the answer to that.

This is your conductor speaking

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard the 2130 ScotRail shuttle service from Glasgow Queen Street to Edinburgh Waverley.  The train will call at Croy, Falkirk High and Haymarket, due to arrive in at Edinburgh Waverley at 2225.  First class accommodation is located at the front and rear of the train, this is for the use of first class ticket holders only.  If you wish to upgrade to first class, you can do so for £4.20.  Female accommodation is located in the middle of the train, this is for the use of female ticket holders only.  If you're not a woman, you can upgrade if you really want to, but this should not be done lightly, and ScotRail recommends counselling as a preliminary step."

In the unlikely event that Jeremy Corbyn's female-only rail carriages plan ever sees the light of day, I trust there will be male-only carriages by way of compensation.  Otherwise, men will be much less likely than women to be able to find a seat on a busy train.  That would be a form of gender-based collective punishment, and I'm not sure that's really on.

Military to Corbyn : Don't apologise, it'll mean we did something wrong

Colonel Richard Kemp is turning purple at the thought of the next Labour leader issuing a formal apology for the party taking Britain into the illegal and disastrous Iraq War -

"[Corbyn] would not only be telling those troops and their families their sacrifice was for nothing but also their actions were illegal, immoral and dishonourable."

Rubbish.  The troops were bravely doing their duty and following instructions, which ultimately came from a government run by the Labour party. Indeed, one of the groups Corbyn will presumably be apologising to is the families of British soldiers killed during the invasion, who were every bit as much victims of Blair's illegal actions as the Iraqi dead were.

"Or will Mr Corbyn be apologising for the deaths of perhaps 219,000 Iraqi civilians killed following the 2003 invasion?  Maybe he is unaware that these tragic people were not killed by British or US forces..."

Woah, woah, woah.  Is the colonel really saying that NONE of those civilians were killed by British or US forces?  I think he might find that claim rather difficult to sustain.  And of course the more pertinent point is this : regardless of who killed each individual, how many of those civilians would still be alive now if Iraq had never been illegally invaded in the first place?

I'd suggest that the colonel start to reconcile himself to an apology.  It's been several years since Nick Clegg denounced the invasion as illegal while speaking on behalf of the government at Prime Minister's Questions.  At around the same time, the incumbent Labour leader publicly admitted the war was "wrong".  Corbyn will now go a step further and apologise.  He'll probably never do so as the occupant of 10 Downing Street, but the direction of travel is unmistakable - a government apology for Iraq is as inevitable as the Bloody Sunday apology was.  Let's just hope it doesn't take quite as long.

*  *  *

Our old friend "TSE of PB" -

"After a decade of ‘austerity’ perhaps the country will want to try something different, particularly if it is felt that austerity contributed to a future recession. If you’re a Scottish Nationalist, you might want to skip the next paragraph."

Not at all, old chap, it's just more of the standard "too wee, too poor, too stupid" fare, and we've got fairly strong constitutions after the nonsense that was chucked at us last year.  But there again, TSE, you might want to skip this link.  You might also want to resist the temptation to re-read your embarrassing pre-election piece about how Labour needed to steer clear of any deal with the SNP, because the SNP slate of candidates were of such "low quality".  That assessment seemed to be mostly based on sniffy articles in the Telegraph about Mhairi Black being twenty years old and working-class, and Chris Law having a ponytail.  Oooh, the horror!

Why Labour will probably split unless Corbyn is deposed

There's an article at Open Democracy from the Scottish Green activist Gabriel Neil, outlining his reasons for agreeing with the conventional wisdom that there will be no SDP-style split in the event of Jeremy Corbyn becoming Labour leader. I must say I don't find them hugely convincing. Basically they boil down to the idea that, unlike in 1981, the conditions do not exist for a new centrist party to become electorally successful.

"The circumstances which allowed the SDP to become a party which rocked the political boat in the early 80s (some polling even predicted they would win the 1983 election) do not exist for the Labour right any more...They do not have two extremes to oppose themselves to – they are part of a cosy consensus with Tory ideology which has led millions to stop voting altogether...The Labour right simply do not look like an exciting electoral prospect on their own, and I suspect they themselves know it."

The fact that much of the Labour parliamentary party is ideologically closer to David Cameron than to Jeremy Corbyn is precisely the reason why the situation that is seemingly about to arise will not be sustainable. These people are not going to be able to stomach sitting on the 'wrong' benches indefinitely while, for example, Cameron defends NATO membership and Corbyn agitates for withdrawal. I'm sure the Labour right are for the most part sincere in saying that they don't plan to leave the party, but that's because they're frantically telling themselves that the Corbyn era will be a very brief blip. They may even be right about that. But if the hard left bed themselves in, and if there is no realistic prospect of replacing Corbyn with a leader who is not a Corbyn protégé, the unthinkable will swiftly become thinkable, and the right will start to look for options outside the official Labour fold.

Just before she helped set up the SDP, Shirley Williams floated the idea of a 'unilateral declaration of independence' by the Labour parliamentary party. That sort of option may be revisited - it would look like an elitist coup, but the Labour right may see it as the least worst option, because what would effectively be a new party (and the Electoral Commission would probably force it to adopt a new name) might be perceived by the public as the de facto successor to Labour. The chain of events could be something like this -

1) Mutterings after electoral setbacks.

2) Careful establishment of two narratives : First, that in a parliamentary system, no party leader can remain in office without the confidence of his or her parliamentary party. Second, that it is in the overwhelming national interest of Britain to have a credible opposition to the Tories - ie. the primary loyalty of Labour MPs is to the British people, not to the "unrepresentative minority" who elected Corbyn.

3) A PLP-only vote of no confidence in the leader.

4) The PLP votes to unilaterally declare its independence after the leader ignores no confidence vote. A new party is effectively created, leaving behind a rump 'official Labour'.

The average British voter is older than you might think

This is a true pedant's post, but I think it's an interesting point all the same.  In an article at Little Atoms the other day, Mike Harris made the following claim, which is technically accurate but gives a misleading impression -

"The average Briton is 40 years old, with 1997 the first general election in which they voted. They simply do not remember or care about the Militant Tendency or the Bennites."

Meanwhile, in an article in the New Statesman, Stephen Bush made the same point in a way that veered into inaccuracy -

"The average voter cast their first ballot in 1997. For Labour Party members, it is Labour victory rather than Conservative hegemony that has become the default setting of British politics."

The problem is that although the average person in Britain is 40 years old, you have to factor in children (who are too young to vote) to arrive at that average. The average person of voting age is actually in their late 40s, and probably cast their first general election ballot in 1987, just two years after Neil Kinnock declared war on Militant. When you take into account the fact that older people are considerably more likely to turn out to vote, it must be the case that the authentic average voter is well over 50 years old, and first took part in a general election in 1983 or possibly even 1979.

So if Corbyn becomes leader, the majority of people who cast the first popular verdict on him next May in the devolved and local elections will have voting age memory of the last time the Labour left were in the ascendancy. I'm not sure what that means in practical terms, but I thought it was worth pointing out.

As one door opens for the Daily Record, another door slams shut

You can see why the Daily Record editorial team probably reckon their unexpected declaration of support for Jeremy Corbyn is a masterstroke. It reaffirms their traditional loyalty to Labour and to the British nationalist cause, while neatly distancing themselves from the toxic part of Labour that campaigned so enthusiastically alongside the Tories during the referendum. It allows them to nail their colours to the mast of what at least some Yes voters in former Labour heartlands are still prepared to see as the acceptable face of left-wing unionism.

There is, however, a snag. It's not so much what happens if Corbyn fails to win (which now looks unlikely), because they can always say "this has been an open and democratic process, we expressed our view but we accept the result". But what if Corbyn wins and is then deposed before the 2020 election? Anything that remains of the Record's credibility will be shot to pieces if they don't buy into the narrative of betrayal this time (especially having failed to do so after the unravelling of their own "Vow"). And by that point, it's logically very hard to see where they go with their political support other than the SNP, if not independence itself.

If, on the other hand, they attempt to maintain their allegiance to Labour with an "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia" manoeuvre, they'd better bloody hope their coverage of sport and celebrity cellulite becomes considerably more compelling than it currently is.

Which "non-mad" electoral system would actually be sure of stopping Jeremy Corbyn?

If you think some of the coverage of the Corbyn surge in the UK press has been a tad hysterical, you should check out a mad rant by The Australian's foreign editor Greg Sheridan, which includes this gem -

"[Corbyn] is the frontrunner to be the new leader of the British Labour Party. This is a truly dismal prospect. But first a word on process. Only a mad process could produce a potential result as mad as this."

Really? Is it true that Corbyn could not possibly win under any "non-mad" electoral process? Let's consider the possibilities...

1) The current system as nature intended. Some people argue that if only MPs who support "mainstream" candidates hadn't inexplicably nominated Corbyn, the parliamentary veto system would have worked as intended and Corbyn's candidacy would have been blocked. The snag is, though, that the caricature of a hopelessly naive MP wanting to "broaden the debate" is in most cases bogus. These people generally had some kind of self-interested motive (currying favour with local left-wing activists, seeking London mayoral votes, etc, etc). In any case, the genie is well and truly out of the bottle, and now that it's been demonstrated that there is widespread support for a radical left candidate, the pressure on MPs to nominate at least one such person in future contests will be irresistible.

2) A straight one person, one vote system restricted to full party members only. Probably wouldn't have made much difference - according to the most recent YouGov poll, Corbyn would have a lead over Cooper of 57% to 43% in the final run-off if only members had been given the vote.

3) A one person, one vote system restricted to people who have been full members for at least five years. This could hardly be called a 'natural' system, but even such a drastic attempt at gerrymandering might not have done the trick - YouGov have the race as a statistical tie between Corbyn and Cooper among people who have been members since before Ed Miliband became leader.

4) The old electoral college. Corbyn would have had a mountain to climb, given that the one-third section of the college reserved for parliamentarians would have practically voted as a bloc against him. But remarkably, his lead among members and affiliates looks so substantial that he might well have had a chance of climbing that mountain. It would have been tight.

5) A return to the old MPs-only vote (no longer used by any UK party). This certainly would have stopped Corbyn - but it wouldn't have precluded the possibility of other results that Mr Sheridan would doubtless consider "mad". In 1980, Michael Foot defeated Denis Healey to become Labour leader - and he did it by 139 votes to 129 in the party's last ever MPs-only vote.

* * *

While I'm at it, I may as well run through some of the factual inaccuracies in Mr Sheridan's piece, because there's an impressively long list of them.

"In the last British Labour leadership election there was a new and odious system, a three-way electoral college — one-third of votes for MPs, one-third for affiliated unions and one-third for rank-and-file party members."

I'm not sure how that can be called a "new system", given that it was first used for Tony Blair's election as leader in 1994. It was a modified version of a system that dated back to Denis Healey's famous win over Tony Benn in the deputy leadership contest of 1981 - previously the split was 40% for trade unions (voting as a bloc), 30% for members and 30% for MPs. Both Neil Kinnock and John Smith were elected leader on that basis.

"But in Britain, with no tradition of [a US-style primary system], the system is ripe for manipulation by a tiny activist minority."

This tiny activist minority makes up almost 1% of the entire population of the UK.

"Tony Blair, the only man in 60-odd years to win clear parliamentary majorities for British Labour..."

Harold Wilson won a majority of 96 in the 1966 general election.

"There are, of course, plenty of specific British factors at work here. Labour lost Scotland, which was not only a huge chunk of its old core vote but a part of its vote that kept it in some measure tethered to reality, because Scotland was a place where to some extent it actually ruled."

That claim sounds superficially credible, until you remember that there has never been any time in history when Labour was in power in Scotland but not in the UK. The Scottish Parliament hasn't been around for long enough for that to be the case.

But apart from all these minor quibbles, what a fabulously well-researched article, Mr Sheridan.

Sturgeon should not worry without porpoise

The Spectator Coffee House blog very rarely features posts from a pro-Labour perspective.  If it has ever before featured a post from a hard left perspective, I certainly can't remember it.  The author of today's piece, Robert McGregor, doesn't seem to have written for the site before.

So is it entirely a coincidence that this once in a blue moon post just happens to take a "bad news for Sturgeon" angle?  Probably not.  I suspect even Fidel Castro would be welcome at the Spectator as long as he wanted to bang on about the latest "blow for the SNP".

Turning to the substance of the post, is it actually true that Sturgeon will be beside herself with worry about a Corbyn win?  I think it's probably fair to say that the SNP would have preferred a boring win for boring Burnham, because it would have changed absolutely nothing, and more of the same suits the SNP just fine.  Corbyn introduces unpredictability into the equation - his leftiness might undermine the SNP's pitch, but equally he might preside over such disunity that next year's Holyrood election will be even less of a contest than we currently expect.  We just don't have a clue how it will play out, and uncertainty is scary.  One thing we can be sure of, though, is that the 'Red Tory' jibe is about to give way to 'utter shambles', which is potentially just as potent.

And if the state of play is going to change, it certainly hasn't happened yet.  Corbyn may be packing out medium-sized halls in Scotland, but he's had no impact on recent local council by-elections, all of which have been won by the SNP on mammoth swings.

For the first time, it's now possible to say it would have been better for Labour right-wingers if Tony Blair had never become leader

RevStu has highlighted a quote from Tom "Bomber Admin" Harris, in which the ex-MP basically says that the only thing that would make voters - in Kezia Dugdale's words - "take another look" at Scottish Labour is to give them what they want, which is independence. (Presumably by "voters" he's not referring to the electorate at large which narrowly voted No, but to Labour's lost voters who mostly voted Yes.) He implies that this would be an unthinkable step, because he is opposed to it as a matter of fundamental principle.

Odd, that, because the New Labour doctrine, which Harris has been signed up to throughout his career, is that the "mature" thing to do is give voters exactly what they want, no matter how uncomfortable it is for you. If you don't, you're wickedly condemning the country to Tory rule and denying the vulnerable people of this land the wonderful, wonderful things that a Labour government can do for them by stealth. (Sure Start! Sure Start! A very low minimum wage! And, er...Sure Start!) It seems that the small print on the New Labour doctrine is that it's only mature to give voters what they want if it's right-wing and British nationalist in flavour.

If only he was consistent about it, Harris' suggestion that there are some lines of principle that cannot be crossed even in search of electability, even if it means "millions will suffer without a Labour government, blah blah blah", would be perfectly respectable. It's essentially the position of the true Labour moderates of old, like John Smith and Roy Hattersley. You tack to the centre to the extent that is consistent with the party's traditional values of equality and social justice, but if that isn't sufficient to win an election, so be it. If you go any further and start transgressing those values, a Labour victory is quite literally pointless. That is, of course, precisely what happened in the Blair/Brown years, which is why Liz Kendall's whingeing about people telling her to join the Tories rings rather hollow. It's one thing for a Labour government, in the name of moderation, to refrain from renationalising industries that the Tories privatised. It's another thing for them to enthusiastically engage in their own round of privatisation. It's one thing for them to not reverse Tory welfare cuts - it's another thing for them to make even deeper cuts. It's one thing for them to not reverse Tory cuts in student grants - it's another thing for them to go infinitely further by imposing tuition fees of thousands of pounds.

Corbyn-mania is essentially the Blairites reaping what they sowed by crossing those red lines. For the first time, it's now possible to clearly say that it would have been better in the long-run for Labour right-wingers if Tony Blair had never replaced John Smith. Under Smith, Labour would have won in 1997 - perhaps not with a majority of 179, but maybe with one of 80-100. They would probably have won in 2001 as well, with the Tories still reeling. By 2005, it's harder to work out what would have happened, because by that point everything had been thrown into flux by the Iraq War, which Smith would probably have kept Britain out of. But regardless of whether Labour had eventually lost in 2005 or 2010 or later, they would not be in the hopeless position they now find themselves, lacking any potential leader from the party's natural centre who can command the affection and loyalty of both the radical left and the modernisers (as Smith did).  Why does such a person not exist?  Because the party doesn't have a natural centre anymore - just tribes who hate each other's guts.

The scenario in which a Corbyn win would harm, not help, Scottish Labour

It somehow seems to have become the conventional wisdom over the last couple of weeks that there will be no breakaway from Labour if Jeremy Corbyn becomes the leader.  But then it was the conventional wisdom not so long ago that Corbyn was just making up the numbers in the leadership contest, and was doomed to finish fourth.  So conventional wisdom has its limitations.  When Tony Blair claimed that he would never walk away and that he was Labour through and through, some people with long memories were probably recalling Shirley Williams saying much the same thing in 1980, just months before she left Labour to found the SDP.

I'm a bit young to remember the SDP split, but judging from what I've read, there were three broad reasons why the Gang of Three (which became the Gang of Four after they joined up with Roy Jenkins) quickly changed their minds and decided their position within Labour was untenable.  The first was the introduction of the electoral college, giving 40% of the vote in leadership elections to the trade unions.  The second was Labour's drift towards supporting withdrawal from Europe without a referendum.  And the third was the return of a full-blooded commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament.  (The latter reason was ironic because the new party immediately went into an electoral pact with the Liberals, who were scarcely any more keen on nuclear weapons than Labour left-wingers.)

Although some Blairites are hopping mad about the way in which the new leadership election system has worked in Corbyn's favour, it's going to be a tad difficult for them to use the democratic outrage of a one person, one vote system as a pretext to leave.  And Corbyn has also neutralised the European issue by clarifying that he will campaign for a Yes vote at the forthcoming referendum (albeit perhaps with considerable reservations).  But as on so many previous occasions in Labour's history, that still leaves unilateralism as an intractable problem.  Although Corbyn has shown himself to be collegiate, it's surely inconceivable that any party he leads will not have the abolition of Trident and withdrawal from NATO as official policy.  And it's surely equally inconceivable that "mainstream" MPs, who make up the bulk of the parliamentary party, will be able to live with that - even for the two or three years they might think would be sufficient to give Corbyn "enough rope to hang himself".  So something will have to give.

I'm wondering if Blairites and other right-wingers may attempt a variant of the ruthless tactic that the Orange Bookers successfully used to displace Charles Kennedy as Liberal Democrat leader in early 2006, when they toured the TV studios making clear that they would refuse to serve until Kennedy stepped down.  In a stroke of genius, Kennedy agreed to their terms - but then added that he would be standing again in the subsequent leadership election.  Everyone knew he would win, and that any attempts by the Orange Bookers to use his alcohol problem against him would be counter-productive.  So they then started touring the studios all over again, this time outrageously insisting that nothing less than a commitment from Kennedy not to put himself forward as a candidate would be sufficient for them.  He could still have faced them down, but at that point his unselfish nature took over, and he fell on his sword in the interests of party unity.

To have any chance of displacing Corbyn, I don't think it will be sufficient for the right-wingers to refuse to serve - he'll be able to put together some sort of Shadow Cabinet.  The threat might have to be that a new party will be set up unless Corbyn steps down.  Unlike the SDP, the threatened split would have to be big enough in scale that what remained of Labour would no longer look credible as the principal opposition to the Tories.  That's a tall order, but if the right-wingers did put up a united front it's fascinating to ponder what Corbyn's response would be.  He's every bit as much an honourable party man as Kennedy was, but he might have very different ideas about what the most honourable course of action would look like.

If he did stand his ground and a formal split occurred, it would be an unmitigated calamity for Scottish Labour.  The Holyrood group would probably fragment, and if by any chance the new party was numerically stronger than official Labour, the SNP would no longer face a serious opposition.  It wouldn't matter whether the London media recognised an Alan Johnson-led Progressive Party (or whatever) as the true opposition.  There is one reason, and one reason alone, why Labour attract considerable support in Scotland, even after their recent collapse - it's the connection to the past associated with the Labour brand.  Stephen Daisley's granddad and all that sort of thing.  Strip that away, and Kezia Dugdale might find herself leading a party that gets 10% of the vote next year, not 25% or 30%.

*  *  *

Labour activist and blogger Luke Akehurst finally lost all dignity when he wrote this on LabourList yesterday -

"Some of us, including me, had grown complacent and soft in our assessment of the Hard Left, and advocated Corbyn being helped onto the ballot because we had come to see them as an eccentric minority to be tolerated rather than an existential threat to Labour’s electability...

We now have the ludicrous and perverse situation where a newly signed up member or supporter has the same say in picking Labour’s leader as an MP who has served for 30 years."

So in the space of a couple of months, Luke has gone from saying 'I want Corbyn on the ballot paper because I know my arguments are superior to his, and he should be defeated in a fair and open contest', to saying 'actually, he can't be beaten in a fair and open contest, so it would have been better if we'd kept him off the ballot paper, or ensured that each right-wing MP has several hundred times as much voting power as a recently signed-up left-wing member'.

This is what the self-styled Labour 'modernisers' have been reduced to after all these decades of noble struggle against the union bloc vote - they're now arguing, without any intentional sense of irony, that democracy is the problem.

Corbyn for glory : YouGov poll suggests the left's candidate will win outright in the first round

In a contested Labour leadership election, the last person to win on the first round without requiring any help from lower preferences was Tony Blair, when he defeated John Prescott and Margaret Beckett in 1994.  It seems rather fitting that a YouGov poll is suggesting that the next person to do it may be the arch-nemesis of the Blairites.

Labour leadership election first round (YouGov) :

Jeremy Corbyn 53% (+10)
Andy Burnham 21% (-5)
Yvette Cooper 18% (-2)
Liz Kendall 8% (-3)

This is only the second bona fide public poll of the campaign.  The first, which stunned us all by projecting a narrow 53-47 victory for Corbyn in the final run-off, was compared at the time to YouGov's famous poll on the penultimate weekend of the referendum campaign.  Like that poll, the big imponderable was how the electorate would react to the discovery that the unthinkable might be about to happen - would they be emboldened, or would they pull back from the brink?  Sadly for us, it turned out to be the latter in the referendum, but this time it appears the opposite has happened.  The momentum behind Corbyn looks unstoppable.  He can even afford to slip back a few points in the closing weeks of the campaign, because he should get enough transfers to win if he has at least 45% of the first preference vote (and probably even if he has a little less than that).

The only way he is going to lose is if YouGov have their methodology catastrophically wrong, much more so than even at the general election.  That's certainly possible, because internal party elections are much tougher to poll accurately.  But it has to be said that almost every scrap of information has been pointing in the same direction - with the possible exception of the betting odds, which have been bouncing around unpredictably, although I expect they'll now fall firmly into line with the polls.

Unlike the Daily Telegraph, a broken clock is accurate twice a day

I know that I'm picking on an easy target when I say that the Telegraph are often pretty clueless, but their treatment of the Labour leadership contest has been woeful even by their standards.  For weeks now, they've been adding little pre-prepared inserts to their online articles, describing Jeremy Corbyn as "the bookies' favourite to finish fourth" (even though for much of that time he has either been second-favourite or outright favourite to win), and Liz Kendall's chances of winning as "improving" (even though her campaign has been a dead duck for ages).  I see today that they've finally updated the inserts to declare Corbyn the favourite - which is rather unfortunate timing, because Andy Burnham was re-established as the clear favourite earlier this week!

They also make this weird comment -

"Under the old Labour electoral college that elected Ed Miliband, union-backed Jeremy Corbyn would be a shoo-in. But rules brought in last year limited the unions' power by eliminating the college and giving a single vote to each party member."

Utter tripe. Any radical left-wing leadership candidate would have been hammered under the electoral college, regardless of any support from the unions, because the parliamentary party had one-third of the vote. Each MP's vote was effectively worth several hundred times that of a rank-and-file party member or trade unionist. Corbyn may or may not win under the new system, but there's no doubt that it gives him a much better chance.

Will Burnham's cynical tactic backfire?

When I saw the headlines claiming that Andy Burnham had pledged to renationalise the railways, I initially thought that may well have been the moment that he clinched the Labour leadership.  If you think about a typical Labour member who is genuinely wavering between Jeremy Corbyn and the "mainstream" candidates, what he or she is crying out for is some red meat from a candidate deemed by conventional wisdom to be somewhat less "unelectable" than Corbyn.  Renationalising the railways looked like a masterstroke - it would be a policy dripping in symbolism for the left, but wouldn't actually diverge from public opinion in Middle England.  It wouldn't even be especially radical - it was official Labour policy under John Smith in 1993/94, and would represent only a very modest reversal of the huge programme of privatisation undertaken by the Thatcher and Major (and indeed Blair) governments.

But it turns out that Burnham wasn't proposing renationalisation at all.  He was simply reaffirming the Ed Miliband policy of allowing the public sector to compete against the private sector for individual rail franchises, as and when they come up.  What he did do, of course, was deliberately use a form of words which he knew would be misinterpreted as a commitment to renationalisation, in the hope of generating headlines that would win over left-wing waverers in a cost-free way.

In a nutshell, what Burnham has just done is a prime example of the insincerity and doublespeak that has driven people to consider Corbyn in the first place.  It'll be fascinating to see whether he's done it subtly enough to get away with it this time, or whether he's simply dug a deeper hole for himself.

Coming up tomorrow : Burnham calls for Tony Blair to be tried for war crimes*

* In a mock trial to be held at a school for educational purposes.

Is Ian Murray's triumphant tenure as Shadow Scottish Secretary drawing to a close?

I suggested semi-facetiously the other week that if Liz Kendall won the Labour leadership, she'd probably ennoble John "the Gardener" McTernan and make him Shadow Scottish Secretary. But in truth, I think we've all been assuming that Ian Murray has a guaranteed job until either the 2020 general election or Scottish independence (whichever comes soonest). As with so many other assumptions, that's been abruptly called into question by the Jeremy Corbyn surge. A couple of days ago, Murray made an extraordinarily rude and ageist comment about Corbyn (who is eighteen months younger than the current frontrunner for US President). He certainly didn't sound like a man gearing up to be the Islington MP's loyal Scottish lieutenant after the leadership contest is over.

It could be that he's just lazily assuming that the Labour party will, in McTernan's phrase, "come to its senses" in time for September. If so, he might see things differently in the event of Corbyn actually winning. But would he already have burnt his bridges by then? With almost any other leader, the answer would be yes, but Corbyn does seem to be remarkably magnanimous and free of grudges. The snag is, though, that Corbyn is also the only candidate proposing to reintroduce elections for the Shadow Cabinet, and with the best will in the world, it's very hard to imagine Murray being favoured by his parliamentary colleagues in a beauty contest of that sort. If the system works as it used to, the leader will be able to add a couple of unelected members (a bit like captain's picks in the Ryder Cup), but why would Corbyn waste his wildcards on Murray when he could use them to bring in allies like John McDonnell and Diane Abbott?

My guess is that a Corbyn win would trigger Murray's exit from the Shadow Cabinet, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Labour might then take a leaf out of Tim Farron's book and decide that having an elected party leader at Scottish level is sufficient, and that the post of Shadow Scottish Secretary is superfluous. At most, Murray might continue in a downgraded spokesperson role, if only to ensure there is someone to face David Mundell at Scottish Questions.

* * *

Is anyone else gutted that the Sunday Times has named eight Shadow Cabinet members who would refuse to serve under Corbyn, and Rachel Reeves isn't one of them? What does it actually take to get shot of her?

Blairites seem keen to erase from history Jeremy Corbyn's willingness to serve under Tony Blair

Apologies if this blog is giving the impression of turning into a pro-Corbyn site, because from a hard-headed tactical point of view I'm inclined to think it would be much better for the SNP if Labour elect Continuity Miliband and proceed with their slow, intensely boring descent into irrelevance. But some of the nonsense being spouted by panic-stricken Blairites really deserves to be called out. There's a downright offensive article in Labour Uncut today by Paul Richards, who with no trace of irony refers to rank-and-file Labour members who diverged from the leadership line in the 1980s as "non-entities", but then whinges about a trade unionist who referred to Blairism as "a virus" that needs to be stamped out. Here's a thought - if the Blairites disapproved of any threats to harmonious camaraderie, wouldn't it have been better not to give their own faction of the party a specific name, and then boast about that faction's triumph over the left by plastering the name over every Labour manifesto and conference backdrop while Blair was leader? Wouldn't it have been better not to make the total exclusion of the left from the cabinet or Shadow Cabinet a test of 'sanity' and ideological cleanliness, as Liz Kendall did in one of the recent televised leadership debates?

Richards also says this -

"There’s Jeremy Corbyn himself, obviously, who has been a hardcore Bennite for 30 years...never sullying his political purity with a single minute on the front bench."

It's true that Corbyn has never been on the front bench, but the snide implication is that this was through personal choice, rather than because of the disinclination of others to give him a job. A quick glance at the records of Shadow Cabinet elections in the mid-90s gives the lie to that notion, however. Corbyn stood in 1994, finishing 49th out of 52 candidates (believe it or not, among the three MPs who finished even lower was Rhodri Morgan, the future First Minister of Wales). He stood again in 1996, finishing 26th out of 26. Extremely unimpressive results, but the fact remains that simply by standing, he was making himself available to serve as a Shadow Cabinet member under Tony Blair. You can't get much more ecumenical than that.

What would a Corbyn win mean for the SNP?

I've just noticed an extraordinary New Statesman article from a couple of days ago, in which Stephen Bush reveals that extensive discussions with insiders have left him "more convinced than ever" that the polls are right, and that Jeremy Corbyn will become Labour leader in September.  We should probably take that assessment seriously, as Bush wasn't wise after the event in respect of the general election - he warned before May 7th that the polls might be misleading, in which case the most likely outcome was a Tory-led government (albeit he thought the coalition with the Lib Dems would have to be renewed).  My only quibble in this case is that the current polls aren't actually showing that Corbyn is the nailed-on winner - he has an enormous lead on first preferences, but all that matters is whether he is still ahead in the final run-off, and on that measure his lead is wafer-thin.  Assuming the private poll we saw last night was legitimate, that should actually be regarded as a statistical tie between Corbyn and Yvette Cooper.

However, if Bush is correct that the polls aren't wildly inaccurate, it's clearly the case that Corbyn at least has an excellent chance.  If he wins, it will turn the political world upside down, and the SNP will be affected just like everyone else.  Here are a few potential implications -

1) Left-wingers who turned to the independence movement because the Britain of Attlee, Bevan and Benn seemed to be gone forever may start to have second thoughts.  I know the counter-argument is that it will shortly be demonstrated that Corbyn is unelectable in the south, but in truth I wouldn't be at all surprised if he enjoys a prolonged honeymoon period in the polls.  Even Michael Foot enjoyed a poll lead over Mrs Thatcher at times.   If that happens, it will fuel a (possibly misplaced) sense in the Scottish left that all is not lost at UK level after all.

2) The SNP will, without changing any of their own policies, sometimes find themselves criticising Labour "from the right" for the first time in decades.  Corbyn will probably propose some nationalisations that the SNP think are a step too far, and he may also be more radical on taxation.  Unless Corbyn compromises with the mainstream Labour view on defence and foreign affairs, the SNP may end up defending NATO against a Labour party that wants Britain to withdraw from the alliance.  Speaking personally, I would find that incredibly disorientating, although admittedly it's a less important issue than Trident, on which Labour and the SNP would suddenly be on exactly the same page.

3) We won't have to worry any more about tactical unionist voting (or at least not to any great extent) - the choice between Labour and the Tories will become more polarised than at any time since the 1980s, and supporters of each side won't be lending each other votes to stop the SNP.  In some cases, Tory voters may even revert to seeing the SNP as a legitimate 'moderate' tactical option for thwarting Labour.  Admittedly, though, tactical voting was never really likely to be a major factor in the Holyrood election.

4) The SNP might find it harder to retain their overall majority next year.  The "good" news is that politics is very personality-driven these days, and I suspect voters will still look at the choice between Sturgeon and Dugdale and conclude that it's a no-brainer.  But the Corbyn factor could chip away at the working-class vote that defected to the SNP en masse in May, allowing Labour to lose less badly than they otherwise would have done.  That could make all the difference if the SNP are seeking a mandate for an independence referendum (regardless of whether the proposal is conditional on Brexit or not).

Of course, all of this assumes that the Labour parliamentary party would accept a Corbyn win, which they may well not do.  If there's a major breakaway, the SNP could end up being helped rather than harmed.  It would be fascinating to see which way the Labour group at Holyrood would jump if they had to choose between two rival parties.

An alternative to Blaixit, or "Pinochet without the tanks"

Over the last couple of weeks, I've made a few mentions of Diane Abbott's dictum that it's always the right that walks out on Labour, not the left.  I think that's probably correct, meaning that if there is any split in the party after the leadership election, it's much more likely to be caused by an SDP-style Blairite breakaway ("Blaixit") than by an exodus of the left.  But there is one possible exception to that general rule, which could come about if anyone is foolish enough to listen to the man with a unique track record of having helped Labour lose elections in both Australia and Scotland over the last couple of years, namely the one and only John "the Gardener" McTernan.

Astonishingly, McTernan has said today that Jeremy Corbyn should be instantly removed from office if he is elected leader.  I had assumed that the Blairite plan might be to give Corbyn a year or two, in the hope that his eventual demise would look like an organic process brought about by poor opinion polls and local election results.  But there would be no cover story for an immediate overthrow - it would be a coup, plain and simple.  Presumably the leadership election rules would then be swiftly changed to block off any possible mechanism for reversing the coup, even in the long-term - so how could the left possibly remain within the party after that?  It would inevitably be seen as Labour's own internal version of the Chilean coup of 1973 - Pinochet without the guns and tanks.

You could easily imagine a "Real Labour" party being set up, led by "Labour's legitimate elected leader" and financially supported by the trade unions that backed Corbyn.  It wouldn't necessarily be only a Campaign Group outfit - many soft left MPs would be so infuriated by the death of democracy within official Labour that they might just be tempted to make the move across.  As McTernan is supposedly so keen on "realism" and winning at all costs, it would be interesting to know how he thinks provoking such a schism would help defeat the Tories in 2020, especially under an electoral system that severely punishes split oppositions.

If Corbyn is elected, and the parliamentary party find that they really can't live with him as leader, the most elegant way of averting a disastrous split would be some kind of negotiated "retirement" after two or three years, in return for a Corbyn proxy such as John McDonnell being appointed to a senior position in the Shadow Cabinet.  That would doubtless horrify McTernan, but in the "real world", John, the idea that the left can win a leadership election fair and square, and that you can then just ignore that and pretend that it has no consequences, simply isn't tenable.

Incidentally, the German Social Democrats won the 1998 election "in spite of" the left-wing Oskar Lafontaine being both party chairman and Finance Minister-designate (ie. Shadow Chancellor).  So the assumption that modern electorates will never countenance voting for a party with a strong traditional left component doesn't stack up.

*  *  *

McTernan also added that he thinks Corbyn's popularity is an emotional spasm, because "so many people believed Labour were going to win this election". Of course, McTernan himself didn't merely "believe" Labour would win, he knew it for a fact. At his Summerhall lecture that I went to just over a year ago, he told us that he could "guarantee" a Labour government if we voted No in the independence referendum.

We're still waiting for our money back, John.