Herding cats



Back in June I made a prediction (a bout of summer madness perhaps?) that the Labour party might split but today I feel vindicated.

At the time I was reacting to talk of the threat to the Labour Party as a 'broad church'. I wrote: "...churches can also suffer schisms within their walls. This is what I fear will happen with the Labour Party, particularly when, as the opinion polls consistently predict, it wins an overwhelming Parliamentary majority. Without a robust official Opposition in the Commons the opposition is likely to arise internally and this could prove very divisive and difficult to manage...". 

Today I'm intrigued to read that Jeremy Corbyn yesterday attended a meeting to discuss the setting-up of a new leftwing party to be known as Collective. Does this mean he has now grasped the nettle of a formal alternative to the Labour Party? He said he had attended to “listen to and share a variety of views about the way forward for the left”. But he must be encouraged by the growing leftwing dissent in the Commons that has centred around him, although whether he will join the new party and encourage his Parliamentary colleagues to follow suit, remains to be seen.

(By the bye, it was interesting to note that Lutfur Rahman, the independent Aspire party mayor of Tower Hamlets, also attended Collective's inaugural meeting. The self-proclaimed socialist was a close ally of 'Red' Ken Livingstone, which could provide a pointer as to how Collective might evolve, especially in relation to the next set of local elections due in 2024.)

Corbyn retained his constituency of Islington North as an Independent MP at the general election, a rare achievement and testimony to his huge popularity locally. Pamela Fitzpatrick, director of his Peace and Justice project, told the Mirror: “We have seen the rise of the far right and already people are feeling politically homeless because they were so desperate for change but support for Labour is dropping so quickly. We need a real movement that can fill that gap".

While it's generally nice to be proved right, in this particular instance the fulfilment of my prediction is not wholly gratifying. I'd much rather have seen a 'broad church' Labour Party re-emerge, working collaboratively in government. Realistically, though, under Keir Starmer's leadership - and with such a stonking majority - that was never likely to happen. It's by no means a given, however, that Corbyn will join, much less lead, Collective, or that all suspended Labour MPs will rally to it. In fact many certainly wouldn't. 

Nor is it clear that other disaffected leftwingers currently remaining in the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) will resign the whip to join Corbyn's new faction. There is no sign of that yet and a lot hinges on the outcome of his approach to the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, for official recognition of his existing grouping, the Independent Alliance (UK), as an entity in the Commons. 

While not yet constituting a party, if successful the grouping of five MPs will be larger than the Greens, Plaid Cymru and DUP, the same size as Reform, and could potentially overtake the SNP, in the Chamber. In that case, as well as gaining extra debating time, they could, with Mr Speaker's agreement, also get additional funding, so-called Short Money*.

If the bloc were then to join Collective, that could be seismic.

*Short Money is made available to all opposition parties in the House of Commons that secured either at least two seats or one seat and more than150,000 votes at the previous general election. As the party wasn't in existence at the general election this could be a hard one to argue.




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