Sensible Labour members will be mourning Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership win this weekend
If Corbyn wins, as looks likely, Labour will truly have ceased to be a serious party of power, leaving the goal wide open for the Tories
LABOUR meets in Liverpool this weekend. But it might as well be for its memorial service rather than a party conference.
If, as pretty much everyone in the Labour Party expects, Jeremy Corbyn is re-elected as leader at noon today, Labour will have ceased to be a serious party of power.
It will have become a party of protest, uninterested in the compromises with the electorate that are necessary to win.
A second Corbyn victory will have far more devastating consequences for Labour than his triumph last year.
The Labour selectorate now know what a Corbyn leadership means, who he is and what he’s selling.
If they choose to give him a fresh mandate, they’ll have accepted a leadership that is intellectually wrong, incompetent and — even in mid-term — far, far behind the Tories.
The internal opposition to him will, through this challenge, have ended up strengthening his position.
Corbyn will be able to say that the party knows what he’s doing and has just asked him to carry on.
Worse, Corbyn’s opponents surrendered to him right at the start of the contest.
At no point did they try to take on his outdated ideology. Rather, they offered up Owen Smith as a more competent leader, not as an antidote to the Corbyn virus.
Smith himself emphasised that the party owed Corbyn “a debt of gratitude for helping Labour rediscover its radical roots”. He stressed: “I am just as radical as Jeremy Corbyn.”
In this contest, Smith has said things that would have rendered him unelectable in a General Election.
He has talked about getting around the table with IS, has indicated he is prepared to consider joining both the euro and the EU’s disastrous border-free Schengen zone, and argued the need for higher taxes.
These policies would be disastrous for Britain. They are also hardly going to make Nuneaton, or any other marginal seat, return to the Labour fold.
Before this contest got under way, there was much talk about a Labour split if Corbyn won. But this now, in the words of one of Corbyn’s most virulent critics in the Parliamentary Labour Party, “isn’t going to happen”.
Labour MPs believe they have to stay and fight, and fight again to save the party they love.
But this is not a fight they are going to win, at least in this decade.
The Corbynites are busy strengthening their grip over the party from top to bottom.
And remember, in this contest tens of thousands of his supporters were barred from voting either because they had joined the party too late or because of what they had said on social media.
In the next contest Corbyn will be able to call on these reinforcements.
At the moment there are discussions under way to try to persuade senior Labour figures to stay off Corbyn’s front bench.
The plan is to form a shadow cabinet in exile which would come up with a set of new ideas for Labour.
At the same time, a dedicated staff would try to sign up moderates ahead of the next leadership contest.
I’m told “the money is there” for a staff of 25 to 30 to work on this campaign, with the aim of ousting Corbyn before the next election.
But this contest shows that Labour has changed. It isn’t the party it once was.
If Labour MPs think Britain needs a sensible, centre-left party, then they need to start one.
Wary May tries to rein in Brexit Boris
FEW things make Downing Street more nervous than Boris Johnson talking about Brexit.
So it was predictable that No10 tried to distance itself from the Brexit timetable Boris spoke about on Thursday.
But their rather OTT response to his remarks did reveal how worried about him they are.
What was striking about Boris’s comments was that he has been playing it very safe as Foreign Secretary.
But there was concern in No10 when Boris, right, was asked to be a patron of Change Britain – a new pro-Brexit group dominated by those involved in the Vote Leave campaign.
After discussions with Downing Street, Boris did not become a patron. However, after some toing and froing, No10 did allow him to record a video message for the group’s launch.
Interestingly, Boris’s message went further than Theresa May’s simple “Brexit means Brexit” formulation, laying down some markers as to what he wants to see in the deal.
May’s strategy on Brexit is to give nothing away. Her team think this is both the best negotiating strategy and the best way to keep the Tory Party from arguing endlessly about the issue.
But several of the ministers involved in the Brexit preparations think this line can’t hold for much longer.
They feel, at some point soon, they are going to have to give businesses and other countries – as well as the British people – a sense of the deal they are trying to strike.
One complicating factor is that those who the UK is negotiating with will keep changing due to the elections in Europe.
Who wins the Italian referendum and the French and German elections will have a big impact on the deal the UK gets.
Brexit Secretary David Davis has told Cabinet colleagues he thinks the deal will be done very late in the day for this reason.
But whatever deal Mrs May strikes, she’ll be watching Boris closely as she does it.
May I see your speech in advance?
TORY Cabinet ministers will be busy working on their conference speeches this weekend.
They have to submit them to No10 by Monday.
May’s insistence on early sight of their speeches is rather ironic.
As Home Secretary, she was notorious for sending her conference speech over as late as possible.
Ministers are wondering if No10’s approach will change post-conference.
One tells me that over the summer, its attitude was “don’t make any announcements unless you absolutely have to”.
The question is whether this approach was just designed to ensure a smooth run into conference, as it pretty much has, or whether it is how the May team wants to run things permanently.
Goldsmith to fight Heathrow runway however necessary
IF the Commons votes for a third runway at Heathrow, Zac Goldsmith will quit Parliament and won’t stand in the subsequent by-election, friends of the Tory MP tell me.
I understand his thinking is that if the Commons supports it, there is no way to oppose a third runway in Parliament.
So he’ll help fight it through the courts instead.
The current expectation is the Government will offer a free vote on Heathrow expansion. This is the favoured solution of the Chief Whip Gavin Williamson – as this column revealed in July.
This would allow Boris Johnson and Justine Greening to oppose Heathrow expansion, as they have promised to do, while remaining in Government.
But with talk of judicial reviews whatever the decision, the Government needs to get on with it. After all, Britain has been debating whether to build another runway at Heathrow since 1968.
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Cameron to Remain in UK
FRIENDS of David Cameron are keen to quash the idea that the Camerons might be moving to New York.
“He might spend more time there. But he’s an Englishman at heart,” one says.
Meanwhile, friends of his are anxiously waiting to see who gets an invite to his 50th birthday next month.
I’m told invitations were due to go out this week and those who backed Leave in the referendum shouldn’t wait in for the postman.
James Forsyth is political editor of The Spectator.