Although it has been common knowledge for a week that the Conservative Party leadership election result will be announced on September 9th, the Labour Party now has the same date as its own deadline.
By that date, it must have a proper leader and Shadow Cabinet in place and not this joke opposition front bench that places ideology before ability and makes some of its members wear two hats due to a shortage of MPs willing to work under its embattled leader.
If by that time the Labour Party still has no leader acceptable to the majority of its MPs and also a credible Shadow Cabinet, then it will be accurate to state that the party’s rules and processes make it unfit to function as a parliamentary party. It will be demonstrable that the party is in fact ungovernable under its rulebook and is not fit to form a government.
The only course of action right now seems to be for the party to split. On one side there would the ‘democratic socialists’, taking its flawed rulebook, the left-wing membership and the more militant trades unions. On the other would be the ‘social democrats’, taking the moderate rump of the membership and backing from donors, support from voters, as well as those sane trades unions that do not always hanker after a socialist one-party republic. The moderates will have to build a new party from scratch, having four years’ grace to do so. The divorce would be acrimonious, with court cases needed to divide that split party’s assets.
If the Labour Party misses this September 9th deadline, the Conservative Party, in addition to being able to use all those juicy quotes about Corbyn from the numerous resignation letters, will be able to state with absolute accuracy that Corbyn’s Labour party is an example of socialist chaos and infighting that puts arcane internal processes and extreme ideology before governing in the national interest. This is a charge the Conservative Party can level at the Labour Party for the next four years to lasting effect among the swing voters that decide elections in this country.
Should the Labour Party not get its house in order by the time a Conservative Woman walks into No.10 as Prime Minister for the second time, they are doomed.
At present, it appears that they cannot exist any more as a single party composed of this clearly ridiculous ‘broad church’ that supports communism and free markets at exactly the same time. The electoral damage will be so great as to make Michael Foot’s time as leader seem like a tiff at a picnic. The Conservative Party will have landslide victories in 2020 and beyond. The Labour Party could be reduced back to where it was after Ramsay MacDonald formed his National Government and fought as such in the 1931 general election. That time, it required a world war, giving Labour politicians disproportionate domestic power in a broad coalition that they put to good use to usher in a Labour government.
The reported exodus of communications staff from the Labour leader’s office may be an indicator of the impending disaster. Corbyn is being seen as a lost cause by his closest people.
It took the Labour Party over 16 years from the SDP split in 1981 to forming a government in 1997. But this was guaranteed by a major failure of Conservative economic policy less than six months after the 1992 election, a number of trivial scandals over-inflated by a wrong-footed and vengeful media that had expected Neil Kinnock to topple John Major, a Conservative Party split over the euro and also the Labour Party’s re-branding under a young, moderate, pro-capitalist and telegenic leader three years before taking office. The Conservative Party have not been as disaster-prone as all that of late.
The Labour Party’s internal political activity should increase in the last month before this deadline. August 2016 will not be a time for holidays in the Labour Party. Its very survival is at stake.
The clock is ticking…
The Labour Party has two months to get its house in order, or it is toast on the floor, buttered side down, fit only for the dustbin of history.
(Image: 70023venus2009)
