Yesterday was the 19th anniversary of Labour’s greatest election victory. The party marked it by debating Hitler’s attitude towards Jewish nationhood. Even this doesn’t capture the full extent of the irrelevance Labour has become since it left office in 2010. In nationwide elections this Thursday it has an uphill task to equal the performance managed by Ed Miliband in opposition. It will be in the party’s longterm interests and the country’s if voters deal Labour a substantial rebuff.
Since Mr Miliband led it to defeat in the general election last year, Labour has abandoned any pretence to serious reflection on its decline in fortunes. Tony Blair won a parliamentary majority in 1997 that exceeded the landslide victories of Clement Attlee or the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher. He did so by audaciously appealing to former Tory voters. By contrast, Labour under Jeremy Corbyn has marched resolutely away from the centre ground.
Labour plumbed new depths of disrepute last week when Ken Livingstone claimed an identity of purpose between the Nazis and the German Zionist movement. The former London mayor was ostentatiously not making a genuine historical point about prewar Europe. He was floating a hoary antisemitic conspiracy theory that has inflamed community relations in modern Britain. There could scarcely be a more vivid illustration of how far the party has jettisoned its own traditions along with the sensibilities of moderate voters.
This week’s elections will decide the political complexion of English councils, the Scottish parliament, the Welsh assembly, the London mayoralty, and police and crime commissioners. Sadiq Khan, Labour’s candidate for London mayor, acknowledges that the row over antisemitism has damaged his chances. To his credit, he speedily condemned Mr Livingstone’s remarks and has been a voice against extremism in the Muslim community. If Mr Khan fulfils predictions and wins the mayoralty, it will be tempting for Labour to take it as vindication of Mr Corbyn’s leadership.
That would be a fantasy. Britain’s cosmopolitan capital is unlike the rest of the country. Labour did well in London last year even while it was all but wiped out in its historical stronghold of Scotland. So far from making up ground in Scotland, the party risks coming third, trailing the Conservatives for the first time in 50 years. It may also cede overall control in Wales and lose seats in England.
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Labour ought to be far ahead when the Conservatives are divided, the Liberal Democrats are enfeebled and the government has attracted public hostility over tax credits, disability benefits and the health service. Under Mr Corbyn’s calamitous leadership, in a fit of inattention, Labour has transformed itself from a serious party of government to a sectarian pressure group of extreme and inflammatory opinions.
It is tempting to hold Mr Corbyn responsible, but in fact this malaise is a team effort. Moderate MPs know they have a leader of incompetence and nugatory intellect, yet have so far been reluctant to strike. Mr Corbyn gives little sign of ever having travelled beyond the circuit of far-left pressure groups or spoken to anyone who does not already agree with him. Labour’s weakness is evident not only in Mr Corbyn’s hapless performances at the dispatch box and before the cameras, but in the bizarre and electorally suicidal choice of causes that he alights upon. Unilateral nuclear disarmament, inflationary public financing and sharing sovereignty over the Falkland Islands are far removed from plans for responsible government.
If British democracy is to resume the pattern where the executive is held to account by a plausible opposition, Labour needs to lose big this week. It is vital for the party’s survival, never mind its pro-spects for again achieving office, that Mr Corbyn be deposed before he causes further derision.