When Jeremy Corbyn was elected as the Labour party leader eight months ago by an overwhelming margin, many predicted that he would struggle. As a serial rebel and unreconstructed politician of the hard left, whose bid for the leadership was overwhelmingly opposed by Labour MPs, Mr Corbyn needed to confound his critics. Instead, he has confirmed their worst fears.
Four days before important elections that the normal rules of politics say should be a shoo-in for the main opposition party, Mr Corbyn’s Labour is in crisis. Faced with the open goal of a Tory party tearing itself apart over the European Union referendum and creating powerful echoes of the huge and destructive Maastricht Treaty schisms of the 1990s, an unprecedented junior doctors’ dispute and contentious policies such as forcing every state school to become an academy, the Labour leader is up to his neck in his own trouble.
Above all, Mr Corbyn has failed to tackle the upsurge of anti-semitism that has taken hold in his party since his elevation to the leadership. Having reluctantly agreed to the suspension of Naz Shah, its Bradford West MP, for suggesting two years ago that Israel’s population should be “transported” to America, Mr Corbyn was then faced with having to deal with Ken Livingstone, one of his oldest political allies. The former London mayor, in an attempt to defend Ms Shah, presented a bizarre Soviet inspired interpretation of history to suggest Hitler was a supporter of Zionism. He stood by those comments yesterday.
In normal circumstances, and under a moderate leader, few would have taken too much notice of what Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, described as Mr Livingstone’s “vile” views. In Mr Corbyn’s Labour party, however, they matter a lot. In the space of less than 12 months Labour has gone from having a Jewish leader to being obliged to launch an inquiry into anti-semitism among its members, with a view to establishing a code of conduct.
You can learn much about Mr Corbyn from the company he keeps. He once described his “honour and pleasure” at hosting “our friends” from Hamas and Hezbollah in parliament. Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel. In equally dubious company, the Labour leader has spoken disapprovingly of the power of the “Israel lobby” . It is all of a piece with his rejection of shoot to kill for Islamic terrorists and with the way that in the past he and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell cosied up to the IRA.
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Labour MPs have little confidence that anti-semitism and other extreme views will be rooted out while Mr Corbyn is leader. They are probably right. Nearly 15,000 Labour supporters have signed a petition calling not for Mr Livingstone to be disciplined but for the suspension of John Mann, the Labour MP who called him out for his comments and was summoned to see the chief whip for doing so. Mr Mann says he has received threats of violence.
In this newspaper today Mark Regev, the new Israeli ambassador to Britain, says elements of the Labour left are in denial about anti-semitism. Mr Corbyn’s “failure to condemn has to be itself condemned”, he says. Perhaps even more telling are the comments of Isaac Herzog, leader of Israel’s Labor party, its main opposition. Mr Livingstone “is surely anti-semitic beyond hope of redemption”, he says, and Mr Corbyn should visit Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem to learn what happened when the Jews were last forcibly “transported”, to their deaths.
For the many moderate Labour MPs and members, recent events have been a nightmare. For the many excellent Labour councils up and down the country, the party’s leadership is more than merely an embarrassment. When the Labour Welsh first minister Carwyn Jones told Mr Corbyn to cancel a planned visit to the principality because it would do more harm than good, it spoke volumes.
There is only one way for Labour to prevent the destruction of the party and its evolution into a hard-left fringe organisation and that is to get rid of Mr Corbyn. That will not happen if this week’s elections provide any succour for him. He has to lose — and lose big.
If Labour hangs on to second place in Scotland, albeit far behind the Scottish Nationalists, Mr Corbyn’s allies will see that as victory. If Labour’s seat losses in the council elections are modest (normally it would expect to gain hundreds) the allies will claim Mr Corbyn has passed his first test. If Sadiq Khan wins the London mayoral race then, despite his having distanced himself from the leader he nominated, it will be declared a Corbyn victory.
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For Labour, the ideal this week would be a series of political defeats without a hint of victory. Large losses in councils and an unexpected triumph for the Tory Zac Goldsmith as London mayor would give it a chance to replace a disastrous leader. It may not happen, given old loyalties, but it would stop the rot.