The events in Nice should jolt Britain out of its sustained recent bout of introspection. At least 84 people are dead, with children among the murdered, and we are reminded again that civilisation is under assault by a death cult. I’ll write later for my weekly Reaction newsletter with some thoughts on the implications.
But before that – and in the context it seems pretty meaningless now – I want to pass on one good observation from a friend about the state of the UK Labour party and what might be done about it.
At a dinner the other night in London, for leading financiers, at which I was the guest speaker on Brexit and all that, we soon got into a discussion about Labour and the failed attempts to remove the dreadful Corbyn.
I went off on a riff about how it should be possible to create a moderate, centre-left alternative to Labour to represent the many millions of Britons who are not Tories. Several people nodded. Why, I said, if Facebook can be built from nothing to a media behemoth in little more than a decade, then surely it should be feasible to create a sensible replacement for Labour?
I am presuming here that the current Labour party has had it. Not only has it been infiltrated by the SWP and hard left, middle class agitators, many of the hundreds thousands of those who have joined are so distant from the concerns and instincts of most voters in England, that there can be no electoral reconciliation. Labour as we know it is finished. Christmas has come early for the Conservatives. That means a new force is needed to hold the Tories to account and to create an alternative government to stop them having the rest of the century their own way.
At dinner, people nodded politely at these observations. And then our host – my friend the banker who is not right-wing – made a brilliant observation.
What would this new centre-left party actually stand for? What would its policies be? And – this is the key – who exactly would vote for it in numbers anything like large enough to enable it to form a government?
I demurred for a second. The Tories are strong in England but England is far from being exclusively Tory. There must be room for a moderate centrist or centre-left party, because… because… because…
And then when you think about it clearly his questions are spot on. The situation is as follows: Labour is dead in Scotland, really. The SNP – social democratic with a leftie tinge – is the party, and the main opposition force is the Tories. What is the Scottish Labour party for? What’s the point? Meanwhile, in the North of England, UKIP is eating Labour’s lunch. Labour is in deep trouble that is about to get worse as it responds to the referendum result by pushing for a re-run claiming working-class voters are so stupid they were misled. In Wales Labour is weakening. In the Midlands and especially the South it has no purchase beyond pockets of appeal. In London it is strong and that is about it.
Even if the sensible parts of Labour broke away and established a membership base (200,000 moderates on ÂŁ5 per month – and wooed back wealthy non-Tory donors and entrepreneurs in addition) the remaining chunk of Corbynite Labour would retain control of the some of the trade unions, select its own own maniacs as candidates for 2020 and end up splitting the centre-left vote, giving the Tories a landslide. So divided is the left that the Corbynites could easily have a terrible general election and still take 5m votes and few seats.
That being the case, I leave my host’s questions with you for consideration. I would be interested in hearing your views. What – post-Brexit – is the point of any centre-left alternative to Theresa “One Nation” May?
