The behind-the-scenes battle for Labour’s future

Emily Thornberry called out Jeremy Corbyn’s key allies on the radio – but failed to mention them by name, writes John Rentoul

Emily Thornberry speaks during a People’s Vote rally in Brighton in September (AFP)

Emily Thornberry, shadow foreign secretary and now a candidate for the Labour leadership, said yesterday: “I think that Jeremy has been badly advised.” She meant Seumas Milne, the party’s director of strategy and communications, and Karie Murphy, who ran the Labour leader’s office before being moved to a campaign role at party HQ for the election.

I suppose it is more decorous to avoid attacking people by name, but Emily “They Can’t Make Up S*** About Me” Thornberry is not always known for holding back. So what is going on?

Part of the explanation is that Thornberry knows Milne and Murphy are still powerful members of the clique that controls the Labour Party. Corbyn’s supporters, organised through Momentum among party members and through people such as Len McCluskey in the trade unions, still have a majority on the party’s national executive committee – and it is the NEC that will decide the timetable and the rules for the leadership election.

But she also knows that there are tensions within the clique – Murphy’s unexplained move out of the leader’s office before the election was probably evidence of that. And she knows that there are resentments against Murphy and Milne among some of Corbyn’s less committed supporters, who might be persuaded to vote for her.

There was surprise at all levels of the party, for instance, when it emerged, days after the election, that Milne and Murphy had – some time ago – transferred to permanent staff contracts. That meant their employment was no longer tied to Corbyn, unlike others on his staff, whose jobs would end when his did.

That is what Thornberry meant when she told Robert Peston on Wednesday: “It does seem to me that if decisions have been made wrongly, it should be [people in senior positions] who should pay the price, and not those who are working night and day in junior positions.”

And she was plainly referring to Milne, the former Guardian journalist who is Corbyn’s spokesperson, when she said: “I think there have been times when we have made decisions and that hasn't been what has been briefed out to the media.” She was talking, among other things, about the party’s response to the Salisbury poisonings, when Corbyn was reluctant to condemn Russia, but Milne was even more pro-Russian in his briefing of journalists.

In the wake of Labour’s worst defeat since 1935, it might be expected that Corbyn’s senior advisers would leave the stage when he did, if not before. But Milne and Murphy are still players in the battle to decide the future direction of the party.

Their fate will tell us a great deal, and it was significant that Rebecca Long Bailey, favoured by most of the clique as Corbyn’s successor, rather sharply (if anonymously) denied a report that Murphy would be leaving her Labour post to run Long Bailey’s leadership campaign.