Jeremy Corbyn should listen to Tom Watson about Brexit and antisemitism – he’ll never be prime minister if he doesn’t
Labour will win power only if it is a broad church rather than the narrow sect it is now in danger of becoming
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Your support makes all the difference.Jeremy Corbyn would be wise to act on the candid but brutal advice given to him by his deputy Tom Watson, who has warned that if the Labour leader doesn’t change course, he will never become prime minister.
In an explosive interview on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, Mr Watson said Labour would suffer further defections among MPs, peers, councillors and members unless Mr Corbyn reassures the party’s social democratic wing by promoting some of its members to the shadow cabinet or giving it greater influence on policy.
He argued that the resignation of nine Labour MPs last week showed the leadership’s attempts to tackle antisemitism had failed, saying the Labour leader must now intervene to ensure more rigorous disciplinary action is taken.
Mr Watson added that further defections would be less likely if Mr Corbyn adopted the policy agreed by Labour’s annual conference by backing a Final Say referendum on Brexit.
If past form is any guide, Mr Corbyn and his close allies will be tempted to dismiss Mr Watson’s criticism as another roar from the dinosaurs of a “Blairite establishment”, which has started to walk out on Labour and find common cause with its Conservative enemies by forming the Independent Group.
This would be the wrong response. For a start, Mr Watson is a former trade union official who did his utmost to force Tony Blair’s resignation as prime minister so that Gordon Brown could take over.
True, Mr Watson comes from a different Labour tradition to Mr Corbyn’s on the Bennite hard left. Both are equally honourable, and Labour has always been a broad church. That is now in doubt.
The party’s 500,000 members have twice elected Mr Corbyn with a big majority, and would do so again if another leadership contest were held now. But there is a gulf between Labour’s members and its MPs, 80 per cent of whom declared they had no confidence in Mr Corbyn in 2016.
As a result, the Labour front bench includes mainly those who remained loyal to the leader, leaving impressive performers such as Yvette Cooper and Hilary Benn on the back benches (though it is true that some of his critics felt unable to serve in Mr Corbyn’s team).
The loss of nine MPs, and the real prospect that others will soon join them, makes this a very dangerous moment for the party. Mr Watson is right to be “desperately worried” about what he called a “crisis for the soul of the Labour Party” and its “perilous” position.
There is another reason he cannot be dismissed by those who point to Mr Corbyn’s mandate from Labour’s members. Mr Watson is the only other Labour figure to enjoy such a mandate: he was elected on the same day as Mr Corbyn in 2015.
How will Team Corbyn react? The omens are not good. During previous bouts of tension between Mr Corbyn and Mr Watson, the leader’s allies drew up a plan to dilute his influence by electing a woman as a second deputy leader.
They dropped the proposal when it became clear that they could not guarantee that a Corbyn supporter such as Emily Thornberry or Rebecca Long-Bailey would land the post, and feared the more independent-minded Angela Rayner would win it. As a soft-left figure, Ms Rayner would have been well-placed to bind together Labour’s rival factions.
Ms Thornberry’s intemperate reaction to Labour’s split is revealing about Team Corbyn’s mindset. She told a rally in Nottinghamshire on Saturday the eight Labour MPs had joined the Independent Group so they could “cuddle up to the Tories”.
Such a response is likely to encourage Labour MPs agonising about their own position to go rather than stay.
Mr Watson’s reaction – seeing the departures more in sorrow than anger – is much wiser, and serves Labour’s interests better.
Mr Corbyn should welcome his peace moves rather than ostracise him, and should act on his recommendations.
He should recognise that Labour will win power only if it is a broad church rather than the narrow sect it is now in danger of becoming.
Is Mr Corbyn a big enough figure to take Mr Watson’s stark warnings to heart? We will soon find out.
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