Remember the Labour ‘moderates’? You know, the vast majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party who opposed Corbyn as leader, and who, we are told, find the deeply unpleasant behaviour of various of his allies and supporters “unacceptable”?
The people who, we keep hearing, will not put up with the next stage of the Hard Left’s takeover of Labour, right until the next stage goes ahead and they all suddenly turn out to have pressing appointments to wash their hair or stand to be a metro mayor somewhere. What happened to those guys?
If you were wondering how the Labour moderate fightback against the Corbynite takeover of their Party is going, look no further than the forthcoming battle for the chairmanship of the Labour NEC. Battle lines are drawing up, candidates are being talked up and anonymously slagged off, factions are rallying their troops and resources for a bitter contest between Momentum and….Unite.
That’s right, we’ve passed the stage at which there’s even an attempt to resist the capture of Labour’s institutions on the part of anyone to the right of Richard Burgon. Instead, they’ve completely abandoned the field, and the factional battles are between different bands of Corbyn’s followers. Like the Model T Ford, only somewhat less innovative, the Labour Party is now offering any kind of Left you want, as long as it’s Hard.
That surrender – the latest in a regular series – does not cast the supposed moderates in a particularly good light. Charged with a responsibility to oppose ideas and tactics that they allegedly believe are fundamentally wrong, they have opted to run away.
Incidentally, it also helps to explain why the Continuity Remain campaign still has rather more money and personnel than might have been expected this long after the referendum; the Chuka Umunnas of the world have occupied themselves with fighting for the EU, because they have given up any hope of fighting for their wider political values or the future of their Party.