Setting Up Anew

The fundamental error of the Corbyn Leadership was the failure to sack the entire Labour Party staff on the first day and start again from scratch. They went on to throw the 2017 General Election. As for the charge that Corbyn was in control of the party by the time of the worse defeat in 2019, that charge is beneath contempt.

The people who lay it know perfectly well that the whole operation had by then been hijacked by Keir Starmer and his cancerous policy of a second referendum on EU membership. Giving houseroom to Starmer was another major error on Corbyn's part. 

Next year's local election results are going to be catastrophic for Labour. It is going to lose the office of First Minister of Wales for the first time ever. And it will retain the office of Mayor of London only on second preferences, so intense is black anger at Starmer's very existence. Dawn Butler was stopped by the Police while driving through Hackney today.

Will there be a Leadership challenge from the Left next year? Yes, and there ought to be. Moreover, there is only one possible candidate. The man whose 2015 Leadership campaign created an organised, mass Left in Britain for the first time in at least a generation. 

Just as there needs to be a head-to-head Leadership Election between Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond, so there needs to be a head-to-head Leadership Election between Keir Starmer and Jeremy Corbyn. 

In both cases, each side needs to be clear from the outset that defeat would mean leaving the party and setting up anew. The contest would then be for the ownership of the brand, once and for all. Both in the SNP and in the Labour Party, that contest is long overdue.