Not Our Party

“It’s quite hard for the public to grasp the idea that there’s 10 people that run things,” said Jeremy Corbyn yesterday. Well, there are going to be 16 of them now. That is ridiculous, as is the name. Downright pernicious are the expressly anti-parliamentary ban on MPs from this “leadership model”, and the permission of dual membership at the discretion of the Central Executive Committee, which will now be concerned with little else apart from its misnamed “democratic whip” that must be a contempt of Parliament.

Will that CEC feature the Conference darlings Amy Leather, who was on the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party during its rape scandals, and Evan or Eryn Browning, whom the Scottish Greens removed as a council candidate only in April because he had texted underage girls to ask them to drink his urine? And no matter who was on the CEC, imagine submitting to that arrangement after having been elected as an Independent. It is an incredibly difficult thing to be elected to Parliament as an Independent, never mind to take a seat from the party that won the overall General Election by a landslide, in one case overturning the 22,675 majority of someone who would otherwise have entered the Cabinet. Zarah who?

With no hope of holding Coventry South even on what was going to be a very bad night for Labour, rumour has it that Zarah Sultana will be heading back to Birmingham, where she and a friend will try to keep Shabana Mahmood and Jess Phillips in Parliament by keeping out Akhmed Yakoob and Jody McIntyre. Since Wes Streeting is practically certain to lose his seat, this intervention might be enough to make either Mahmood or Phillips Leader of the Labour Party. Within 18 months, she could be Prime Minister. Your Party cannot tell you who would be Prime Minister if it won a General Election. It can tell you only that it would not be Jeremy Corbyn.