Jeremy Corbyn alongside fellow leadership candidates, 2015. Photo: Stefan Rousseau / PA Archive/Press Association Images. All Rights ReservedThere are a few inescapable cliché phrases in British English. 'At the end of the day' may be the most depressingly frequent, but 'Labour Party in chaos' follows close behind. Last year, Jeremy Corbyn made an entirely unheralded transformation from long-serving fringe backbencher to the overwhelmingly elected leader of his party. In the last two weeks, the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP - that is, Labour’s members of the House of Commons), has sought tirelesly to transform him back into a backbencher. First, Corbyn’s shadow cabinet members abandoned him en masse; then the PLP passed a vote of no confidence in him, 172-40. Then they awaited union-brokered talks aimed at Corbyn’s removal. Finally, two of them, Angela Eagle and Owen Smith, challenged Corbyn to a new leadership election.
The battle between Corbyn and his followers represents, if not a class cleavage, then certainly a deep split in political philosophy. Corbyn’s backers are anti-austerity activists who are, in their commitment to a mixed and regulated economy, classically social democratic. The PLP, on the other hand, reflects the legacy of the neoliberal New Labour project, obsessed with projecting economic credibility (that is, fiscal conservatism) and an electoral strategy aimed mainly at the middle classes. They seek Labour’s future among different voters. Corbyn’s opponents in 2016, as in 2015, worry about the voters Labour lost to the Conservatives, UKIP and the Lib Dems under Miliband (about 19 percent of their 2010 vote). Corbyn’s camp, presumably, seeks its future among those lost to the Greens and SNP (about a tenth of the 2010 vote), or among young voters, or non-voters. It's worth noting here that Labour actually increased their overall vote share in 2015, but only 72 percent of its 2010 voters stayed loyal.
The dispute reflects Labour’s increasing inability to define political legitimacy within the party.
