For Labour's moderates, staying in the party gets harder to justify every day

“Should I stay or should I go?” The challenge of the Clash’s great song rings out across the decades because it crystallises a thought so many people have had in so many differing contexts. Today it is the question that Labour moderates are asking each other after the launch of the new Independent Group of MPs.

Today’s press conference led off with statements by Luciana Berger and Chris Leslie. Heart-stoppingly, Luciana introduced herself as “Labour...” and had to correct herself to saying she was the “MP for Wavertree.”

That habit of speech stood for a lifetime of loyalty and a lingering sense of belonging. And it made Ms Berger’s modern day ‘J’Accuse’ all the more powerful when she said: “I cannot remain in a party that I have come to the sickening conclusion is institutionally anti-semitic.”

You could feel the weight of the journey that took her to the conclusion.

All the resignation statements made by this very disparate group—united more by their desperation at the direction of the Labour party than by any shared ideology—were as personal as they were passionate. Above all, they were pained.

This why the angry reactions of Corbynites on social media were misjudged: these MPs are not cowards. Indeed, they may have just made the bravest and most defining act of their political careers. Sorrow rather than anger would have been more becoming of the leadership.

Where does the Labour party go from here? The first thing to note is that this is not a new question: it has been in the mind of all Labour moderates since Jeremy Corbyn was first elected leader of the party. A leader from the very fringes of the labour movement, one whose politics are alien to post-war tradition of the Labour party, Mr Corbyn’s sweeping an absolute victory was a fundamental break in Labour history—and everything that has happened since then has driven home the point.

Every time he has had a choice, Labour’s leader has confirmed that his ideological roots are who he is. The politics and the project are what they were from the very beginning, and there have been many potential flashpoints and they have not led to any truly serious split within Labour.

Partly, this is sentimentality. Many responses to the fundamental crisis in the party start and end with tribalism. “Labour is a family…” begins many a reflection.

And that tells a truth—but it also exposes a deep-rooted conservatism that is inherent in labourism. The syllogism goes: unity is strength; disunity is defeat; disloyalty should be punished early and often. But sometimes the emperor really has no clothes. When a Jewish MP is bullied out of a party, that is one such time.

Few Labour politicians or commentators supportive of Jeremy Corbyn are willing to address Ms Berger’s central charge. Instead, they attempt to change the conversation. Angela Rayner, Shadow Education Secretary, tweeted a classic of the genre:

https://twitter.com/AngelaRayner/status/1097450558246539264

A moment’s reflection might lead to the conclusion that a party being unable to rid itself of anti-Semites might not be the best advertisement for being able to remove the Tories, but it does its job.

The more interesting group in the party are the moderate MPs who are saying nothing. They are as angry about the bullying and antisemitism as the MPs who have left. And their concerns about Jeremy Corbyn are as strong. They are not saying or doing anything because there is a more proximate crisis—the threat of a “No Deal” Brexit. They are strongly of the view that there every challenge facing the country would only be worsened by the wrong Brexit deal.

Hugh Gaitskell’s words still ring in Labour ears: “There are some of us who will fight, and fight, and fight again, to save the party we love. We will fight, and fight, and fight again, to bring back sanity and honesty and dignity, so that our party—with its great past—may retain its glory and its greatness.”

That worked before. The far left was defeated in the 30s, the 60s and the 80s. It’s an honest calculation. And the Brexit challenge is a clear and present danger.

That’s why the front line for most moderate MPs is preventing Mr Corbyn being the midwife to Theresa May’s Brexit. And with the Prime Minister’s commitment to winning a parliamentary majority with her own MPs and the DUP the risk of the UK crashing out of the EU rises daily.

It is a logical position to take—work on today’s problems today. If I had been asked as a political consultant what my advice would be about launching a breakaway group, I would have advised delay.

But I also know that if Luciana Berger had asked me whether she should have resigned because Labour is an institutionally antisemitic party, I would not have tried to argue with her about timing—just as I have not with any Jewish friends who have resigned from the party. Why are you leaving is no longer the question, it’s why are you staying? An honest answer gets harder every day.