The biggest news this week was Jeremy Corbyn's re-election as Labour leader. He comfortably beat his challenger Owen Smith by garnering 61.8% of the vote, a larger margin of victory than last year.
Corbyn was first elected Labour leader in September 2015, when he defeated three other candidates and got 59.5% of the vote.
Now, all that is fine. Winning in any game is good, but it's important to last long. There is no point in winning the battle only to lose the war. The war is in 2020. Yes, the general elections. Can Labour under Corbyn come to power again? That's the moot point. A party that had three back-to-back general election victories under the Teflon prime minister Tony Blair, can it once again make it to the top? There is a strong feeling that the Labour Party has chosen the wrong leader? It is backing the wrong horse. The cheer around Corbyn's win is likely to be short-lived.
Already the party was reeling under Corbyn's poor leadership, it had miserably failed to connect with its voters, his re-election is nothing but another nail in Labour's coffin. Or to say, so long as Corbyn is at the helm of Labour Party, the Tories will have a good time in the electoral battle.
However, in his leadership victory acceptance speech, Corbyn urged Labour to “wipe the slate clean” and vowed to bring Labour back together, saying “we have much more in common than divides us”, insisting the party could win the next election as the “engine of progress” in the country. Corbyn said both he and Smith were part of the “same Labour family” as he appealed for unity.
Well, these are nice words to listen to, but practically everyone knows, including the party insiders, that Corbyn can't regroup the party.
There is plenty of evidence, or at least polling, to suggest that Labour will be annihilated at the next election. The party could quite conceivably suffer a collapse in support comparable to the one it experienced in Scotland last year, with its share of the popular vote ending up at the 25% mark.
According to Labour supporters, the party is unlikely to win the next general election under Corbyn.
A poll conducted by Sky New's Data team in July found 59% of Labour supporters said it was unlikely the party will win the next general election if Corbyn won the leadership contest, compared to 32% who said it was likely.
The poll also found that 59% thought it was likely the party would split if Corbyn secured victory over Owen Smith, while 27% said it was unlikely.
In an even bleaker forecast, 45% said it was unlikely Labour would “ever win another general election”, while 44% said it was likely.
An exclusive ComRes poll for The Independent found that Smith had a better chance of winning a general election than Corbyn, with 38% of the general public saying Smith had “more chance of winning” than Corbyn, who was chosen by 31%.
According to YouGov polling, voters do not see Labour as competent on the economy.
Today the country is without a functioning Opposition. The Labour Party should be attacking the Conservatives more as a good Opposition in the Parliament rather than fighting among themselves. This will do the party a power of good.
The party should unite together and work on things they agree on. The focus should be on improving the NHS, investment in infrastructure, comprehensive schools and the economy. They should be at it all the time till the voters and the media get the message that the party is serious.
As they say politics is the art of the possible. Labour has four years to repair the damage, and four years is too long a period to bounce back, if the will and right attitude is there. The party should come out with something concrete to offer the electorate to remain in the game. Labour must make peace with the past and get real. Otherwise, as said earlier, it will be a cake-walk for the Tories.
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, in his keynote speech on the economy at the Liverpool Labour Conference warned the party to be ready for an early election. He pledged £250bn in infrastructure spending, an end to austerity, the scrapping of trade union legislation, a new wealth tax, a £10 hourly minimum wage, opposition to free trade deals and a crackdown on corporate greed in the party's most leftwing economic policy package for a generation.
He said the company law would be rewritten to avert a “Philip Greens” kind of a scenario. The BHS boss was accused of taking money out of his ailing company, leaving behind a huge pension crisis.
He said the “winds of globalisation” were “blowing against the belief in the free market and in favour of intervention.
McDonnell set out what he said was a programme for government.
“In this party you no longer have to whisper it – it's called socialism,” he said, sending the audience in raptures.
Corbyn has claimed that a further £100bn of public investment in a National Infrastructure Bank could leverage £150bn of private sector money to create a total infrastructure programme of £500bn.
Criticising the claims, former shadow chancellor Chris Leslie said the plans would involve “an awful lot of either borrowing or extra taxation. You would have to double income tax, double national insurance, double council tax and you would have to double VAT as well”.
McDonnell's speech was packed with such policies, which would see an “entrepreneurial state” step in to boost the economy's potential, raising productivity through investments in areas like broadband and transport.
This latest economic message, if it is not just on paper, will augur well for the party. The Liverpool conference has given the party a chance to introspect and reach out to the ordinary voters and the party should capitalise on it. Itshould make at least one more big push to take back the party and make it moral, effective and electable once more. Or to say the least, give the country an effective Opposition in the House it so badly needs.
