Corbyn and the Syria vote

Writer Robert Harris is a notable Blair basher, so on seeing his name on the front page of the Sunday Times this morning, in a piece about Syria and Corbyn, I feared the worst. But it's worth reading (£):

When Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour party, the event caused widespread merriment, not least among his political opponents. Now the laughter has died on everyone’s lips. It turns out it’s no joke to live in a country without a serious opposition, especially when the times call for military action.

This week the government goes to the Commons to ask for the authority to strike terrorist targets in Syria. It will want the backing of as many Labour MPs as possible to present a show of national unity. But those same MPs, thanks to the Corbyn insurgency, will know that they face the threat of deselection if they appear to challenge his leadership — above all, on the emotive issue of war.

Far earlier than anticipated, the moral and political crisis that was always implicit in Corbyn’s election has arrived.

Corbyn is, to all intents and purposes, a pacifist. But Labour has never been a pacifist party. It condemned the 1938 Munich agreement with Hitler and then joined the wartime coalition only on condition that Chamberlain stood down as prime minister. It helped found Nato. It developed the atom bomb. It fought the communists in Korea. It maintained and improved the British nuclear deterrent.

After more than 75 years of active internationalism and willingness to use force, it is Corbyn who is the aberration. As the historian Glen O’Hara pointed out recently in the New Statesman: “Labour has never before been led by a politician so far from its historic centre of gravity.”

Great parties split. The Conservatives split in the 1840s, the Liberals in the 1920s, Labour in 1931 and again in 1981, when two dozen MPs left to join the Social Democratic party. But today Labour faces more than a mere split. It faces an existential crisis.

By his disastrous widening of the franchise for electing the party leader, Ed Miliband has handed control of it to what a previous leader, Hugh Gaitskell, memorably denounced as “pacifists, unilateralists and fellow travellers” — people not only antipathetic to ordinary voters but anathema even to most ordinary Labour MPs. It will be hard, it may even be impossible, to get the institution back....

Such chaos cannot go on much longer.. Those MPs who either defy a three-line whip to vote for military action against Isis, or who are permitted to follow their consciences in a free vote, may well prove to be the nucleus of a new party.

If that sounds apocalyptic then so is the mood of many Labour MPs: obliged to watch at close quarters day in, day out, the incompetent antics of a leadership that has no hope of ever winning a general election but which is nonetheless impossible to dislodge.

Let us hope, then, that enough Labour MPs have the courage to defy their leader and his virtual army and ensure that Britain plays its part in the UN coalition against Isis. Because if the vote goes the other way it won’t only be the Labour party that will have been revealed as supine, unreliable and irrelevant in the teeth of this crisis — it will be the entire country.

As a number of commenters point out though, Corbyn's "pacifism" is selective. He doesn't generally have a problem with violence against the West,.

Comments

[Bob-B]

Quite good, but I don't think it's right that 'Corbyn is, to all intents and purposes, a pacifist.' A real pacifist would be rather less keen on links with organizations like the IRA and Hamas. He appears to believe that 'we' should never use force, but he seems to find it quite understandable that others should decide to do so.

[XRay]

That's cause he's a commie, Bob-B, quiet capable of speaking out of both sides of his mouth. Forgive, but what might be the "...three line whip...?

[sackcloth and ashes]

XRay

A 'three-line whip' refers to parliamentary procedure, in particular the world of the 'whips' (the MPs selected by the party leader to impose discipline on the troops).

When it comes to parliamentary votes, a 'three-line whip' is a strict order to (a) attend a vote and (b) cast your vote in accordance with the party leader's policy. Failure to comply usually involves disciplinary action, and can involve expulsion from the party.