How Blairite MPs can destroy the Labour Party

In a week which has seen yet another attack on Jeremy Corbyn by a Labour MP it's clear that those who oppose Corbyn have learnt nothing from the Blairite years or the destruction of the Party in Scotland. John Woodcock may be right that Corbyn didn't make the most of his opportunity to attack Cameron and Osborne over the recent disastrous 2016 budget but he is missing the point. Corbyn may not be the best possible Labour leader but he does have important qualities - he is a decent man who says what he thinks, a man with principles, a rare quality in politicians, and something that should be valued. Add to that, the fact that there there is no obvious alternative to Corbyn - don't tell me Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham or Dan jarvis! - and it becomes pretty obvious that Labour MPs should get behind their leader and turn their fire on the Tories.

Jeremy Corbyn

So why the problem? Blairite MPs need to wake up and smell the coffee because Blairism is dead and politics have moved on. There is hunger for real change and a leadership challenge would do more to scupper Labour's chances in 2020 than a united party fighting the Tories on their many weak points including the destruction of the NHS and our education system.  

These Labour MPs suffer from exactly the same malaise that destroyed Labour in Scotland - a complete inability to see that their Blairite, pro-'free' market and anti-public sector politics has got right up the noses of a large segment of the electorate, a segment large enough to get them a majority in 2020. Like Scottish Labour they are completely oblivious to this fact. No doubt the special circumstances of the referendum hastened Labour's demise in Scotland, but they were in serious decline anyway because they allowed the SNP to move into, and occupy, a huge vacant space on the left of politics that they had created by sticking to unpopular centre right neoliberal politics.   

How does this happen? Its almost certainly the result of the groupthink that afflicts most politicians in the EU and the wider western world, resulting in a belief system that only markets matter and that they can provide solutions to everything. As a Green Party member I ought to be celebrating the death-wish that Blairite MPs are embracing but I don't. We have to get the Tories out in 2020 and Labour are the only Party that can do it. I hope we will gain MPs but we need a strong opposition from Labour that offers real alternatives to the asset stripping of the public sector rather than a timid, watered-down version of Tory policy. If Labour MPs succeed in ousting Corbyn and continuing with 'business as usual' I expect the Labour Party in England and Wales to suffer the same decline as the Party did in Scotland.