The media and the commentariat are having a summer ball. Jeremy Corbyn’s position as (supposed) frontrunner has them amused, outraged and agog. A serious political process is coinciding neatly with silly season. Fun as it is to watch, there is a seam of tragedy here too - Labour is making exactly the same mistakes as it did for years under Ed Miliband. Firstly, it is giving too much credence to polls, and acting accordingly. Secondly, and most importantly, nobody in the party is giving any serious thought to what happens after September. It is this lack of long-term, strategic thinking that is doing the party genuine damage.
Assuming Liz Kendall doesn’t take the crown, there are now two scenarios for Labour in its current state:
1. Corbyn wins.
The Labour left will celebrate - for a while. Then, he will have two options. Either he compromises with the rest of the party to stop it splitting apart, angering his erstwhile support base. Or he will prioritise a hard-left agenda and ignore most of the rest of the party. This is before he sets out any agenda on any national or local policy issue. Either way, he will probably be deposed, causing more turmoil.
2. Yvette Cooper or Andy Burnham wins.
Regardless of any policy platform they are trying to project, they will be consumed by trying to keep together the revitalised left, the disillusioned Milibandians and the despairing Blairites. They will have to answer the tricky question of why Labour remains affiliated to the unions. If either of them keep the whole party together and remain leader, they can count that a success. But they are unlikely to do that and win an election, regardless of what the government does.
How to avert disaster? My personal view is that the polls are feeding the left-wing surge that will make it difficult to unite the party after September. The greater Labour’s focus on the Corbyn campaign, the more people sign up to vote for him. Labour must avoid this self-fulfilling prophecy; its senior figures must stop giving the campaign publicity and instead project long-term thinking about serious opposition.
This leads me to a second thought. Labour must start to strategise again instead of focusing on an arbitrary September deadline. The country will look very different in 2020, and it is time to start building a policy platform around that picture. The Tories are enjoying their moment of triumph, but they have plenty of time to make mistakes before the next election. Many bear-traps beckon, not least Europe, Scotland, Heathrow, the economy and the NHS. Labour needs a detailed plan for all of them, and how to take advantage if the government stumbles.
September is a false deadline for the party. It’s what comes afterwards that is important. To become an effective opposition, Labour must look beyond its internal squabbles and start calmly planning for the next election now.