As the dust settles after the EU referendum and the arrival of Theresa May in Downing Street it is likely that the Labour Party will receive a bit more attention from the media. I doubt this will do them any good at all.
In normal times a leadership challenge in the main opposition party would lead the news bulletins.
But Angela Eagle’s challenge a week ago coincided with Andrea Leadsom withdrawing from the Tory leadership contest. Naturally, journalists were eager to report what was going on in the governing party because its repercussions were, simply, far more significant.
This meant that Eagle cut a forlorn figure when it came to inviting questions from the media during the press conference for her leadership bid.
“BBC anyone? No? OK, Robert Peston, where are you? No? Michael Crick?”
The Eagle had crashed.
Doubtless Jeremy Corbyn’s team will have enjoyed watching Eagle’s discomfort, but her problem goes beyond unlucky launch timing.
Her appeal rested on a male Tory Prime Minister not knowing how to cope with her.
In 2011 when she was bawling at David Cameron he responded: “Calm down, dear.”
For Cameron, usually so astute on these occasions, this was perceived as being among his worse gaffes. The remark was widely taken as condescending to women generally – who do, after all, make up rather a significant proportion of the electorate.
Added to this, there is also a little local difficulty for Eagle. In her constituency of Wallasey, Labour members support Corbyn and have urged her not to stand against him. Indeed, there is a move to deselect her as the Labour candidate for the seat at the next election.
When Corbyn was elected Labour leader last September, he called for “a kinder, gentler politics”. Some of his supporters didn’t get the memo. Eagle has had death threats and had a brick thrown through the window of the constituency office.
These are unpleasant actions from a very small minority – but the bigger problem for Eagle is that if her local members don’t support her, what chance does she have among party members generally?
The other challenger to Corbyn is Owen Smith, the Labour MP for Pontypridd.
He pledges to spend £200 billion to “rebuild Britain”. This is a nice round figure but the details surrounding it seem a bit sketchy. Smith also wants to put the top rate of income tax back up to 50 per cent.
Seriously?
Smith seems to think that Ed Miliband’s spectacular electoral defeat last year was down to him not promising to tax and spend enough.
Smith was a shambles when interviewed on Andrew Marr on Sunday on whether or not he accepted the result of the EU referendum.
Supposing there were a General Election before Article 50 had been triggered, Marr asked, would Smith’s position be that if he became PM he would proceed with it?
“It’s not a binary choice,” he replied.
The Iraq War remains an important issue for Labour members. Eagle voted for it. Owen Smith was not an MP in 2003 and claims that, as a layman, he was against it.
But in a local paper interview from 2006 he said: “I thought at the time the tradition of the Labour Party and the tradition of left-wing engagement to remove dictators was a noble, valuable tradition, and one that in South Wales, from the Spanish Civil War onwards, we have recognised and played a part in.”
Smith used to be a lobbyist for pharma giant Pfizer. Eagle used to work for the Confederation of British Industry. But it’s a certainty they will be veering off to the Left to try to secure votes among the Labour membership.
The upshot could well be that Corbyn holds on. His views on an array of matters may well be regarded by the British people as abhorrent – not least on terrorism and his notion that Venezuela’s regime is a model that we should follow.
Yet among Labour members, the Corbynista world view is the orthodoxy.
He doesn’t look like a winner – but then neither does Eagle or Smith. Many of the members may well shrug and decide they may as well go down fighting under the leadership of a true believer.
