Let’s get several things straight. But first let me say to readers who do not know, I was a founder member of the SDP, I defected from the Tories which made me a novelty, I was SDP Chairman of the City of London and Westminster South and I was close to what was going on among the defecting Labour MPs, about forty of them, and all of whom but three, lost their seats at the first general election after the drama. I did not join the combined Liberal Democrats and stayed with the SDP until it sank. I went down with the ship. The talk then was of ‘a new kind of politics’ because ‘politics is broken’. Yes we heard it yesterday, but if we are old enough, we have heard it all before.
Prior to the breakaway from Michael Foot’s Labour, Thatcher was set to lose the first election she fought as prime minister in 1983. She won by a landslide. In fact 13 million people voted Tory and 16.23 million voted Labour and Lib/SDP alliance. So she won a landslide on a minority of the votes. It is worse than that. The SDP/Libs won 23 seats on 7.7 million votes. Labour won 209 seatswith 8.4 million. A gap of only 700 thousand votes gave Labour an extra 186 seats. It is not the politics that are broken. It is the electoral system.
If you want a first past the post voting system, you can only have two main parties and they must each accommodate a coalition of views and opinions within their ranks. It makes breakaways well nigh impossible. That is why Labour and Tory have dominated our political scene for over one hundred years. If you want to change you have to introduce a proportional electoral voting system, as in Scotland and Wales. We had a Cameron referendum about that. We voted to keep first past the post. Another referendum mistake.
So forget about Labour defections. New Labour, which has completely disappeared in the country at large and from the actual membership of the Labour Party, still dominates the parliamentary Labour Party. It hates Corbyn and everything he stands for. It will never give up trying to smash up the huge following he enjoys. But at the end of the day it is votes that count. Gordon Brown, the last New Labour prime minister, managed 8.6 million votes in 2010. Corbyn delivered 12.8 million in 2017.
That is why he is leader of the Labour party. He understands Labour is the party not of the centre but of the left. It is the champion of the working class, the underprivileged, the ordinary people who through thick and thin, on earnings which will never make them rich, keep this country running. And of decent people of every class and background whose life ambitions have a place for the welfare of others, rather than being just about them. When Labour remembers why it is there it wins. What we heard yesterday from the angry seven was a lot of waffle about them and their feelings. But that is of little use to those who are having to stave of hunger by going to food banks. Which is why the defectors will be a short term wonder. In the end they too, may, in those waking moments in the wee small hours, wonder why.