We may well ask. Many think it is a near laughing stock. Yet in politics there are more people laughing on the other side of their face than anywhere else. In fact Labour’s plight is very interesting. It is certainly in a place no political party has been before. It has a leader for whom fewer than twenty MPs voted. It is split over bombing Syria and quite a lot of other stuff. A free vote is one thing but for the Shadow Foreign Secretary to bring the House of Commons to its feet cheering and clapping (clapping used to be a mega no no) as he defies his Leader is a rather untested event. Quite what goes next is hard to predict. So instead we will this evening take stock.
Corbyn is a popular hero who gets more media coverage than any opposition leader since Thatcher shortly before she brought down the Callaghan government. He has to fight his way to his car. Public opinion does not see him as a future prime minister but they do see him as an honest and genuine person who puts principle before power. In politics today such a person is the equivalent in motoring terms of a very rare vintage Bugatti. So the fact that his oratory is a bit stumbling and his stated positions more right than real is all seen as a plus. And when you look at the figures it is not, for Corbyn, bad news. The majority of his shadow cabinet backed him (so he can boot out the defiers at will), over 70% of MPs backed him, the majority of party members backed him and the majority of the unions back him. And practically every impartial commentator who had any real knowledge of the IS phenomenon backed his position too. All in all that is not too bad at all. Maybe not a champagne moment, but a glass of something certainly.
So what has happened? Simple. Old Labour is returning. New Labour is busting apart. Soon it will break off altogether. The Oldham by-election tonight will be interesting. Only politicians will stay up, and talk a lot of nonsense in the process. In the morning when we wake up we may find that Labour have held the seat. Or we may find that its is all a bit too much for ordinary folk and they’ve decided to play safe and vote for Nigel’s man instead. That will certainly cause a storm in a few muesli bowls. Might even spill some milk. But it will have no effect on what happens in 2020.