What can unify us? Fatigue

I was planning to ignore the sound and fury regarding the proposed change to the leadership election method. This is surely the wisest course of action when the issue being debated is one where every faction has held, at some point in the recent past, every position. The Right supported One Member One Vote, now it supports restoring the electoral college. The Left opposed One Member One Vote, and now oppose restoring the electoral college. What are we meant to do with this other than to remark: Labour factions gonna faction.

As it happens, I think I have discovered a change that all factions can get behind…

Chaminda Jayanetti has remarked that a half decent candidate of any faction can win under any of the above systems, provided they reach beyond their own faction. I think this is basically right. This describes Ed Miliband (David Miliband, as is well known, made unforced errors in rubbing people up the wrong way) in 2010, Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, and Keir Starmer in 2020. Corbyn’s victory over Smith is explicable for the same reason Starmer will beat any challenger if he is challenged before the next election: Labour members, who are less factional than the party elite and activists, tend to support their leader.

This is a pragmatic view. There is the principled argument, made most forcefully and convincingly by the historian Robert Saunders…