The fascination of ‘what ifs’: Could the last election have turned out differently?

Jeremy Corbyn thought about standing down as Labour leader, but was persuaded by Seumas Milne, his adviser, to stay for the good of the cause. At least, that is what I was told in early 2019. I wasn’t sure it was true, because Corbyn had always struck me as stubborn and driven by his sense of mission.

But now Philip Cowley, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, has written a compelling account of why it might have been true. He has written a chapter in the latest book of counterfactual histories, compiled by Duncan Brack and Iain Dale, which was published this week – and asks whether Labour could have avoided the thrashing of the 2019 election if Corbyn had stood down beforehand.

Cowley sets out a more compelling argument than I recognised at the time for Corbyn to have quit. Above all, it would have been the best hope of ensuring a Corbynite successor. Given that Labour and Corbyn became increasingly unpopular after the unexpectedly good result in the 2017 election, it was likely that the party would not do so well in the next election. That would mean the party would probably turn to a non-Corbynite as the next leader.

Cowley argues that Corbyn ought to have been tempted to quit while he was ahead. It is certainly true that he would have gone down in history among the so-called hard left as the moral victor of the 2017 election.

In passing, Cowley exposes one of the problems with counterfactual history. He examines the common Corbynite complaint that Blairite attacks sabotaged Labour in the 2017 election, in which Corbyn came surprisingly close to becoming prime minister: “Had Labour been more united, it might well have polled better. But if it had polled better, there might not have been a 2017 election in the first place. Would Theresa May, who was decidedly sceptical about the arguments for an election when she was 20 points ahead in the polls, have been willing to go for it had the gap been smaller?” As Cowley says, “It’s doubtful.”

Funnily enough, something similar happens to the idea that Corbyn could have saved his reputation and Labour’s fortunes if he had stood down – when it is examined closely. The first problem is the question of who his successor would have been. The best qualified “Corbynite” candidate would have been John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, but there was already a personal distance between Corbyn and McDonnell after the 2017 election.

That might not have mattered if McDonnell was sincere in his unwillingness to stand, as he had appeared to be since his heart attack in 2013. But the split between them might still have complicated the succession, because the next best qualified candidate of the Socialist Campaign Group was Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary, who had had a good election, but who was McDonnell’s protege.

There was, as Cowley says, “a growing mood within the party that the next leader ought to be a woman”, although he notes a fascinating item of trivia: “Every Labour leadership contest in which a woman had stood (1994, 2010, 2016), had seen female candidates come below every single male rival. In any Conservative vote in which female candidates were participating (1975, 1989, 1990, 2016), the opposite held. This trend ceased to be true for the Conservatives in 2019, yet it still holds for Labour.”

So not Richard Burgon, then. Nor would Corbyn have endorsed Angela Rayner, who was already seen by the sectarians of Momentum as a crypto-Blairite. Cowley doesn’t suggest this, and it would have been extraordinary, but Corbyn and his inner circle might have tried to promote Laura Pidcock, the MP for North West Durham, who was elected only in 2017. She was aligned with Corbyn rather than McDonnell, although how she would have fared in the rigours of a leadership election is anyone’s guess.

At this point, we can see why Corbyn decided to stay, despite the growing foreboding of electoral disaster and a “centrist” successor. But as Cowley says, it is not clear that Corbyn’s replacement would have made much difference to the outcome of the election, after all. The erosion of Corbyn’s benign avuncular persona was only a small part of Labour’s defeat: its main problem was its policy of facing both ways on Brexit. Two years ago this week, Corbyn was asked by Sophy Ridge of Sky News, “Do you want to stay in the EU or do you want to leave?” and he replied: “Investment, jobs, trade and equality, both in or out of the EU: I want those things.”

Labour’s policy of a second referendum was unpopular, but what was the alternative? As Cowley says: “Adopting a second referendum was a disastrous policy for Labour; rejecting a second referendum may have been even worse.” If that had happened, Jo Swinson’s Liberal Democrats would have hoovered up Remainer votes and handed even more seats to the Conservatives.

The only way that Corbyn standing down as Labour leader would have saved the party would be if his successor had refused to allow Boris Johnson to hold the election in the first place. But I am not certain that would have been possible once Swinson had sold the pass. That, I think, is the big counterfactual: what would have happened if Swinson had refused to give Johnson the election he wanted?

Cowley confesses all in his biographical note at the start of the book: “When he pitched the idea for this chapter, he thought it was a ‘what if’ that would have made a material difference to what happened subsequently; then he wrote it and realised he was wrong, and that it probably wouldn’t have done.”

‘Prime Minister Priti … and other things that never happened’, edited by Duncan Brack and Iain Dale, is published this week by Biteback