Daily catch-up: Will the Labour Party split? Will there be an SDP Mark II?

Comrade Phil Collins wrote in The Times on Friday (pay wall) that the idea of Labour MPs forming a new party is as bad an idea now as it was when Tom Driberg (above left) tried to persuade Mick Jagger to be the celebrity figurehead of a Labour breakaway in 1967. Keith Richards said it was the worst idea he had ever heard. Richards, and Collins, are right about that. The conditions for a new centre-left party are less favourable than they were when the Social Democratic Party was launched in 1981 – then, the Conservatives had moved to the right while the London liberal middle class and the media were all for a new party.

But I fear that Collins draws the wrong conclusion about the next step: that Labour MPs should depose Jeremy Corbyn without delay.

By next year’s party conference Mr Corbyn could have cemented his position by changing all the party rules. That means the day will come soon when the shadow cabinet will have to force a contest in which the parliamentary party gathers around a single candidate. Mr Corbyn may not prove as meek, in those circumstances, as many of them suppose. In one sense, to act requires courage, but how courageous is it really to take the only available course?

It wouldn't work. There are now even more than 251,000 Corbyn supporters in the Labour selectorate – more have signed up since his election – and fewer supporters of the true left who want to change the country for the better rather than posture about it, as these people have been leaving the party in silent lapsings. So Corbyn would be re-elected with even more than 59 per cent of the vote.

Of course, Corbyn's support is neither as substantial nor as homogeneous as it looks. His election was a remarkable coincidence rather than a great alteration to the underlying structure of politics. Many of his supporters also voted for Tom Watson as deputy leader. Some of the Corbynites I know greatly enjoyed Angela Eagle’s performance at Prime Minister’s Questions last week, even though she cheeked her leader, mainly by being better at it than he.

No doubt the Labour selectorate would respond to a different leader if he or she offered similar inspiration and hope, which might even include at some point the hope of election victory. But who is this "single candidate" of whom Collins writes? As the Speaker says when he calls an absent MP to ask a question: "Not here."

So, yes, Collins is right about one thing. As a Labour MP said recently, “There is only one way this is going to end – the only question is who gets to keep the name.”

One side or the other will prevail. But the side that prevails keeps the name. There will be no breakaway. Nor will there be a coup against Corbyn for a long time. One day, the "single candidate" will emerge. We will recognise him or her when it happens.

• Until then, Labour is doomed. Our ComRes poll for The Independent on Sunday showed Corbyn has more positive supporters than Ed Miliband did at this stage, three months into his leadership. But more people have a negative view of Corbyn than did of Miliband, and so his net score of minus 21 is worse than Miliband's minus 15. My colleague Paul Vallely puts the best possible interpretation on the poll, but that a lot of people think the Labour leader is a nice bloke is not enough to win elections.

• The Sunday newspapers were full of David Cameron's "climbdown" on denying benefits to EU immigrants until they have been here for four years. Don't believe a word of it. The Prime Minister is winning and pro-Europeans ought to be, as Owen Jones is, cheering him on. My column for The Independent on Sunday.

• The Top 10 in The New Review, the Independent on Sunday magazine, is Interesting Numbers.

• And finally, thanks to Moose Allain ‏for this Christmas shopping update:

"I was going to buy Bambi on DVD but it's a little dear."