A leadership election must happen fast - and it’d be best if Corbyn lost it

It says something both comical and profound about Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party that over recent days his MPs have had a choice of coup against him from which to choose. First there was the one begun by Margaret Hodge and Ann Coffey, who demanded a vote of no confidence in the leader at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party last night. Then, and in the end much more decisively, there was the one arranged by the Shadow Cabinet. The second dart is the one carrying the poison.

By the time you read this, more than a dozen leading members of the Labour Party will have resigned in protest at Corbyn’s abject leadership. In such circumstances, it would be ridiculous to carry on as he has initially tried to, by appointing a Shadow Cabinet full of cronies. In the interests of the Labour movement and Britain’s parliamentary democracy, it would be best if there were a leadership election soon – and that Corbyn lost it.

Britain is in the early stages of a political and constitutional crisis that could morph easily and terrifyingly into a banking and economic crisis. In circumstances where none of this were true, it would be necessary that we had a strong, effective Labour Party that were holding this majority Conservative government to account. In the current circumstances, such an opposition is vital. With Corbyn at the helm, there is no prospect of that materialising.

Contrary to a view fast becoming fashionable on social media, Corbyn is not to blame for the victory of Brexit campaigners last week. As the leaders of the campaign, and those who called the referendum in the first place, No 10 should take ultimate responsibility for our current plight. But had Labour not been led by this amiable but totally inadequate socialist, their base may not have voted Leave so emphatically, and the turnout among those inclined to vote Remain may have been higher, two factors that could have swayed the result.

The brutal truth is that Corbyn’s campaigning was woeful. Everyone knows that he is a strong Eurosceptic at heart, but he wore the scars of his pragmatic switch of allegiance just a little too shamelessly. Turning up at events under-prepared and unexcited, he made the case for the EU with all the enthusiasm of a medieval peasant confessing to witchcraft on pain of torture. It didn’t wash: and it was this miserable performance that has been cited time and again by his former colleagues in their resignation letters. Distinguished parliamentarians like Angela Eagle and Chris Bryant always knew deep down that Corbyn wasn’t up to the job. Recent weeks have given them ample evidence to cite when trying to persuade colleagues of this obvious truth.

Now, with mass resignations from his Shadow Cabinet, virtually no support in the Parliamentary Labour Party except from a cabal of loyalists, and a policy prospectus that is highly unlikely to win a general election, it is abundantly clear that he is leading the Labour Party to oblivion. Indeed, it is the very prospect of another plebiscite in the autumn or spring that has triggered this insurrection. Labour MPs know that, with perhaps just over 20 per cent of the vote, they could be wiped out across huge swathes of the country, with Ukip doing to them in England what the SNP did to them in Scotland.

This would be a terrible state of affairs – not simply because the new English nationalism has a very nasty streak about it, but because the centre-left in Britain needs to look like a plausible alternative government. That it doesn’t is, ironically, thanks largely to Ed Miliband: it was his foolish idea, imbibed from the American community organiser Arnie Graf and the Brexit svengali Steve Hilton, to reduce the barriers to membership of the Labour Party and so flood it with young members who believed Corbyn their saviour.

How naïve that belief always was, this column has already pointed out. And yet that belief, and that membership, remains the source of Corbyn’s authority. He is right to say that, so soon after winning a clear mandate from members, it would be something of a betrayal for him to depart the scene and resign as leader. Alas for him, the support among his base is currently softening, and in any case if these new supporters want Corbyn to return Britain to socialism, which won’t happen, they have no right to destroy the Labour Party along the way.

Remarkable to think that less than a decade ago, Labour was in government, led by someone who had won three elections, and clearly spoke for a majority in Britain. Today, in a country that has never been more divided, we need an opposition that is united, strong, intelligent, charismatic and effective. The contemptible sight of Diane Abbott MP, a Corbyn-ultra, tweeting a link yesterday to a petition asking members of the public to condemn her own parliamentary colleagues, showed just what a sorry impasse her comrade’s leadership has brought us to. In the interests of the Labour movement, of Britain, and democracy itself, a new leader is needed, and fast.