The shadow foreign secretary showed yesterday what an effective, coherent opposition should look like
I have been a member of the Labour Party for fifteen years and never have I witnessed anything like yesterday.
MPs had a grave decision to make – to support military action against ISIL in Syria or not.
The debate started on a poor note. The prime minister failed to give a clear explanation of his figure that 70,000 moderate Syrians were ready to provide the boots on the ground needed to back up air strikes.
His decision not to apologise for his remarks that those opposed to military action were somehow ‘terrorist sympathisers’ was also an error of judgement that diminished the standing of the office that David Cameron holds.
Then came Jeremy Corbyn – head down in his notes, he simply faced a barrage of noise from the Conservative MPs, failing to answer head on his views about the air strikes currently taking place in Iraq against ISIL, strikes undertaken at the invitation of the Iraqi government itself.
The new, honest politics obviously did not extend to answering a straight question with a straight answer. The sight of deputy leader Tom Watson with his head in his hands said it all.
But then came Hilary Benn. Since agreeing to serve under Jeremy Corbyn Benn has been placed in a difficult, if not impossible position. He was forced to clear up the mess created by Corbyn’s failure to provide leadership on the UK’s place in the EU, and over Syria he has been propelled to play the statesman role that the leader of the official opposition is incapable of doing.
Benn’s speech last night was well and truly electrifying. The passion, the energy and the clarity that he brought to the argument was the kind of speech that neither Cameron nor Corbyn could deliver. It was a speech of a prime minister in waiting.
Jeremy Corbyn sat stony faced throughout, not even able to muster a ‘well done’ on the delivery of a great speech to his shadow foreign secretary.
The Labour Party now faces a crunch moment that it has to confront head on. Yes, Labour members voted overwhelming for Jeremy Corbyn to lead the party but sometimes reality has to hit us.
Jeremy Corbyn is not a prime minister in waiting. His poll ratings are tanking further (if that were possible) among those voters who ultimately decide who governs the country.
His inability to present a united front on crucial security issues would pose severe difficulties of the UK’s position in the world if he were, by some fluke, ever to make it to Downing Street.
But worst of all has been his attitude to his parliamentary colleagues. Yes, he called for an atmosphere of tolerance as MP after MP has faced abuse for supporting military intervention in Syria, but it was he that sent Labour MPs to face the wolves last weekend, leaving them to stew. It was shameful.
Members of the parliamentary Labour Party and the country as a whole know the truth. For all his admirable qualities and principles, Jeremy Corbyn cannot and will not win a General Election. Hilary Benn showed yesterday what an effective, coherent opposition should look like.
Air strikes over Syria are now being undertaken in defence of democracy. In the UK our democracy is in peril thanks to the absence of a credible opposition to hold the government to account.
The Labour Party cannot go on like this. Something, and more specifically someone, needs to change and change now.
Ed Jacobs is a contributing editor at Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
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127 Responses to “Comment: Hilary Benn showed us what Labour is missing”
Steve Cheney
Up to a point, maybe. But parties should still have principles that people can expect their MPs to adhere to. Plurality is essential for democracy to be anything other than elective dictatorship – Labour needs to be sufficiently different from its competitors, or they’ll lose their core support to disillusionment and end up fighting over the scraps with right-wingers who are far more convincing than them.
Ringstone
So the Shadow Foreign Secretary and Shadow Defence Secretary, with all their privalaged access, should bow down to the opinion of the pitchfork waving “dog on a rope” brigade on a matter of national security?
I don’t think so; this is politics as a big boys game, not the student union.
Steve Cheney
Under Corbyn, Labour has opposed the government effectively. It’s not just down to votes, it’s down to determining how debate will be framed. Under New Labour, we were never far from hearing about how we should vote Labour because they would do x Tory policy much better than the Tories do; under Corbyn, we have opposition to the policies themselves!
You would think that, after the drubbing we got in Scotland, the PLP would realise that being the one anti-austerity party out of countless shades of austerity would be sensible – yet they still seem determined to resist, and to undermine the arguments put forward. Labour shouldn’t be agreeing with Tory policy – because Opposition is not about telling people what you agree or disagree with. Opposition is about taking government proposals and tearing them apart in search of evidence that they are flawed.
On the strength of the Syria vote, Benn is more interested in making pretty speeches for Tories who will never vote for Labour no matter how much they pretend to approve, than he would ever be in taking a Tory policy apart to show everyone why it will fail, let alone taking it apart to show why it is *morally* reprehensible.
No one had faith in Blair; they were simply so sick of Thatcherism that they’d vote for anything at that point. You know when people last had faith in Labour? It was when they hated the Tories, and said they hated the Tories, and knew WHY they hated the Tories, and SAID why they hated the Tories. It was when they hated everything about the Tory Party.
That’s where we need to be. Because Tory voters don’t like us and it will take something pretty spectacular for them to vote for us. Whereas there are a lot of voters we straight up abandoned who will come back if we just demonstrate, however briefly, that we miss them.
Asteri
Its Glenda I feel sorry for, she didn’t deserve that.
Raife Keller-cooper
what are you talking about? a week ago Benn was arguing against the bombings himself, as was Cameron when Putin was doing it, they don’t know what the hell they’re doing, just scrambling over each other to suck up to arms dealers and banksters. They give as much of a sh!t about national security as they do about syrian children. You’re very naive.