How to save the Labour Party

Wait. Come back. This is not another piece about the potential creation of a British centrist party to replace the Labour party that has been taken over by Marxists. For weeks now, with Brexit becoming so boring that it has driven some of its opponents totally round the twist, the holy grail in London media commentary on politics has been the search for the perfect answer on how an alternative, centrist opposition party might be built.

Hell, I’m of the centre right and even I wrote several articles on a possible centrist party. But, revealingly, no-one other than depressed Labour MPs and centrist newspaper columnists has ever spontaneously mentioned a breakaway party to me. Life goes on, almost no-one listens to Tony Blair, and the obstacles in the way of a new party are immense.

On Monday, parliament returns and the shenanigans of the Corbynites over Syria will likely prompt more chatter about the supposed impossibility of Labour moderates staying in an organisation now controlled by the far left. The pro-Russian, Corbynite Labour leadership is opposed, as ever, to the West doing anything involving military action.

As this is not – repeat not – an article about a putative new centre party, I will try to avoid spending too much time restating how unlikely such a venture would be to succeed. What would its position on Brexit be? Some moderates think that battle is lost. Others say they will never concede. They cannot agree.

And why the London assumption that there is a gap for a new party in a place such as Scotland, which has the SNP, the Tories, Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens already, and a distinct devolved set-up? And what of the South West of England, with its particular and peculiar dispensation, a tradition of non-metropolitan liberalism mingling with a strong strain of euroscepticism.

Geography and roots matter, a lot, especially with the British first past the post voting system. Goodness, the new party would probably even struggle in London – London! – where the Corbynites are strong and voters seem to think that making Labour’s Diane Abbott – Diane Abbott! – Home Secretary with responsibility for policing and crime would somehow be a sensible idea.

There are other problems with a new party. Such as the discredited centrist big beasts of twenty years ago who will have to be kept away from a new party in case they discredit it. Who will tell them this? Who will persuade them to turn down bids from the media?

Or perhaps winning power is not the essential point, and the new party’s mission will simply be to split the Labour vote thus denying Corbyn power at a general election. That’s a fine and patriotic project. But it could sound a pretty cynical or thin basis on which to launch a movement that will have to generate voter excitement and hope.

My colleague on the Times, Matthew Parris, in his column last weekend, had another take. I had, he thought, underestimated the likelihood of centrist Tories defecting. Some of them dislike Brexit and the Tory right. Such voters might be tempted by a new centre party.

But as he – and I – concluded, the Tory party is resilient and history suggests it will avoid choosing an extremist leader. It will want to build a coalition of interests that makes it possible for centrists – or some centrists – to vote Tory.

That means, in the next general election the choice on Prime Minister will probably be binary, between the Tory leader of the day and a far left alternative. Lots of Tory voters who dislike the party’s right wing have, for decades, still managed to vote Tory because they conclude the alternative would be worse. They might not this time, but if it’s Corbyn or another far left figure on offer it seems a pretty good bet they will stick with nurse for fear of something much worse.

With the Tories unlikely to split, the new party business is obviously more an affair of the centre-left.

There, a lack of centre-left agreement is why there are multiple efforts underway to form a new party. The rival outfits each seem to want their own analysis of what should be done to prevail.

No, enough centrist wittering. Here, I want to offer an alternative. The Labour party could be saved and reclaimed if centrists can ditch the gloom and get on with it.

There will be Conservatives who urge me to withhold constructive advice. Don’t tell Labour how to get its act together.

But I would like the proper Labour party – the patriotic and moderate Labour party of Ernest Bevin, Jim Callaghan, John Smith, George Robertson, Mo Mowlam, John Reid and Caroline Flint – back again, at the very least as a bulwark against the destruction of Britain by the far left and to give the Tories proper scrutiny and competition. For years I moaned (justifiably) about Labour, when Gordon Brown left us appallingly poorly prepared for boom turning to bust. Tony Blair let him. Now, with Corbyn in charge, Labour looks much worse.

So, how to save it? It is simple, but not easy.

There is lots of centrist money floating around. Do not – not – use it to start a new party.

Instead, use it to fund the establishment of a moderate group inside Labour. Establish a moderate alternative to Momentum, the far left’s party within a party. Open regional offices. Provide training for moderate activists in how to recruit.

Every existing moderate should sign up to the anti-Momentum. Form local groups, ignore the abuse and derision, and go round ward by ward asking moderate Labour voters to help save Labour, encouraging them to join the group and the party. If any of those voters start claiming the Jews run the world, tell them that the moderate group is full up.

It is hardly impossible. Corbyn boosted the Labour membership to around 550,000. But his hopes of hitting one million came to nothing. The far left seems to have hit a ceiling. So, out recruit them. Find 500,000 Labour-voting moderates. That’s under 5% of the 12,878,460 votes Labour got at the general election. Stop moping. Convince people and make joining easy.

This will take years. But keep going, finding a thousand members at a time. The Cameroons who took over the Tory party did not do this, and the result is that the Conservative party is electorally successful but hollowed out on the ground with a membership below 100,000.

Although reclaiming Labour would be difficult, it could work which a new party won’t. And Labour regeneration is what the Conservative party fears much more than some centrist breakaway from Labour which the Tory high command would love.

Okay, okay, my centrist friends ask when I dismiss their new party fantasies, so what are the dispossessed centrists, the lost voters with no-one to vote for, supposed to do if not form a new thing? My message is: forget the mirage of a new party. Take all that money and latent energy, and save Labour, and perhaps even Britain too if Corbyn and his ilk can be removed. Do it step by step. Start now.