A few thoughts on Shadow Cabinet elections…

Next week Labour MPs return to Parliament after a summer of in-fighting, court cases, threats and tumbling poll ratings. It seems likely that they will asked whether they want to reintroduce Shadow Cabinet elections, forcing on Jeremy Corbyn a team he doesn’t want and probably excluding his closest allies.

Should MPs return to Shadow Cabinet elections, rightly ditched by Ed Miliband in 2011 (against the wishes of, er, Jeremy Corbyn) the immediate question for Corbyn is who becomes Shadow Chancellor? John McDonnell isn’t exactly Mr. Popular with the PLP, yet he is at the heart of the Corbyn operation, as essential to the Labour leader as Gordon Brown to Tony Blair in the mid to late 90s. Calling Labour MPs “fucking useless”, briefing against colleagues like Heidi Alexander and attacking Labour’s General Secretary and party staff may have been fun at the time, but if Shadow Cabinets become elected, McDonnell will almost certainly find himself scrabbling around for more than 30 votes (let’s be generous).

What then does Corbyn do? He spent thirty years arguing for the PLP to pick not only the Shadow Cabinet but every frontbencher – even when Labour win power. He would be a hypocrite to oppose the reintroduction of elections and an even bigger one to ignore the results and give the top job to an MP who didn’t make the cut. It would be farcical to overrule a decision he himself has campaigned for, but then we’ve come to expect farce and hypocrisy from the current leadership.

Corbyn is not the only one in a bind though. While Shadow Cabinet elections should thankfully see the end of Abbott, Burgon, Long-Bailey and many of the other fifth-raters currently padding out the Shadow Cabinet, those elected to serve face the same issues they had before they quit.

Firstly, Corbyn’s lamentable political, policy and media operation will remain as chaotic and unfit for purpose as before. It won’t improve – in fact it will likely deteriorate as many of the talented staffers at HQ who kept the show on the road in May’s elections drift away or quit. Who could blame them after the leadership has turned a blind eye to briefings from McDonnell and his advisers and Jon Lansman that a purge is coming? Who would trust Seumas Milne, Andrew Fisher, Katy Clark or Karie Murphy? None of them has any loyalty to anything other than “Jeremy”.

Secondly, every member of the Shadow Cabinet will need to answer the following question – not only can Jeremy Corbyn be Prime Minister, but should he be? I suspect most in the Shadow Cabinet believe the answer is no. Every time they do an interview they put themselves up for ridicule. And to what end? Serving in a dysfunctional Shadow Cabinet for a leader who has to read out his thoughts in meetings from a piece of paper? Imagine being stuck in the Shadow Cabinet having to fight a snap election in May 2017?

Far better then to accept that Shadow Cabinet elections were scrapped for a very good reason. The leader should be responsible for his or her own team. And also accept that, in the words of one of his own aides, Corbyn must be allowed to fail on his own terms, with his own supporters around him.

So my message to the PLP is this: sit back for a year. Corbyn will fail because he is doing a job he is manifestly incapable of doing. Week after week there will be chaos and confusion, dreadful polls and dire PMQs. His hand-picked Shadow Cabinet will collapse under the pressure of work and inexperience and sheer ineptitude.

At some point, the edifice will collapse.

Accept that there is nothing that can be done to stop Labour’s looming electoral catastrophe and that the rebuilding can only begin once the Corbyn project has destroyed itself.

Edit: Since I wrote this it seems likely that MPs will vote for the return of Shadow Cabinet elections and also that Corbyn will be given leeway to appoint a handful too (presumably McDonnell, Abbott and Trickett). It seems to me we will be back to square one – Corbyn leader with a “compromise” Shadow Cabinet that is overwhelmingly opposed to him but who will be blamed by the hard left for Jeremy’s uselessness. I still remain opposed to the idea, just as I supported scrapping shadow cabinet elections in 2011.