Jess Phillips accidentally made clear why Labour is doomed

Twenty-four hours ago, Jess Phillips was complaining that the problem with the Labour party leadership hustings was that it was impossible to articulate the struggle the party faces in answers of 40 seconds, as are the rather peculiar rules.

And yet, having now pulled out of the race, in the form of a two-minute video, she has summed up the party’s problems in eight word-perfect seconds.

“I truly believe that if we don’t speak to the country on their terms, and not just ours, then we won’t be able to make the gains we need to win an election.”

And thus were summed up the last four bizarre years, which already feel like an impossibly bad dream, with consequences for the country, and the party, that were once considered beyond either’s very worst nightmares.

But with her second sentence, specifically the reason why she is standing down, she clearly articulated the problem the Labour Party is going to find it very difficult indeed to solve.

“The Labour Party will need a candidate that can unite all parts of our movement: the union movement, the members, the elected representatives... and at this time, that person isn’t me.”

Ms Phillips is right on both counts. But her rightness cannot be reconciled with itself. She is right that the party needs to remove itself from its incessant navel-gazing. It needs to understand how it came to be in the unimaginably woeful state it is in. It needs to work out how it managed to become repellent to northern working-class voters and the lives they lead. (It could start by rewatching the mad Palestinian flag-waving sessions from its own conference).

But no Labour Party leader can hope to fulfil all of the things Ms Phillips says they must do. It is impossible to make the party electable again and gain the support of the members. Because it is a straightforward statement of fact that the members do not want the party to be electable. Even now, a YouGov poll of members reports that Jeremy Corbyn is the members favourite leader of all time. He towers above Clement Attlee. Blair, naturally, is a distant last.

A conventional wisdom has now emerged that Labour must unify, that its warring factions must find a peace. But it is impossible to see the settlement of such a peace. The members, which is to say, for the most part, the pro-Corbyn wing of the party, have absolutely nothing to offer. They have had their fun, drunkenly joyriding the car, but now that it has been wrapped around the electoral lamppost and the police called, no good can come of placating these people, but that is what all leadership hopefuls must do.

Jeremy Corbyn’s opinions and those who share them are of no value whatsoever to the Labour Party. They are the fast lane to oblivion. This is as true in 1983, as it was in 2019, as it was at any arbitrary point in British political history in the 150 years.

The tragedy, of course, is that Ms Phillips is right. Labour has trodden itself so deep in the mud it is unlikely that whoever wins this contest will be the one to drag it back to the daylight. The best hope for this next short era – the party’s next self-inflicted spell in the wilderness – is that it finds a kind of Kinnock of the hour.

But in the medium to long-term, no good can possibly come of accommodating those for whom no amount of failure can ever be too much.

Ms Phillips cannot be Labour leader because she is correct that she has nothing to offer those who are so desperate to lose.

The next Labour leader will have to lead a party that has embraced a politics that rejects markets. The trouble is, in the end, democracy is a market. And for those who think themselves above the mucky business of buying and selling themselves, there is a familiar outcome.

At the moment, there is no one who can save Labour from itself, as Ms Phillips didn’t quite say, but accidentally made very clear indeed.

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