Who is the next leader of the post-Corbyn left?

Corbynite MPs are marginalised and divided, but not irrelevant, writes John Rentoul

Who will take up Jeremy Corbyn’s torch? (PA)

The Corbynite left is splintering, less than two years after losing control of the Labour Party. “They’re saying it isn’t a splinter group but it is,” said a source to Sienna Rodgers, the editor of Labour List, about the formation of a group of MPs called “New Left”.

The group includes the only two Corbynites who are left on Keir Starmer’s front bench: Olivia Blake and Sam Tarry. The way in which Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters have marginalised themselves since Starmer became leader is either one of the most surprising or one of the least surprising plot twists since April 2020, depending on your point of view.

They argue that they have been pushed out, or witch-hunted, but a more disciplined approach and some tactical apologies would probably have kept Corbyn in the parliamentary party and Rebecca Long-Bailey in the shadow cabinet. Instead, they have all gone, while the Socialist Campaign Group, the ancient faction founded to keep the flame alive in the wake of Tony Benn’s defeat in the 1981 deputy leadership election, is riven by splinterers.

The “New Left” group includes, as well as Blake and Tarry, backbenchers Dawn Butler, Kim Johnson, Clive Lewis, Rachael Maskell, Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Nadia Whittome. A strategy document said the group would take inspiration from “The Squad” in the US, Democratic members of Congress who have “put pressure on President Biden to take more progressive stances on a number of issues”. It could operate “informally below the radar”, the document suggested, or more publicly, like the ERG – the European Research Group, the hard-Brexit Conservative faction of MPs that played a part in replacing Theresa May with Boris Johnson.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter by clicking here

This new grouping sheds some light on a good question asked last week by Helen Lewis of The Atlantic: who might the leading figures be if the post-Corbynites organise themselves to fight back? Dawn Butler is one possibility: she stood for the deputy leadership two years ago, but came fifth. Lewis said: “The two I’m watching are Nadia Whittome and Zarah Sultana. Sultana has 225,000 Twitter and 257,000 TikTok followers, and has a very firm grasp of which issues upset centrist commentators – and therefore fire up her base. As for Whittome, she is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, but also retweets Starmer, and is working with Ed Miliband on a climate bill. A fork in the road may lie ahead.”

The Bennite-Corbynite ideology may seem marginalised now, but those of us who made the mistake of thinking it was irrelevant in 2015 should give these machinations at least some of our attention.

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator