Why doesn't Dennis Skinner just go and join the Tories?

The Beast of Bolsover, veteran of the Socialist Campaign Group, soul-brother of Jeremy Corbyn, voted with 'the enemy' last night

Dennis Skinner defied the party whip last night and voted with the Government on Brexit (AFP)

Why don’t they just go and join the Tories? Who needs Labour MPs who vote with the Government anyway? Now that Jeremy Corbyn, lifelong member of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, is leader, let us purge the party of traitors and unite behind a true socialist programme.

Now that Corbyn has tightened his grip on the party machine, he could try to deselect the seven Labour MPs who voted with the Conservatives last night. Kate Hoey and Frank Field: out they go. Dennis Skinner, Ronnie Campbell, Kelvin Hopkins… Oh. Skinner, Campbell and Hopkins are members of the Socialist Campaign Group too.

When the Group met two years ago to decide who should be its candidate for the Labour leadership, the choice was Dennis Skinner or Jeremy Corbyn. Skinner was 83 and didn’t want to do it. Corbyn was 66 and didn’t mind. You know what happened next.

But if Corbyn hadn’t secured enough nominations to stand (looking at you, Sadiq Khan, Margaret Beckett, Jon Cruddas, Sarah Champion), he would probably have voted with the Conservatives last night as well. So would John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, another member of the Socialist Campaign Group.

The Group has always been opposed to Britain’s membership of the EU, which it regards as a neoliberal capitalist club. Hence the confusion over Labour’s policy on Brexit since Corbyn has been leader. That confusion allowed Corbyn to pull off what Katy Balls of The Spectator calls the “clever” trick of winning votes from people who want to stop Brexit as well as from Labour Leavers at the general election. (Although she qualified “clever” by saying: “May not be intentional.”)

In search of clarity, therefore, we can only welcome the social media campaign that sprang up in the early hours of the morning to expel Labour MPs who voted with the Government to support the principle of the EU (Withdrawal) Bill last night. As far as I can tell, the campaign consisted of three kinds of people:

1. Corbynites who were outraged by Labour MPs collaborating with what Laura Pidcock, the Corbynite MP for North West Durham, calls the enemy, but who didn’t realise Skinner was one of them and who have gone quiet since.

2. Corbynites who were outraged and are still outraged, not knowing or caring that Skinner and Corbyn are ideological soul-brothers.

3. Non-Corbynites gleefully pointing out the contradictions and hypocrisy of the other side.

Mind you, the second group could try to assemble the case against Skinner as a class traitor. He got on well with Tony Blair (although he voted for Margaret Beckett in the 1994 leadership election), and voted for David Miliband in the 2010 leadership election.

But if he should be deselected for voting with the Tories, they would have to deselect Corbyn too, who voted with the Tories hundreds of times as a so-called Labour MP.

Now that is a deselection campaign that might clarify where the Labour Party stands on Brexit. But it seems that is the one subject on which Corbyn’s supporters are trying to avoid ideological purity.