It's Movie Time with the Insignificant Seven and the Hapless Amigos

Steve Bell. The Guardian. 20th February 2019.

Well it's finally happened. There have been rumours of impending splits for weeks, the only uncertainty was whether it was Labour or the Conservatives who would break first. Now we know, Labour broke itself. Politics is broken, said the new Independent Group, and so was their website when I looked at it just now. It’s not incompetence, it’s a metaphor.

For the rest of us, this week events are confirmation that not even the Labour party thinks that the Labour party can save us from a Tory Brexit. Seven, oops, eight, Blairite MPs have flounced off from the Labour party in order to perform a tribute act to the unlamented 1980s one hit wonders the SDP. They will succeed in precisely bugger all, except to make Labour even less electable than it already was.

Surprise surprise, the not remotely magnificent seven spent most of their press conference slagging off the rest of the Labour party, and not attacking the Tories, that hate group which is actually the root cause of the Brexit problems who are screwing over the UK in the first place. On they trotted, each of them laying out their issues with Labour, every one of them greeted with “Who’s that?” from the assembled audience, followed by “weren't they once in Coronation Street?"  Whoever it was who was caught by the BBC microphone greeting the announcement with an “It’s mad. Between this and Brexit we’re absolutely f***ed,” had it spot on.

The Independent Group isn’t social, it’s not democratic, and it’s not a party, but apart from that it’s exactly like the SDP. When the Gang of Four (I remember them well - I'm that old) broke away from Labour in the 1980s in protest against Michael Foot daring to take a party that was supposed to be socialist in a vaguely left wing direction, the flouncers were at least big beasts within the party. All of them had been cabinet ministers in previous Labour governments and two of them had held one of the great offices of state. David Owen was a former Foreign Secretary, Roy Jenkins had previously served as Home Secretary. The others were almost as illustrious, Shirley Williams had been Education Secretary, and Bill Rodgers had served as Defence Secretary and Secretary of State for Transport. Yet even though any one of them possessed greater political experience and ability than today’s sorrowful seven combined, they still failed to make any serious electoral impact with their new party and only succeeded in splitting the opposition and ensuring a decade and a half of Conservative rule. 
 
There are, it has to be said, serious issues with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party. He is the mirror image of Theresa May, incapable of reaching out beyond his own support base, narrowly tribalist, and ideologically inflexible. He came to power promising to be different, that he’d listen to the membership and prioritise what ordinary Labour members wanted. Once in power he’s done the opposite. He’s turned into exactly the kind of Labour leader that he himself serially rebelled against, and he is doing his utmost to ensure that Brexit happens. He just wants the Conservatives to take the blame for it and then hopes that he can coast to power in the ensuing chaos. It’s a breathtakingly cynical form of politics from a man who promised honesty and moral fibre.
Yet this split is self-serving and will ultimately prove futile. It pretty much guarantees that if the Conservative party can hold itself together, that it will remain in power for the foreseeable future even though it is the most incompetent, inept, clueless and randomly vindictive government that the UK has ever seen. 

None of the splitters has the slightest intention of submitting themselves to the electorate even though they claim to have split on the question of allowing the electorate to have its say. The kindest thing you can say about The Independent Group is that it’s all an elaborate exercise in trolling the Corbynite wing of the Labour party, who are now demanding that if you’re not giving the voters what they thought they were getting then you need to resign and allow the electorate to vote on it, and thereby logically force them into supporting a second referendum. If that’s the tactic, it’s doomed already.

And don't me started on the self-styled Three Amigos. I prefer to call them the Hapless Three. Maybe I'll get around to them but, for now, let's just say that they are as opportunistic as the less- than-Magnificent Seven. Yul Brynner must be spinning in his grave at the comparison with the best Western of all times. And I'll have a gunfight with anyone who says 'nay' to that.

No doubt someone somewhere is photoshopping in the faces of the Hapless Three but I can't be bothered. It's a wonderful film though.