Evening Standard comment: Frank Field’s departure won’t create a new party; Crossrail answers needed

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Frank Field is a political loner, not a leader. That doesn’t make his lifelong effort to champion the poorest any less impressive, or his resignation from the parliamentary Labour Party in protest against anti-Semitism and bullying any less courageous. But it does mean that Mr Field’s departure is unlikely to prompt a mass exodus of other Labour MPs.

His threat today to provoke a messy by-election in Birkenhead, just a day after ruling one out in his resignation letter, is a reminder that there isn’t some great master plan.

Indeed, the fact that the Corbynistas’ opponents can’t agree on even the basics of a strategy to resist them is one of the great advantages the Labour leadership enjoys.

The central question social democrats face is this: fight or flight? Do you stay in the Labour Party, resist the takeover from the far Left, battle for every conference resolution, every constituency selection and every seat on the National Executive Committee?

That is what many Labour moderates did in the 1980s when faced with the Militant movement. Mr Field himself was in the heat of the battle in Merseyside.

The fact that it was ultimately the young Labour MPs who stayed — like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who entered No 10 — rather than the veteran Labour politicians who quit to form the SDP, like Roy Jenkins and David Owen, has been used ever since to make the case for standing your ground.

Many moderate Labour MPs, as a result, are lying low and waiting for something to turn up.

But there is one massive difference between Militant back then and Momentum now: in the 1980s, though they came close, the far Left never captured the leadership itself. Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley were fighting to stop the Frank Fields of the party from being deselected; Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell are doing everything they can to accelerate the purge.

Once the citadel is lost, can it ever be regained? Those in Labour who think not are part of the conversation taking place across London about creating a new centre-Left party.

Early hopes rested on the resources of the founder of LoveFilm, Simon Franks, who turned up promising to fund the project.

But now his putative new party, United for Change, has split even before it has launched and Labour types have fallen out of love with Mr Franks.

The problem with creating a new political party is not money — there are plenty of people with cash who are deeply disillusioned by the rightward lurch of the Tories and the Left-wing madness of Labour.

The problem is: what is this new centrist party going to stand for? Does it want to stay close to the EU? In which case Frank Field and other Brexiteer Labour MPs facing deselection certainly aren’t going to join.

Does it favour higher taxes and more public spending? In which case pro-European Tories and the business community will not be attracted to it.

And if we need a new centrist party, why are the Liberal Democrats so moribund that their own leader seems to be taking part in the discussions about forming a new party?

British politics is ripe for a big realignment. Millions of voters, not least in London, don’t want only a choice between the Jacob Rees-Moggs and Jeremy Corbyns of this world.

The question is whether that realignment happens within the existing two parties or outside it. All the attention so far has been on Labour.

But we suspect it is the outcome of the forthcoming Tory leadership contest that may prove decisive in providing the answer.

Crossrail answers needed

News that the opening of the central section of the new Crossrail line will be delayed by a year is a big embarrassment for the Government and City Hall.

Yes, it is a hugely complex infrastructure project. But that was taken into account when the budget and timetable were originally set.

We need a better explanation for what has gone wrong. When did the Mayor, Sadiq Khan, and Transport Secretary Chris Grayling know, and why didn’t they tell commuters and businesses counting on the scheme sooner?

What is the extra cost to the taxpayer, and the shortfall in Transport for London revenues? What is happening with HS2?

Answers, not excuses, are needed — now, not next year.

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