Here's a bit of common sense from John McTernan, Blair's director of political operations 2005-7:
‘Doctor, doctor, I feel like a pair of curtains!” “Well, pull yourself together then!” A bad medical joke seems appropriate as, more than anything, the Labour Party appears to need clinical help. Jeremy Corbyn, its leader, has lost the support of 80 per cent of Labour MPs and cannot appoint a full shadow cabinet. Yet the best Corbyn’s Twitter army can do is the hashtag #ChickenCoup, an infantile insult that reduces the leadership struggle to a playground game. “Dare you!” “Chicken!”
Now it seems to have reached stalemate. Jeremy Corbyn knows he should go. The stress is showing in his face. Tom Watson, the deputy leader, who has a bigger heart than many credit him with, is desperate to find a way for Corbyn to bow out with dignity. Yet while Tom attempts to talk to Jeremy, senior figures round the leader are trying to make sure he stays. Others in the leader’s office know that their next step is in a new job, yet Seumas Milne, the party’s strategy director, wants Corbyn to stay whatever the cost. Almost alone among the parliamentary Labour Party, John McDonnell feels the same. For them, ideology trumps all: they are both from the ultra-left.
“Whole sight,” wrote John Fowles, “or all the rest is desolation.” There is no better advice for Jeremy Corbyn. Look at yourself, look at your situation and do the right thing. You have changed the Labour Party, broadening its membership, opening it to new voices. You have changed the terms of debate. Labour is an anti-austerity party (but so is the Tory party now). However, when Osborne dumped his deficit targets this week, Labour could not exploit that because you and your intransigence were the only story.
Corbyn pulling himself together is necessary but not sufficient. The party has to pull itself together, too. The UK faces its greatest peacetime challenge: how to negotiate the best possible settlement with the EU. That needs a government on its mettle, hounded and kept honest and accountable by a disciplined opposition. When internal politics dominate everyone’s thinking, the external world is forgotten and the national interest is neglected.
There are no easy choices facing the UK over the next couple of years. There is one, though, for Corbyn and Labour: he must go, and go now.