The first thing to note is that it’s not about policy. The not-so secret seven MPs who left the Labour party this morning have not changed their policy preferences. They have not become Tories. Nor have they even become liberals. They could, with little difficulty, endorse much of the Labour party’s 2017 manifesto without compromising themselves in the slightest.
Because this break, this rebellion, this journey into exile, is not about policy. It is about character and values and so many of the other things the Labour party believes it holds dear to the extent it often behaves as though it thinks it owns a monopoly on these things. And the chief message from this more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger departure is that these seven – who are really eight, if the Barrow MP John Woodcock is included – do not believe Jeremy Corbyn is a fit and proper person to be prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
They may not be alone in that. The most recent YouGov poll on this question reported that just one in five voters thinks Corbyn would make a better prime minister than Theresa May. Let that sink in. At a time of political crisis and faced with the weakest, most divided, government many of us can remember, the leader of the opposition is weighed against a ruinously unpopular Prime Minister and still found grievously wanting. The public have seen enough; they know he’s not up to it. And not even happy-clappy promises to nationalise the trains can change that.
I do not know if there will be a second wave of defections later this week, though I know that if I were planning this kind of rebellion I would have organised matters so there would be, holding some pledges of allegiance back for a second round, the better to build – if you will forgive me here – momentum.
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