The one way for LAB to close down its antisemitism crisis is for Corbyn to go but that is not going to happen
This continues to dominate the headlines
The ongoing narrative over anti-semitism within the Labour Party has now gone beyond the point when the former spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, said that a bad news story should have been closed down. Tony Blair’s spin doctor used to observe that if one was running more than a week after it started then it was serious.
By that judgement this is really starting to look very problematical for Labour and Mr Corbyn and it’s hard to see what is going to close it down. There are so many cases to be dealt with in the pipeline that we are going to get continual reminders of this running sore and you can be sure that Labour’s opponents are going to do their best to keep on bringing it up.
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Mischievously the government is making time available in the Commons for a debate and the overnight news about Corbyn’s Facebook account being deleted is only going to add to the media hunger.
Today’s Times is reporting that 17k members have been lost this year and only last week 3k of them did not renew their direct debits.
Ironically this will only make the party’s membership base even more pro-Corbyn because you would assume that those who have gone were not part of his fan-base.
The real worry for the party must be that this is so associated with their leader that this will continue as an ongoing irritation while he remains in the job. Given his huge support amongst the membership seen in the recent YouGov members’ poll then it is hard to see him stepping aside.
The political point is that voters don’t like split parties and that is what this row highlights.