How Labour rebels strengthened Jeremy Corbyn
Here are my post conference thoughts on the state of Labour.
1 Hilary Benn and Labour rebels made a colossal miscalculation in challenging Corbyn when they did, after the Brexit vote. Having defeated the challenger Owen Smith by an almost humiliating margin, Corbyn is stronger and more confident than he has ever been. Worse than that from the rebels' point of view, Corbyn was tired and fed up before they tried to oust him. Now he is fired up and raring to go.
2 Estranged Labour MPs still don't get it. They regard the Corbyn-loving Momentum movement as leftie thugs and headbangers. There are a few of those in Momentum, but they are outnumbered by creative, well-educated, passionate activists - who Labour's right would do much better to engage with than reject and alienate.
3 Corbyn's Labour is a long way from being a credible opposition, able to challenge the Tories on policy making, meticulously scrutinise draft legislation and perform effectively at the despatch box - because Corbyn would need to persuade 40-odd talented MPs to end their boycott of frontbench and backbench jobs, and he won't.
4 Laying down arms in Labour's civil war, temporarily at least, does not make Labour ready for government. It has a lot of big and bold ideas - a £500bn public-sector investment bank, a "National Education Service" billed as being as important as the NHS, a plan to shift tax from income to wealth, a guaranteed income for all - but not a surplus of properly costed practical proposals. These may come - but if Corbyn is shrewd he'll hope that his warning that May could go to the country next year is baseless scaremongering.
5 It is a massive credibility problem for Corbyn - and potentially a serious problem for the UK - that Corbyn, as leader of Her Majesty's opposition, has almost nothing to say on the challenge of our age, how to make Brexit work.
6 Only a fool would under-estimate Corbyn. He has comprehensively outmanoeuvered a parliamentary Labour Party which saw him as a lumbering dinosaur. The big point is that the political landscape has been hit by an earthquake since the Crash of 2008, which precipitated a people's revolt against mainstream politicians. The context for Corbyn's rise is the same one that delivered a Brexit vote, against the confident expectations of the establishment, and sees Trump as closer to the Whitehouse than anyone thought possible just a few months ago. Corbyn will leave his mark on Britain, though goodness only knows what that will be.