Rivals face off in UK Labour leadership race

Britain’s embattled Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will debate head-to-head on Thursday with the man seeking to unseat him in a bitter contest that has exposed deep divisions in the main opposition party.

The veteran socialist takes on Owen Smith, a former member of his top team, in the first of several face-to-face debates between them ahead of a postal vote by members that will see the winner crowned on September 24.

Labour has been plunged into disarray since Britain’s June 23 vote to leave the European Union, with lawmakers dissatisfied at Corbyn’s leadership demanding he step down in the political turmoil that followed.

Corbyn, 67, has refused to quit, pointing out that he was elected only last September on the back of strong grassroots and trade union support — prompting his critics to back the relatively unknown Smith as an alternative.

The battle for control of the party has exposed long-standing fault lines in Labour over whether to position itself to the left or centre-left of British politics, and led to fears that it could even split.

Both men are promising to strengthen workers’ rights, tackle inequality and low wages and invest in infrastructure, although Smith has said he is also reaching out to centrist voters.

But it has become a bitter fight, and local party meetings have been banned during the leadership contest due to allegations of intimidation, mainly levelled against Corbyn’s supporters.

Corbyn is backed by Momentum, a mass movement of Labour members, who have turned out in their droves at rallies around the country in recent days, hailing the Labour leader as a genuine alternative to mainstream politicians.

But Smith, 46, has strong support among Labour MPs, who argue that Corbyn — a veteran anti-war and anti-nuclear campaigner who has never held high office — cannot beat Prime Minister Theresa May’s governing centre-right Conservatives at the next election.

The latest opinion polls make uncomfortable reading, with one by ICM putting the Conservatives 16 points ahead, while a YouGov survey found 29 percent of Labour voters would prefer May to Corbyn as prime minister.

– ‘Cusp of disaster’ –
Labour, which emerged in the early 20th century from the trade union movement, moved to the centre under former prime minister Tony Blair, who won three successive elections.

But since losing to the Conservatives in 2010, and again last year, the party has struggled with its identity.

Many saw the Brexit vote as a wake-up call, after millions of disenchanted voters in Labour’s traditional northern English heartlands defied their MPs to vote to leave the EU.

Corbyn’s supporters point to the surge in membership in the past year as proof that he is energising Labour. In February 2015 there were just under 200,000 members and by last month there were 515,000.

“Some people don’t get this yet. They think a movement is something instead of parliamentary politics. It’s not. It’s what makes a Labour government possible,” Corbyn said last month.

But Smith said he was worried the party might now split.

“One of the great jobs of the Labour leader is to hold the Labour party together and make us a powerful, united force in government or in opposition, and Jeremy hasn’t done that,” he said.

Owen Jones, a left-wing commentator who pushed for Corbyn’s election last year, warned Labour needed a radical change of strategy to win back lost voters and reach new ones.

“As things stand, all the evidence suggests that Labour — and the left as a whole — is on the cusp of a total disaster,” he wrote in a blog posting this week.