Jeremy Corbyn’s allies are urging him to extend an olive branch to disillusioned Labour MPs, after the party lost dozens of council seats in Thursday’s local elections — the first time it has done so in opposition since 1985.
As Clive Lewis, a shadow energy minister and Corbyn loyalist, told the Guardian the leader needed to beef up his team of advisors and should be willing to make policy compromises with the rest of the party — including, if necessary, on the renewal of Trident.
“It’s incumbent on people around Jeremy to say, ‘We’re going to take a leap of faith’,” he said. “What I’m saying to people is: compromise, reach out. Sometimes we do forget. We are comrades, we are colleagues and we agree on more than we disagree on.”
With Emily Thornberry due to publish her report into defence policy – including the future of the UK’s nuclear deterrent – in the coming weeks, Lewis said Corbyn, who has long championed unilateral nuclear disarmament, should accept the verdict of Labour’s autumn conference, even if it backs Trident.
“Have a debate,” said Lewis. “There’s no guarantee that Jeremy will win, but to my mind – yes that is an important issue, but park this after September. Let’s find out what unites us”.
The Norwich South MP, who has been a strong advocate of Corbyn’s approach, including during last year’s debate on UK participation in bombing raids on Syria, said there were also concerns, even among those who are sympathetic to the leader, about the quality of his top team.
“I think it is fair to say that there has been an improvement in the leader’s office, and I think people want to see that move on faster,” he said. “It’s about opening up, and bringing in people with a wider range of experience. A narrative needs to be developed, and a strategy”.
Labour was pushed into third place in Scotland, behind the Conservatives, after losing 13 seats. With most English council results in Labour lost a net 18 seats – while in Wales the party held onto control in the assembly, but lost the stronghold of the Rhondda to Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood.
The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, has also been heard to express concerns about the professionalism of Corbyn’s leadership operation in recent weeks. Another largely loyal shadow minister said of the leader: “He is learning as he goes. Sometimes the lack of front-bench experience comes through”.
While some of Corbyn’s supporters are keen to heal the rift in the party, however, others hope to use the better-than-expected results – some forecasters had pointed to a loss of more than a hundred council seats – to consolidate the far left’s hold on the party.
Any attempt at an immediate coup appeared less likely after the party held its ground in England, retaining control of councils such as Nuneaton and Harlow.
Jon Lansman, chair of the Corbyn-supporting grassroots group Momentum, said the grim night in Scotland, where Labour slipped into third place behind the Conservatives, showed that the party should “put its values up front”.
“I think the real lesson of Scotland ... is that is is a problem and this can happen to Labour if it doesn’t put its values up front,” he said. “Short term electoral gain does not win in the long term, and what it has done is led to disaster in Scotland.”
He added that in Wales, the party had made a mistake by failing to wholeheartedly embrace Corbyn and his anti-austerity stance.
“The only major seat we have actually lost is to Plaid in Wales,” he said. “There is a warning in that. Carwyn Jones obviously distanced himself from Jeremy and repositioned the Welsh party somewhat to the right of his predecessors.”
Momentum is readying itself to see off any leadership challenge to Corbyn, lining up activists to staff a phone bank and motivate sympathetic activists to back him.
But Lewis said it was not good enough for Corbyn to postpone the reckoning. “Let’s just say in the next two years there’s a coup: that’s just going to be two years of constant in-fighting and backstabbing and looking like a shambles,” he said. Instead, he said, the message to Corbyn should be: “We don’t think you’re firing on all cylinders, but let us help,”.
While the results of Thursday’s elections were not catastrophic, with the party’s share of the vote up marginally from last year’s general election, most observers, including a number of frontbenchers, believe a Labour government in 2020 remains an unlikely prospect, and there have been persistent rumours that several MPs are manoeuvring against Corbyn.
Dan Jarvis, the former paratrooper frequently touted as a potential challenger, registered a £12,500 donation from Labour donor Peter Hearn, who backed Yvette Cooper’s leadership bid, at the end of April, in a hint that he may be preparing the ground for a future run.
With former health secretary Andy Burnham, one of the party’s heavy hitters, announcing that he is considering standing as the mayor of Manchester when radical new powers are devolved to the city, there are also growing fears among some in Labour of a brain drain, if it appears that the earliest the party can expect to be back in government is 2025.
Despite repeated calls for unity from senior Labour figures throughout on Friday, including a demand from McDonnell that Corbyn’s critics “put up or shut up”, many MPs were ready to condemn the party’s performance publicly.
Stephen Kinnock, the Aberavon MP who came to prominence recently when he campaigned to safeguard the future of the Port Talbot steelworks, said the results suggested Corbyn and his team should change their approach.
“When I’m on doorsteps, I think people are looking for three things: a party that is offering security, stability and fairness,” he said. “You have to give people the sense they can trust you. What is important is that the leadership listens and learns and change the way we present ourselves to the British people.”
Corbyn’s critics are also concerned that the party’s dire performance in Scotland will raise the bar for winning a general election, because for every seat it loses in what was once its strongholds north of the border, it must make more inroads into less promising electoral territory in currently Conservative or Liberal Democrat areas of England.
George Osborne’s former advisor, Rupert Harrison, tweeted on Friday to say the Conservatives’ performance in Scotland was “by far [the] most significant ... election result”.
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