Younger MPs can almost, in a way, be forgiven for believing this as they have hardly known the Labour Party to be any different. How could they? After the emergence of Neil Kinnock as leader in 1983 the party began its move to the centre right, losing the 1987 General Election in the process and, after abandoning Labour policy on trades union closed shops in 1989 and the following the witchhunt and subsequent expulsion of the left-wing Militant Tendency from the Labour Party in 1991, it lost yet another General Election in 1992. This led to a change of leadership with the late lamented John Smith whose premature death, less than two years later, precipitated the rise in fortune of Tony Blair, whose landslide General Election victory of 1997 lead to the party moving even further to the right.
Throughout the Blair and subsequent Gordon Brown years the party lost touch with a large number of its traditional supporters. Notice that I say supporters not members, as many of us who were members left the party as a result of that shift to the right. We no longer felt comfortable in a party where special advisors held sway, and where the majority of party funding was coming from rich businessmen and champagne socialists, where the voices of the trades unions who had been our traditional supporters were dismissed, and where a decision to go to war was made on spurious and unsubstantiated evidence. Where the voices of members were over-ruled by those of the Leader's Office, and where decisions such as selecting prospective parliamentary candidates were taken by the NEC instead of at local level by the membership in their constituency parties. In just 13 years the Labour Party membership dropped from over 400,000 in 1997 to just 150,000 by 2010, alongside that the party lost around 5 million voters. Hardly a success story was it? Did you ask yourself why?
Did you notice? Did you, as MPs ask yourself why that might have happened? Did it occur to you to go and talk to members about why we felt disengaged from the party? Did it occur to you to go out and and talk to electors about why they had walked away en masse from voting Labour? Did you assume it was just a blip and all would soon be back to normal? Well, that didn't happen did it?
Yet twelve months ago you had the chance to make a difference, with a new party leader, and a resurgence of support for socialist policies - so-called radical stuff, like decent housing for everyone, a properly funded NHS free at the point of use, nationalisation of the railways, improved public services, sorting out the mess that is education, making sure that our elderly and disabled do not have a daily struggle to exist, that people are not reliant on food banks to survive - food banks, in 2016! If that is not a national disgrace I don't know what is! What did many of you do? 172 of you voted within the PLP to undermine the democratically elected leader and force a leadership challenge, which is effectively spitting in the face of the 59.5% of the membership who voted for Jeremy Corbyn - those are the people who also helped to get each of you elected as MPs, so perhaps you might like to show them a little respect? You also leaked stories to the media, which being owned by hugely rich individuals with vested interests in the status quo, is hostile to the idea of a socialist government, and you worked against him and his team in more ways that we the membership will ever be able to know - but let me tell you this, we may not know the detail but we know the fact that it happened and we have long memories.
Now comrades, you have a second chance. The Labour Party membership has overwhelmingly re-elected Jeremy Corbyn as leader, this time with a bigger majority than a year ago - some 61.8% of the vote for him - and he had over 50% of the votes in each category of membership, so you cannot deny that he has a mandate from the membership. The members will also expect each of you to accept and respect that mandate and not to work against the leader we have chosen. In case you have forgotten, this is called democracy and we in the Labour Party espouse it - as it says on the back of our membership cards - The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. You are also expected not to leak information to a hostile media, nor to work to overthrow the elected leader. If you can't manage to do that then you might also find that we, the members, can't find it within our hearts to forgive your betrayals and we may also not be too happy, when it comes to election time, to give up our precious free time to help you get re-elected to carry on undermining him.
Please comrades, do not take this as a threat, it is simply a statement of fact. There is a huge amount of anger amongst party members at what we perceive as treachery, disloyalty or just disingenuity and you have a lot of work to do to put things right and regain our trust. And it is all about trust and loyalty. It's about respect for members and for the democratic mandate which has been given to the leader. It's about decency and honesty. It's also about understanding that the Labour Party is a democratic socialist party and if you are not a democratic socialist then you do not belong in it!
I sincerely hope that you all will take some time to search your consciences and consider your positions. Members do not want to see MP deselections or a split in the party, we want to see a united party that is taking on the Tory government and defending those whom the party was founded to represent. We are not Tory-lite, we are not a party of austerity, we are not a party that should be funded by, and in the pockets of, businesses. We are Labour, together we are strong. Be with us now, or go.
