As Labour divisions fuel fears of a 1980s SDP-style split, it's worth noting that Tony Blair could have prevented this crisis

Tony Blair at Oslo in 2011, in his role as Middle East Envoy. Photograph: Jonas Gahr Støre og Tony Blair via photopin (license) (cropped)

As, probably, a rather dramatic over reaction, it has been suggested that the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the new Labour leader could lead to a split in the party. His election to power representing the party's Left-wing, it is said, could lead to another breakaway akin to that of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 1980s.

That split was led by Centre-Right, liberal and pro-European members of Labour, known as the Gang of Four - namely David Owen, Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers. That group left to form a new centre party, the SDP, in response to the rise of a Left-wing faction under Tony Benn and Michael Foot, when they found themselves unwilling to follow an overbearing Right-wing faction under Denis Healey.

The formation of the breakaway party almost saw Labour drop to third in the popular vote when the SDP, in their alliance (which later became a merger) with the Liberals, took 25% of the vote in 1983. But there was a time when such a split may not have been so bad of a thing for the Labour Party, for socialists, for trade unionists or for British politics.

In the 1990s, Tony Blair came to power in the Labour party and began his 'modernising' project. So strong was his position, he was able to rewrite fundamental elements of the party constitution to allow himself greater freedom of means in achieving the party's democratic socialist ends - his so-called Clause IV Moment.

At its peak, Blair's 'Third Way' New Labour held 418 seats in the House of Commons, had the support of the Liberal Democrats and benefited from the defection of a good number of moderate Conservatives. Only a few steps shy of completing this project, Blair stopped short. Blair could have created a new, broad, Centre party - a UK Democratic Party - that might have absorbed Tory and Labour moderates alike into a new, more progressive, establishment party. Instead, he left Labour in no man's land.

Labour have become a party of professional, pro-establishment, besuited politicians, who won't give up their connections trade unions and Left-wing politics even as they preaches Right-wing economics to an electorate turned cold. The hypocrisy inherent in falling short of a full transformation, by trying to have it both ways, has seen the party's idealistic Left-wing base fragment, scattering into a hundred different parties. The party is bleeding away its identity.

It does now seem as if progressives - of all stripes - may have been substantially better off had Blair, in fact, succeeded in his attempt to modernise the Labour Party into a moderate, centrist, democratic party. Not because Blair's professional Centrism offers a particular boon to progressive politics, but rather because the waters of the Labour Party's identity would not have become so muddy.

The socialists and trade unionists of Labour's left might have become a consolidated rump, a solid, united, party that could have kept together the various disparate socialist parties. It might have been a strong and idealistic voice, alongside Charles Kennedy's Liberal Democrats, to the Left of Blair's Centrist democrats - a loud progressive anchor, like Sinistra Ecologia Liberta in Italy, to the Left of their own Democrats, or as the SNP have sought to cast themselves.

Maybe Blair's democratic party would have had the courage to introduce proportional representation - ultimately reducing the Conservative to a Far-Right rump, powerless in the face of the support for the Centre and Left. Maybe there would not have been two elections with Labour scrambling ever Rightwards in their desperation to avoid losing power.

Blair's failure to follow through, along with his more controversial decisions, helped to lay the foundations of the Left's fragmentation. Left-leaning voters, who want to vote 'true to themselves' (Freedland, 2015), have found themselves disillusioned or cast adrift as first Labour and then the Lib Dems sought the Centre-ground in the hope of getting into power.

Yet the progressive parties can still recover. Labour remains the largest Left-leaning party and would need to be at the heart of any recovery. Labour's various factions, if they could work together under a new leader, would be the central pillar of Caroline Lucas' proposed progressive alliance for 2020 - which will likely be the best hope for the Left's election chances.

A pact would need to put electoral reform at the heart of its campaign and aim to confine the iniquities of the UK's political system - that force the creation of these alienating big tents that prevent truly representative elections - to the past. From that point on, the Left could be true to itself. There could be multiple parties, of socialists and liberals, greens and radicals, without each hurting the election chances of the other.

It might end the stifling of legitimate political voices, that denies voters the opportunity to make clear their priorities. The Left could still then work together in government, in the spirit of co-operation and consensus for the common good, to ensure that we do not again have a government of narrow interests ruling on just a third of the vote.

References

Andrew Sparrow's 'Jeremy Corbyn win could cause SDP-style Labour split, says donor'; in The Guardian; 23 July 2015.

Tim Bale's 'A Corbyn-inspired split would be a Labour catastrophe – just look across the Channel'; in The Guardian; 23 July 2015.

Neal Lawson's 'Without the soft left, Labour is doomed to splinter'; in The Guardian; 24 July 2015.

Stephen Moss' 'Labour realists should embrace Jeremy Corbyn and enjoy their spell in the wilderness'; in The Guardian; 17 July 2015.

Jonathan Freedland's 'The Corbyn tribe cares about identity, not power'; in The Guardian; 24 July 2015.

Caroline Lucas' 'My challenge to Labour: embrace a progressive, multiparty politics'; in The Guardian; 17 June 2015.