None of this means that a split, should it come, is something anyone in the Labour Party should welcome. It would be unspeakably selfish and venal, conducted for the most narrow, shortsighted and base of motives. And the mere fact that it would be intended to trash Labour, to hurt it so badly that it returns to obedience, should inspire rage and contempt.
But it does mean that those who are making the prospect of a split their red line, as it were, are entirely wrong in their focus. The coup plotters have started this process, in a premeditated way, and don’t have a road-map out of the situation they have created. The responsibility is on them to negotiate their retreat, to make peace with their defeat, and to work with whichever leadership the party members wish to elect.
If a small number of those MPs, having gained careers and power on the back of the labor movement, and on the back of the Labour Party, are prepared to try to wreck it when they don’t get their way — well, then, to hell with them. Let them go, and see how far they get. They will lose.
—Richard Seymour
This Is Not 1981, and an SDP Mark II Will Not Work
