A U.K. Labour Party Split? That's Electoral Suicide

As Britain’s Labour Party prepares to announce the result of its leadership election Saturday, attention is beginning to turn to how the party will reunite after months of infighting. Whether left-wing incumbent Jeremy Corbyn is re-elected (as is highly likely) or is defeated by challenger Owen Smith, the Labour Party looks set to remain highly divided. Indeed, the talk all summer was not of reconciliation but of a potential split in the party.

Labour’s members of parliament, mostly from the moderate wing of the party, voted against Corbyn 172 to 40 in a no-confidence motion in June. By contrast, its grass-roots membership is increasingly left-wing, with Corbyn carrying them by 62 percent to 38 percent (with 86 percent of members joining in the last year favoring Corbyn) in the most recent opinion poll.