As the strife in Labour mounted following the EU referendum, its former leader Neil Kinnock told a meeting of the party’s MPs: “Dammit this is our party! I’ve been in it for 60 years! I’m not leaving it to anybody!”
The sentiment was repeated, albeit in milder form, by the former leadership hopeful Liz Kendall in an interview with GQ last week.
“I’m not going to leave my party,” she said. “I am not going to give up my party to people who do not represent what we believe.”
Who exactly the “we” or the “our” Kinnock and Kendall refer to is unclear in the above statements.
Indeed, the tussle over Britain’s major leftwing party has revealed a complex ownership that underpins any large organisation.