Vote Labour, Get SNP ... Again

Jeremy Corbyn will not quit without a fight. Labour have a history for not having the courage of their convictions and waiting for someone else to make the difficult decisions for them. In Government they left the difficult decisions to the Coalition to rebuild the shattered economy. David Miliband was rumoured to challenge the unpopular and failing Gordon Brown but it never happened. Now in opposition there is still no challenger to take on the 'mighty' Jeremy Corbyn. They have done all they can safely do without damaging their careers by resigning their shadow positions and voting in a meaningless non-binding motion of no confidence. Labour are now in unprecedented territory. There are no political giants in the Labour Party like Shirley Williams and Roy Jenkins to go off and form a new party so where does Labour go from here. It would not be difficult to imagine the complete disintegration of the Labour Party as we know it and this would all fit with my previous article that project Corbyn is full steam ahead (tory-story.blogspot.co.uk/project-corbyn-makes-its-move).

 

Despite reports of Angela Eagle being given the support of the Parliamentary Labour Party to Challenge Corbyn for the leadership the message is that she is giving Jeremy Corbyn more time to do the right thing. What she fails to see, or does not want to see, is that Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters believe he is already doing the right thing by waiting for a challenge and letting the members decide. This is his deep felt philosophy and shy shouldn't it be. He was elected by the membership with a huge mandate. In his mind it would be crassly undemocratic to have the will of thousands of members overruled by 172 MP's so he's going nowhere. 

Knowing a contest is inevitable, the delay in challenging his leadership gives Momentum ample time to organise his election campaign and mobilise his supporters. Even a casual glance at Momentum's website and social media shows they are in full swing recruiting supporters, getting new members to join and relentlessly promoting Jeremy Corbyn to the mass membership (twitter.com/PeoplesMomentum).

Jeremy Corbyn will win the leadership challenge. Labour PLP know that and probably explains the delay. Given his almost certain victory we would then see the complete disintegration of the Labour Party as we know it and this is the rub. Jeremy Corbyn doesn't want the Labour party to carry on as we know it. He and his supporters want it to carry on as they want to know it. With 172 MP's having no confidence, his return as Labour Leader with a fresh mandate can only mean mass resignations from the Labour Whip. In Parliamentary terms this would convert all those Labour MP's into independents. The rump of the remaining MP's may not be sufficient to be the largest party in the House of Commons. That honour would fall to the Scottish Nationalist Party, especially if they form a coalition with others.

This would be a planned low point for project Corbyn. What would follow in the party would be a throng of deselections in the constituencies and refusals by others to defend their seats as a Labour MP in the General Election. The Left Wing will then make it's final and decisive move and become Labour candidates with many becoming MPs and re-establish the party as the official opposition, or even in Government. Never say never.

I agree wholeheartedly with the Prime Minister when he said to the Labour leader "For Heaven's sake man, go!"  But it is equally, if not more so, a failing of Labour MP's to stand up to him and remove him by mounting a challenge and is the danger to the nation. With Jeremy Corbyn refusing to go we could well see Angus Robertson at the despatch box as Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, with an SNP Shadow Cabinet at his side and his SNP shadow ministers on the front bench. The spectre of the 2015 General Election was Vote Labour get SNP. Under Jeremy Corbyn this might yet come to pass.