The vote of 170 careerist Labour MP's against Jeremy Corbyn means less than nothing compared to the 200,000 plus votes of LP members standing behind him. The 40 MP's who voted for Corbyn should make their support public, so that party members know who the 172 who voted against are, so that they can be held to account.
Shadow Lord Chancellor, Richard Burgon, last night on Newsnight correctly said that it was unfathomable why some Labour MP's were deliberately trying to unseat Jeremy Corbyn, and to defy the wishes of the vast majority of the party, especially at the present time. The question has to be asked, is the reason for their actions driven by the fact that some of them are actual paid Tory agents, working inside the Party to destroy it? After all, in the 1970's and 1980's, it is well known that Special Branch and the secret services had around 200 trade union officials directly on their payrolls, including ex-NUM President Joe Gormley, who was feeding them information, before the 1972 and 1974 miners' strikes, when he was himself NUM President. In addition, we know that they have had large numbers of undercover agents working in the environmental movement, CND, the Stephen Lawrence campaign and so on. We all know that the Tory Party and these agencies have close links, so them having their own agents inside the LP would be not at all unlikely.
On the same Newnight, Owen Smith commented that the coup against Corbyn was a plot that had been hatched by Blair-rights some time ago, and that the claims about Corbyn's role in the referendum campaign were a red-herring. But, then Smith's own actions in then resigning are wholly irrational. If he knows its an unprincipled coup attempt by Blair-rights, if he knows the claims about the referendum campaign are just a cover for it, why resign, and thereby add grist himself to the mill of the conspirators and traitors?
But, Smith's comments about the referendum campaign are quite correct. Nearly 70% of Labour supporters backed Corbyn and voted Remain. Only 30% voted to leave, which is the same proportion as Liberal voters who voted to Leave, of SNP supporters who voted to Leave, and Green Party supporters who voted to Leave. Yet, no one would suggest that anyone could be confused about where the Liberals stand on the issue, no one is accusing Sturgeon of leading a lacklustre campaign! Moreover, if we are asking about Labour supporters not knowing what Labour's position was, how does that reflect on Labour MP's, and particularly those Blair-right MP's now criticising Corbyn?
In Tristram Hunt's Stoke Central Constituency, there was one of the biggest votes to Leave anywhere in the country, so where has Hunt been for the last few years? Why did Labour voters in Stoke not know where he and the Labour Party stood on the issue, and if they did know, how come Hunt did such an appalling job of connecting with those voters and convincing them of the case for Remain. Perhaps Hunt was too busy conspiring with other Blair-rights to oust Corbyn to have actually been doing his job and persuading Labour supporters in Stoke to vote Remain!
The same is true of Kinnock Minor, where the vote to Leave in his safe Labour seat was 57%. In Gloria De Piero's safe Labour seat, the Leave vote was 70% to Lave, but De Piero has the nerve to criticise Corbyn! In London, the vote to Remain was around 70%, with only 4 Boroughs voting to Leave. One of those Boroughs was Barking and Dagenham, the seat of Margaret Hodge who led the campaign to launch a vote of no confidence in Corbyn! In Barking 62.4% of the vote went to Leave. So what was she doing during all that time? Why was she so out of touch with labour voters in her constituency? Why did she fail to let them know what her and Labour's position was, why did she fail so spectacularly to convince them? Should she not resign in disgust at her pathetic performance, compared to the performance of Corbyn.
The fact is that those who now complain about Corbyn's role had some of the worst results in the country. It was they who gave a weak and mixed message. They seem not to have learned the lesson from the Scottish referendum, where Labour stood shoulder to shoulder with the Tories, and consequently got annihilated in Scotland. But, its no wonder that the Blair-right Tories ignored that lesson, ignored the Labour Party's decision not to stand on platforms with Tories and so on. The fact is that those Blair-rights message was indistinguishable from the failed message being purveyed by the Tories themselves. Having put forward that Tory message, and lost, the Blair-rights now have the nerve to blame Corbyn for the defeat!
It was Blair-right MP's like Harriet Harman, and Tessa Jowell, and soft Blair-right London Mayor, Saddiq Khan that were repeatedly seen standing shoulder to shoulder with Cameron, one of the most right-wing Tory leaders in decades, not Corbyn. It was Tom Watson and Ed Balls who joined in the Tory Leave supporters calls for tighter immigration controls, not Corbyn. It was former Labour Chancellor, Alistair Darling, who stood shoulder to shoulder with George Osbourne, and promised to inflict £40 billion of further austerity measures on Labour voters, not Corbyn! And, if we are to complain about the visibility of the campaign, where was the official leader of the Labour In campaign, Alan Johnson, during all that time, where was Shadow Foreign Secretary Hillary Benn. They were missing in action, no doubt too busy plotting.
This coup was planned long ago. The fact is that a handful of Blair-right MP's who have only allegiance to their own careers and wallets, and some possibly to the Tory Party itself, and no respect for the Labour Party and its half million members, never accepted the vote of the members of the party. Corbyn in my opinion made a mistake in allowing them into the Shadow Cabinet in the first place. He should have read Machiavelli's "Prince" to know how to deal with them. Yesterday's Shadow Cabinet reshuffle showed that there are more than enough MP's to take the places of the traitors. As I wrote some time ago, the size of governments and Shadow governments is way too big. It is driven not by necessity, but by a desire of career politicians to cajole their colleagues by the power of patronage, and a desire of them all to get on to an extended gravy train. There is no need to have more than 10 Shadow Ministers, and they can be backed up by party staff, rather than other MP's.
The only motivation of the traitors in provoking this clash at the moment, when the Tories are in tatters, is to promote their own personal interests, and possibly for some of them, to distract attention from the troubles of their paymasters in the Tory Party itself. No other rational conclusion can be drawn, because they must know that by causing such division, any chance the Labour Party has of winning the next election is being destroyed. They are clearly putting their own interests above those of the party, as they always have. In fact, most of them think the party only exists to serve them, to put them into Parliament, so that they can live the life of Riley, and draw their large salaries and expenses.
The coup has clearly been long planned, and the fact that the Blair-right traitors are being supported in their campaign by the Tory media, tells us all we need to know about its political aims, and the political affinities of the plotters themselves. The BBC has played a typically abysmal and biased role. Along with the rest of the Tory media they have created a narrative that they seek to purvey as gospel. So, we have supposed Labour voters in Wigan interviewed in a vox pop. How do they know they are Labour voters, given that in Britain we have a secret ballot. Yet, we are expected to take it at face value that what we are being told is absolute, unquestionable truth.
We are then told that these Labour voters will not vote labour because of Corbyn. Firstly, this hand picked selection of interviews is presented as though it is in some way representative of all Labour voters, but secondly on the basis of the reasons they said they would not vote Labour, they certainly would not vote Labour under the Leadership of any of the Blair-right pretenders, because they stand for the very opposite of the politics those interviewed were seeking! Indeed, it is the policies of those very Blair-rights over the last twenty years that created the conditions in those communities from which those people are suffering, and which turned six million of them away from Labour after 1997, in the first place!
The only way forward for Labour here is to get rid of the Blair-right traitors. They are out of step with the Labour Party. They should go and go now. If they do not go voluntarily, the Labour Party should deselect them, and for some expel them for bringing the party into disrepute, including their open fraternisation with the Tories during the referendum. Only then can we ensure that we have a Parliamentary Party that is in step with the Labour party itself, and is thereby able to give a clear and distinctive message around which we can organise to win the next election.
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