Newark Constituency Labour Party Passes Motion Backing Corbyn

Besides all of the tens of thousands of people that have signed the petitions supporting Jeremy Corbyn against the right-wing coup attempt against him by a handful of right-wing elitist MP's, support is beginning to flood in from other sources.  I reported yestrday about the support from the Durham Miners, and the poll in the Sunderland Echo, showing 66% support from its readers.

In addition now a number of CLP's are beginning to pass resolutions supporting Corbyn, and denouncing the right-wing plotters.  For example Newark CLP have passed the following motion.

"Newark Constituency Labour Party notes and supports recent statements by trade union leaders such as Wendy Nichols (Unison) Dave Ward (CWU) and Len McCluskey (Unite) who have voiced their union's support for Jeremy Corbyn's continued leadership of the Labour Party.

Newark CLP condemns the actions of many shadow cabinet ministers who have resigned at a time when the Parliamentary Labour Party should have had two key priorities in mind:

1) Preparing for an imminent general election

2) Holding the government to account when it opens negotiations to leave the EU

Following tonight's well attended meeting, Newark CLP would like to confirm that it has full confidence in Jeremy Corbyn's leadership following his election with a very clear mandate.

Newark CLP urges the PLP and the NEC to unite strongly at such a critical moment in the history of the Party and the country."

Already a number of the big unions have come out to back Corbyn, Manuel Cortes of TSSA, earlier today, rightly told the BBC that the actions of the handful of Labour MP's who are attacking Corbyn rather than the government in the present conditions are a disgrace.

On their website the TSSA on Monday set out the support for Corbyn from twelve major union leaders.

They wrote,

"Twelve major trade union leaders, including TSSA General Secretary Manuel Cortes, have backed Jeremy Corbyn against the leadership challenge being manufactured by some in the Parliamentary Labour Party.

The following joint statement was issued over the weekend:

“The prime minister's resignation has triggered a tory leadership crisis. At the very time we need politicians to come together for the common good the Tory party is plunging into enter a period of argument and infighting. In the absence of a government that puts the people first Labour must unite as a source of national stability and unity. It should focus on speaking up for jobs and workers' rights under threat, and on challenging any attempt to use the referendum result to introduce a more right-wing Tory government by the backdoor. The last thing Labour needs is a manufactured leadership row of its own in the midst of this crisis and we call upon all Labour MP's not to engage in any such indulgence.”

Quite right.

In the meantime, the kind of politics the plotters represent, and the politics they would want to return the party to is illustrated by the fact that rich novelist Robert Harris is trying to get a load of his rich friends to get right-wingers to join the party to vote against Corbyn.  The same approach is being taken by the right-wingers of Labour First.

Aaron Bastani has also provided information on the politics of those who have resigned from the shadow front bench, by listing them and showing all those who abstained on the 2015 Tory Welfare Bill, which took £12 billion away from the disabled and poorest in society.

As Paul Mason says, it appears that these right-wingers are hell bent on causing a split, but they are shit scared to put up a candidate for an election, because they know they will lose, despite all of the media games they are playing to try to suggest the opposite, with a handful of schills stuck up in front of a camera to suggest they were former Corbyn supporters who have changed sides.  They also know that if they split and stand in elections under their own banner they will disappear into the dustbin of history, like the SDP before them.

That is why they are desperate to get Corbyn to resign so that they don't have to stand against him, and so they could prevent another left-wing candidate being on the ballot.  They have also been investigating who owns the name Labour Party, as well as seeking legal advice on whether Corbyn could be prevented from being on the ballot.  The Labour Party itself took legal advice on that, and as Emily Thornberry has also said, the rules are clear.  If Corbyn does not stand down, he does not need to be nominated, but is on the ballot automatically against any challenger.

Rather like Cameron, the plotters gambled, acted rashly, and they have lost.  Cameron gambled he would not have to call a referendum, and then gambled he could win it.  The plotters, because they are so used to playing their own elitist, Westminster games, thought that by going through all of their childish plots of staged resignations - that everyone has known were going to be played out at some point - they would force Corbyn to resign as one of them would.  Now he has not, they are lost.  

Petty intrigue between them is what they know, and the game they play without any concern for the party or the workers they are supposed to protect.  That same factor means they are even having difficulty settling on a candidate to stand against Corbyn, because whoever does so will be cutting their own political throat.  They have been exposed for the self-centred charlatans they are.

The fact, is as one young member told the BBC, Corbyn is the only person, at the moment, who can transform the Labour Party, and save it from the decline it was suffering.  By turning it into a social movement, rather than just an electoral machine designed to provide a handful of elitists with a comfortable political career, the truth is that even all the stuff about staffing the front benches is so much stuff and nonsense.  As I wrote the other day, the size of governments and shadow front benches is driven not by a requirement to have that many MP's in such privileged positions, but simply by patronage, and a means of playing Westminster games.  Corbyn needs no more than 10 top Ministers, if that.

The real job of holding the Tories to account takes place not in Parliament, which no one sees, not in Prime Ministers Questions which is a total farce and a disgrace for democracy, but out in the communities, in the workplaces, and it is there that the Labour Party needs to build its activity and its support.  The SNP say they want to be the official parliamentary opposition.  In a sense there is a case for that, because the 172 renegade MP's have essentially already put themselves outside the party by their treacherous actions at a time when the fire should have been directed firmly on the Tories.  If the Labour party in Parliament does not support the democratically elected Leader of the Party, if they will not serve in the interests of the party, then the SNP are quite right to dismiss them as being actually Labour Party MP's.  The Labour Party in the country would then know who to blame for that situation, and for the petulant, childish behaviour of those MP's.  We should begin replacing them immediately, with grown up real Labour MP's, who will support Corbyn, and the mass membership of the party.

I noticed today that at PMQ's the disgraced Labour MP Simon Danczuk, who has had the Labour whip withdrawn from him, and now sits as an MP, was sitting firmly in the middle of all these right-wing plotters and traitors, and it is fitting that he was welcome amongst them.  The call of Cameron for Corbyn to go, today, should be one of the reasons that Labour Party members rally around him.  Cameron is already going having gambled and lost.  All of those Tory-lite plotters and traitors in the Labour Party who have let the Tories off the hook, by their actions, by their own gamble should do the same thing, and for God's sake go!