Jeremy Corbyn to hold crisis talks as Labour MPs try to force him out

[brooklynite]

Source: The Guardian

Jeremy Corbyn will attempt to confront the crisis facing his leadership on Monday morning as he enters emergency talks with the deputy Labour leader, Tom Watson, amid a series of further shadow cabinet walkouts and a likely vote of no confidence from his MPs.

The Labour leader, who was left reeling after his decision to sack the shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn, was followed by the resignations of 11 senior shadow cabinet members, said he would not “betray the trust” of the people who voted for him by stepping down. He vowed to stand against anyone challenging him for the leadership.

But Corbyn has come under huge pressure from the resignations, which will pitch politicians against Labour party members who elected Corbyn by an overwhelming majority in a battle for the heart of the party.

Heidi Alexander, the shadow health secretary, was the first to walk out, followed by Gloria De Piero, who has represented young people and toured the country talking to Labour voters and members.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/26/corbyn-to-hold-crisis-talks-as-labour-mps-try-to-force-him-out

---

So Brexit could basically bring down both Parties strong enough to govern. Where will Lib Dem and UKIP end up?

[libdem4life]

1. Reminds me of an old, I think, Marine saying....FUBAR.

That's the only concept that applies to this gordian knot.

[dlwickham]

4. this is like FUBAR of biblical proportions

[Equinox Moon]

2. Good luck Jeremy

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. Jer loved his press releases and ignored both

his country and his party. If he had a gram of self respect left, he would resign. Even a centigram.

[killbotfactory]

5. Why would the brexit voters listen to Corbyn, when they ignored every other politician and expert

telling them what a shit idea this was?

[iandhr]

7. I would love to see him out.

He is an antisemite and terrorist sympathizer.


He has called Hamas and Hezbollah agents of “long-term peace and social justice and political justice in the whole region,” and once invited to Parliament a Palestinian Islamist, Raed Salah, who has suggested Jews were absent from the World Trade Center on 9/11. Corbyn called him an “honored citizen.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/opinion/an-anti-semitism-of-the-left.html?_r=1

You you honor a man who implies "The Jews were behind 9/11" you have no place leading a political party in a western democracy.

But he has a huge fan club here on DU. Goes to show you have acceptable antisemitism has become on the left.

[ericson00]

8. perfectly said. He is why Labour's case failed miserably

[Surya Gayatri]

15. Thoroughly unelectable at the national level.

This guy will never get anywhere near 10 Downing Street.

[leftynyc]

14. +1000

Could be the only silver lining of this vote would be to get rid of Corbyn.

[MADem]

9. I always thought he was a shitty representative of the Labour Party.

He seems to have an "All About Meeeee" attitude. And his quirks and his personal life seem to overwhelm any policy stances he might hold.

He's no spring chicken, but he comes across as a bit childish, to my view.

Selfish, even.

Labour can and should do better.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

10. I work with a former Labour MP

It is very difficult to articulate their feelings about Jeremy Corbyn because if you take out all the swears and slurs it isn't really a sentence.

I personally suspect that Corbyn privately supported Brexit.

[MADem]

11. Wow--my gut feeling was right, then!

He's not Labour's finest hour!

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

22. He is a firebrand geezer who screamed the nonsense young reactionaries wanted to hear

But he also keeps really, really unfortunate company.

[MADem]

25. That is how he came across to me.

A bit "too too" quirky, IMO. I didn't find him authentic--it seemed to me that he was trying too hard, if that makes any sense.

[craigmatic]

12. It's either him or a polished politician that nobody trusts in an era where people hate that kind of

politician. We already saw that with Miliband. They might as well keep Corbyn because tories have already shown their incompetence. Changing now will make labour look incompetent and weak.

[Ironing Man]

13. except...

the problem for Labour is that Corbyn is a complete turn off for the swing voters in the marginal and swing constituancies in the midlands of England that Labour needs to win from the Tories in order to for a government - they swing between centerist Labour and centerist Tory, and Labour going off in to the Left under Corbyn has shot those hopes dead.

i live in one of those constituancies, i'm a member of the Labour Party in one of those constituancies - Wyre Forest if you're interested - and while when i knock on doors i do meet people who haven't voted for decades, people who are utterly disengaged from politics who like Corbyn and who intend to vote Labour (proper Project Corbyn types), for every one of those i meet, i meet 5 swing voters who have voted Labour in the past who tell me that they will never vote Labour while Corbyn is its leader under any circumstances.

while i don't believe, like you, that Labour will prosper under a super-shiny, slick charactor like Blair 2.0, its not prospering under Corbyn, and worse - the things voters dislike most about Corbyn are the things that a Labour PM will have to concentrate on in the next few years: international negotiations, economic hardball, immigration hardball. not only will those swing voters who sometimes vote labour not vote for Labour under Corbyn, they'll actually vote for someone else.

[Surya Gayatri]

16. Interesting report from the field. Confirms what I said upthread.

Thoroughly unelectable at a national level. He will never see the inside of 10 Downing.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

23. Corbyn was never going to survive to see the next election

The gong is just sounding a little earlier than expected.

[Gumboot]

17. This is the invisible hand of...

... The US State Dept., trying to install another Tony Blair in Corbyn's place. A meek yes-man for their next war.

Stand firm, Mr Corbyn. There's a lot riding on you right now.

[MADem]

26. Oh sure....that's the most amusing thesis I've ever heard.

Like John Kerry doesn't have bigger fish to fry...

[NuclearDem]

18. Bye Jeremy!

[pampango]

19. UKIP (at least Nigel Farage) will probably end up in the a Conservative cabinet. He deserves it

since he and his far-right party were instrumental in bringing this referendum about and winning it.

[brooklynite]

20. Disagree...with Boris Johnson likely to become PM...

...he can present the Tories as the "safe" outlet for xenophobes.

[pampango]

21. I hope you are right. Before the vote: Boris Johnson "offers Farage job in Post-Brexit government

Boris Johnson "offers Nigel Farage job in Post-Brexit government"

The Ukip leader repeatedly refused to deny he would accept a job in a Tory administration led by Mr Johnson, if Britain votes out at the EU referendum and David Cameron is forced to quit

Nigel Farage paved the way for a role in Boris Johnson ’s post- Brexit government tonight.

The Ukip leader repeatedly refused to deny he would accept a job in a Tory administration led by Mr Johnson, if Britain votes out at the EU referendum and David Cameron is forced to quit.

Channel 4 News’ Michael Crick tweeted: “Farage friend says he's been approached by Boris camp about job in Johnson govt & place in Lords to avoid fighting possible Thanet by-elect.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/boris-johnson-offers-nigel-farage-8199899

Of course politicians make promises like this to each other (and to voters) before elections and often do not follow through.

Johnson will be a bad enough prime minister without the baggage of Farage hanging around his neck.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

24. Farage will never be embraced by the Conservatives as we know them

But I don't think come the next election, probably November, the British political scene will be recognizable.

[GliderGuider]

27. Here's a somewhat different view of what's happening to Corbyn

It's written by British investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed, who seems to know what he's talking about:

Tony Blair’s crony elite want to snatch Labour back from the working class

The latest coup attempt against Jeremy Corbyn within the Labour Party is being led by an elitist Blairite network who have always seen his sudden rise to leadership as a threat to their waning control of the party.

15 shadow secretaries of state and nine shadow ministers who have resigned from Corbyn’s opposition cabinet all have affiliations to, or are involved with, the Fabian Society – the London think-tank affiliated with the Labour Party.

The Fabian Society was a major force in establishing the intellectual basis of New Labour under Blair’s premiership and has remained closely aligned to Blair’s supporters in the party. It was also the main force attempting to re-impose a Blairite vision on the party before Corbyn’s surprise leadership victory.

According to Sky News political correspondent Sophy Ridge, the flurry of resignations from Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet have been “choreographed” largely by one man: Conor McGinn, Labour MP for St Helens North.

McGinn, however, belongs to a wider network of Blairite Labour politicians who had opposed Corbyn’s leadership of the party from the beginning. He was involved with the Fabian Society at a senior leadership level during its role in attempting to ‘re-found’ the party under a Blairite pro-war, pro-corporate blueprint.

It sounds like The Poodle's puppies want to get back in the henhouse.

In case you don't know Dr. Ahmed, here's his capsule bio:

http://www.thecanary.co/author/nafeez/

Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is an award-winning investigative journalist, international security scholar and bestselling author. He is International Editor at The Canary. He writes the 'System Shift' column at VICE's science magazine Motherboard, and is the creator of INSURGEintelligence, a crowdfunded public interest investigative journalism project. Previously, Nafeez was a weekly columnist at Middle East Eye in London for two years, before which he wrote The Guardian's 'Earth insight' blog between April 2013 and July 2014. His work has been published in The Guardian, VICE, Independent on Sunday, The Independent, The Scotsman, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, The New Statesman, Prospect, Le Monde diplomatique, New Internationalist, Huffington Post UK, Al-Arabiya English, among others.

In 2015, Nafeez won the Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian story on the energy politics of the Ukraine crisis. The previous year he won another Project Censored Award, known popularly as the 'Alternative Pulitzer', for his Guardian story on civil unrest due to climate-induced food crises. In 2010, Nafeez won the Routledge-GCPS Essay Prize for his academic paper on the 'Crisis of Civilisation' published in the journal Global Change, Peace and Security. He also won the Premio Napoli (Naples Prize) in 2003, Italy's most prestigious literary award created by decree of the President of the Republic. Nafeez has twice been featured in the Evening Standard's 'Top 1,000' list of most influential people in London, in 2014 and 2015.

[Nihil]

28. And that is far more accurate than most of the posts upthread ...

Corbyn is the nearest thing to a genuine Labour politician that we've seen in ages.
(Tony Benn probably was the last one - though he's probably spinning in disgust
at the path that his son chose.)

That is obviously not acceptable to the Blairites who would love to return to their glory days
of "Conservativism with a red tie" and so this whole manufactured PR campaign just needed
a trigger - conveniently provided by the morons who chose "Leave" on Thursday.

No, I (sadly) don't think he will survive the coup but at least let it be seen as what it really is:
an attempt to purge any remaining Labour sentiments from the "Conservative Second Team".