Labour’s leadership ballot closed at noon yesterday, bringing to an end weeks of campaigning, smears and attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters. Despite this, six bookmakers today had Corbyn at 1-100 (a 99% chance) of winning the election, while sources in Momentum believe he could beat Owen Smith by an even higher margin than last year’s 59.5%.
The peak of the hysteria around Corbyn, entryism and Momentum was reached on Monday night, with two back-to-back documentaries on Channel 4 and the BBC. Channel 4’s Dispatches sent an undercover reporter into Momentum HQ for six months, and was unable to find anything much of note, with former Deputy Leader John Prescott joking that instead of The Battle for the Labour Party it should have been renamed ‘The Battle to Stay Awake‘, and Tory MP Zac Goldsmith remarking it was ‘weak’. Given the sheer range and ferocity of smears thrown against Momentum in the past year, the only noteworthy part of the documentary is that someone spending half of that time undercover there could not encounter anything.
Despite claiming this week in LabourList that, “a coalition of Labour’s two wings to be an effective parliamentary opposition is possible”, Labour First secretary and failed NEC candidate Luke Akehurst tweeted on the 31st of August that the, “point is to start a process that may take several goes”. Leadership challenges may be expected therefore next summer, and the summer after, and maybe into 2019.
The party is now braced for annual conference, which formally begins on Sunday, with the leadership announcement the day before. The NEC will meet on Saturday to decide on which rule changes will be going ahead to be discussed.
“point is to start a process that may take several goes”. Leadership challenges may be expected therefore next summer, and the summer after, and maybe into 2019.”
This is exactly what a lot of us predicted. It is urgent that rule changes are introduced so that the MEMBERSHIP and not the PLP trigger ballots for Leader and Deputy Leader of the party.
spot on bill
Corbyn needs to be careful about who he is conciliatory towards.
He should not be conciliatory to those MPs who have done everything that they can to destroy his leadership.
‘Bomber’ Benn has made it clear that he will not accept the result if Corbyn wins:
“I will give my full support to whoever is elected if someone other than Jeremy is chosen by the members in September.”
Hillary Benn, 19 July 2016, The Today Programme
My woodwork is creaking…….it must be all those worms that are emerging.
Blair is standing for Parliament in Witney!!! What?
Ed Balls, loser, is condemning Corbyn for ….being a loser.
David miliband is doing the same.
While those MP’s who attending Jo Cox’s funeral claimed their expenses for doing so, meaning that we paid.
Luke Akehurst assets that the membership is wrong and must be changed…….to ones who agree with him.
I figure that there are 10 MP’s who need to be sidelined, while the rest can be worked on, apart form the decent guys and girls who have done the right thing and stood by our choice for leader.
Yes there will be screams of witch hunts and deselections, but isn’t that just what’s happened to around 200,000 members who weren’t allowed to vote?
Isn’t that what’s happened to all those members who’ve had their membership removed?
And isn’t what the PLP tried to force onto Jeremy?
Read the article by David Miliband in The New Statesman (he seems to have suddenly reappeared lately and is making some noise) but it was turgid and abysmal communication.
This from the man who couldn’t even beat weak Ed and who voted for the Iraq War (and I think) the invasion of Afghanistan and bombing Libya and would I am sure have voted to bomb in Syria.
In Government he supported PFI, was part of a cabinet that neglected working class communities, did nothing about housing and cosied up to the banks who caused the financial meltdown – it was the banks what done it – but New Labour Yuppies certainly didn’t help!
In his dull as ditchwater piece this favoured son of the Right offers no ideas just his opinion and perhaps the grassroots are sick of New Labour opinion and crumbs for the working class/working people from ‘the great men and women of history’.
As I have said all Labour members are equal but when some members are selected by members to be MPs then a significant number of them seem want to be more equal than others and some give them more power when Labour MPs are just members who are serving the Party – they are not there to serve themselves.
The great positive is that Labour under and because of JC now has 500,000 members who actually believe we now stand for something.
I believe we can transform UK society and working with international partners the World.
We should now all unite around the ace band ‘JC and The Visionaries’ but some seem to failing the audition.
I have seen thousands of talented and passionate diverse men and women at Momentum meetings and rallies around the country this year and from now on should select those committed to our cause.
Some of us weren’t left loads of money and when you have had nothing you know the importance of Labour winning for working people and we can with JC.
So unite behind JC and all members including MPs should serve Labour by sticking it to the Tories!