The Scottish National Party, which is the UK's third-largest party, now believes that the only surefire way to prevent Johnson forcing through a no-deal Brexit is to remove him from office and replace him with Jeremy Corbyn as a caretaker prime minister.
Under the plan, Jeremy Corbyn, who is the leader of the second-largest party in parliament, would briefly enter Downing Street with the sole purpose of delaying Brexit, before triggering a general election.
Responding to a tweet on Friday suggesting that opposition parties should temporarily install Corbyn as prime minister, the Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon replied: "Agree with this," adding that "Nothing is risk free but leaving Johnson in post to force through no deal - or even a bad deal - seems like a terrible idea to me."
One senior SNP source told ITV's Robert Peston that Corbyn would be the only realistic choice for the role.
"It is increasingly clear that we will have to install a new prime minister via a vote of no confidence so that we can request a delay to Brexit and hold an election," the source said.
"The convention is absolutely clear that it is the leader of the opposition - in this case, Jeremy Corbyn - who should become prime minister in those circumstances.
"Trying to find a compromise candidate, a national unity candidate, is too complicated, especially in the time we have. Whether people like it or not, the temporary prime minister has to be Corbyn."
Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn?
Thanks robbie_dee
This is a very promising turn of events
Johnson has to be removed very quickly before much more serious violence breaks out
Amber Rudd says prime minister's Brexit rhetoric 'legitimises violence'
Former minister was ‘disappointed and stunned’ by Boris Johnson’s comments about Jo Cox
WILL BOJO GOGO?
Will Boris Johnson resign?
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10008415/boris-johnson-resign-dangerous-language/
Supreme Court: Where does defeat leave Boris Johnson?
If this happens, since Corbyn will also be leading Labour into the snap election, the anti-Corbynites will have an immediate obligation to stop doing everything they've been doing to undermine Corbyn throughout his leadership, admit they've been wrong not to stop it before, and actually start doing the work of uniting Labour for electoral victory.
That includes admitting that Corbyn's supporters never deserved to be collectively accused of antisemitism and that Corbyn has always been innocent of the charge of tolerating antisemitism within the party.
The anti-Corbynites now owe it to Labour to do that.
Surely Ken Corbyn owes it to Kabour to step aside so the party has a fivhting chance to win the election.
he is currently running a bad third as preferred PM
The anti-Corbynites now owe it to Labour to do that.
What are the chances the “anti-Corbynites” do that? I don’t see that happening and I’m not sure where that leaves Labour.
The anti-Corbynites now owe it to Labour to do that.
What are the chances the “anti-Corbynites” do that? I don’t see that happening and I’m not sure where that leaves Labour.
The chances of that depend on what those I've applied that label to-a group mainly comprised of the right wing of the PLP, in particular those MPs who only hold their seats because Kinnock or Blair imposed them as parliamentary candidates against the will of their own constituency parties, while at the same time imposing party rules which make it virtually impossble for the constituency parties to deselect them or hold them accountable in any way at all-care about more deeply:
Do they care more about having Labour win the next election?
Or do they care about nothing-as is the case with most of them-but returning to the days when the party was nothing more than their private club, a club in which they and no one else-other than the CEO's who started donating to the party after Blair stripped if of all socialist convictions-have any say in how the party is run or what it stands for, where the party is nothing but a path to the true future most anti-Corbynite MPs seek, once they've finished with party politics, a gold-plated early retirement consisting of highly-paid, work-free directorships on corporate boards-their reward for once again making the party a socialism-free zone?
The PLP knows that nobody they would accept as leader could ever win even tepid support from the young.
They know Labour can't win if the young go back to staying away from the polls, as they would unavoidably do if Labour went back to the non-socialist, pro-austerity, pro-military intervention policies the PLP and the PLP alone wants Labour to go back to.
They know Labour can never again, no matter how far to the right it goes, win the votes of people who voted Tory in 2010, 2015, and 2017, and that there's no point trying to return the party to its obsession with voters who hate Labour values, to the now-nonexistent "Middle England" voters whose attitude Billy Bragg succinctly captured in his lyric "we don't like peace campaigners 'round here".
They know that taking Labour back to the Blairite era means dooming it to political oblivion, with most of those who vote for it now swinging over to Greens or becoming nonvoters.
But the PLP doesn't care about that. All they want, all they have wanted throughout the four years in which they have vilified and demonized Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters and sought to drive them away, is simply to erase any possibility of Labour ever again being a party of radical change, ever again being a party that stands for a different vision of life, ever again being anything but their own personal sinecures.
This is why Open Selection is needed. The PLP are out of control in their arrogance, and everything they have done in the last four years can be categorized as "bringing the party into disrepute".
If they care about winning the election, they will accept that the leadership issue is settled, stop undermining their leader, and do what they are SUPPOSED to do-focus solely on attacking and trying to defeat the Tory government.
If they don't-and clearly they don't-they will carry on with their pointless and totally unjustified sabotage-and-slander campaign.
Surely Ken Corbyn owes it to Kabour to step aside so the party has a fivhting chance to win the election.he is currently running a bad third as preferred PM
So that is your chance nicky. He's willing to risk ending his political career to toss out Boris and to delay Brexit. If he loses the general election, he is done as Labour leader. Problem solved on your end.
No Aristotle, the problem would not be solved because Johnson would in all likelihood win a majority government, aided and abetted by Corbyn’s vanity in refusing to accept how unelectable he is.
The Economist ( whose views Ken will reflexisly reject) has just hit upon a deadly accurate phrase to describe Corbyn’s approval ratings: “preposterously unpopular.”
No Aristotle, the problem would not be solved because Johnson would in all likelihood win a majority government, aided and abetted by Corbyn’s vanity in refusing to accept how unelectable he is.
That scenario would get you rid of Corbyn right away. Isn't that what you want?
Besides, it's clear from your posting here that you have no real problems in your life, unlike many of us who struggle economically, and you wouldn't really be negatively impacted by a Conservative government in the UK at all. Why do you care so much about the election outcome?
The Economist ( whose views Ken will reflexisly reject) has just hit upon a deadly accurate phrase to describe Corbyn’s approval ratings: “preposterously unpopular.”
The Economist is a mouthpiece for the global 1%. Ken is right to reject anything it has to say.
Johnson could face no-confidence vote next week to halt no-deal Brexit
SNP’s Stewart Hosie says opposition must unite and that Corbyn must get first chance to be PM
Sat 28 Sep 2019 09.57 BSTLast modified on Sat 28 Sep 2019 12.18 BST
The prime minister, Boris Johnson, could be removed as early as next week under plans being drawn up by opposition party leaders. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images
There could be a vote of no confidence in the government next week in order to remove Boris Johnson as prime minister and secure a Brexit date extension, a senior Scottish National party MP has said.
Nicola Sturgeon 'open to Corbyn' as interim prime minister
Read more
Following talks between opposition party leaders at Westminster, Stewart Hosie said the move appeared to be the only way of ensuring Johnson did not push through a no-deal Brexit on 31 October.
“We have to do that because there is now no confidence that the prime minister will obey the law and seek the extension that parliament voted for only a few weeks ago,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“If we are serious about the extension, that is the only game in town.”
Hosie, a former SNP deputy leader, said the aim was to stop a no-deal Brexit, and that all opposition parties and Tory rebels needed to be united.
The SNP MP urged the Liberal Democrat leader, Jo Swinson, to get behind the move, which could lead to Jeremy Corbyn being installed in No 10. Swinson has previously said she would not put Corbyn in Downing Street, even for a short period.
Stewart Hosie said Labour, as the second-largest party in the Commons, should have the first chance to form a government after a successful no-confidence vote. Photograph: Mark Runnacles/Getty Images
“If another name came forward that was acceptable to everybody – a Ken Clarke or Dominic Grieve-type figure – then self-evidently that would be a good thing to do,” Hosie said. “But it is also self-evidently the case that the second-largest party [Labour] should have the first chance to form that administration.
“If Jo Swinson and the Lib Dems are actually serious about stopping Brexit then they need to stop playing political games [and] get on board with everybody else.”
Hosie said it was a short-term procedure to get an extension to article 50 and then have a general election.
Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has said she is open-minded about Corbyn becoming an interim prime minister, in order to secure an extension to Brexit and call a general election.
She told BBC Scotland: “We are all going to have to compromise, we are all going to have to swallow our pride and put up with something for a matter of days to allow that to happen, and get on with it.”
Her representative in Westminster, Ian Blackford, said the SNP was “desperate” for an election.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/28/boris-johnson-no-deal-brexit-no-confidence-vote-snp
No Aristotle, the problem would not be solved because Johnson would in all likelihood win a majority government, aided and abetted by Corbyn’s vanity in refusing to accept how unelectable he is.
The Economist ( whose views Ken will reflexisly reject) has just hit upon a deadly accurate phrase to describe Corbyn’s approval ratings: “preposterously unpopular.”
It would be meaningless for Labour to defeat the Tories in an election on a "moderate"(i.e., not a milimetre to the left of Blair) platform and with a leader the PLP approved of, though.
There'd be no change, and anything even mildly non-conservative in the platform would be abandoned as soon as such a "Labour" government got in, and a Labour government which abandoned anything even mildly non-conservative, as the 1964-70 Wilson goverment and the 1976-79 Callaghan government did, would be doomed to a landslide defeat at the next election.
Corbyn isn't the problem. The Left isn't the enemy. The problem is the Blairite majority in the PLP-a group whose members and ideas are all permanently discredited with the electorate.
Middle England doesn't exist and it's not possible for Labour to get votes from people who voted Tory in the last election without ceasing to BE Labour.
Just accept that the Third Way is dead and that Labour needs the young and the left to win.
And Corbyn's popularity issues would be instantly undone if only the PLP would admit that 1)he never deserved to be accused of abetting antisemitism and his supporters never deserved to be accused OF widespread antisemitism; 2) That No Labour leader could ever hold the party together in any form by making it do what the Milton Friedman types want and go all-out Remain, that it's enough that Labour is committed to a second referendum.
No Aristotle, the problem would not be solved because Johnson would in all likelihood win a majority government, aided and abetted by Corbyn’s vanity in refusing to accept how unelectable he is.That scenario would get you rid of Corbyn right away. Isn't that what you want?
Besides, it's clear from your posting here that you have no real problems in your life, unlike many of us who struggle economically, and you wouldn't really be negatively impacted by a Conservative government in the UK at all. Why do you care so much about the election outcome?
The Economist ( whose views Ken will reflexisly reject) has just hit upon a deadly accurate phrase to describe Corbyn’s approval ratings: “preposterously unpopular.”The Economist is a mouthpiece for the global 1%. Ken is right to reject anything it has to say.
As would anyone with any actual socialist values. The Economist was brutally antiworker and anti-Labour in the Thatcher era and in 1997 they argued that Blair hadn't moved the party far ENOUGH to the right to earn their support. The agenda of the Economist, from the moment it started publishing, was to crush any alternative to the capitalist status quo.
They would bash Labour if Ian Austin was leading it.
The Economist’s wditorial stance is beaide the point.
it is incontrovertably correct i. Ststing Corbyn is more unpopular than ang Britush leader has ever been.
The Economist’s wditorial stance is beaide the point.
it is incontrovertably correct i. Ststing Corbyn is more unpopular than ang Britush leader has ever been.
It matters that the he did nothing to deserve any unpopularity. It matters that Corbyn never deserved the unrelenting four-year-long sabotage campaign his own MPs have carried out against him, a campaign they had no justification for carrying out.
It matters that he never deserved to be accused of tolerating prejudice against Jews and that there was no greater incidence of that among his supporters-and that in fact the vast majority of antisemitism is felt and expressed by Tories and those to their right.
It matters that it was a despicable lie for anyone to claim he was "pro-IRA", when he simply supported a united Ireland and recognized that whatever solution was adopted would have to involve negotiating with Sinn Fein, as it was never going to be possible to militarily defeat Sinn Fein and as the conflict was equally, if not more, the responsibility of the Loyalist death squads and their sometimes-allies in the British Army-an army which should have been nothing but neutral peacekeepers but, insisted, for no valid reason, on taking sides and fighting to keep the existing repression in place.
It matters that he did nothing wrong in taking the only position on Brexit-stop "no deal", negotiate something better after the election the failure of "no deal" will inevitably cause, then hold a second referendum-everyone has known for months that Labour could not go "hard Remain" and push for an unachievable second referendum before the election without fatally splitting the party, and that it also can't go "hard Brexit" and push for an exit from the EU on October 31st without splitting the party.
And it matters that what we have seen here is the most decent person in UK politics, perhaps the only decent person to be leading a major party in UK politics, has been subjected to a vilification campaign by the most dishonest, cynical, principle-free people in UK politics-his own party's right wing.
It matters that it's bogus to accuse Corbyn of being "far left" when the program he is running on is fairly similar to, on the bulk of the issues, to the program Clement Attlee led Labour to a landslide victory on in 1945. It doesn't have the militarism, but why should it? There's nothing to be militaristic about anymore and "humanitarian intervention" has never been anything but code for soft imperialism.
Finally, it matters that, if Corbyn were to go-and we can assume the PLP would not allow anyone but "moderates" on the ballot to replace him if he did go, like they did in the undemocratic stitch-up for Gordon Brown in 2008-the message sent to all will be "no decent, principled person will ever be allowed to lead this party and any such person who tries will be vilified into oblivion. And the message to the youth of Britain, virtually all of whom are left wing-there's no such thing, in all but infinitesmly small numbers, as a "young Labour moderate"-nobody starts life without principles-the message sent to the young will be "nothing you care about will ever matter to this party, we will DEMAND your vote but offer you nothing in exchange for it, and your only role in politics is to shut up and do what you are damn well told".
There is no way that having this narrative end with Corbyn's exile and his replacement by the sort of person the PLP would approve of-and they'd only accept a heartless, cynical warloving centrist as we both know-would produce a Labour victory, or that the Labour Party would have any reason to go on existing if it went where to the dismal place that narrative would have to lead it.
And Aristotle is right...you clearly write from a position of personal privilege and wealth. You clearly write from a lack of democratic, radical, transformative values. You are fine with politics being nothing but "it's enough to get 'our side' in to run the sameness".
If Corbyn were forced out in that narrative, you'd see the vast majority of young leftists give up on the party forever-Jeremy, being a decent person, would beg them to say, but you know they wouldn't, since Labour would stand for nothing they cared about anymore-a large number would switch to the Greens, some to minor left parties, probably at least half would simply go back to not-voting as the young were almost always non-voters prior to Corbyn being leader.
And when that happened, no other group of voters from any other age cohort or any other part of the political spectrum would ever rush in to replace them.
That's how it would have to play out.
The reality is just like many other places the media drills right-wing messaging 24/7 into the UK so of course Corbyn is the devil
If Corbyn becomes PM he will have access to some government resources where hopefully he can turn his image around
One thing he might consider doing the morning he becomes PM is firing the entire political news crew at the BBC and replace them with progressive broadcasters
The reality is just like many other places the media drills right-wing messaging 24/7 into the UK so of course Corbyn is the devil
If Corbyn becomes PM he will have access to some government resources where hopefully he can turn his image around
One thing he might consider doing the morning he becomes PM is firing the entire political news crew at the BBC and replace them with progressive broadcasters
That can be a part of his election agenda in the snap election after Boris's agenda has been stopped. It would go well with a proposal to change the UK's media ownership laws so that Murdoch can be stripped of his empire of lies.
I read Ken’s curious observation......
“And Aristotle is right...you clearly write from a position of personal privilege and wealth. You clearly write from a lack of democratic, radical, transformative values.”
....and realized after a while that he was talking about me.
In order to defend the hapless Corbyn he and Aristotle ascribes various fictional attributes to me, ones that no one who really knows me would take seriously.
But I shouldn’t be surprised at Ken’s level of self-delusion in making fictional excuses for the “preposterously unpopular” Corbyn. Like Trump he continuously aims personal attacks on those who question him. Attacks as baseless as any that Trump has promoted.
And like Trump, he continuously deflects, pretending that everyone else is to blame for the glaring failures of his tarnished idol who of course bears no personal responsibility whatsoever.
Nothing healthy can come from rewarding a slander and lie campaign.
And those who spent the last four years campaigning to make Corbyn unpopular had no positive intent in doing so.
It's impossible that rewarding this could lead to Labour being led by a leader who was popular, honest, and committed to real change. Nothing like that ever comes of tactics like this.
Unjustly vilifying a decent person never produces a victory for the greater good.
And we've made assumptions about your intents and your station because only prosperous people living in comfort would prefer to see a party like Labour being led by a non-radical leader who was fine with the status quo, as the PLP would. It goes without saying that the PLP will never accept any leader who hasn't abandoned any and all socialist convictions, and essentially all "social democratic" convictions as well. That's what being a "modernizer" means; it means having no passionate commitment to fighting injustic or fighting exploitation and oppression; it means not caring about anything but winning an election for the sake of winning an election.
And it's unnecessary.
Labour would have won in 1997 without moving massively to the right, without depriving the party conference of any say in what the party stands for and reducing such decisions solely to what people liked to hear in rigged "focus groups", without ending up to the right of the Tories on both crime and the use of force internationally.
Labour was going to win in 1997 no matter what.
The whole point in how the PLP has treated Corbyn was to make sure he couldn't lead the party to victory, as he nearly did in 2017-in an election no one the PLP would have preferred to Corbyn would have come anywhere close to making a 10 percentage point gain in the Labour vote share-because if Corbyn had put Labour over the top then, or if he manages that this time, it would destroy, once and for all, the myth that Labour only won because of the trauma and misery Blair inflicted on the Labour base, that the 1997 result was solely because Labour had a leader who made it clear that he despised the Labour base as much as the Tories and their "we don't like peace campaigners 'round here" voters do.
That is the only reason, the only possible reason, that the leading opponent of racism and bigotry on the Labour benches has been slandered with false accusations of looking the other way at a form of bigotry when he never ever looked the other way.
That is the only reason that the figure who persuaded Sinn Fein-and was probably the only person in UK political life who could ever have done so-to negotiate for the creation of a power sharing executive in Northern Ireland was labeled a supporter of the IRA, even though everyone knew he was never anything of the kind.
Doesn't the slander aspect of this bother you at all, nicky? Don't you feel the slightest bit of shame in your support for the demonization of the first decent person who has led a major political party in the UK in decades?
Truth is a defence to slander Ken
there is at least some truth in each of the ghings you pretend are unjustly attributed to Corbyn.
There is no truth in any of them
1) Corbyn has opposed antisemitism all of his life. He also supports Palestinian self-determination. He was willing, and his supporters were willing, to accept every part of the IHRA definitions on antisemitism OTHER than those related to comments about Zionism and the Israeli government. There was no legitimate reason to put restrictions on what can be said about the Israeli government or about Zionism into the guidelines, since there is virtually nothing that can be said about Israel or Zionism that is actually grounded in bigotry against Jews, so there was no reason for Labour to agree to guidelines that make it harder to criticize the Israeli government than it is to comment about any other government on the entire planetl.
The Formby inquiry showed that, of the 200 complaints about alleged antisemitism within the party, only 12 were found to have any connection to Labour party members or supporters. The Chakrabati report found that, at most, there was an infinitesmally small amount of stereotypical views of Jews or Judaism among Labour supporters. Repeated opinion polls and studies have showed that the prohibitive majority of views which were actually hostile and hateful towards Jewish people are held by people who support the Conservative Party and those entities to its right.
When the Metropolitan Police investigated the bigoted messages that Luciana Berger reported to have been sent to her in her theatrically weepy performance in the HoC, they found that none were sent by anyone who had any connection to the Labour Party at all, let alone any allegiance to Corbyn.
Ruth Smeeth, early in Corbyn's leadership, claimed that somebody shouted antisemitic slurs at her when she was holding a press briefing to attack Corbyn and push for his resignation and the expulsion of his supporters. No evidence was ever found that anyone within Labour at all, let alone anyone supporting Corbyn, had anything to do with that incident, and it is highly likely that the person who did that was simply a hired disrupter of no personal political allegiance.
And virtually every allegation of antisemitism made by Margaret Hodge-a person who has been carrying on a personal vendetta against Corbyn throughout his leadership, and the person who orchestrated the non-binding and meaningless "no-confidence motion" against Corbyn, and who has treated Corbyn as a personal enemy ever since he led the investigation into her failure to deal with child abuse allegations at council-run children's homes while leading Islington Council-has been proven bogus.
There is nothing there other than what the right-wing PLP and the media, including the Tory-supporting BBC in its now-totally discredited "Panorama" show on the issue have distorted or fabricated. There's no there there.
2) As has been repeatedly proved, Jeremy Corbyn NEVER, at any point "supported the IRA". He supported a United Ireland in the 1980's. Virtually everyone on the left-of-center side of UK politics supported that in the 1980s. It was LABOUR PARTY POLICY in the Eighties. There was no such thing as a "Left" case for preserving British rule in Northern Ireland at the time. Today, the Social Democratic and Labour Party-the moderate-to-conservative Catholic party in Northern Ireland, STILL supports the ultimate goal of a United Ireland. That position was never synonymous with support for the IRA or with apologism for the use of force to achieve a United Ireland.
To get to any sort of end to the conflict, it was always going to be necessary to get the IRA into some sort of real negotiations with the British government and the Unionist forces there. The Loyalist paras should also have been part of those negotiations, but the Unionist parties have always refused to admit that the Loyalists were their shock troops, under their command, that the conflict was just as much the result of Unionist/Loyalist repression and violence as anything Sinn Fein and the IRA did.
In any case, Corbyn and others on the British left simply recognized that ending the violence required the participation of all factions, and that only those who had supported a United Ireland as a goal had any chance of getting Sinn Fein to participate in talks.
Tony Blair recognized this, too-which is why he had Corbyn act as an emissary to the republican forces.
It's in significant measure due to Corbyn's work that the Good Friday Accord, with its flaws, with its limitations, with the damage done by the endless, unjustified series of Unionist shutdowns of the Northern Irish Assembly in order to slowly undo the necessary equality between communities in the arrangement, was ever established at all.
Corbyn helped stopped the violence. He never did anything to make it worse. He never defended violence.
What matters is that the situation, as a result of the negotiations and compromise that Corbyn's work as an emissary helped start, is massively better.
The Ian Austin types don't get it that there was never any possibility of ending "The Troubles" in the stubborn Anglo-Saxon manner they were trying to end them; with a pointless insistence on trying to militarily crush republicans into surrender. That was never going to happen. Everyone knew that was never going to happen. There was no point in trying to get that.
Corbyn is being vilified and slandered by the Right on theissue simply for doing the only things that could ever have stopped the killing. He never defended the IRA's tactics and he never supported the IRA as an organization.
It would have served no purpose for Corbyn to embrace the Tory delusion that the Northern Ireland conflict was never about anything but the republican groups harming people for the sake of harming people and the conflict being down to the intransigence of republicans and nothing else. It wold have served no purpose for Corbyn and the rest of the left to reduce themselves to simply parroting Tory/British Army demands for unconditional surrender.
So again, no truth at all in the slander that Corbyn backed the IRA. The goal of a United Ireland was never supported by the IRA and the IRA alone.
Ask yourself this, nicky: would Labour be in ANY worse situation at all if, on the day after the 2017 election(or for that matter after the point during the 2017 campaign when the party started soaring in the polls under Corbyn's leadership and started dead-heating the Tories in the polls) the PLP and those in the Labour bureaucracy at that time had said "ok, it's time to stop what we've been doing, get behind Corbyn as leader, accept that his supporters have just as much right to stay in the party as we do, and switch to focusing on what the Official Opposition is supposed to be doing-focus solely on attacking the government and trying to get it out of power"?
Can you seriously argue that anything at all is better because those forces within the party refused to do that? That anything is better for Labour's future as a result of four years of unrelenting sabotage and slander against their own leader?
Why are you such an unquestioning defender of an relentless, orchestrated campaign of vilification against a person who has done nothing to deserve viligification? Of an effort that, if successful, is going to drive the young, without which whose massive turnout at the polls Labour can't win in any scenario, away from the party and away from politics in disgust? An effort that can have no other effect than to pre-emptively discredit anyone it could possibly put in to the party leadership as replacement to Corbyn?
And why, of all people, do you trust the judgment of the PLP-the group which gave Labour the leaders which led it to humiliating defeats in the 2010 and 2015 election? The group whose stupidity in not creating a distinctly Labour campaign against Scottish independence was the cause of the near-total Labour wipeout in Scotland in 2015? Of all people, why assume THAT crowd knows what they're doing?
Most of them wanted Liz Kendall, the most right-wing, and therefore least electable candidate of all, in the 2015 leadership campaign.
Most of them supported the Tory "benefit sanctions" policies which were put in place solely to persecute the poor-my God, nicky, it's not possible to support what Cameron and May were doing on that and still hold any recognizably "Labour" values at all-if Labour isn't in solidarity with the poor, why should it even exist? It would have nothing to offer and no reason to keep fighting elections it it went to running as the party of those who look down on the poor.
Most of them still defend the Iraq War.
And most of them are only still MPs because, after Kinnock or Blair imposed them as candidates over a quarter-century ago, the party made it impossible for their constituency parties to de-select them. Again, why defer to THEM?
Corbyn would have been glad to stand down the whole time, if it weren't for the fact that he has no guarantee the PLP will accept the fact the the overwhelming majority of Labour members and supporters agree with his policies and have the right to expect that someone who agrees with those policies will be guaranteed a place on the leadership ballot. Why on earth should Corbyn simply trust the PLP not to make the ballot a socialist-free zone, as we all know the PLP wants to do?
nicky, you would agree that, since the party rank-and-file is left-wing, there has to be a place for a credible left-wing candidate on a leadership ballot to replace Corbyn if he were to stand down, wouldn't you? You'd have to concede that the no "moderate" could possibly represent what the vast majority of the party stands for now and that the PLP would have no right to expect loyalty to a "moderate" as leader, given that every moderate in the PLP in the last four years has spent the last four years treating Corbyn as if he has no right to be leader and treating his supporters as though they have no place in the party, and especially since the anti-Corbynites in the PLP have repeatedly, and with no justification, implied that the Corbyn phenomenon is nothing but a Trotskyite plot.
This matters deeply, because the next election instantly becomes meaningless if Labour ends up with an essentially Tory leader of the Tom Watson or Margaret Hodge variety, and because the young would be lost to Labour forever if anyone like that became leader again.
John McDonnell is Labour 'Leader in All But Name After Silent Coup'
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/john-mcdonnell-is-labour-leader-in-al...
"Shadow chancellor is said to have assumed control of the party, amid claims that Jeremy Corbyn is preparing to step down. 'McDonnell is now basically the leader of the Labour Party,' said on outsider. 'It's a silent coup..."
"This is a copy of the letter I sent to the Labour Party today to cancel my membership. Feel free to retweet. I will not fund a party that endorses warmongers and murderers."
https://twitter.com/BriannaCeleGill/status/1183775998485159937
McDonnell has never done anything remotely like endorsing warmongers.
WATCH: 'Is Tony Blair A War Criminal?' This is Utterly Damning
https://twitter.com/UmaarKazmi/status/1182741306386341889
"John McDonnell has gone from saying that he wants Tony Blair to be arrested and tried in the Hague to rejecting that Blair is a war criminal and saying that he shouldn't be remembered for invading Iraq. What a mess. What a disgrace."
Now, as then, 'others naively went along'...(As they always do.)
WATCH: 'Is Tony Blair A War Criminal?' This is Utterly Damning
https://twitter.com/UmaarKazmi/status/1182741306386341889
"John McDonnell has gone from saying that he wants Tony Blair to be arrested and tried in the Hague to rejecting that Blair is a war criminal and saying that he shouldn't be remembered for invading Iraq. What a mess. What a disgrace."
Now, as then, 'others naively went along'...(As they always do.)
Spare me. You were always going to call Corbyn a sell out and even though McDonnell is to Corbyn's left, you were always going to end up calling him a sellout. You'll end up calling for the Left in the UK to vote for some trivial,
irrelevant minor parties or demand an electoral boycott like you always do in Canada, even though electoral boycotts never achieve anything anywhere for anyone.
Shadow Cabinet Members Tell Corbyn Respect Brexit Vote, No Ref Before GE
https://skwawkbox.org/2019/10/14/shadow-cabinet-members-tell-corbyn-resp...
"Lavery, Trickett and others remind Labour leader of 2017 commitment to enact 2016 referendum result..."
Pity such should be necessary.
'A Second Rigged Referendum?'
https://twitter.com/ggmoats/status/1183805010863411200
"Labour's changed its mind again. But has Jeremy Corbyn finally lost control of his party? George Galloway examines the dire situation."