Cowardly plotters
The SKWAWKBOX warned at the weekend that the next anti-Corbyn coup was already underway – and showed yesterday that it is a ‘coup of cowardice’, with right-wing malcontents attempting to inflict maximum damage on the Labour Party before peeling off to form a tiny new party. This was subsequently confirmed by information leaked to the Daily Express.
Now the SKWAWKBOX can provide further details about how the shaky ‘rebels’ hope to execute their plan – and cowardly barely covers it, but is combined with an arrogance that puts on display an astonishing sense of entitlement.
The malcontents hope to create a new party – but without disaffiliating from the Labour Party. They hope this would result in a formal ‘party within a party’ – along the lines of the Co-operative Party’s current status – consisting of MPs ‘temporarily’ suspended from representing Labour,
Their idea is that they will only rejoin if Jeremy Corbyn is no longer leader – and they hope to cultivate pressure to force Corbyn to quit for the sake of reunification of the movement.
The ‘soft rebels’ hope to number twelve to fifteen – but insiders say five is a more likely number. Nonetheless, they entertain an ambition to hold the balance of power in a hung parliament and to leverage this to force Corbyn’s resignation, thereby disenfranchising not only most Labour members but the public who votes for him.
The 5-15 – already down from the 12-20 mooted when the SKWAWKBOX broke the news of the plan some weeks ago – consist of ‘usual suspects’ that will surprise few if any Labour supporters.
However, they think they have soft support from a wider number of Labour MPs on the basis that they guarantee not to contest Labour marginals, which. explains how an East Midlands MP knew about the plan – but such a promise is currently a sticking point.
There are issues with the plan, however – particularly that it only works if the plotters make their move after an election. If they do it before, they will be expelled from the party, won’t get any campaigning resources and will have no chance of selection for their own seat.
This suggests that. they are hoping to retain their position as Labour candidates and then spring the breakaway party on election day – this would be overtly cynical and would not go down well with those who just voted for them as a Labour candidate, but it could be done.
But a post-election move would be irrelevant to the question of Labour marginals – suggesting a two-phase plan, with new candidates attempting to win – or prevent Labour winning – marginal seats, followed by a ‘defection’ by the ‘soft rebels’.
It appears that their containment and self-imposed isolation has fostered delusions as well as a flawed plan, however.
A senior Labour insider, asked what the party’s response would be, stated flatly:
That we don’t negotiate with terrorists – and that the local phone-box is already occupied by the LibDems.
The SKWAWKBOX understands that recent polling, which showed Labour as much as five points clear of the Tories, was a huge shock to the plotters and a considerable spanner in their works – which puts much of what followed in a clearer light.
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