Evidence is slowing coming to light that far from knocking on voters’ doors to get support for “remain”, some Labour Party Right figures have been spending the last weeks planning the coup against Jeremy Corbyn – irrespective of the referendum outcome.
Two pieces of evidence in particular have given the game away.
•First, Jeremy Corbyn was heckled during the Gay Pride demo about the referendum result. He responded by saying “I did my best” – and the event was widely reported as Corbyn being forced to admit he had been at fault. The story was shared widely round social media – and the great reception Corbyn had received from the rest of the Gay Pride rally was hardly reported at all.
However, Craig Murray – former Ambassador to Uzbekistan, who became a household name when he resigned from that post in 2004 in protest at UK support for the dictatorship running the country – has pointed out that this heckle was no spontaneous event. He has identified the heckler as Tom Mauchline, who works for PR company Portland Communications and who worked on Liz Kendall’s Labour leadership campaign last year. Kendall was the Blairites’ preferred candidate and came bottom of the poll. On Saturday morning, Murray reports, Mauchline was tweeting about a 38 Degrees petition (he used to work for them) which supported the no-confidence in Corbyn motion Labour MPs were putting to the Parliamentary Labour Party. Mauchline urged people to sign the petition. Over the course of the day, it gathered less than 100 signatures – while the pro-Corbyn petition on the same site secured around 150,000 signatures. That’s how the news is made: orchestrated set ups which gullible journalists looking for sound bites to sell papers or promote websites fall for.
•Second, 57 Labour Party members who were candidates at the 2015 General Election have written to John Cryer MP, who is the Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party, stating that they support the coup against Corbyn. Really? These candidates stood in constituencies the length and breadth of the country: no one can really believe that they all knew each other and managed to chat and agree on the text of a letter since the referendum result came out. Clearly, they all – or at least most of them – have an allegiance to some sort of organisation that was able to contact them and secure their support for the coup. This kind of move used to be known as “supporting a Party within a Party”.
The MPs involved in the coup must have been sitting in the House of Commons this afternoon (Monday) as Jeremy Corbyn responded to David Cameron’s statement on the referendum. Corbyn gave a masterful response – critical where necessary but sticking to Labour values and looking to the future. He line up the ball, and scored, and scored and scored in a real back of the net performance.
At least some of the plotters must be wondering if they have got carried away by the moment and must be regretting their statements that Jeremy Corbyn does not have the aura of a Prime Minister.
Meanwhile, party members, over half of whom voted for Corbyn, have begun protesting at the coup. The plotters are beginning to find out that even if they are successful in slicing the top of the Labour Party, it has a thriving body living throughout the UK. Some plotters may be realising that if there is a selection before the next General Election, it is the Corbyn voters who will choose their successors. If there is a snap General Election which doesn’t allow a selection procedure, it is the Corbyn voting members who would be campaigning for them to be returned to Parliament. Some of the plotters may, like David Cameron, be changing their mortgage arrangements sooner than they had planned to do so.
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