And what would be the result of a contest between Jess Phillips and Jeremy Corbyn?JimBentley wrote:Now that Jeremy Corbyn has been re-elected Labour Party leader with an even bigger mandate than last year (despite 150,000+ of his supporters being barred from voting), I wonder whether certain members of the Parliamentary Labour Party - particularly those that refused to serve in the shadow cabinet - will get behind him rather than trying to undermine him (with the enthusiastic help of virtually every media outlet) at every turn? I'd like to think that they will, but on past form, they're probably plotting another leadership challenge as I type this.
If so, I wonder who'll they will try next? It's not going to be any of the high-profile naysayers - people such as Yvette Cooper, Angela Eagle, Chuka Umunna, Liz Kendall, Hilary Benn, Stephen Kinnock, Tom Watson et al - who still harbour political ambitions, as they surely know that they would be beaten badly and that would harm their reputations irreparably. It'll have to be someone with name recognition, but expendable to the PLP, so my bet's going on Jess Phillips. As to when, probably early next year; they can't do it immediately, it would be too transparent.
The anti-Corbyns were willing to risk the reputation of the party by making this challenge. I'm not actually sure what they thought would happen. Corbyn was always likely to win against Eagle/Smith/any other challenger, but Labour were always going to lose from this. Maybe they thought Corbyn would just stand down, or that they could force him off the ballot, but that was never going to go down well with the Labour membership, which would likely have knock-on effects for the party.
And so, what different would happen if Jess Phillips or anyone else made a challenge next year? The party would look even worse, and if Corbyn won again, the whole concept of Labour leadership contests would become a big joke to everyone. Early next year is way too early. If they want to get rid of him, they have to play the long game. It's not enough for them to be dissatisfied with him internally - he has to majorly fuck up in public. My understanding is that Gordon Brown was pretty unpopular as a leader within Labour, but they generally speaking shut up about it because they didn't want Labour to lose out with all the infighting.
But for some reason, they've considered it to be OK to just have a pop at Corbyn whenever they feel like. It's been really unprofessional from a whole host of Labour MPs, and they've really damaged the party. This is irrespective of what you might think of Corbyn as a leader - even if you think he's damaged the party himself, that's not a reason just to damage it further. It's completely insane what's happened with Labour since he's become leader.
After this second election, they just really now need to shut the fuck up for a while and get on with it.
Edit - Does it really count as a bigger mandate? He got 59% last time against three other people and there was no need for the second AV round to be triggered. He got 61.8% this time, which is more, but I'm pretty sure that his win last year would have been bigger in any of the head-to-heads.