Labour MPs are today voting on the motion of no confidence on Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. The rebels expect the vote to pass with 2:1 support from the parliamentary party. But what they do not know is whether the party membership has really shifted enough for Corbyn to lose when it moves to a new contest. Corbynite sources are adamant that he will win again, and reports of disillusionment amongst activists, while striking, are only anecdotal.
But Labour MPs who oppose Corbyn’s leadership now see the coup us unstoppable, and believe that if necessary they will have to hold repeated votes and leadership contests in order to dislodge him. They think that the chaos that this would cause would still be better than the way he is leading the party, and would at least move them closer to their goal, which is to remove him and replace him with someone, anyone, who isn’t of the hard left.
The challenge for the plotters, who are extremely well-organised, is to find one candidate that the party can unite around if Corbyn does have to be on the ballot automatically. And this will be difficult. As one key figure in the rebel movement observed: ‘This is a political party. It has a lot of egos. We are probably going to have to lock some people in a cupboard.’
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