McDonnell: ‘We have been expecting a coup… We knew it was coming’
![[Image: Rick Findler/PA Wire.]](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/160630-McDonnell-Rick-Findler-PA-Wire.jpg)
[Image: Rick Findler/PA Wire.]
Speaking to a crowd of students at a hastily arranged rally outside the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) in central-London on Wednesday evening, McDonnell said the civil war inside the Labour Party was a “a battle for democracy.
“If we allow 170 Labour MPs to force out a democratically elected leader of the Labour Party, never again we will see a progressive socialist as the leader of the Labour Party,” he said.
“We have been expecting a coup at any time,” he said. “We knew it was coming.”
Source: Jeremy Corbyn Victim Of Labour MP ‘Lynch Mob,’ Says John McDonnell Ahead Of Leadership Challenge
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sadly neaths mp part of it
Mike.
The last three Labour leaders have all asked Jeremy Corbyn to step down. It’s all very well for people like you to shake their fists and shout “Tory” whenever anybody in Labour calls for Corbyn to go but are you really claiming that Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband are Blairites? I mean, really? Corbyn and his puppet master McDonnell are propelling the Labour party towards self-destruction.Corbyn, a professional ranter and protester, is all cod rhetoric and no detail or plan who will NEVER persuade enough members of the electorate to support Labour to return the party to office.
An heroic failure is still a failure.
And Corbyn is more stupidity than heroism.
(Hiding comments like this one won’t change things.)
You do realise that, as Tony Blair’s chancellor, Gordon Brown was an arch-Blairite?
But when Brown was Prime Minister didn’t you yourself advocate returning him, and the Labour party he led, back into office in 2010? I don’t remember you shouting “Blairite” whenever Brown’s name was mentioned.
What is happening is very serious, Mike.
If Labour doesn’t win the next election, or at the very least strip the Tories of their majority, the British people will be ruled by an extremely hard-right Conservative party outside of the protections extended to us under EU law. The sick, poor, unemployed, single parents and disabled will be pilloried and crushed.
Corbyn doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning and if he stays on the future outlined above will happen as sure as eggs are eggs. It is absolutely pointless, in fact dishonest, to espouse sterling principles and promise Jerusalem and jam if you’re a political leader who has no chance whatsoever of wielding political power no matter how beloved you are to your followers. Politics is not like religion: blind unswerving faith will not create a heaven on earth for zealots, adherents or outsiders.
Corbyn IS destroying the Labour party no matter how pure his motives. He reminds me of a Jehovah’s Witness condemning their child to certain death by sticking to their principles and refusing their child a blood transfusion.
No, I didn’t advocate returning Brown into office in 2010; not on this site, certainly (because it didn’t exist – Vox Political began on December 31, 2011. I would have, though, because any Labour government is better than one run by the Conservatives.
Your third paragraph is true, and you raise issues that every Labour politician should consider very carefully. Your fourth paragraph isn’t. You do not know that Corbyn cannot win an election. The evidence shows that he is perfectly capable of doing so, having won every major election since he became leader in September last year. It is dishonest to threaten fire and brimstone on Labour supporters if you have no idea of what will happen, as Corbyn’s detractors have done – including you.
You cannot support your claims about Corbyn. You are merely hoping that if you repeat your unfounded assertions loud enough and long enough, people will be fooled by them and will fall back into supporting the watered-down Tory policies of the “empty suits” who appear to be dominating the PLP at the moment.
The labour ‘elite’ have destroyed democracy; to do this at the time the conservatives are leaderless and in confusion – There is now no government and no opposition to take control of the country!
Expect race riots very shortly, where there is a power vacuum evil will rise to fill the space – All the newspapers and news reports are pushing it forward!
Democracy is the bottom line here.
They all say we have to abide by the democratic decision of the people over Brexit while simultaneously ignoring the democratic decision of the Labour membership.
I for one can’t trust anyone who behaves like that, no matter who they are.
In my view, the anti-democratic Labour MPs ought to be deselected and replaced with mature, honest people, who can be trusted to work for the benefit of all.
Democracy is about free men and women picking people to represent them. It is not about returning puppets to parliament to carry out the majority wishes of their voters. During the Blair years Corbyn himself was conspicuously and serially disloyal to his party’s leader despite Blair being elected by a majority of party members. Politicians are supposed to be free to use their own judgement in most matters, especially matters of conscience. If this wasn’t true no politician could transfer their allegiance after being elected to another party, as, for example, when Winston Churchill crossed the floor of the House of Commons from the Liberals to the Conservatives swapping one democratically elected leader for another. This kind of things happens regularly, is and always has been part of the democratic process:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_politicians_who_have_crossed_the_floor
The MPs arraigned against Corbyn are entirely in the right as far as their loyalties are concerned (he wasn’t leader when they were elected) and could, if they wanted, join any other political party or split from Labour and form their own new party, while still remaining MPs if the wanted, which looks more and more the most likely thing to happen with Labour if Corbyn stays. The Labour party might never recover from this and the lives of innocent millions convulsed because of it.
Yes, Corbyn was serially disloyal to Blair. Was he disloyal to the members of Islington North CLP? The evidence suggests not, as his majority in that constituency has grown at every election. And, crucially, Corbyn did not try to remove Blair from his place as leader of the Labour Party (much though he may have wanted to)! He respected the wish of the party membership to have Tony Blair as their leader. The current rebellion does not respect members’ wishes, and in the Labour Party, that is a big difference. Yes, politicians are free to use their judgement in most matters, but that does not mean they may ignore the people who nominated them and helped them get elected – at least, not if they want help to get elected again. If a politician crosses the floor then they are betraying the party they originally represented, but banking on the party they are joining providing activists who will help them get elected next time.
It doesn’t matter one jot that Corbyn wasn’t leader when the current Parliamentary Labour Party were elected; he is the leader now, with a democratic mandate that dwarfs theirs. They could indeed split from Labour and form their own party, while remaining MPs, if they wanted. That would, of course, considerably strengthen the Conservative Government’s position and boost arguments that they are only in Labour to help the Tories. It would not create too many problems for Labour if a snap election is called for later this year, though. Labour has the funding, the members and the party machine, and would simply nominate new candidates to take over from those who have betrayed the party, in the eyes of the public at large.