Neither Messiah nor Antichrist

Britain 2016

Say what you will about the ongoing destruction of our country, it has got my creative juices flowing. A lot has been happening it's fair to say, the collapse of our currency has led to the FTSE keeping itself afloat as quality save version of a stock market (a subject for another post I think), Michael Gove unveiled himself as a real life Francis Urquhart (not Underwood please, we're British), and Lord Rannoch suggested we hold EU nationals resident in this country hostage while simultaneously revealing that at some point Britain had colonised a planet fromthe Mass Effect video game series. What I'm going to talk about today though is the endless Labour party coup which continues it's endeavour to make itself the most farcical part of our absurd country.

Never Forget

When Jeremy Corbyn became leader I rejoined the Labour party after many years away. I'd left when it became apparent that nice as Ed Miliband was he wasn't really able to offer any effective opposition with most of his policies seeming to be "we'll keep doing austerity, but we'll be upset about it which will at least be more bearable than the unrepentant gleefulness of the Tories." It was hardly stirring stuff. Corbyn's win suggested a change was in the air and we might be able to hope for a government that wasn't committed to self-destructive neo-liberal policies.

And here is the issue with Corbyn and this whole coup: I support what he represents, not who he is. He does not seem to be a particularly effective leader. He says and does a lot of things I don't support. But I continue to support his leadership because he represents the possibility of a major party fully rejecting the politics of austerity. If there was a better leader with the same core message I'd almost definitely support them over Corbyn

With that in mind I've been completely bowled over by the reaction of my left wing friends to this coup, because they have cleaved so completely into two camps. Those that support Corbyn have decided that the coup is a conspiracy by right wing "Blairites" whose only goal is to keep the tories in power, those who support the coup believe that Corbyn is the result of a cult of personality propped up by a bunch of Trotskyite anti-Semites. No room for shade of grey, black and white only in this party.

The most dangerous man in Britain

All this over a man who is quite literally the quiet old lefty at constituency meetings who makes his own jam.

Now both sides have perfectly good arguments. The loyalists point out that Corbyn has a big popular mandate, and given that being a bit left of the Tories hasn't worked for the last two elections it's time to offer something more radical to a populous who are openly rejecting the political-economic orthodoxy. The plotters point out that Corbyn isn't a very effective leader and someone more unifying and competent needs to be in charge at a time when Britain risks a slide into fascism.

The problem for the plotters is that they have proven themselves utterly incompetent. Let's compare two coups that have happened over the last week. Michael Gove showed how you do a coup right, until the very last moment he publicly professed his support for Boris while subtly undermining him and covertly sounding out supporters, then at the last moment he made his surprise announcement and took the wind out of BoJo's sails. He showed himself untrustworthy but ruthlessly competent. Hilary Benn meanwhile leaked his intention to resign to the press, giving control of the situation to Corbyn who fired him, which no one could object all that much to when Benn had made his disloyalty clear. It was amateurish, incompetent, and showed a complete lack of understanding or regard for his opponent.

The plotters subsequent plan, to just resign in the hope that Corbyn would follow, is so pathetic it barely merits looking into. Anyone with actual leadership would have gone "let's take a minute to rethink this because it's obviously not going to work", but no one did and so the plotters fatally undermined their one argument - that one of them could lead better than Corbyn. If they had just put forward a halfway competent candidate with left wing credentials  I think they would have had at good chance of winning or least making Corbyn reconsider his position, instead they have destroyed any impression of competence and made themselves untrustworthy to the  party membership.

So now we have a self destructive stalemate, Corbyn can't back down and the plotters have lost the opportune moment to make their move, what is the way out? Fuck if I know, but it probably involves Andy "Britain's most boring man" Burnham.