26

The ineptitude of the failed Corbyn coup

from Another Angry Voice

Jeremy Corbyn Coup inept
The most interesting thing about the failed anti-democratic attempt to bully Jeremy Corbyn into resigning as Labour leader (just 10 months after he was elected with the biggest democratic mandate of any UK party leader in history) is the sheer ineptitude of it.
If there was anything that the Blairite New Labour movement was undeniably good at in its heyday, it was stage managing the news agenda. They were masters at it. The glib soundbites, the cultivation of links between the party top brass and the press pack, the schmoozing with Rupert Murdoch, the pre-written editorials fed to the hacks to be lazily churnalised into newspaper column inches, the showy and modernistic presentation. In fact I’d say that stage management of the news agenda was the single most significant hallmark of the Blair years.
Damn, they were so persuasive that they even managed to convince about half the country that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was going to be a great idea!*
The remarkable thing about the pre-planned anti-democratic coup against Jeremy Corbyn was the sheer ineptitude of it. Not only did the Blairites carefully pre-planned operation leave their target still standing after they threw everything they had at him in a 24 hour “blitz”, their explanatory narratives made no sense whatever and they left a trail of incriminating evidence all over the place.

Pre-planning

The coup was pre-planned. There is absolutely no doubt about that. The people who were planning it were so confident of success that they even briefed the Daily Telegraph about their plot to overthrow Corbyn ten days before the referendum result was even announced!
The fact the coup was pre-planned blew a large hole in the narrative that Corbyn had to be ousted because of his supposedly weak EU referendum arguments ruining the Remain campaign. In order for that narrative to make sense, the plotters would have had to have known the result of the referendum in advance, which they couldn’t have done.
The Canary have done some sterling investigative work into the shady network of dodgy PR companies stuffed full of Blairites, shell companies, BBC collusion and so forth who are implicated in the coup attempt. It was inept enough to leave such a trail of evidence to follow up on, but the sheer hubris of telling the newspapers what they were going to do ten days before they did it looks like the kind of PR cock-up that Blair, Mandelson, Campbell and the like worked strenuously to avoid during their time at the top.
Apparently the methods are pretty much the same as classic Blairism, but the execution has become sloppy, over-confident and bizarrely incompetent.

A big misjudgement

Whatever the reason they decided to gamble on Corbyn caving in and resigning, it backfired terribly when he refused to go and defiantly challenged them to put up a candidate in a democratic election.
Perhaps the people who orchestrated this anti-democratic coup attempt believed their own propaganda a little too much? They’d spent the last 10 months, ever since Corbyn was elected as leader, briefing the press that he’s a such weak leader, so maybe they thought he’d just meekly capitulate to their stage managed coup attempt?
Whatever the reason for this over-confident assumption that Jeremy Corbyn would simply roll over and resign (betraying the 250,000 Labour members who voted for him just ten months previously as a consequence), they got it badly wrong and put themselves in a terrible bind.
They’ve been scrabbling around looking for for their ideal “Anyone But Corbyn” candidate to stand in an election that Corbyn is almost certain to win, especially given the way he’s attracted so many new people to the party that it’s literally doubled in membership since he became the star of the Labour leadership election last summer.
An additional problem for them is the fact that 60,000 people have joined the Labour Party in the week since the attempted coup plot was launched. Anyone imagining that the majority of them are people enthused about voting for the as-yet-unnamed ABC candidate must be as delusional as the bunch of Labour MPs who actually seem to consider a low-profile, strategically inept, gaffe prone, insincere, iraq war approving political water carrier like Angela Eagle to be more electable than Jeremy Corbyn.
By putting themselves in a position where Jeremy Corbyn can take them on in re-election which he will almost certainly win with an even bigger mandate, they’ve clearly endangered themselves dramatically. Corbyn had demonstrated that he was willing to work with them and allow them to survive within the party, but by trying to stab him in the back and missing, they’ve now given him the chance to run a leadership election based on giving constituencies the right to deselect corrupt/right-wing/venal/self-serving/party damaging MPs and replacing them with people who might do a better job of actually representing their constituents interests rather than their own.
Just like David Cameron’s EU referendum gamble, the Blairite coup gamble has backfired spectacularly too.

The bigger picture

The Labour MPs who were planning this post-Brexit coup obviously got so giddy with excitement, and so locked into the mindset of putting their narrow party political plot into action, that they completely lost sight of the bigger picture.
The aftermath of the biggest Tory cock-up in decades and the resignation of the Prime Minister was the least opportune moment to kick off an internal party political spat imaginable.
Just look at it from their strategic perspective for a moment. They claim to care about the Labour Party (so much so that they shed crocodile tears on the telly over it) and they claim that Corbyn doesn’t do enough to hold the Tories to account.
If they had any strategic nous, and if these clims were true, instead of attempting their coup immediately after Brexit, the plotters (Hillary Benn, Angela Eagle and the like) could have made a huge show of attacking the Tories for Brexit, they could have used their friends in the media to give their criticisms prominence, whilst Corbyn’s get ignored, belittled and disparaged.
Instead of helping the Tories out of the Brexit hole they’d dug for themselves and booting the Labour Party down there in their place as they did by launching their coup immediately, the plotters could have won plaudits for their own strong responses in the crisis situation, boosting the Labour Party rather than trashing it, and ensuring their own stars were rising in the process.
Thus, a few weeks, or months after Brexit, when the public narrative was clearly set that Brexit was the fault of the Tories, they could have tried their rebellion, pointing to the fact that they laid all the big hits on the Tories in the wake of Brexit, not Corbyn.
They didn’t play it that way because they lost sight of the bigger picture: That some things in life are actually more important than who is the leader of the Labour Party, and the vote for Brexit was undeniably one of those things.

Insincerity, unjustifiable claims and delusional rubbish

Angela Eagle demolition
The hubris of briefing the Telegraph about what they were planning to do before they did it was bad enough, but some of the dire stuff the plotters came out with after the coup attempt was launched was staggeringly bad. Angela Eagle’s resignation letter was catastrophically insincere. Just two weeks after praising Corbyn’s determined hard work and blasting the mainstream press for the lack of Labour coverage during the campaign, she bitterly criticised him for conducting the campaign with “half-hearted ambivalence”!
Another example of an utterly appalling resignation letter is that of the Darlington MP Jenny Chapman who joined in the carefully choreographed sequence of resignations desgned to inflict as much damage as possible on Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party. In her letter quitting the shadow education brief she claimed to be speaking on behalf of her constituents in saying that they had lost confidence in Jeremy Corbyn. When she posted this letter on her Facebook page she was inundated with furious comments along the lines of “how dare you presume to speak on my behalf”. The overwhelming majority of replies expressed confidence in Corbyn and an extreme lack of confidence in her.
Tristram Hunt probably wins the prize for the worst resignation letter of all though. In it he actually claimed that “Labour urgently needs to play the role of effective opposition” because the current crisis is as bad as Suez in his opinion. Apparently launching a failed coup attempt against your own party leader and completely letting the Tories off the hook for their culpability is his definition of “effective opposition”. He then went on to slam Corbyn for making a supposedly poor case for Remain. In Tristram Hunt’s constituency of Stoke on Trent 69.4% voted for Leave (in Jeremy Corbyn’s Islington constituency 75.2% voted for Remain). Talk about trying to shift the blame! Apparently Hunt’s own Constituency Labour Party have already had a vote of confidence supporting Jeremy Corbyn followed by a vote of no confidence in Tristram Hunt.

Forged signatures

Jeremy Corbyn 4
Making bizarre claims to be speaking on behalf of your constituents when resigning is one thing, but listing 500 local councillors who you claim have signed a letter supporting the coup against Corbyn when the list contains the names of numerous councillors who back Corbyn’s leadership and are utterly furious that their name has been added to the letter without their consent.
Claiming that somebody has signed a letter when they haven’t is tantamount to forging their signatures. LabourList should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for such deceitful behaviour, but they’re not. They’re far too concerned with their anti-democratic efforts to force Corbyn’s resignation than they are with maintaining anything resembling decent standards of truth and honesty.

Conclusion

Blairism has undeniably lost its shine. Tony Blair was once the golden boy who won landslide after landslide, but he isn’t anymore. He’s widely reviled, and his sequence of attacks on Jeremy Corbyn during the leadership election in 2015 probably did more to raise Corbyn’s profile than any other factor. Blairism lost two General Elections in a row (2010 and 2015) and in electing Corbyn with such a huge mandate the Labour members were crying out for a change of direction,. But Blairites think they know best, so they’ve been sabotaging Jeremy Corbyn at every turn culminating in their the launch of their inept coup attempt after just ten months.
The problem that this failed coup attempt exposes is that the Blairites aren’t even good at the stuff they used to be. In the age of social media, their attempts to manage the news agenda have failed spectacularly. They may have the entire press pack on their side supporting their grubby self-serving coup, but social media is alive with criticism of the mainstream narrative, and the more they try to force their version of events down people’s throats, the more people are seeing their crude manipulative propaganda for what it is.
Perhaps the most telling thing of all is that the failure of their own coup attempt means they can be hoisted by their own petard. If Jeremy Corbyn is as weak and incompetent as they’ve always claimed, how incompetent must they be to have failed so spectacularly to overthrow him, despite planning it for weeks and then throwing everything they had at it?


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Categories: Essays, featured, UK
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H. Miketta
H. Miketta
Jul 6, 2016 1:25 PM

For those who want to take action in the wake of these disgusting political games, here is a petition helping to do so.
https://www.change.org/p/lucy-powell-lucy-powell-mp-to-resign-and-give-room-for-a-by-election-in-manchester

Zang
Zang
Jul 4, 2016 9:39 PM

Why doesn’t the UK have a referendum to decide Blair fate ? After all the UK supported the US on Mr Blair’s advice with no consideration of the public view point. Should he at least be given the right /sarc to be judge by his peers ? Even Adolf Hitler had referendums on issues which were to effect the population…..

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Jul 5, 2016 4:56 AM
Reply to  Zang

Would the referendum be multi-choice? A gibbet, hanging, hanging, drawing and quartering or auto da fe, sort of choice.

Jen
Jen
Jul 4, 2016 12:56 AM

My comment may be rather late and maybe a little off-topic but is there anyone who thinks as I do that Jo Cox’s widower husband should be considered a suspect in her murder?
In September 2015, Brendan Cox resigned abruptly from his position as a senior executive in Save The Children charity (and we all know he is a big player in the NGO network) after a number of female employees threatened go public about “inappropriate behaviour” towards them on his part and after the charity ignored their complaints about him.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3298572/New-charity-scandal-Save-Children-executive-quits-women-s-complaints-inappropriate-behaviour.html
The day before Jo Cox was killed, Brendan Cox was spotted and photographed riding a dinghy on the Thames River with his two small children and another woman:comment image?w=960
After Jo Cox’s death, her husband put up the Memorial Fund on the GoFundMe website very quickly, too quickly perhaps.
I know this is all very circumstantial and I know that there is a trial going on but there is something very suspicious about the circumstances surrounding Cox’s death and we can’t entirely rule out the possibility that someone other than Thomas Mair might have wanted to get rid of her.

wardropper
wardropper
Jul 3, 2016 9:43 PM

Probably just Murdoch flexing his disintegrating muscles.
If this coup had worked, much worse would have followed, and Parliament would have ended up entirely owned by such wretched specimens as M.
I expect further attempts before I’m too old to care …

manfromatlan
manfromatlan
Jul 3, 2016 8:05 PM

Inept indeed. Match that with the cut throat tactics of the Tories as they jettison Gove and Johnson and anoint Teresa May 🙂
Perhaps the CLP’s should act on their motions of no confidence against the PLP who split Labour?

joekano76
joekano76
Jul 3, 2016 3:40 AM

Reblogged this on Floating-voter.

jag37777
jag37777
Jul 3, 2016 12:01 AM

Indeed. I wasn’t surprised by the coup attempt but I am very surprised (and heartened) by the ineptitude of the plotters.
As you say, if it leads to a general deselection process it may be the best thing to happen to the Labour Party since Callaghan turned all neoliberal in 1976.

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Jul 3, 2016 1:43 AM
Reply to  jag37777

I see the incompetence as sign of the influence of the Israel First Lobby, to which all the Blairites from Benn all the way further down, swear total allegiance. Another unmistakeable indication of ‘The Lobby’s ‘ involvement is the hysterical, utterly dishonest, and ongoing campaign to smear Corbyn as ‘antisemitic’.
The Israel First Lobby is nothing if not impudent. No matter what machinations it gets up to, they have long had to do nothing but screech ‘antisemitism’ at any who dare expose them to be able to silence all criticism. They even had the foul chutzpah to hiss ‘antisemite’ at those opposing the regular orgies of child slaughter in Gaza. And the Get Corbyn lynch-mob obviously think they have inherited this immunity to criticism and exposure.
The Israel Firsters are NOT, of course, all of Jewry, not in the UK or anywhere. Many decent Jews have supported Corbyn, but their opinions are totally suppressed. The Israel First Lobby, and its MSM stooges, always imply that Jewry is a great monolith, all thinking alike with Netanyahoo, Lieberman and Bennett, and, apparently, Rabbi Sacks, Nick Cohen, Jonathon Freedland and Melanie Philips, but that is just another lie.

Arrby
Arrby
Jul 4, 2016 6:10 AM

“Many decent Jews have supported Corbyn, but their opinions are totally suppressed.” And so, if you have a blog, link to Jewish or Israeli persons or orgs that don’t support Nazi Israel, but try to educate people about Israel and it’s Palestinian victims.

jag37777
jag37777
Jul 4, 2016 7:25 AM

It’s not just the Israeli lobby. It’s the entire establishment.

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Jul 5, 2016 4:58 AM
Reply to  jag37777

The two are congruent categories in the West today, and have been for some time.

jag37777
jag37777
Jul 8, 2016 11:32 PM

Which makes your concentration difficult to fathom.

Janet B
Janet B
Jul 2, 2016 5:58 PM

Bravo too! Absolutely yes to this piece….its a great read amid all the garbage that’s out there.

rtj1211
rtj1211
Jul 2, 2016 5:04 PM

The strains here concern the democratic legitimacy of MPs elected in constituencies and Party Leaders elected by a different constituency, namely MPs, party members and trades unions.
MPs are voted for by people who are not party members, but who are nonetheless indispensable in electing a Government.
Party Members are often driven very differently to ordinary voters, who see the world differently to the binary black-and-white often presented to them in the form of two political parties.
The MPs believe, rightly or wrongly, that they cannot form another government under the current leadership. So they think they need to change the leadership.
They are, however, selected by small constituency associations who may or may not be representative of the electors in that constituency.
Sometimes you get a situation where a party is incapable of detoxifying its internal inconsistencies. You then either get putsch, anti-democratic manoeuvrings or a fundamental breakaway of one faction.
There are usually almost no politicians, party members or the like who are prepared to lay down and die for the good of the country.
That is why parties often go into opposition for many years…….

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Jul 3, 2016 1:46 AM
Reply to  rtj1211

The Blairite PLP are firmly in the hands of the Israel First Lobby, who detest Corbyn because he has treated Palestinians as human beings. That is the root of the Blairite drive, and the foul accusations of ‘antisemitism’ mobilised as a spear-head in the campaign.

DonNeedNoStinkinUserName
DonNeedNoStinkinUserName
Jul 4, 2016 7:33 AM

I have lifted the comment that is posted below directly from the blog Xymphora https://xymphora.blogspot.co.nz/2016/07/the-reasoning-of-lemmings.html#disqus_thread as I thought it went straight to the heart of the matter and offers a valid reason for the ineptitude surrounding the whole failed incident.
“The ineptitude of the failed Corbyn coup”. Not only did the coup plotters do something really stupid and wreck their political careers – though some will be rewarded with appointment to the House of Lords, and some will end up in a rump party of some sort – they appear to have jumped into this without any thought of the consequences. Lemmings leaping off the cliff, hoping to land on the roof of a helicopter passing by.
Think about this for a minute. How can this possibly be happening? These people aren’t stupid. They are aware of polling, and the deep and wide support in the party for Corbyn. They know they cannot possibly succeed.
There is literally only one possible explanation. World Jewry, terrified at the likely prospect that the next election will yield a Prime Minister of Britain who is profoundly pro-Palestinian, has decided to blow up and destroy the entire Labour Party. You can see why realism is necessary to understand the world, and necessary for self-preservation.
For those of you not familiar with Xymphora I would recommend it on adaily basis for it’s often obscure links and their insight into events that matter.

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Jul 5, 2016 5:03 AM

I agree, but I find the expression ‘World Jewry’ daft. The Jewish elite, absolutely, but every Jew on Earth? Hardly. Jews are not a monolithic, undifferentiated, mass, although the Jewish elites certainly insist that is so. The Jewish elites are now so unprecedentedly powerful in the West that their disempowerment will only be achieved with the aid of sane and decent Jews, who see the situation as untenable and dangerous for everyone, particularly for the Jews.

mohandeer
mohandeer
Jul 2, 2016 4:28 PM

Reblogged this on Worldtruth.

bevin
bevin
Jul 2, 2016 4:25 PM

One of the factors behind the timing must have been the impending re-districting (as they say in the US) which will turn the Blairite incumbents, seeking re-election, into Blairite candidates looking for Constituencies. Without control of the leadership and the NEC the Blairite officials running the party will find it difficult to repeat the most disastrous Parachute operation since Arnhem.

Ghostship
Ghostship
Jul 3, 2016 5:56 PM
Reply to  bevin

Of far more immediate concern to the Blairites is the publication this coming Wednesday of the Chilcot Report. Having a friendly hand on the tiller would make far easier for Blair and his unprincipled cronies like Benn who got his leg up into government because of Claire Short’s principled stand. Unfortunately, the ICC is saying they can’t look at any case involving Blair taking us to war – they can only do that to Africans.

Richard Le Sarcophage
Richard Le Sarcophage
Jul 5, 2016 5:06 AM
Reply to  Ghostship

Anyone heard anything from the so-called ‘ICC’ concerning the latest Israel atrocities and crimes against humanity in Gaza. It’s been quite a while since they were referred, but that detestable Aunty Tom, Bensouda, has gone awfully quiet, like a thoroughly well-trained ‘House Negro’.

harvey brown
harvey brown
Jul 2, 2016 2:05 PM

Failed Putsch hahaha

Jesska
Jesska
Jul 2, 2016 1:51 PM

🙂

Tish Farrell
Tish Farrell
Jul 2, 2016 1:33 PM

Popular support – it’s after all a pretty simple and straightforward concept. One wonders then, in a supposed democracy, why it is that so many Labour MPs fail to grasp its meaning. And one further wonders, if they don’t understand it, what place do they have in the House of Commons?

Mike Nightingale
Mike Nightingale
Jul 2, 2016 1:17 PM

Bravo! Yes to all the above!