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Can Corbyn actually stand?

I have no idea what the actual rules are here but:

‘We’re doing very well!’ Delusional Jeremy Corbyn threatens to SUE his own party if he is blocked from standing in leadership contest because MPs won’t support him

Be fun if Jezza can’t stand because 51 MPs don’t sign up for him to stand.

44 thoughts on “Can Corbyn actually stand?”

  1. I don’t know what the answer is. However it is fun to see Labour doing to itself what it did many people’s chance of decent housing.

  2. Maybe we’ll see an Anti-Pope in Avignon, so to speak. That would be fun to watch. Especially the burning of heretics.

  3. Fuck ’em. I’d rather see Corbyn hang on the next election, so that everyone can see just how unpopular he is.

    It won’t change anything though. We’ll just get the usual complaints of “wrong kind of socialism” that we hear about the ex-USSR or Venezuela.

  4. William Connolley

    I looked up the rulebook (http://labourlist.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Rule-Book-2013.pdf); it is ambiguous.

    The relevant part is on page 15: “In the case of a vacancy for leader or deputy leader, each nomination must be supported by 12.5 per cent of the Commons members of the PLP. Nominations not attaining this threshold shall be null and void.” OK, so that one doesn’t apply, there is no vacancy. Continuing: “Where there is no vacancy, nominations may be sought by potential challengers each year prior to the annual session of party conference. In this case any nomination must be supported by 20 per cent of the Commons members of the PLP. Nominations not attaining this threshold shall be null and void.”

    So its badly written. Does the 20%, as written there, apply to “potential challengers” but not the sitting leader as it appears to say? Or does “any nomination” include Jezza?

  5. It reads to me that the nominations only apply to challengers, not to the incumbent. The leader does not need to be nominated.

    Of course, pretty much any written statement can be interpreted arbitrarily as one wishes..

  6. “‘We’re doing very well!’ Delusional Jeremy Corbyn”

    That statement is only delusional if you assume that the ‘we’ Jeremy is talking about is the Labour Party and by “doing well” you are talking about progressing towards an election win.

  7. I hope Jeremy can stand, because I will be supporting him if he does. I can think of no-one better than Jeremy to lead the Labour party into the oblivion it so rightly deserves.

  8. Eagle is a very poor candidate. If they are serious about this I don’t know why they couldn’t choose someone with even a little more oomph from their meagre ranks. Hilary Benn for example.

  9. Dan… When you said Hilary and i had a sarcasm alert. Was i right?

    I actually know little about Angela. Why is she a poor candidate?

  10. Re Connolley’s comment above, it reads to me that Corbyn (not being a challenger) needs no supporters, but that if he vacates to stand he only needs 12.5%. Which I think he’d get.

  11. If they want to win an election, Frank Field or Gisela Stuart. But they are really just interested in another candidate with Islington Appeal, which is why they are going to go the way of the Liberal Party.

  12. Ian B.
    I agree, it is the challengers that need the need the support.
    ‘Where there is no vacancy, nominations may be sought by potential challengers…’ (Thanks to W.C, for the text.)
    The authors assumed that the incumbent must have already passed that hurdle, which was a reasonable assumption. Funny how things can turn out.

  13. No I wasn’t being sarky.

    Benn is hardly a colossus true, but he not a raving lunatic/trotskyite and at least gives the appearance of being a grown up. If the Labour lot want to go the non Corbyn route they could do worse.

    RE: Eagle – Just go watch any interview with her on youtube. Utter lightweight. Irritating voice. Rather dim.

  14. The NEC will rule. Since gaining power, and in amongst all his other riveting activities, would bet he has gained control of the NEC.

  15. Of course Eagle’s dim. You can’t run a 2016 party on 1956 policies and she doesn’t realise that. The world has changed, and they haven’t. Progressives – the most conservative people ever.

  16. Hilary comes across as wet and jack straw-light. No way leadership material- Botched his coup attempt, and as leader it would be replacing damp rag with wet cloth. I see that debate and realise Angela is not going to wow anyone personality-wise either but interested to know how she was regarded by civil service and her boss as a minister.
    Keir or Chukka or Andy Burnham would be the ones with leadership potential. (not sure about support but ability )

  17. If she does for Corbyn she’ll stand down next year and the Party will then have a proper choice. I assume that’s the deal – maximise the vote for a unity, non Corbyn candidate.
    Next time, Jarvis, Cooper, Burnham, Umuna, Starmer.

  18. Has there ever been a sitting Labour leader who was challenged for the leadership? If so did the incumbent seek party nominations or not? Are we in uncharted territory with a leadership challenge?

  19. Ian B posted: Of course, pretty much any written statement can be interpreted arbitrarily as one wishes.

    Isn’t that what the LHTD does on his blog?

  20. Interested has to be right. The challenger needs nominations to challenge; that challenge involves her standing against the leader; that’s what a challenge is. No need for the leader to get nominations unless he’s challenging himself (nothing is impossible on the left…)

    If Corbyn resigns then it’s a vacancy so 12.5%.

  21. Jim,

    Tony Benn challenged Kinnock in 88 (supported by one J.Corbyn incidentally). But that was under a completely different system.

    If Corbyn gets on the ballot he wins. If he wins the question will be if the MPs flounce off, or bend the knee.

    I rather hope he doesn’t get on the ballot. The reactions from Corbyns, weird cult like fanbase will be splendid.

  22. Tolkein, yes it could go down like that. But then again de-selection of MPs is a possibility. If Corbyn is ousted due to lack of 51 MPs. and effectively they re-run the 2015 election with the ideologically approved list then expect de-selection to be the first thing on the Momentum to-do list.

  23. I have to say on the evidence of that rule book, if Labour MPs fix it so that Corbyn has to get nominations to be on the ballot, then he has every right to go to court over it. As a layman reading that I’d say it was pretty clear that an existing leader does not have to prove a certain level of support – he is the leader for goodness sake, in this case voted in less than a year ago on a landslide. Its for the challenger to prove that they have significant support in order to prevent specious challenges.

  24. William Connolley has posted a link to the old rule book. The new one (under which Corbyn was elected and under which any new election will be held) is here:
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5Ik-gKDMpozSmtFaC1VYVNJZ1E/view?pref=2&pli=1

    Leadership election rules on page 14.

    The rule for challengers is still the same, but the threshold in a vacancy has gone from 12.5% to 15%, and the old “electoral colleges” have been abolished, making all votes equal.

    Incidentally, the fact that the Labour Party rule book runs to 90 pages but they still can’t work out how to run a leadership election under it tells you all you need to know about the Party.

  25. Jesus Christ almighty, I just popped on yesterdays Andrew Neil show which has an interview with Eagle.

    Upgrading my previous assessment of ‘Rather dim’ to ‘Thicker than a whale omlette’. She’s going to get beaten very very badly..

  26. Is it just me, or is 20% a very low threshold to challenge an incumbent? Especially since the threshold in a vacancy is 15%. I would have expected a greater differential.

  27. @tolkein – and therein is the problem. They might be more plausible as a PM than Corbyn (but then so is my pet dog, and he’s been dead for 10 years). But could any of them win a general election?

    Yvette ‘Mrs Balls’ Cooper, Andy ‘Blood on his hands’ Burnham, Chuka ‘Bottler’ Umuna, and Keir Starmer’s track record is uninspiring as Ian B points out. So that just leaves Dan Jarvis.

  28. Bloke in North Dorset

    “If Corbyn is ousted due to lack of 51 MPs. and effectively they re-run the 2015 election with the ideologically approved list then expect de-selection to be the first thing on the Momentum to-do list.”

    Momentum has already started, all this will do is give it a big shove.

  29. Reading the rulebook it says “challengers” must get nominations. The sitting office-holder isn’t a challenger because they are the office-holder. By definition a challenger is somebody who *isn’t* the office holder. To me it’s clear that if you want to knock out the leader, then you, the one trying to knock out the leader, need to be nominated to knock out the leader.

  30. What happens if umpteen hundred thousand Labour party members write in Corbyn’s name on the ballot and vote for that?

  31. I thought you were doing a rundown of the top 10 things that Jeremy can do and I must admit I thought that remaining vertical was as good as it gets.

    Really, MPs have shown what they think of democracy and it stinks. If they think they know better than party members, they should bugger off and form their own party.

    Their only problem, of course, is that any party including such as Andy Burnham will have fewer members than MPs.

  32. What happens if umpteen hundred thousand Labour party members write in Corbyn’s name on the ballot and vote for that?

    They’re socialists, so the answer depends on whether the people running the election want Corbyn to win or not:

    They want him to win: the people have spoken and Corbyn is duly announced as the winner even though he wasn’t on the ballot.

    They don’t want him to win: umpteen hundred thousand voters spoiled their ballot papers, and the winner is the one that got the highest number from the other 2 dozen votes.

  33. Ian B:“Please, not Starmer. He ought to be under investigation for his terrible tenure as DPP.”

    Well, when (pace the last post) the Home Sec admits that the justice system ‘treats blacks more harshly than whites’ perhaps that’ll be her first job when she’s PM?

  34. yes looked at the Andrew Neil interview just now too and there’s no doubt Angela’s a very flat media performer. I already had doubts about Angela’s leadership quality when she was prompted by a reporter to get all teary having stuck the knife into Jeremy’s back.
    I don’t say she can’t run a department, (more data needed) but given that her charisma index is pretty low, she isn’t that credible as someone who’s going to appeal to swing voters. So if she’s honest her whole pitch is not: I can win the next election, but: I can gain more MPs to support me than you Jeremy. It looks very like she’s a patsy to get rid of Corbyn and the people waiting in the wings will then challenge her whether she steps aside or not and my guess is unlike Corbyn the first colleage to say to her ‘this is not working is it?’ will get the resignation letter in the first post.
    Incidentally she seemed to admit it was a Remain based coup, in which case there should at least (like the Conservatives) have a Brexit choice on the ballot or perhaps they have learned their lesson of giving a choice for the purposes of balance :}

  35. Interest g that there was a massive media shitstorm over Leadsom claiming to be the better candidate because she is a mother, but absolutely nothing over Eagle claiming to be the better candidate because she’s a northern lesbian.

    Pretty much sums up our media.

  36. I thought Leadsom was a very good performer. Very natural and engaging. And came across as very genuine.

    Which was what prompted me to email her to ask her to stand, before she’d declared.

  37. My comment at 11.51 . “in which case there should at least (like the Conservatives) have a Brexit choice on the ballot”

    was out of date 10 mins later.

    “or perhaps they [Labour] have learned their lesson of giving a choice for the purposes of balance”

    Forgot that the Conservatives never had to learn the same lesson, it being instinctive.

  38. Angela had Charities minister as I recall. Then went off about zoos.
    Many of which are charities.

  39. Ha, Labour just voted themselves into oblivion – Corbyn will be on the ballot without needing 20% of the MPs backing. So he’s a shoo in to win this and any future leadership challenges (unless challenged by an even further Left candidate).

    The saner elements of the Labour Party better start making plans to leave and start anew elsewhere. SDP Mk 2 anyone????

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