...shall never wear the crown.
I said this to my Mrs when Cameron resigned. I thought it was a mangled bit of Shakespeare, though I remembered it had been used in the context of Mrs Thatcher's downfall about Michael Heseltine, who indeed did not wear the crown. According to various internet sources, it was actually said by the BBC journalist, Gavin Esler, about Heseltine. So not Shakespeare at all.
But in today's Shakespearean tragi-comedy events it became clear that Boris will not wear the crown either.
I'd also noted when Cameron quit that, while Johnson would have presumably won the vote with Tory party members, it wasn't clear he'd get into the final two with Tory MPs and get on the ballot paper. Which is presumably what he concluded.
Isn't it strange that the two politicians who command the most grassroots support in their parties, Johnson and Corbyn, are so unpopular with their MP colleagues? Colleagues who, of course, know them well and are in a better position than most of us to judge their personality, competence and suitability to wear said crown.
So the Tories fight amongst themselves to elect their new leader. But it looks like arm wrestling compared with the scrap inside Labour.
The Labour rules require 20% of the party's MPs to nominate a candidate. Corbyn only got that last time because some MPs thought a leftie should be on the paper even though they didn't support him. One of the MPs who later said they regretted it was the late Jo Cox (see https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/06/jeremy-corbyn-leadership-labour-mps-elections). So presumably Corbyn would not pass this threshold. But apparently it is not 100% clear whether a sitting Labour leader needs to be nominated. According to the Guardian, the party has received conflicting legal advice on this point (see http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/29/how-does-labour-appoint-a-leader). So Corbyn might be on the ballot paper anyway, as he has said he would stand again.
If there is a contest and Corbyn were on the ballot paper, then presumably all the £3 "registered supporters" associates would vote him back in. Whereupon the same Momentum groupies would then try to select alternative Parliamentary candidates to the current, anti-Corbyn MPs when the time comes.
This could be a fight to the death for the soul of the Labour party, every bit as much as the fight against Militant and the splintering off of the SDP.
Yes Phil I agree your conclusions about Corbyn. The fight is to the death for the soul of the Labour Party. Personally, whilst not being a socialist I do think that Labour needs to be what it once was - a socialist party.
ReplyDeleteIt has always struck me as odd that Labour has been anything but a socialist party in living memory, the exception being the short period when Michael Foot ran it.
Why it was all but a Christian Democrat party, in European terms, when Blair was running it!
We already have two right wing parties in the Tories and UKIP. We have a left of centre Lib Dem Party (although there is room for it to be more left of centre in my view as a Lib Dem member) and a small socialist Green Party. Surely there is room for a mainstream socialist party in the UK? Yes I know the Scots have a social democrat/ nationalist party and the Welsh have a nationalist party too.
So my conclusion is that whilst Corbyn is clearly not a leader of men and women he needs to stay until another socialist leader comes along and the Red Tories need to but out.