Labour MP's obtain legal opinion regarding Corbyn removal
Labour Leader +Jeremy Corbyn 's support amongst the PLP (the Parliamentary Labour Party) has reached the stage where Senior Labour MP's have apparently sought a legal opinion as to whether the PLP can remove him as the Party Leader.
According to UK press reports, the answer is that Corbyn can be removed if there is a leadership challenge by another Labour MP.
If Corbyn is removed as leader by the PLP, however, the first question is whether he will be permitted to stand again as leader. I assume the answer is likely to be yes.
Secondly, and more significantly, if he is permitted to stand for re-election, will Corbyn, as incumbent, be required to once again obtain the required 35 nominations from other Labour MP's.
It will be recalled that earlier this year Jeremy Corbyn only just managed to obtain the 35 nominations he required (by the Rules governing Labour's leadership elections) from other Labour MP's, at the eleventh hour. At the time, many of the MP's who did nominate him did not regard him as any form of serious contender for the leadership. On the contrary, most of his fellow Labour MP's regarded him as more of a maverick.
Most of the MP's who nominated Corbyn apparently did so in the belief that, having lost the recent general election, it was in Labour's interests to have a wide field, and thus, hopefully, a wider ranging debate about policies, prior to electing a new leader.
If Corbyn were to face a leadership challenge or were to be removed as leader by the PLP, it is safe to assume that, on this occasion, he would be unlikely to receive the required 35 nominations from Labour MP's in order to permit him to stand in any subsequent leadership election (assuming, too that such nominations to be a requirement for an incumbent leader.)
Here lies the problem for Labour however. Whilst it is legally possible for Labour's MP's to remove Corbyn as leader, and whilst they might also be able to legally exclude Corbyn from standing for re-election, it will not be politically possible.
The problem the PLP face is that, on the 12th of September 2015, Corbyn was elected as Labour Leader by the party's members with a clear majority of almost 60% of the votes. Most political commentators in the UK seem agreed that whilst Corbyn's leadership is considered to be a unmitigated disaster by the PLP, he apparently continues to remain popular with a significant majority of Labour Party members.
Assuming the Labour Party members were asked to vote for a new leader, excluding Corbyn as a candidate, most Labour members would point to Corbyn's recently obtained mandate from the party members, and decline to support other the PLP candidates.
In particular, if Corbyn's name were to be excluded from any leadership ballot, one would expect a campaign by Corbyn's supporters for spoilt votes. If that occurred, the likely result would be that more than half the votes cast in any new Labour Leadership contest would be spoilt. This would undermine both the result and the credibility of the PLP candidates.
So for now, the PLP will have to put up with Corbyn's leadership. They will have to wait for current wave of Corbyn Mania within the Labour party membership to subside prior to making their move. Such is the damage that Corbyn is doing to Labour's image, however, I suspect the PLP may not have to wait too long!
Siegfried Walther 28 November 2015
Citizen Ken is clearly no democrat! :
http://siegfriedwalther.blogspot.co.za/2015/11/ken-livingstons-77-idiocy.html
+Labour Party
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