So Will Labour Putr Their Toys Back In The Pram Now?

[ToraToraTora]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36909862
.....and leave Jezza can get on with re winning the labour leadership.

[chiaroscuro]

So Labour voters have the choice of frying pan or fire?

[ToraToraTora]

or, horror of horrors, they could look further afield.

[mushroom25]

i'm not sure they will. here's an extract from the judgement:-

It is quite obvious that one side will be pleased with the outcome of the case and the other side will not. Doubtless the dichotomy of view on the outcome will reflect the well-publicised divisions that exist within the LP. I repeat as firmly and unequivocally as I can that the resolution of the narrow legal issue I have been asked to decide is wholly uninfluenced by which side will be pleased with the outcome. Mr Henderson suggested that it is possible that those responsible for the drafting of the rules never foresaw that the situation that has arisen recently might arise. It is not for me to speculate, but if he is right, it is not for the court to try to re-write the rules to provide a solution. The responsibility for that lies elsewhere.

[sandyRoe]

If the next election is lost, as now seems very likely, will Jeremy do the decent thing and resign ?

[Gromit]

Corbyn has an 100% success rate in the by-elections Labour have fought since he was elected leader. The problem really isn't Corbyn. It's the troops, they have mutinied. Usually a mutiny can be attributed to a string of bad results, or autocratic behaviour by those in charge. But Corbyn is not guilty of either of those things.

The sad fact is, the MPs want to ignore the rules, and the membership and their core voters. They want to decide who the leader is themselves, and are not prepared to be dictated to by everyday Labour Party members.

Presumably the election will now take place, and presumably Corbyn will win again, and presumably the MPs will not be happy with the result. Something has to give, and Corbyn holds all the cards.

[gulliver1]

Oh yeah!" BOOMING BRITAIN" Still biting your teething ring then TGT, can you ever get anything right on here, .

[chiaroscuro]

Who's TGT?

[Orderlimit]

yet another embarrassing shambles. Complete disarray is an understatement.

[Quizmonster]

The rules re Labour leadership contests were crystal clear from the start...specifically that an incumbent leader did NOT require nominations from the PLP members although challengers DID. The NEC had no real choice but to accept that reading of the rules a week or two ago and nor did the judge today, despite claims that they were ambiguous They clearly weren't!
Consequently, the party must now either unite or split, it would seem.

[ToraToraTora]

search me chiaroscoro!

[jim360]

Why do Corbynistas continually cite by-elections as evidence in favour of Corbyn's electability? Lest they forget, Ed Miliband let his party to 14 by-election victories out of a possible 19...

[youngmafbog]

Depends on the by-election.

If its a labor stronghold then it really doesnt prove much. If labor take a seat from another party then it does.

[jim360]

Yup, that's basically my point. Under Corbyn, Labour have won 4/4 by-elections but in seats they already held (by default, they are going to win the fifth, which was Jo Cox's seat). Under Miliband, 13 of the 14 victories were in seats already held by Labour, with also one win over a Tory-held seat (and one loss to George Galloway) -- and the seat they did win was then lost again in the General election.

By-elections say nothing about Corbyn. Local elections don't either, really -- although to be fair Labour did better than expected in the 2016 round.

[dave50]

Do the Jeremy Corbyn fans within the Labour party actually believe they can win the next election with him as leader and his left wing policies? Are they naive or do they bury their heads in the sand or do they live on another planet or what?

[jim360]

I think they do believe it. In the end, of course, only the election itself will prove them wrong, but even then I wouldn't hold out much hope of their cottoning on to this. It was all a media conspiracy, or the voters are gullible idiots, or something like that.

Fairly sure the mentality is a repeat of what happened in the build-up to, and the aftermath of, the 1983 elections, when Labour swerved to the left and got destroyed. Perhaps the Falklands had a lot to do with this too (who doesn't love a winner?), along with the SDP-Lib Alliance taking about 25% of the vote from Labour without actually winning any seats (yet another failure of the electoral system in this country, but never mind...). But my understanding is that those on the "hard left" were determined to blame everyone but themselves for their abject failure. It may well be the same in 2020.

Or, of course, they could be right and Corbyn manages to win somehow after all. This isn't totally impossible, but I think it would have rather a lot more to do with the performance of the Tory party in the next four years than any successes of Corbyn's Labour.