British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn lost a vote of no-confidence Tuesday after a motion was put forward by his party’s lawmakers angered by his leadership.
Advertisement
But I’m a trade unionist and it’s been heartening over the last nine months to see a Labour Party leader actually supporting workers when they’ve had to take strike action, instead of condemning them as previous leaders have disgracefully done.
Today up to 150 Labour MPs are expected to back a motion of “no confidence” in his leadership.
The spate of resignations from Corbyn’s team began in the early hours of Sunday when the opposition leader sacked his foreign affairs spokesman, Hilary Benn, prompting more than 40 resignations in two days, many of them from the core Labour team known as the Shadow Cabinet. The vote is not binding under existing Labour Party rules.
Corbyn has previously said he would stand again if the party did call a leadership contest.
The contrasting attitudes to Mr. Corbyn’s leadership points to a contradiction at the heart of the Labour Party.
Mr Corbyn’s determination to fight on means the Labour rebels will have to mount a formal leadership challenge if they want to oust him.
Since Friday morning’s result was announced, it has been revealed more than a third of those who supported Labour at last year’s general election defied the party’s pro-EU position and voted for Brexit.
Jeremy Corbyn has been roundly thrashed in a humiliating no confidence vote by his own MPs with more than 170 of his own colleagues voting against him.
Although Mr Corbyn has replaced some of those who have stepped down from his top team, there are still a number of vacancies he will struggle to fill.
Corbyn – who blasted “internal manoeuvering” within his party – was defiant on Monday, June 27, at a rally organized by the grassroots Momentum movement, largely made up of the far-left campaigners who helped get him elected.
He said: “It is absolutely disgraceful what these MPs have done”.
“A beleaguered Jeremy Corbyn should take a long hard look in the mirror, then do what is in the best interests of his party, working people and the country because, to be frank, it is increasingly hard to imagine him as a Labour prime minister on the steps of Downing Street”, it adds.
More recently, she was Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills in Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet, and also Shadow First Secretary of State.
His opponents in the Labour Party question whether he can ever win over voters in the party’s heartlands.
Advertisement
Chris Bryant, the former shadow Leader of the House, told the BBC on Monday: “His attitude in the European Union referendum was so casual, so, I think, inappropriately inept and sometimes it felt as if nobody knew if he was in favour of Remain or Leave”.
