THE no-confidence motion lodged against Jeremy Corbyn may not have the effect of ousting him as Labour leader, even it it were to command a majority in a secret ballot of the party’s MPs.
Labour MPs Margaret Hodge and Anne Coffey will raise the motion today at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), with a vote expected via secret ballot tomorrow.
Corbyn owed his decisive leadership election victory to rank-and-file individual members and registered supporters, many of whom signed up for a £3 subscription fee under new rules introduced by Ed Miliband to make the party more a grassroots movement.
Only a small minority of Labour MPs voted for Corbyn in the leadership contest in September last year. He was only allowed to stand in the four-way contest after MPs backing other candidates agreed to sign his nomination papers, to reach the required threshold of nominations from PLP members.
But under party rules to remove Corbyn, 20 per cent of the Parliamentary and European Parliamentary Parties – 50 MPs and MEPs – need to write to the Labour General Secretary nominating a challenger. If there is a vacancy at the top, the number falls to 15 per cent, or 38 signatures.
However, the unresolved issue is whether or not Corbyn also needs 50 nominations, or whether he gets on the ballot automatically. It has been reported that the Labour Leader’s office has sought legal advice on this and have been told that he will get on the ballot automatically. Any decision to force a contest on the say-so of Labour parliamentarians would create a major conflict with the party members and supporters who overwhelmingly elected him nine months ago.
Corbyn secured 59.5 per cent of the vote in the contest, defeating Liz Kendall, Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham. A spokesman for Corbyn has said that he “is the democratically elected leader of the Labour Party and will remain so”.
All of this means it is inevitable that a PLP attempt to force out Corbyn would be resisted by much of the party membership. However, Corbyn signalled that he would be prepared to run again for leader if necessary and shadow chancellor John McDonnell has said he would run such a campaign.
Were the leadership contest to be held under the same terms as last year, it seems highly likely that Corbyn would win again, potentially by a greater margin due to the "attempted coup" by MPs.
There has been speculation the PLP may seek to elect its own leader and bypass the party membership, a process used to pick the leader up until the early 1980s. Labour MP Dan Jarvis, a former Paratrooper, has been talked up as a possible candidate and it may be that a figure like Heidi Alexander, who quit yesterday as shadow health secretary, may also stand.
Labour in post-war Britain has never removed a party leader in the way the Tories did with Iain Duncan Smith and Margaret Thatcher. Michael Foot, elected Labour leader in 1980 under the old rules, never faced a serious attempt to force him to resign despite faring badly.
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