Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Do Jeremy Corbyn’s allies really need to worry about a coup?

For the past few weeks, Labour MPs have been ratcheting up their plotting against Jeremy Corbyn. As I explained here, they have detailed planning sessions for a potential coup in the summer, and have broken their parliamentary party down into groups so that they can develop strategies for persuading each group to accept that the sooner the party gets a new chief, the better.

Now, the Corbyn operation is disorganised, but it’s not totally ineffectual, and funnily enough the Labour leader’s allies are quite keen to avoid any attempt to take the Hard Left out of power when it has only just taken over. So the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy is trying to change the rules at the July meeting of Labour’s National Executive Committee so that the leader is automatically included on the ballot paper in the event of a challenge, rather than him needing to get 35 signatures all over again.

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