The Coup Plotters Handbook (as thumbed through by Luke and others)....

Spend nine mouths plotting a coup.
Register various domain names for possible websites in plenty of time.
Design the logo’s for the forthcoming leadership contest in case there is one.
Dig out our address book for the team(s) that helped run previous leadership campaigns. Make sure key personnel are going to be ready.
Spend the final days and hours of the EU referendum getting the resignations ready and the final touches in place.
Hilary makes a midnight phone call where he admits he has been canvassing support for the coup, and engineers his own sacking.
Start two days of times resignations. One per hour to maximise damage to the party leader. And one single message. Jeremy Resign.
Keep the pressure up day after day. Spin, brief, misrepresent and lie. Talk to journalists as an ‘unnamed Labour source’ or a ‘senior labour figure’ to say Jeremy has to resign.
Have a vote of no confidence to heap more pressure on the leader.
Start Saving Labour to try and recruit an army of new right wing members in case we fail to get rid of him and there is an election.
Wheel out Neil Kinnock.
Start attacking the membership for being trots and dogs and rabble. Try and isolate Jeremy Corbyn.
Keep spinning and briefing. Rely on anti-labour media and other anti socialist groups and commentators to undermine the leadership. Still try and get him to resign.
If he hasn’t quit, stand a stalking horse candidate to trigger a contest. Doesn’t matter who the candidate is, the important thing is to trigger the contest.
Get the NEC to ban Jeremy from the Ballot. Then the stalking horse can drop out and our preferred candidate(s) can step forward. Possible names include Tom Watson, Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall etc.
If Corbyn is on the ballot, exclude new members and price out the poor (all thought to be more likely to vote for Corbyn).This is important because our attempts to sign up new members didn’t succeed, because we don’t have much popular support.
During the election frame Corbyn and his supporters as thugs, bullys, dogs, criminals, anti Semitic, homophobic, racist, and generally unpleasant.
Try and cancel all regular Branch and CLP meetings during the period of the election contest, because we think most of them support Corbyn and we don’t want them getting together and talking about whats been going on! Justify doing this because of the threat from thugs, bullys and dogs.
Say that if Corbyn wins the Labour party will split and die.
Use the right wing media and anti labour forces and commentators to drive home smears and lies at every opportunity.
Say if we don't beat him this time we we will beat him in 2017 or 2018

Corbyn doesn’t stand a chance. Does he? He can’t survive, can he? Surely not!

Do you ever get the feeling that reality is descending into farce. This is what Luke has just written:

I am not sure what the point is in Jeremy running for re-election. If he wins he will still be in the same position..... [Nothing] will be changed if Corbyn is re-elected, however wide the margin...... MPs..... will challenge him again and again...... until eventually he is defeated.

My translation: We will defeat the politics that Jeremy Corbyn represents. And we will not respect democracy, but will attack again and again and again, regardless of the democratic will of the membership, until Jeremy Corbyn and the socialist politics he represents are beaten.

And this from a man who wants to be democratically elected to the NEC to represents the interests of the CLP's and wider membership on that body!

Its a crazy world!

And just in case anyone is left in any doubt as to who/what offers the best commitment towards working for a strong, united Labour party able to offer a clear political alternative going forwards, just look at the different reponses to the NEC's decision to uphold the rulebook of the party:

Jeremy Corbyn welcomed the chance to have a leadership campaign, saying he would fight 'on all the things that matter', from inequality and poverty to improving opportunities, and that this contest would 'strengthen our party in order to defeat this Tory government and bring in a government that cares for the people'.

John McTernan, on the other hand, a former Director of Political Operations for Tony Blair, and chief of staff to the leader of the Scottish Labour party in the run up to 2015 (when the Labour party was wiped out in Scotland), said: The NEC have stabbed the Labour Party through the heart. The Labour Party is dead.'

Mc Ternan and his pal Murphy were the SNP's secret weapons.

Particularly as McTernan spoke adoringly of Thatcher at the Tory conference*.

The SNP must have thought all their Xmases had come at once.

Now what was it that McDonnell was saying about the policital ability of the plotters... ?

* http://www.heraldscotland.c...

He and Murphy were the gifts that just went on giving.

He also said after wing asked about the members preferred choice. "Who cares what the membership think'. That said it all for me

He is extraordinarily abrasive and arrogant.

It's about "real" democracy. Not lip service... Say I.

McTernan and the like care nothing about what ANY think

soundcloud dot com/ spectator1828 /john-mcternan- who-cares-about-the-grassroots …

I resent to be branded extremist because I support Corbyn, we have to remain strong as he does, Corbyn is the example to follow, All this is distraction because all the majority of the PLP want is for labour to loose the next general election. I bet most if no all of the 172 MP's had already excellent paid jobs lined up and don't care about losing their seats in the next general election, providing that a genuine socialist labour party doesn't win.

Possibly, but it depends if any employer will have them given their display of utter disloyalty to the organisation and its leader... I wouldn't employ them, couldn't trust them.

Neither would I trust them or employ them, but I suspect they are acting on behalf of their future employers, corporations come to mind. However, the plotters may do well to remember the sentence utter by Scipio over 2000 years ago to the Lusitani plotters that betrayed their leader when seeking the promised reward " Rome does not paid traitors"

I like that... Fits my opinion of such people totally. Thank you.

Remember the good old days when the Tories were the enemy ??

They have just managed to get themselves elected as Labour MPs these days.

No they only started following real Labour policies when Corbyn sat on the front bench :-)

Mind you I do miss all those focus groups.

Well said Peter!

Wonder who Luke wants to win ??

Thatcher?

You forgot, wheel out a tearful NEC member who says she and others felt intimidated and bullied as Corbyn's team threaten legal action if the NEC act unlawfully, then complain that he doesn't protect them by denying a secret ballot (which they ultimately got), but stick your head over the parapet anyway.

Meanwhile, over at Ipsos Mori:

http://ukpollingreport.co.u...

Very well said :-D might steal and share if you don't mind?

Lost me at the second sentence Luke where it should have read "By 18 -14 the NEC decided to read the words on the pages of the Rule Book and implement them properly and not use them to narrow political advantage". But I did struggle on and thanks for letting us know that all those long standing Labour Party voters (like me) and members who have been gritting their teeth supporting a Party which took us into war after war, who lost the plot on how to challenge the Tories (eg over education), who hollowed out the membership, who lost the Labour heartlands long before Jeremy, who PFI'd our NHS into crippling debts, who undermined the unions, the public sector but who kept on campaigning and fighting for and with our communities are just a bunch of rag tag foul mouthed "Hard Left" infiltrators. And as for those young people inspired by Jeremy - what do they know except how to throw bricks through windows? An inspiring rant Luke which I am sure will go down well with Progress comrades but is meaningless to a new generation of young and not so young activists who want to build better communities, a better country an a better world.

You did him the honour of an intelligent riposte. He isn't worth it. Good comment though :)

They should always be argued against :-)

And the old buggers like me! I left when the party went right and came back with Brown. Jeremy is saying the things I joined Labour for and, no, he's not a mad leftie, he's a socialist and if you don't want socialism join another Party because half a million members can't be threatened, can't be ignored and can't be beaten!

Talk about a rant!

Well said!

If this doesn't convince the deluded right wing of the party of their own self centred stupidity then nothing will. I joined the party specifically to vote against Corbyn and it was this kind of bigoted nonsense that convinced me that the party was beyond hope without him. Every word you have written is dripping with a sense of superiority and ignorant hatred of those with whom you disagree. The party structure that you wish to block Corbyn from re-establishing is the one that produced Tony Blair. The one you claim to be the happy place where you feel secure is the one that produced Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn.

I don't know how you have the brass neck to align yourself with Healey, Hattersley and Smith. None of these people approved of the dismantling of party democracy that happened under Blair that you cling to. They all agreed with Corbyn. They all would be classed as hard left if they espoused the same views they did in office by the foolish intransigence and the total risk aversion that has taken over the party's right wing. What those great politicians had that the right wing currently lack is pragmatism. They also need knew that they were not the best leaders and needed a good one to win. They were never foolish enough to denounce Michael Foot as hard left. They knew that was a Tory campaign and had the good sense not to join in because it would not just be Foot that would be tarred with that brush if it were given its head, (pity the idiots who think it wise accuse Corbyn of antisemitism haven't got enough mental acuity to realise that). It was the SDP who were stupid enough to do that.

There are simple reasons why Corbyn wins when competing with the right one of which is that the right believe the rubbish that fills this article but most fundamentally it is that he is the first leader since Blair (pre-1997) to offer hope.

Great post.

That's because Foot was on the soft left. He was a leftist, but he backed the Falklands war, actively took on Militant etc.

He showed that it's possible for hte left to have a wide variety of perspectives and not plump for dunderheaded 'no comprimise' type ideology.

He also confronted Benn, whereas Corbyn comes from Benn's tradition.

No, it was because they had more political nouse in their little fingers than the current lot have put together.

I remember (relatively well).

Spot on. ;)

Well said :-)

I am a new member, I feel utterly disgusted by the ridiculous assumptions being made about me, I am not the 'hard Ieft', I am simply 'the left'. I am not a militant/radical, I am a mum of two who is worried about the state of our NHS and education system.
I cannot believe the superior attitude of so many existing members and the NEC and the PLP, why are they so determined to discourage new members? it feels like an old boy's network to me.
This article is ridiculously biased, the first line describes the NEC's decision to follow their own rules as 'the NEC ducked treating him equally', they also ducked treating me equally and at least 130,000 others, but lets not worry about that ay............

akehurst is a seriously nasty character from having read him for a few months

Will try to avoid his propaganda in the future I think

You got him straight away. We are really not all like that Sandra, welcome to the party :-)

Thank you Sue

Changing the £3 Registered Supporters scheme to £25 does not close any loopholes.

It just restricts them to the wealthier, which is where the Anti-Corbyn faction feel their support is.

I'd prefer they scrapped Registered Supporters altogether, but allow full members to vote no matter when they joined. One member, one vote.

I think most of the membership would prefer it, unfortunately it works against the interests of the right. Hope it ends up in court.

So despite the fact that the NEC has conceded that Corbyn is the incumbent leader and therefore needs no nominations AS STATED IN THE RULES you're still not prepared to accept the democratic mandate which he will in all likelyhood get (despite the gerrymandering). And, rather than concentrate your fire on the Tory government, you're prepared to continue the sabotage and infighting which, more than anything that Corbyn has ever said or done, has done the worst damage to the image of the party in the eyes of the electorate certainly in my memory, which is a pretty long time! You and your allies have brought more disgrace to the Labour party than thousands of us can stomach. If you don't feel deep shame for your deceit and underhandedness then there is, I think, something wrong with your approach to being a member of the Labour party. Maybe it's time you thought about crossing the floor to the Tories.

This is a frankly bizarre article.

The MPs standing against Corbyn talk about him as a decent, principled man who is ill suited for leadership. They talk about healing the party and uniting against the Tories.

Meanwhile, this foaming at the mouth tirade calls for endless fratricidal warfare and essentially driving the party into the ground if things don't go his way.

It's the Progress way, Comrade.

Luke, you're having a laugh aren't you? The soft left leading the charge? Labour behind in the polls?

The soft left did not lead this charge.

Labour were equal to the Tories in the polls just prior to this Blairite led treacherous undemocratic bullying exercise.

Blair was ten points behind when he left..

Seems his supporters can be very forgetful.

Very poor article for Labourlist to post...

I have to disagree with you on that. It's useful because it shows up Akehurst for the biased twerp he really is.