Drawing a line in the sand: Jeremy Corbyn is losing control of the Labour Party if he fails to tackle Labour rebels on Brexit vote, the Labour Party crisis is so great that Corbyn needs to take the party back to bare metal, a massive cull is needed if the party is to go forward, things can only get worse unless he shows leadership

Dear All

The biggest failure in leadership is failing to lead and take control of your party, this is the position that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn finds himself in as he is constantly allowing himself to be undermined.

Looking from the sidelines, there is no chance that people will return a Labour Government and the promises of a better Britain have simply been swept away by a malignant group of Middle Class Labour MPs who have more in common with the hard right of the Conservative Party than working class Labour members.

Brexit upset the applecart, the cosy relationship of the political elite who are intent on ignoring the wishes of the people. We all know their agenda and it isn’t in keeping with the wishes of the British people.

Jeremy Corbyn was forced to go through a leadership contest, he won that by the popular vote and a huge majority; despite this the malignant group of MPs in the party refused to accept it.

The Labour leadership contest as I remarked solved nothing, it only kicked into the long grass, the fight that must surely happen, the removal of the Blair crowd as elected members, Labour needs a cull not just to go forward but to survive as a party.

I don’t like all of Jeremy Corbyn’s policies; he is good on domestic issues but exceptionally poor on matters relating to foreign affairs. The feeling I get that is he is out of his depth and never really adopted the right attitude. You would think it would dawn on him as this is a weak area that he should have the sense to ‘farm it out’ to someone with a more traditional world view.

After all winning elections is the name of the game in politics still!

If Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t control his party soon, he will be seen in the same light as Michael Foot, weak, old and pointless. Michael Foot was an exceptional politician, he was smart and dedicated, he wasn’t however a leader, and when he assumed power, he was too old and too set in his ways to be seen as a Prime Minister.

A man of his time!

Jeremy Corbyn is making a huge mistake by now clamping down on the rebels in his party, if he thinks the Olive branch works he is mistaken, Corbyn needs to clear the decks of the Labour Party in Westminster. It is said that Corbyn could let frontbench rebels keep jobs if they defy him on Brexit vote.

If this was me, I would get my team in a room and ask for loyalty and anyone who couldn’t do so tell them they should leave, I wouldn’t waste my time attempting appeasement, because appeasement doesn’t work.

In attempting to gloss over the cracks, John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, predicted that once Brexit was no longer the all-dominant subject on the political agenda and other issues came to the fore, then Labour during the next 12 months would move ahead of the Conservatives in the opinion polls.

How do you go forward into battle with a weak leader and a divided party? Patently John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor should start to wake up to the fact that he will never be anything other than Shadow Chancellor. I think also the idea that down the line that mutual interest could unite the party is farcical in the extreme, the idea of ‘let’s all get together to play politics for votes’ is easily seen through.

You only have to look at the ‘git’ standing for Labour in the Stoke by-election who is openly anti Corbyn to see how bad things are in the Labour Party at present. I think however there is no solution to the Labour's candidate for the Stoke Central by-election who claimed that party leader Jeremy Corbyn was an "IRA supporting friend of Hamas" and said Brexit is a "massive pile of s**t."

That clown deserves to lose the by-election by his disgraceful actions, and I hope the people of Stoke decide on someone better because with his attitude, there is someone better. The lack of integrity being displayed by the Labour Party in this election is breathtaking; Labour is promoting their candidate as a “local man” in Stoke-on-Trent by-election when he actually grew up nearly 200 miles away in Suffolk. We have seen Labour MPs joining in such as Labour MP Anna Turley has called Snell their “brilliant local candidate”, Keir Starmer calls him their “fab local candidate”.

Lying to the electorate never works and it is said that Gareth Snell’s plummy accent has not gone unnoticed on the doorstep in Stoke.

Does Jeremy Corbyn need another anti Corbyn pro-Remain MP who has made it clear that he is opposed to support Theresa May’s EU Notification of Withdrawal Bill? Corbyn needs that like he needs another hole in the head, better for the Labour Party to lose the seat, and the way things are going, they might to Ukip.

Last week, Jo Stevens and Rachell Maskell, the respective Shadow Welsh and Environment Secretaries, resigned from the Shadow Cabinet, as did Dawn Butler, the Shadow Minister for Equalities, over the leader’s three-line whip to support the bill.

If I was Labour leader and I would take the party back to bare metal because it is increasingly looking likely that a massive clear out of Labour MPs; and the ringleaders of the anti Corbyn no matter who they are need to cast out straight onto the scrapheap. Corbyn is now facing the prospect of an even larger rebellion when the bill receives its final vote at Third Reading on Wednesday, if he has advisors, someone should advise him better and he needs to start making examples of people and that includes Labour MP Diane Abbott, the Shadow Home Secretary who had allegedly a migraine and didn’t vote in the three line whip.

When Corbyn was asked whether frontbenchers who defied party orders could keep their jobs, Mr Corbyn told BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend:

"You are asking me a very hypothetical question here. I will be making an announcement during the week."

He added:

"I am a very lenient person."

Politics is about making the hard decisions when you reach the top, people follow strength and Corbyn isn’t showing this, he isn’t showing he is a future Prime Minister come 2020.

Finally, it is laughable that the Labour Party will unite post Brexit, McDonnell said:

“People won’t vote for a divided party, we know that, and that’s why we’re behind in the polls.”

And high likely to remain there creating a vacuum that other parties will take an advantage of in the future. There just might be a win for Ukip in Stoke, which should send a shockwave through Labour because it is a rejection of the Blair crowd who are desperate to cling to their power base.

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University