The favourite to be next Labour leader has now decided he wants Corbyn’s job

The favourite to be next Labour leader has now decided he wants Corbyn’s job

Someone in the Parliamentary Labour Party is going to have to take one for the team if they want Corbyn gone.

In today’s Independent on Sunday, Jane Merrick writes

I understand that [Dan] Jarvis now wants to be Labour leader – and when a vacancy arises he will go for it. He is not perfect, and he will not be the only candidate. Yet Jarvis can count on more support than he would have had earlier this summer. The question is, in what form will that vacancy arise – in a bloody coup or when Corbyn decides to stand down? For Jarvis’s prospects to survive, he cannot be part of any plot.

Rightly or wrongly the current Labour leadership are seen as unpatriotic, the easiest way to undo that perception is to elect as leader someone who has served in the armed forces. Step forward Major Dan Jarvis, the Member of Parliament for Barnsley Central, this gives him an advantage over most of the other contenders to replace Corbyn. Labour does have form for replacing a pacifist leader with an ex major, when Major Clement Attlee replaced George Lansbury whose pacifism was rejected at the 1935 Labour party conference.

But I think the lesson of the 1990 Tory leadership of “he who wields the knife never wears the crown” is influencing those who want Corbyn gone, personal ambitions of many may stop Corbyn being toppled as it was clear from Corbyn’s interview with Andrew Marr this morning where Corbyn said “I’m not going anywhere” that he won’t be going voluntarily.

TSE

PS – Though it would be remiss of me not to mention that a lot of Labour’s current travails stem from a former Army Major, Eric Joyce whose problems caused him to stand down as an MP and the process to choose his replacement in Falkirk became so troublesome that Ed Miliband changed the way Labour leaders are elected, if Ed Miliband hadn’t it would be very unlikely Jeremy Corbyn would have become Labour Leader.

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