They are in the painfully contorted position of being both passionately sincere and disingenuous in pointing out that the Corbyn leadership "isn't working". For sure they mean it, but one of the many reasons it is not working is that they constantly attack him.

Labour MPs point to their party's dire poll rating as proof that Corbyn must go. But it is a minor miracle that Labour's poll rating is not even lower, given the number of MPs who have been arguing in public that their leader is useless.

These public declarations of dissent partly explain the apparently deranged behaviour of Corbyn's office, contemplating contacting an MP's parents to put pressure on him, dropping a planned campaign on rail fares to conduct a reshuffle, appointing and sacking an MP recovering from cancer. The people in Corbyn's office behave like paranoid neurotics partly because they have lots to be paranoid about. After decades as a backbench rebel Corbyn cannot and does not know about the arts of leadership, including how to manage a team. But part of the explanation for his behaviour is a justifiable fear that the team is out to get him.