they're in a bind. They badly needed Corbyn to resign in the face of the PLP's refusal to work with him. He didn't and now they're between a rock and a hard place.

If Corbyn is on the ballot paper, then he will win and the PLP are not just back where they were, but pistol whipped to boot with a whole load of constituencies likely to seek de-selection of quisling mps.

If Corbyn isn't on the ballot paper, then I imagine that the party will fall into warfare at the next Conference with constituency meetings likely to make demands for immediate de-selection.

It all adds up to a funky situation.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Harry Giles

Dear anti-Corbyn Labour supporters,

I get it. I really do. He has not led Labour to brilliant election results. He has not inspired confidence in enough of his MPs. His personal polling is not good. Some of his supporters are utter dicks. Momentum is way more centralist than I'd like (though I think "Trotskyist" is a bit of a push). He's older and he's tired. He doesn't always speak brilliantly. We really really want to get rid of the Tories. I completely understand why you might not support Corbyn.

The problem is, you have given us nothing else to support. I am a politics geek, and I have been completely obsessed by the newsfeeds for the last fortnight, and I have not seen one single new policy idea come from the anti-Corbyn MPs. Maybe you have them, but if so they haven't made it out beyond your thinktanks and fancy ill-attended seminars. I have not seen one single new compelling narrative, one single new ideological possibility. Maybe you have them, but you've been even worse at getting them in the papers than Corbyn. Lines about Corbyn's electability mean nothing unless you can offer another idea to elect.

Because we are desperate. Speaking personally, I have had every economic advantage afforded to the middle class, and I still have never had a full-time job, a living wage income, or income security for more than a few months ahead. I managed to get out of debt but I've been stuck in the private rental sector and getting out seems to be getting harder and harder. I'm 29. My mental health and sexuality haven't helped with all this, especially not with austerity screwing things up on those fronts as well. But I am pretty privileged, all things told, and I'm physically desperate for political change, so I cannot fully imagine how desperate things must be for folk who started out with fewer advantages than me.
......

Labour leadership: readers put case for and against Corbyn | Membership | The Guardian

Eagle and Harman blame Jeremy Corbyn for not getting the vote out for Remain (that in itself is highly debateable), but the figures don't seem to add up .....

Remain Meetings addressed by ....

Jeremy Corbyn 123
Alan Johnson 19 (Leader of the Labour In Campaign)
Harriet Harman 17
Angela Eagle 15

`Is Angela Eagle really better than Jeremy Corbyn?' - Guardian writers on Labour's leadership | Gary Younge, John Harris, Anne Perkins and Maya Goodfellow | Opinion | The Guardian

Gary Younge: There was not one idea about what she would do.

...Angela Eagle barely seems to have a plan A. She wants to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn. Well, reasonable people can disagree on whether that makes sense. But that in itself is not much of an agenda and raises the obvious question, "What do you want to replace him with"? Corbyn was not elected for his personality but for his politics. His victory was emphatic. His election was part of a global moment that has seen a left resurgent across Europe as well as in the US. So whoever seeks to replace him needs to engage with that.

Apparently that's not going to happen. Significantly missing from Eagle's announcement was a single idea about what she would actually do. "I'm not a Blairite. I'm not a Brownite. I'm not a Corbynista. I am my own woman," she said. Quite what that means for the rest of us is difficult to tell. She supported the Iraq war, voted against every effort to investigate it; she voted for the bombing of Syria, she voted for the introduction of tuition fees and for raising them to £3,000, and abstained on welfare cuts. That sounds pretty Blairite to me. [...]

Anne Perkins: Labour would crumble if Corbyn is not on the ballot

Show, not tell, they say, and everything about the standing of Labour was shown when the live TV coverage switched away in unison from Angela Eagle's challenge to Jeremy Corbyn - only to while away the time before Andrea Leadsom emerged to crown Theresa May prime minister in discussion over when the removal van should be booked for No 10. The Tories have always done political assassination much more efficiently than Labour. [...]

Maya Goodfellow: Labour has deep-rooted problems, Eagle is not the solution

If this is all about "real" leadership, it's not entirely clear how Angela Eagle is a viable replacement for Jeremy Corbyn. The charges levelled against him, notably that the public aren't clear about Labour's messages, don't necessarily disappear under Eagle. Her speech was reminiscent of something from Ed Miliband, diagnosing problems without providing clear answers. A soft-left Milibandesque candidate who voted for the Iraq war is not the answer to the party's problems - and I say this as someone who voted for her to be deputy leader last year.

...The truth is the huge hurdles facing the party have been many years in the making, and their architects are a significant number of the MPs behind the anti-Corbyn campaign. People left behind by an unfair economic system and abandoned by an inward-looking political class want to have some ownership over their lives and over politics.

Eagle is yet to properly lay out her ideas, but a technocratic response to this is not enough. Labour needs to become a democratic movement. Making this change is a fractious process but Eagle's attempt to derail it with the backing of the vast majority of the parliamentary Labour Party suggests that, however much they attack Corbyn for being out of touch, the PLP don't understand the problems that face them.

`Brexit' may need a second referendum and Parliamentary approval in order to go ahead, the former Clerk of the House of Commons has said.

Reversing Brexit with an act of Parliament?

How will this go down with the people who voted for Leave? As you quoted:

Union Jacks Flutter Over a Widening Gyre | Salvage

Yet you only have to watch the reactions of many Brexit supporters to know that this isn't going to change their minds. Their joy and relief, their sense of accomplishment, of having finally made themselves heard, of having `taken their country back,' is overwhelming. They won something; they finally won something. And nor is it just pensioners in blighted cities. The people shouting `out, out, out' at Muslim school students in Brockley, the woman in Enfield telling non-white people to `get out,' the neo-Nazis parading in Newcastle: the racists feel a new confidence, a new entitlement. It is `their country' at last. Even if it is only a `psychological wage,' they will fight to defend their gains.

Yes, they will fight.

However, it just goes to show that, as we have long claimed, the right wing of the Labour party in Westminster (a majority it seems) seem to have far more in common with the Tory party than they ever did with the general membership of the Labour party.

They always get irate when this is claimed, yet here we are

keep to the Fen Causeway

Johnson probably doesn't realise it fully, but his time is done. His career has been built entirely on self-aggrandizing chuzpah, brushing off minor setbacks and leaping forward. Well, he got himself to the point where he could take the job everyone knew he wanted, that of Prime Minister. It was in his grasp. But, at that moment, he hesitated then turned away. And, in that moment, dissipated everything he was understood to be by the public.

He is viewed differently now, as a wrecker, a coward, a waster. If he doesn't know it now, he will realise it in time.

keep to the Fen Causeway

However, Portugal's 1-0 win over their more fancied French rivals on Sunday night left the same communities feeling distinctly gloomy.

Nobody expected les Bleus to make it to the final, let alone after defeating Germany. This was quite a good Euro for the French team. So, disappointed? Yes, but gloomy? Give me a break...

French opinion polls suggest even more Euroscepticism at home than in Britain, resentments Front National's Marine Le Pen was quick to exploit with a call for a Frexit referendum.

Can the same people strike for the still relatively powerful CGT union over François Hollande's government's attempts to relax rigid labour laws and increase unemployment - read Kim Willsher's background here - and also vote for Le Pen?

For all the street action, France's workforce, by the way, is 8% unionised, below even the US (11%), let alone Britain (25%).

CGT is "still relatively powerful" while at the same time, the French are less unionized than even their US counterparts. Some power. And let's not forget the mandatory reference to the "rigid labour laws". Plus all the moaning about people-I-met-who-tried-to-set-their-own-business-and-gave-up. All the entrepreneurs (a decidedly foreign word) who created their own company haven't received the memo, obviously.

Which is consistent with French attitudes over many decades, consistent with François "I hate the rich" Hollande's stated position before becoming president, since modified in the realities of office.

Hollande's declaration was just an election ploy he didn't even pretend to follow through once elected. We'd be lucky to have a Corbyn in France. Instead, we have Mélanchon.

May has actually been very clever.  She has put three of the top Brexiteers in charge of foreign relations: BoJo as Foreign Secretary, Fox in charge of international Trade, and Davis in charge of the negotiations. None will appeal to the Europeans. BoJo is hated for his persistent misrepresentations.

It will now be on the Brexiteer's head if they fail to come up with a good deal, and if they fail to realize all the wonderful opportunities for Trade with the rest of the world which Brexit was supposed to open up.

Expect lots of nice words in public, and people digging in behind the scenes.  I doubt a deal will be done within the two year time frame, and then the UK will be out on their ear without any deal.

A deal subsequent to the two year Article 50 period is unlikely because that would require unanimity among the EU's members and could be blocked by Malta, if it so wished.  Having derided the EU's lack of democracy for so long, the UK would be hoist on the petard of excessive democracy in the EU.

Some things are more important than German car exports.  The EU was built for the long haul.  Expect Scotland to break free and rejoin the EU, and N. Ireland to melt down - peacefully, I hope.  

The EU will bide it's time all the while maintaining internal stability by demonstrating the perils of schism. Everybody wins, except the Brits, and perhaps the Irish...

Index of Frank's Diaries