I predict the coup against Corbyn will fail

THE attempted coup against Jeremy Corbyn seems destined to fail.

Indeed, it looks as if he will entrench his position as Labour leader and score an even more decisive victory in the forthcoming leadership election than he did last year when he won by a landslide with 59 per cent of the votes.

This will pose a dichotomy for his enemies in the parliamentary party. They will have no mandate to challenge the result. Equally, after such disloyalty, surely they won’t be able to pledge support for Corbyn?

But if Labour MPs refuse to serve him, they will plunge the party into the gravest crisis in its history, dwarfing even the historic split of 1931 when Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour broke in two over austerity cuts.

In all likelihood, the Labour Party as we know it will not survive if that happens.

For his part, I believe Corbyn should rise to the challenge by being more radical and incisive in his attacks on the Tory government.

I mentioned this to him when I met him this week — urging him to be more clinical in his critique of its foreign policies.

He agreed that the dismissal of Hilary Benn as Shadow Foreign Secretary (who embarrassingly opposed him over intervention in the Syrian civil war) would allow him more freedom to speak up for Palestinian rights.

Corbyn told me that he plans to ask searching questions about the Government’s relations with Saudi Arabia.

He will also support families of British military victims of the Iraq war if they mount a private prosecution against Tony Blair and others.

This is a refreshing approach, because for far too long there has been an unspoken consensus over foreign policy between the two main parties (i.e. pro-EU, pro-meddling in the Middle East), which, I believe, has been profoundly damaging to Britain.