Right wing is failing miserably in its attempts to get rid of our leader

I’D like to present a summary of what many of our Labour MPs (including our very own Ian Murray MP) have been up to. So far Labour’s right has:

1) Carried out a sustained and bitter campaign of deliberate wrecking, against a leader elected by a majority of members, from day one.

2) Carried out the notorious Chicken Coup in a manner calculated to cause maximum damage, at a time when Labour under Jeremy Corbyn was beginning to win elections again, had fought four successful by-elections, three with large favourable swings, taken London and Bristol and won every other mayoral contest, polled more votes than the Tories and was three per cent ahead in the national polls; in other words the Chicken Coup badly sabotaged the party just when it was becoming successful again.

3) Tried to nobble the leadership campaign by trying to keep Mr Corbyn off the ballot.

4) Tried to nobble the leadership campaign by disenfranchising more than 100,000 new full members who had joined on the understanding they had full voting rights.

5) Tried to nobble the leadership campaign by making signing up as a supporter as difficult and expensive as possible (I am amazed so many did in the end).

6) Tried to nobble Mr Corbyn’s support base among constituency parties by shutting them all down for the duration. “Intimidation” makes a good all-purpose excuse but the reality was they were scared of a genuine grass-roots uprising among the 80 per cent of (constituency Labour parties (CLPs) that supported Mr Corbyn.

If CLPs had been left to function normally, that could have led to motions of censure and no confidence against not just Angela Eagle but all the Chicken Coup MPs. That is the real reason they were hastily shut down.

And you know what? None of it seems to be working. Labour now has a mass membership about twice the size of all the other UK parties put together (“Corbyn confident of staying leader as new members rush to join party”, The Herald, July 21). The membership is youthful, growing and engaged, where the Tory party’s membership is shrinking, ageing and mostly passive. John McTernan dismissed the membership as people who do not matter.

How wrong he was. Like most of Labour’s right, yesterday’s man with yesterday’s politics. Pete Gregson, 27 Riversdale Grove, Edinburgh.