Jeremy Corbyn's Leadership fight

The Last couple of years for the Labour party in the UK has been somewhat of a roller coaster and I am not going to get all party political in this blog, but I am going to raise something that I think many politicians can learn from.

  So lets wind the clock back.... but not too far.... not as far back as siblings Milliband were going head to head but to the point just after the awkward photo of  Milliband Clegg and Cameron the morning after the general election. Ed Miliband took the decision to step down following the election result triggering a leadership contest in which the Jeremy Corbyn was nominated, possibly to stir it up a little, and very quickly it became apparent that within the Labour party he was becoming very popular and it is at this point that I think the lesson of the last 15 months for all parties starts:-

   As soon as his popularity became apparent a number of senior politicians expressed the view that if he were elected the party would be un-electable. So the MP's were advising the grass routes membership that they did not want Corbyn as leader and at that point it was fair for them to air that opinion. Jeremy Corbyn then went on to win with 59% of the membership vote, Just pause for a second, the membership of the party voted by nearly two thirds in a four way battle to elect the leader they wanted knowing that this was not the MP's popular choice. This is the democratic right of the membership and so the leadership was settled, the new leader was elected and it was time for MP's to get on with the job.

   Earlier this year we had the EU referendum and I agree that Jeremy Corbyn was slow out of the blocks and probably enjoyed the blue on blue a little too much, he didn't come out fighting as he was expected to do. So the MP's who didn't want him there in the first place in my opinion used this as an opportunity to fight the democratic decision of the grass routes membership.  The MP's were saying "we don't like the leader you have chosen and so we will vote we have no confidence in your choice and want a different one". The vote of confidence happened and Jeremy lost so the leadership battle commenced.

 3 months on and we have seen a summer of rule changes, court battles, trolling, a bruising campaign and the grass routes membership have voted for their leader who is Jeremy Corbyn, with a bigger share of the vote than before. All of that emotion, political damage and money spent to get the result the membership wanted in the first place.
 
 This does raise the question when is it a good time to have a vote of no confidence if you don't like the result.

The lesson must be that whilst MP's are elected to make decisions they must listen to their constituents and party members on the ground especially if they can make the decision, Remember its grass routes members that select and elect MP's.