Image: OR books, fair use.
Corbyn was able to see off the attempted coup of summer 2016 because his sources of power, in the membership, the unions and the movement, were greater than those of his opponents in the PLP, the party bureaucracy and the media. Any conventional politician who had won the leadership by advancing through parliament and the press would have been unable to survive. But Corbyn’s success was achieved in spite of those institutions. He was not playing by Westminster rules. In their bewilderment and exasperation at his refusal to resign, many MPs appeared not to realise this.
The issue at the heart of the coup—and indeed the whole first year of Corbyn’s leadership—concerned where power lay in the Labour Party. Was it with the PLP, as had historically been the case, or was it with the membership? And where did the unions, with the constitutional might to settle the matter one way or the other, stand?
