© CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/2016 GETTY IMAGESLabour Leader Jeremy Corbyn listens as former leader Ed Miliband addresses supporters and members of the public in Doncaster town centre
As the Chilcot Inquiry report is released to the public, those MPs attempting to depose Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn — their leading lights inescapably sullied by having supported the war — are suing for peace.
Over a week of high-profile resignations, statements, demands, pleas and threats have seemingly done little but consolidate Corbyn's position. In record time, it has gone from being a coup to a #chickencoup to a #headlesschickencoup.
This could be the biggest own-goal in the history of British politics. Journalists steeped in the common sense of Westminster, assumed that it was all over for Labour's first ever radical socialist leadership. How can he lead, they reasoned, if his parliamentary allies won't work with him? This, in realpolitik terms, merely encoded the congealed entitlement and lordly presumption of Labour's traditional ruling caste. Even some of Corbyn's bien-pensant supporters went along with this view. They should have known better.
The putschists' plan, such as it was, was to orchestrate such media saturation of criticism and condemnation aimed at Corbyn, to create such havoc within the Labour Party, that he would feel compelled to resign. The tactical side of it was executed to smooth perfection, by people who are well-versed in the manipulation of the spectacle. And yet, in the event that Corbyn was not wowed by the media spectacle, not intimidated by ranks of grandees laying into him, and happy to appeal over the heads of party elites to the grassroots,
their strategy disintegrated. This was not politics as they knew it.
Comment: There was a promising increase in momentum on the Palestinian issue, but the tide just wouldn't turn. The funding from Israel and AIPAC pressure have all but glazed over the Democratic party. Easy marks, Israel bought and entrenched Hillary Clinton years ago, the US government decades ago. It has always been up to ordinary people to rescue the Palestinians...before they all disappear, before it is the last Palestinian...for surely that is Israel's intent. It means something, don't you think? Iranians next?