Are Labour rebels terrified Jeremy Corbyn will WIN general election?

Is the real reason Labour rebels are trying to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn because they are really really really scared he will win the general election?

Are Blairites (or is that Blairongs?) worried that a Corbyn victory could lead to the end of banker and defence contractor junkets, and consign them to years in the wilderness where a Murdoch party invitation and an oil war are both pipe dreams?

A future SO terrible they’d have to pay for their own drinks?

At first sight, the Evening Harold team thought this theory was a bit far-fetched as they debated it over a pint at the Squirrel Licker’s Arms. But the more we thought about it, and the more Eddie refilled our glasses, the more sensible it looked.

It’s tempting to think the Labour rebels wouldn’t know a traditional Labour voter if they tripped over, or more likely, kicked one. But it’s now clear the coup plotters DO know who traditional Labour voters are, and they also know these voters will overwhelmingly vote for Corbyn. So they can try to exclude these voters from a Labour leadership election by charging them 25 quid, but you can’t charge someone to vote in the general election – if you could, the Tories would’ve already tried it.

The problem for the Labour rebels is being a ‘traditional Labour voter’ is not the sole preserve of older people any more than liking David Bowie or Led Zeppelin is. You just have to believe in putting people’s interests ahead of big corporations, realise austerity is a giant wheeze bought in by George Osborne to win a Bullingdon Club bet, and understand that doing the opposite of what Tony Blair and his friends advocate is usually a sound course of action.

Is it really so surprising that such a message seems to resonate with so many people, who then flock to Labour and Corbyn? And is it really so surprising that such a message scares the bejesus out of many of the Labour rebels?

Blairongs like John McTernan can try all he likes to marginalise this new breed of traditional Labour voter by calling them ‘Corbynistas’, but to us this nickname sounds very Che Guevera-like and hence cool. Way cooler sounding than ‘John McTernan or Tony Blair’.

In an attempt to get rid of Corbyn, the Labour coup plotters have literally adopted an ABC (anyone but Corbyn) approach by choosing Angela “Arghh’ Eagle, who certainly qualifies as ‘anyone’, and who achieved a 2nd to last place in the Labour deputy leader race last year.

It seems like desperate stuff, to try to replace Corbyn who won the Labour leadership in a landslide, with Angela Eagle whose campaign launch was so thrilling BBC and ITV journalists deserted it halfway through to cover a Leyton Orient transfer rumour.

But all this straw clutching makes sense when you consider what the Labour rebels have to lose – it’s not just the terrifying prospect of Jeremy Corbyn winning the general election.

If the ABC plan fails, then it’s ‘D’ for de-selection. It couldn’t happen to a nice bunch of people.