The unmitigated disaster unfolding in the United Kingdom's Labour Party continues to get worse by the day. It is possible Jeremy Corbyn may have to go to court to get access to the ballot:
Corbyn sidestepped a question about whether he thought he would be able to get the 51 signatures from MPs and MEPs that his opponents claim he would need to be a candidate in the contest.
He said he had not seen the legal advice that Iain McNicol, Labour’s general secretary, had reportedly received saying that as a sitting leader Corbyn would need 51 names (the backing of 20% of MPs and MEPs).
Corbyn said that if the party’s national executive committee tried to keep him off the ballot, he would challenge that. He indicated he had received his own legal advice saying he should be on the ballot automatically.
When Corbyn lost the no-confidence vote among Labour’s MPs only 40 members supported him while 172 voted against him. It is possible that Labour could prevent him from being listed, but I can't imagine that Labour Party parliamentarians could possibly be that stupid. However, you never know.
Corbyn beleives, however, as leader he should be listed automatically:
“I’m expecting to be on the ballot paper because the rules of the party indicated that the existing leader, if challenged, should be on the ballot paper anyway,” he said.
When it was put to him that party officials disagreed, he replied: “I will challenge that if that is the view that they take … I would just say to anyone in the party to think for a moment: is it really right that the members of the party should be denied a choice in this? Half a million people are members of the party because they want the party to succeed.”
His sole challenger, Angela Eagle, insists the opposite:
In a separate interview with ITV’s Peston on Sunday, Eagle said she thought Corbyn would need to get fresh nominations to stand again. But she accepted this would be a matter to be decided by the party’s national executive committee.
The NEC, which is expected to meet on Tuesday to discuss the issue, is roughly split between Corbynites and non-Corbynites, making it hard to predict what it might decide.
Nice. It is bad enough to have this going on a time of national turmoil over leaving the EU and possible breakup of the country. But now Britain faces the prospect of a Labour Party committee in effect forcing its own leader off the ballot since apparently he isn't confident of his ability to convince even 11 of the people who have no confidence in him to at least allow him access to the ballot.
This is fucking surreal.