If I lose I'll join the SNP, warns Corbyn

By Nigel T Ranter, our Westminster Bubble Correspondent

jimmy-corbynLabour leadership hopeful Jeremy Corbyn has told the BBC that, if he fails to become leader of his party, he will consider resigning from Labour and joining the SNP.

Currently the front runner in the leadership contest, there have been rumours within the UK Labour party of a plot by Blairite MPs to dethrone him should he top the poll in August. There have also been calls to curtail the leadership contest if he looks likely to win the vote.

He told this reporter: "I hope the parliamentary party can find it within itself to return to Labour's traditional values before it disappears altogether like the Lib Dems. The membership gets that, the unions get that, but I fear the majority of the Labour establishment may be already lost to us.

"But if, by fair means of foul, the party rejects my leadership and everything I stand for, I will have no choice but to join my old friend and colleague Dennis Skinner on the SNP benches. Labour may be dying in Scotlandshire, but the old Labour values are alive and well up there.

"And if Scottish independence is the price for social democracy, I could learn to live with that. After all, I've campaigned all my life for the self-determination for the Palestinians and many other peoples, so how could I then deny those same rights to our friends and neighbours, the Scots?"

In the interests of balance, we asked the other leadership candidates for their comments.

Second favourite Andy Burnham said: "It would be undemocratic in the extreme for Jeremy to be elected against the express wishes of the current Labour leadership.

"Why elect a leader at all if they are then to simply do what they are told by ordinary members of the party, mere simpletons who can't possibly see the big picture. And that big picture is the Blue Screen Of Death."

Third runner Yvette Copper told us: "Ed says we must be trusted on the economy, and the people trust the Tories. The message is clear – to beat the Tories we must first become them. I love it. It's so Zen."

Backstop candidate Liz Kendall commented: "What Tony said. That sounded about right."

However, renowned democrat and proven election winner John McTearwan, writing in the Guardian, said: "Corby's too much of a square to understand the beauty of triangulation.

"He just doesn't get that the Electorate in England is almost entirely made up of Tories nowadays. So it's only by becoming truly Tory ourselves that Labour can hope to win any future elections in England."

On the subject of the demise of the Scottish party which, under his stewardship, lost all but one of its 41 MPs to the SNP last May, he wrote: "Well, the Jocks can just go screw themselves! They're as bad as the f**king Aussies."

A spokesnat for the SNP said simply (well, they're all pretty simple that lot): "Mr McTearwan would do well to follow his own advice."


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