http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11215711/Ed-Miliband-needs-to-fight-and-lose-the-next-election.-Its-the-only-way-Labour-will-learn.html
This morning Ed Miliband is not facing a coup. It’s much more serious than that.
Coups are structured, formalised plots, organised by a relatively small number of dedicated individuals. What we’ve seen over the last 48 hours is a convulsion; a spontaneous outpouring of the anger and frustration that has been gradually building up within the parliamentary Labour Party over the past four years.
Four MPs are reported to have approached parliamentary Labour Party chair David Watts calling for Ed Miliband to stand down. It may as well have been 40 or 400. The silence of their colleagues does not represent consent for Miliband’s leadership.
“We’re in a bizarre, possibly unique, situation”, one shadow cabinet member said yesterday. “The PLP have now lost confidence in the Labour Party leader. But they feel there’s nothing they can do about it”. Another shadow minister told me: "Is the entire PLP in despair, saying something must be done? Yes. Are we seeing a full blown coup? No." A third said: "The only thing that was holding it all together was the poll lead. When that goes there's nothing to bind it all together."
Coups are over swiftly. Labour’s agony is set to continue for another six months.
As Miliband’s dwindling band of supporters belatedly mobilise, Labour’s “silent rebels” will be accused of “losing their heads”. They haven’t. The people who have lost their heads are those who have seriously believed Ed Miliband would guide his party to victory in 2015.
They will be accused of self-indulgence. When in fact those who are really guilty of self-indulgence are the political dilettantes who have spent four years treating the leadership of a great political party as nothing more than a glorified PPE practical.
Miliband’s rebels will be accused of disloyalty. Disloyalty? The person most terrified by the prospect of a coup against Ed Miliband is David Cameron.
The reason Labour MPs are now in open revolt is not because they are guilty of disloyalty or self-indulgence. They are in revolt because they can see what the entire country sees: that Ed Miliband is not up to the job of being prime minister.