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These Are the Labour Plotters Who Will Try to Destroy Jeremy Corbyn if He Becomes Leader

A guide to the Labour right-wing's anti-Corbyn wrecking crew.

Jeremy Corbyn (Photo by Oscar Webb)

More from the Labour leadership contest:

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What Would Happen if Jeremy Corbyn Became Prime Minister?

I Went to a Jeremy Corbyn Rally in Norwich to Try to Understand Corbyn-mania

Barring the sudden end of the world or an outright military coup, it's almost certain that Jeremy Corbyn will shortly become the first Labour Trotskyite to do what Uncle Leon never could, and actually win a leadership contest. Of course, as his opponents have repeatedly pointed out, he's been a lifelong rebel – in fact, during the Labour government from 1997 to 2010, he was the party's most disobedient MP, defying the whip nearly 500 times. It's not clear how he can turn that record into a programme for leadership. He's certainly going to have a hard time refashioning himself from the lone voice speaking out against a heartless party machine into the clanking and inhuman command of the machine itself.

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More to the point, though, what about the rest of the parliamentary party? Those preening, strutting tosspots who emerged – suddenly and seemingly fully-formed, as if out of some protean alchemical slime – when Labour dedicated itself to Satan's service back in 1994? These people are used to being in charge, and they have the flawless, Photoshop-looking skin to prove it. How will they deal with the role-reversal: no longer in the driving seat of history, but now a bunch of fanatical whingers who want to take the party back to where it was over two decades ago?

It's no secret that most Labour MPs now regard Corbyn with a fear and frenzy that verges on the homicidal. When he scraped through to the contest with two minutes to spare, many of the people nominating him only did so because they didn't think he had a chance at winning: it was pure hubris, a gesture of slick and smarmy condescension, a pat on the head for the tired old dog of the Labour Left. Now, convinced that they've created a monster, their hatred towards the man can really only be read as a sublimated hatred towards themselves. But whatever its origin, it's still dangerous.

The contingency plans of Labour's old ruling classes are all, to put it mildly, deranged. Last month, it was revealed that Labour MPs have split into two strategic camps, dubbed the "Maquis" and the "Free French". The Maquis hope to get their members into the into Corbyn's shadow cabinet, outwardly toe the line while opposing any actually useful policies behind closed doors, and try to work "behind enemy lines" to overthrow him when the time is right. The Free French want to essentially withdraw from the party, ignoring the whip, boycotting the front bench, and creating a deliberate crisis that will lead to their leader's ousting.

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Of course, as Corbyn has shown, MPs have every right to follow their principles, even against the leadership and the apparent will of the party's membership, even if those principles can basically be summed up as "I want to have a lot of money". But there's something grimly hilarious about the Second World War metaphor they're using: chinless, gutless career politicians with names like Percy comparing themselves to the heroes of the French Resistance, when just about the only major Labour figure you could be certain would have joined the partisans in 1941 is none other than Jeremy Corbyn.

But who are these reluctant rebels, these remnants of the defeated ruling classes frothing with anticipation at a new White Terror? If Corbyn were to instruct his new version of the Cheka to put together a list of wreckers and enemies, it might include names like these.

Simon Danczuk

You might remember Simon Danczuk as the MP who posted photos of his ex-wife on Twitter with the caption "Fav if #tacky RT if #classy". The man is essentially an idiot, with a big potatoey head and the gasping, witless, prognathic face of a salmon that's swum upsteam at the wrong time of year, and is now gently flapping itself to death in an empty pond. In an interview on LBC radio, Danczuk declared that the plot to overthrow Corbyn would begin on "day one". Most of his interventions so far have been the political equivalent of painting "Anti-Corbyn Cabal – No Jeremys Club" on his treehouse, and patiently sitting cross-legged inside while he waits for everyone else to turn up. In the Game of Thrones world of Labour party political intrigue, Danczuk is one of the horses, or possibly a rock.

Danger level: He's not doing any favours to the people of Rochdale, who he supposedly represents. But anyone who could be overthrown by Simon Danczuk probably deserves it.

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Chuka (Screengrab via)

Chuka Umunna

Umunna's withdrawal from the leadership election, three days after he entered, was the first big surprise of the contest. This might have been linked to the discovery of his profile on ASmallWorld – a social network for millionaires, power-brokers, and other ghastly lumps of squandered flesh – on which he complained that clubs in Kensington offer gratingly few opportunities for a "trash-free decent night". The Daily Mail fumed that he had 'brand[ed] the public C-list celebrities' – which, given that most of us aren't celebrities at all, might say more about the wounded self-regard of Mail journalists than their willingness to stand up for the great unwashed of Britain.

Read: Leaving My Friend Rasool Behind and Why He Must Be Freed from Turkish Prison

Even so, Umunna is young, smart, and not entirely visually unpleasant, even if he does look a bit like an egg with ears. His Wikipedia page even referred to him as the "British Barack Obama" (although, admittedly, that line was added by an IP address coming from his old law firm). His ideology is, in the parlance of people who haven't spoken to a real person for three decades, "modern and forward-looking": pro-business, pro-profits, and, more than anything, pro-Chuka Umunna. He's pledged to support whoever becomes leader, and has made a plea for party unity, which is all the proof you need that he's up to something backhanded. It's very possible that he's biding his time, waiting for the rest of the party to exhaust itself in internecine slap-fights until he can swoop in and claim the leadership for himself.

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Danger level: For a long time Umunna was the heir apparent to the vampire order that's built a nest for itself within the party; his backers have long arms, deep pockets, and no eyelids. If he takes over, the whole country will become as sleek and clean and lifeless as an investment bank's logo. Stock up on garlic.

David Miliband (Photo via the World Economic Forum)

David Miliband

Last month, the Independent on Sunday ran a poll to see how a 2020 election might turn out for the four Labour contenders – and David Miliband. This is despite the fact that Miliband isn't running for the leadership, isn't an MP, and doesn't even live in the country any more. Instead, he's in America, making £300,000 a year (plus other undisclosed bonuses and expenses) as the CEO of the International Rescue Committee, a charity that is trying its level best to come off as a front group for the illuminati: its board of directors includes people from Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, and there used to be a representative for something called "Lizard Investors LLC". The lizards are gone but probably maintain some kind of interest in the charity. It has also been accused of getting itself tangled up in intelligence circles over the years.

While his brother could never escape being a nerd, David Miliband has, since a maladroit incident with a banana, turned himself into a cold and ruthless machine, with silicone skin and titanium bones. He's not an empty suit, as he's sometimes been described. He's emptiness itself. He is the Void, howling and all-consuming.

For the Labour right, he's not just the Leader That Never Was; he's almost become a kind of Christ-figure. His political career died for our sins (or those of the unions, whatever), but they believe, with hair-pulling, self-flagellating intensity, in his Second Coming. But given the vast fortune this son of a Marxist theorist has managed to build for himself, it's very unlikely that he'd be persuaded to come back for anything other than the Prime Ministership. A quick by-election to put him back in Westminster, in a constituency he'll never visit again, and then to Downing Street. But David Miliband knows that power isn't something that happens in parliaments and palaces. Power is the feeling when you tighten your hands around someone's throat and see the light go off in their eyes. Power is the power to cause suffering, not for any reason, but because that's what one does.

Danger: You should fear David Miliband. But fearing him will not save you.

@sam_kriss