‘Tis but a scratch! Just a flesh wound! Come back and I’ll bite your legs off!” They’re not quite Jeremy Corbyn’s words – they’re actually from the Black Knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail, who despite losing both arms and legs in a swordfight still dementedly refuses to accept he’s lost. But that seems to be roughly the game plan.
Two-thirds of the Labour frontbench has resigned in two days, and now 81% of his MPs profess zero confidence in their leader. Yet still the Black Knight staggers defiantly on. No surrender, no compromise. You have to admire the granite-hewn stubbornness, the heroic refusal even to consider whether he has become the problem, not the solution. Labour now faces an existential crisis – a possible snap general election it’s nowhere near ready to fight, Ukip pillaging its heartlands, huge economic and constitutional questions flowing from Brexit to which it has no answer. The guy with no previous frontbench experience before September, however, ploughs on.
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