Corbyn, of course, has not resigned. A leadership challenge will unquestionably therefore be mounted, according to Kinnock – and as the last Labour leader to have faced such a challenge, he has a lot to say about the rules. That it was Corbyn and some of his current team who led Tony Benn’s 1988 leadership challenge against Kinnock is an irony upon which he does not dwell, perhaps for fear of looking motivated by bad blood. The point, he says, is that Corbyn and his team are now trying to break the party’s own rules.
The rule book clearly states, he insists, that in order to be a candidate, Corbyn would be obliged to secure the support of 20% of the PLP. Corbyn’s team insist that as the incumbent, his name would automatically go on to the ballot paper. If that were true, argues Kinnock, why did he himself have to secure nominations when challenged by Benn? And why did Corbyn’s own supporters call for a change to the rule in March, when they acknowledged that: “The current Labour party rules do not clearly spell out that an incumbent leader is automatically on the ballot paper for leader in the event of a challenger securing the requisite nominations”?