“There is no magic money tree” say the people who think there's a magic housing tree, health, education and police trees

OUR RELATED STORIES:

£100bn a year is missing from our high streets thanks to 50 years of pay squeezes

Why does everyone say inequality is falling, when it's rising? Because they're only counting incomes, not all wealth (property, pensions, etc.)

The NHS is not a “cost”. It creates nationwide jobs, technology, growth and wealth. Oh, and health

FTSE bosses take 2.5 days to earn what you earn all year. Data shows they don't deserve it

All governments agree to fix the housing crisis. Latest figures show we're still not even trying

Recovery? What recovery?! Bank of England director explains why broke Britain is still broken

Brexit was about inequality in Britain, not immigration. Have our politicians realised this?

See the Stats: Osborne's 2016 budget protected the wealthiest while the most vulnerable suffer

Inequality: the UK has 9 of the 10 poorest regions in Northern Europe. But Inner London is the richest

Graphs at a glance: With highest pay and highest job growth is London sucking the life out of Britain?

Londoners earn 15% more 'cos London is damn expensive! But the poorest 5th in London are paid only 4% more

Graphs at a glance: Britain is already a low-pay economy with falling average wages

Is your Cost of Living crisis over?! Average wages are still back where they were 10 years ago

Election 2020: since 1997 the percentage of those under 55 who don't vote has doubled

Don't be fooled: the top 1% are paying more income tax? Because their income has doubled since 1995 while the bottom 90%'s has stagnated

Read More

The big question: who was behind the NHS malware?

Fee and KJ hazard a guess...

SOURCE PUBLIC SECTOR EXECUTIVE: Lib Dems join Labour in pledge to scrap 1% public sector pay cap

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron has pledged to put an end to the government’s 1% public sector pay cap and uprate wages in line with inflation, a commitment that is in line with Labour’s pledges according to its leaked manifesto. Farron, who accused the Conservatives of treating health workers “like dirt” at yesterday’s Royal College of Nursing (RCN) annual conference, said nurses and teachers could be £780 better off by 2021 as part of his party’s plans. Conversely, it is estimated that a new nurse would be around £530 worse off by then under current Tory plans, while a primary school teacher would lose out on £550 and an army sergeant £830, according to Lib Dem analysis. The party’s leader also said that the controversial pay cap, branded by many unions as a “cruel” policy, would leave the average civil servant £800 worse off by 2021. Vince Cable, Lib Dem shadow chancellor and the former business secretary, said: “Public sector workers are facing a double blow at the hands of this Conservative government, with years of pitiful increases to pay combined with a Brexit squeeze caused by soaring inflation. “Our NHS and schools are already struggling to recruit the staff they need. "Living standards are falling, prices are rising and nurses are going to food banks – but Theresa May doesn’t care.” Just last week, a leading trade union claimed the cap policy will cost the UK economy around £16bn in lost wages by the end of the decade. Analysis by the GMB also predicted that between 2017 and 2020, five million workers in the public sector will find themselves out of pocket by around £3,300 each. As expected, the cap has been an extremely controversial policy since its inception, and is now threatening to drive the nursing workforce to its first-ever strike in the RCN’s 100-year history.

OUR RELATED STORIES:

£100bn a year is missing from our high streets thanks to 50 years of pay squeezes. See the stats

Hoping for a Brexit U-turn? Then let's U-turn inequality. Except Hammond’s budget is making it worse

Why does everyone say inequality is falling when it's rising? Measure all wealth/assets, not just incomes

The NHS is not a “cost”. It creates nationwide jobs, technology, growth and wealth. Oh, and health

FTSE bosses take 2.5 days to earn what you earn all year. Data shows they don't deserve it

All governments agree to fix the housing crisis. Latest figures show we're still not even trying

Recovery? What recovery?! Bank of England director explains why broke Britain is still broken

Brexit was about inequality in Britain, not immigration. Have our politicians realised this?

See the Stats: Osborne's 2016 budget protected the wealthiest while the most vulnerable suffer

Inequality: the UK has 9 of the 10 poorest regions in Northern Europe. But Inner London is the richest

Graphs at a glance: With highest pay and highest job growth is London sucking the life out of Britain?

Londoners earn 15% more 'cos London is damn expensive! But the poorest 5th in London are paid only 4% more

Graphs at a glance: Britain is already a low-pay economy with falling average wages

Is your Cost of Living crisis over?! Average wages are still back where they were 10 years ago

Election 2020: since 1997 the percentage of those under 55 who don't vote has doubled

Don't be fooled: the top 1% are paying more income tax? Because their income has doubled since 1995 while the bottom 90%'s has stagnated

Read More

£100bn a year is missing from our high streets thanks to 50 years of pay squeezes

A pound’s worth of product is not worth a pound when you’ve made it. It’s worth a pound when someone has bought it. That’s why Britain needs a pay rise.

There’s no rise in UK sales without a rise in UK incomes. That’s why we’ve not had a recovery. Only a recovery in credit card debt!

Whichever party understands that, vote for them.

Wages have flatlined since July 2005, says the Office for National Statistics. But it’s worse than that. Notoriously, the Average Weekly Earnings (AWE) data never include the earnings of the self employed, which have been getting worse, so that means there has been an overall decline.

SOURCE Office for National Statistics

If you’ve been one of the lucky ones who have seen his/her earnings increase, you have a counterpart who saw the opposite. As the graph tells us, the more you earned the more someone else didn’t. So if you’re trying to sell them something, you’re in trouble too.

Those people earning less: are they all lazy and stupid? Nigh on half the workforce?!

A balance must be struck between earnings rising too fast (businesses and their customers can’t afford it. So the business goes bust) and too slow or not at all (businesses can fill their shelves, but nobody can afford to buy the damn stuff. So the business goes bust). That balance has been lost since the 1970s. For too long wages, as a percentage of the nation’s GDP, have been falling.

 

That 10% drop in the UK’s wages bill, compared to 50 years ago, equates to around £100bn a year in spending being taken off our high streets.

Now take a look at the list of sectors where wages are falling. If your business depends on selling to people working in those sectors, you’d better pray they get a pay rise.

SOURCE: Resolution Foundation

Yes, I said pray. Because businesses, in competition, find it genuinely difficult to coordinate a pay rise lest someone breaks ranks and win-wins by keeping pay down while selling to those who got the rise. That’s why unions do us all a favour, by coordinating that pay rise. Government too, by legislating that rise.

The Resolution Foundation, digging into Office for National Statistics data on wages, says around 40 per cent of the workforce are in sectors where pay is falling in real terms.

This is despite another “good performance” on jobs, with fast growth in hours worked, employment remaining at a record high and unemployment falling by 45,000. Although, notoriously again, the official employment data says anyone who has worked a measly one hour a week is “employed”. One hour! What a job that must be!

We’re wasting our time if jobs are being created, but incomes aren’t rising. We’re driving with the hand brake on.

“But having a job matters more than having a pay rise!” says the tub thumping right, who see low pay as a way of creating jobs. These are the same people who say “Those Commies, they think full employment matters more than growing the economy.” They’re asking for the same thing as the Commies now. Beautiful! Someone should tell them that if wages don’t rise, economies simply don’t grow *.

 

* ...except, of course, through immigration. More people, more GDP. Simples. No wonder neither New Labour nor the Tories cut immigration. Immigration is not the cause of our problems **, it’s the only thing that’s making our economy look as though it has a future.

** Do you seriously think if the population had risen through more British babies instead of immigrants, those past governments would have built the 250,000 houses a year we need, increased spending on the NHS and schools to shorten those queues, and raised those wages?

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Hoping for a Brexit U-turn? Then let's U-turn inequality. Except Hammond’s budget is making it worse.

Almost four decades of widening inequality caused Brexit. Who seriously thinks we’d have voted Brexit if low-end wages had risen in line with growing national wealth? If low income workers had been saving, rather than borrowing or going without? Instead, since 1979, the Tories increased inequality. Worse, Labour failed to reverse it. In fact, it crept up further. Immigration and the EU is getting the blame for that poverty. But neither caused it.

Source: Institute for Fiscal Studies http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/4637
NOTE: The “Gini coefficient” is an internationally used measure of inequality, where zero corresponds with perfect equality (where everyone has the same income) and 1 corresponds with perfect inequality (where one person has all the income, and everyone else has zero income).

Inequality so what? It means we’ve become a nation of borrowers. Since the 1980s the bottom 50% have actually had to borrow money to cover their living costs. As the graph shows, the poorer you are, the more you had to borrow. And before you shout “If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it!” where do you think that huge chunk of the nation’s high street spending is going to come from, that’s paying your wages?! The "Savings Ratio" in the graph shows what percentage of income different groups (the poorest to the richest) save. A negative Savings Ratio means they are borrowing. 

SOURCE: Resolution Foundation report "Gaining from growth: The final report of the Commission on Living Standards"

So, anyone hoping that Brexit voters will change their mind before the EU plug is pulled must therefore pray that inequality gets better. But Chancellor Philip Hammond’s budget is about to make it worse.

Here’s a graph of how incomes changed in the first four years of the “cataclysmically awful” bank bust (2007/8 to 2011/12), overlaid with how incomes will change thanks to Hammond’s budget (2016/17 to 2021/22).
SOURCE: Resolution Foundation report: “Are we nearly there yet? Spring Budget 2017 and the 15 year squeeze on family and public finances”

The lines show household net income growth (i.e. after including tax and benefits, and housing costs) for all working-age households. The poorest are on the left, the richest on the right. The bank-bust brown line shows everyone’s growth was negative, but the poorest suffered least and the super-rich most. Hammond’s blue line shows the poorest will suffer more than anyone has since 2007/8, while incomes will actually grow for the top 50%, the richer the better.

The graph comes from a report by the Resolution Foundation, who said: “the final four years of the current parliament look like being worse for poorer households than the financial crisis period itself.”

And before you accuse the Resolution Foundation of being too lefty, its boss is David Willetts, the Tory peer and former cabinet minister.

Someone needs to tell Hammond that a recovery needs people to spend money. But Hammond’s plan is to give more money to people who will save it, and less to people who would spend it. It’s not going to work. Duh!

What of UK average earnings as a whole? Overall, has the UK got a pay rise yet, since the bank bust? Paul Johnson is the boss of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The IFS is one of the few research bodies that politicians don’t argue with, such is the robustness of their work. He said: “On current forecasts average earnings will be no higher in 2022 than they were in 2007. Fifteen years without a pay rise. I’m rather lost for superlatives. This is completely unprecedented.”

Unprecedented. The never-ending stagnation has forced commentators to dive deeper and deeper into their tattered history books as every year passes. Yup, this has been the worst recovery for wages since... Napoleonic times!

SOURCE: Resolution Foundation report: “Are we nearly there yet? Spring Budget 2017 and the 15 year squeeze on family and public finances”

The Resolution Foundation report confirms it: “we are on course for average pay across the decade to 2020 to be lower than the average for the decade before. That would represent the worst decade for real earnings growth in 210 years.”

“But Brexit is not simply about inequality and wages. Get real! Plenty of Brexiters just don’t like immigration and the EU.” Sure, but there aren’t nearly enough of them to win a referendum on their own.

Both Theresa May and Philip Hammond voted Remain. Now they are the PM and Chancellor of Brexit Britain. What are they doing to prove their Brexit credentials? By deepening inequality, they ensure the fervour for Brexit never goes away. I guess that’s kind of pro-Brexit.

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"Austerity” cuts to tax credits/benefits have hit women hardest: £79bn against £13bn for men

Fee and Chris wonder whether a female PM's chancellor will do better...

SOURCE GUARDIAN: Women bearing 86% of austerity burden, Commons figures reveal

Labour has urged the Conservatives to carry out a gender audit of its tax and spending policies, as the shadow equalities minister, Sarah Champion, published analysis showing that 86% of the burden of austerity since 2010 has fallen on women. Champion said research carried out by the House of Commons library revealed that women were paying a “disproportionate” price for balancing the government’s books. The analysis is based on tax and benefit changes since 2010, with the losses apportioned to whichever individual within a household receives the payments. In total, the analysis estimates that the cuts will have cost women a total of £79bn since 2010, against £13bn for men. It shows that, by 2020, men will have borne just 14% of the total burden of welfare cuts, compared with 86% for women. Many of the cuts announced in earlier years by former chancellor George Osborne, including a four-year freeze on many in-work benefits and reductions in the universal credit, are yet to bite. Hammond has loosened Osborne’s fiscal rules, but he will press ahead with most of the pre-planned austerity measures – though the tax credits rebellion forced the government to promise not to look for fresh savings from the welfare bill in future years. Mary-Ann Stephenson, co-director of the Women’s Budget Group lobby group, condemned the Tories in light of the new research. She said: “The chancellor’s decision to continue with the decisions of his predecessor to cut social security for these low income families, at the same time as cutting taxes, is effectively a transfer from the purses of poorer women into the wallets of richer men.” The government publishes an analysis of the differential impact of its policies at different points on the income scale, but does not carry out a gender analysis.

OUR RELATED STORIES:

Why does everyone say inequality is falling, when it's rising? Because they're only counting incomes, not all wealth (property, pensions, etc.)

The NHS is not a “cost”. It creates nationwide jobs, technology, growth and wealth. Oh, and health

FTSE bosses take 2.5 days to earn what you earn all year. Data shows they don't deserve it

All governments agree to fix the housing crisis. Latest figures show we're still not even trying

Recovery? What recovery?! Bank of England director explains why broke Britain is still broken

Brexit was about inequality in Britain, not immigration. Have our politicians realised this?

See the Stats: Osborne's 2016 budget protected the wealthiest while the most vulnerable suffer

Inequality: the UK has 9 of the 10 poorest regions in Northern Europe. But Inner London is the richest

Graphs at a glance: With highest pay and highest job growth is London sucking the life out of Britain?

Londoners earn 15% more 'cos London is damn expensive! But the poorest 5th in London are paid only 4% more

Graphs at a glance: Britain is already a low-pay economy with falling average wages

Is your Cost of Living crisis over?! Average wages are still back where they were 10 years ago

Election 2020: since 1997 the percentage of those under 55 who don't vote has doubled

Don't be fooled: the top 1% are paying more income tax? Because their income has doubled since 1995 while the bottom 90%'s has stagnated

Read More

Grammar schools are asking parents for donations to cover funding cuts

Fee and KJ identify our last remaining hope for social mobility...

SOURCE GUARDIAN: Grammar schools ask parents for donations to cover funding cuts

The government’s plans for a revised “fair funding” formula would mean most grammar schools were worse off as a result of the changes proposed by the education secretary, Justine Greening – at a time when the government is banking on grammar school expansion as a key domestic policy aim. The Grammar School Heads’ Association said more than 100 of the existing 163 grammar schools in England would be worse off as a result of the proposals, with more than 60 suffering deep cuts in annual budgets. The new “fair funding” formula unveiled by Greening at the end of last year would impose cuts on schools in mainly urban and suburban areas, and redistribute funding to more rural regions that have received considerably lower per pupil funding for many years. However, the policy failed to inject any new funds into the school system, meaning that thousands of schools in England with frozen budgets will be further disadvantaged. Grammar schools, which select by academic ability at the age of 11, are worse off than many state schools because of their failure to admit disadvantaged pupils eligible for additional government funding of more than £900 each a year. Altrincham Grammar School for Boys has just 26 students receiving pupil premium funding out of 1,250 students enrolled, or just 2% overall. Schools in England are not allowed to charge pupils for teaching, attending or applying to join a school. But they are allowed to approach parents for donations and to charge for additional activities such as trips. While some grammar schools already ask parents for regular donations, Tim Gartside, the headteacher of Altrincham Grammar School for Boys in Trafford, said his school was considering asking parents for donations of £30 to £40 a month if the new formula goes ahead. Parents of pupils at Latymer school, a grammar school in north London, were told last year that a “very significant financial shortfall” could force it to cut staff, increase class sizes and offer fewer subjects at GCSE and A-level. A letter from the school’s headteacher and governors asked for donations of £30 to £50 a month, and told parents such contributions were “considerably less than the average fees of an independent school”. Other grammar schools known to have asked parents for donations include Southend High School and Ilkley Grammar School.

OUR RELATED STORIES:

Official stats show Free Schools are no better, but they are cheaper to "build" from ex-office space!

Government spending on education, health and other services are being cut to pre-1948 levels

School class sizes in England are among the largest in the OECD

The NHS is not a “cost”. It creates nationwide jobs, technology, growth and wealth. Oh, and health

FTSE bosses take 2.5 days to earn what you earn all year. Data shows they don't deserve it

All governments agree to fix the housing crisis. Latest figures show we're still not even trying

Recovery? What recovery?! Bank of England director explains why broke Britain is still broken

Brexit was about inequality in Britain, not immigration. Have our politicians realised this?

See the Stats: Osborne's 2016 budget protected the wealthiest while the most vulnerable suffer

Inequality: the UK has 9 of the 10 poorest regions in Northern Europe. But Inner London is the richest

Graphs at a glance: With highest pay and highest job growth is London sucking the life out of Britain?

Londoners earn 15% more 'cos London is damn expensive! But the poorest 5th in London are paid only 4% more

Graphs at a glance: Britain is already a low-pay economy with falling average wages

Is your Cost of Living crisis over?! Average wages are still back where they were 10 years ago

Election 2020: since 1997 the percentage of those under 55 who don't vote has doubled

Don't be fooled: the top 1% are paying more income tax? Because their income has doubled since 1995 while the bottom 90%'s has stagnated

Read More

The NHS is not a “cost”. It creates nationwide jobs, technology, growth and wealth. Oh, and health

Where are the jobs and economic growth of tomorrow going to come from? One dead cert is healthcare. So it completely mystifies me that the NHS is always described as a “cost”, whereas increased spending on anything from cars (£71.6bn, up 3%) and games (£4.2bn, up 5%) to soft drinks (£14bn, up 2.7%) and pet products (£4.6bn, up 3%) is celebrated and can win someone a knighthood.

The champions of an economy are the sectors that use high skills, and technological innovation. They are the ones that deliver better products, services, results and overall living standards than they did the year before.

And we’ll always need low and medium skilled jobs. Not just because such jobs support the cutting edge activities, but because getting any product or service out of the door and onto the high street needs skills at every level.

Uniquely, our health industry does it all. From trolley pushers to brain surgeons. From brooms and paperclips to MRI scanners and precision surgical knives.

Healthcare creates jobs from top to bottom within the NHS, and for all the businesses that stock and service the NHS. And on top of all that, uniquely, it does it across the country in every region, rich and poor.

So why are we cutting the NHS? Spending as a percentage of GDP is dropping. Previous governments raised it, recognising it's value in terms of health and wealth.

Tory spending per head has flatlined. This is happening while the population is ageing overall, and modern treatments are better yet more expensive.

That’s the core NHS budget. But total health spending in England (which includes things like public health, education and training) is set to fall by almost £5bn over this parliament.

“We can’t afford it!” Why? What were you planning to spend your money on? What makes you think if we spend less on healthcare, we’ll spend it on technology, engineering and other pro-growth sectors in the UK? Give me a tax cut and won’t I spend it on Ubers and coffee, or an imported car that gives one job to a UK car salesman whose skills – polishing a windscreen with his cuff while you sign on the dotted line – haven’t changed since the invention of the car salesman. Our “dazzling” employment figures are holding up overwhelmingly because of the creation of low-skilled, self-employed and zero-hour jobs. As far as UK Plc is concerned, they are dead end jobs.

“We’re cutting NHS fat, not the muscle. They’re efficiency savings.” Show me a report that says the NHS is less efficient than somewhere else. They’re not easy to find. The NHS comes top of most tables. Where it’s beaten (healthy lives: mortality amenable to medical care, infant mortality, and healthy life expectancy at age 60) it’s beaten by countries that simply spend more.

[SOURCE: The Commonwealth Fund]

So what’s the difference between spending extra billions via taxes on the NHS, and keeping that money in our pockets so that we can spend it on whatever we like? Big, if you want a modern economy of the top rank (errr... and “universal healthcare free at the point of delivery for all,” you soppy twit). But if you’re offended that someone else (the state) is deciding how your damn money is spent, then you’ll see no difference. Fine, but please take your hands off the nation’s steering wheel, for all our sakes.

Yes, I get it. The right wing ideologues don’t object to spending billions more on the health sector. It’s a sector, and it’s growing, for heaven’s sake! They object to the fact that it’s overwhelmingly publicly owned, and they cannot make profits from it.

Never forget, in the USA where healthcare is the most privatised, health costs leave citizens with less money in their pockets while delivering worse results: $8,233 per capita in the US compared to our $3,268. That's almost £4,000 more spent on healthcare per person, and not on other parts of the economy. It's why the makers and sellers of cars, games, soft drinks and pet products should be the first on the barricades to defend the NHS.

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Will Theresa May keep her promises on her "Shared Society"

KJ and Fee celebrate Theresa May's Tory u-turn, for the moment...

SOURCE The shared society: Prime Minister's speech at the Charity Commission annual meeting

For we know what happens when mainstream, centre-ground politics fails. People embrace the fringe – the politics of division and despair. They turn to those who offer easy answers – who claim to understand people’s problems and always know what – and who – to blame. We see those fringe voices gaining prominence in some countries across Europe today – voices from the hard-left and the far-right stepping forward and sensing that this is their time. But they stand on the shoulders of mainstream politicians who have allowed unfairness and division to grow by ignoring the legitimate concerns of ordinary people for too long. Politicians who embraced the twin pillars of liberalism and globalisation as the great forces for good that they are, but failed to understand that for too many people – particularly those on modest to low incomes living in rich countries like our own – those forces are something to be concerned, not thrilled, about. Politicians who supported and promoted an economic system that works well for a privileged few, but failed to ensure that the prosperity generated by free markets and free trade is shared by everyone, in every corner and community of their land.

SOURCE Prime Minister unveils plans to transform mental health support

The plans aim to make mental health an everyday concern for every bit of the system, helping ensure that no one affected by mental ill-health goes unattended. It includes... new ways to right the injustices people with mental health problems face. Despite known links between debt and mental health, currently hundreds of mental health patients are charged up to £300 by their GP for a form to prove they have mental health issues.

OUR RELATED STORIES:

FTSE bosses take 2.5 days to earn what you earn all year. Data shows they don't deserve it

All governments agree to fix the housing crisis. Latest figures show we're still not even trying

Recovery? What recovery?! Bank of England director explains why broke Britain is still broken

Brexit was about inequality in Britain, not immigration. Have our politicians realised this?

See the Stats: Osborne's 2016 budget protected the wealthiest while the most vulnerable suffer

Inequality: the UK has 9 of the 10 poorest regions in Northern Europe. But Inner London is the richest

Graphs at a glance: With highest pay and highest job growth is London sucking the life out of Britain?

Londoners earn 15% more 'cos London is damn expensive! But the poorest 5th in London are paid only 4% more

Graphs at a glance: Britain is already a low-pay economy with falling average wages

Is your Cost of Living crisis over?! Average wages are still back where they were 10 years ago

Election 2020: since 1997 the percentage of those under 55 who don't vote has doubled

Don't be fooled: the top 1% are paying more income tax? Because their income has doubled since 1995 while the bottom 90%'s has stagnated

Read More

The Labour Party can survive rebellious MPs. But without its ordinary party members the Labour Party is toast.

Superman?

Labour MPs slipping into their underwear to “rescue” the Labour Party by defenestrating Jeremy Corbyn should beware. They should take heed of the precipitous scene in the 1978 Superman movie, as well as the precipitous destruction of the Liberal Democrat Party in 2015.

As in the Superman (1978) Movie: Labour Party falls from a skyscraper to be caught by SuperLabourMP,

SuperLabourMP: “I’ve got you”
Labour Party: “You’ve got me? Whose got you??”
 


Labour MPs' plotting to subvert the will of ordinary party members who chose Corbyn forget that without the support of those ordinary party members the MPs don't amount to a hill of beans. Labour MPs forget they owe their jobs to their party and its members, and not to their own talents. A survey by the Hansard Society in 2013 found more than three quarters of people didn't even know the name of their own MP. Over a single decade the number who knew even their MP's name dropped from 42% to 22%, such is the irrelevance of the individual MP.

Am I being unfair? Could it be our MPs, like Spiderman and Catwoman, deliberately seek anonymity? So they can go unmolested into their local nailbar for a soothing scrub?

 
Or is it just that most people simply don't care who their MPs individually are? They just vote for the Party because the Party has their support regardless of the person who takes the seat. And when the Party loses their support it will hit the ground with an almighty CRASH! Rather like the Liberal Democrats did in 2015.

Liberal Democrat supporters brutally punished the LibDem parliamentary party for what they regarded as treachery supporting Tory policies during the 2010-15 coalition government.  

Labour Party supporters too will punish their Party for the MPs' treachery. Specifically the party supporters motivated enough to fill envelopes and schlep around canvassing during elections will be motivated enough to stop. 


Angela Eagle MP seemed to have worked this out. Having been persuaded by more timorous colleagues to be the Forlorn Hope standing against Corbyn, within days she postponed her declaration. Perhaps persuaded by rumblings of discontent from her own constituency party, expressed not least in a "Hello Angela" letter to her:

“Hello Angela

At the CLP [Constituency Labour Party] AGM on Friday 24th June 2016, delegates asked me to write to you to ask you to reject the motion of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn. The meeting was overwhelmingly behind Jeremy continuing as Labour leader. Your appearance on TV during the post referendum programme was mentioned. Your response in putting the question of his leadership aside to deal with the issues was welcomed. The idea that the Labour Party would rather miss the chance to capitalise on the splits in the Tory party by in fighting was not acceptable to members.
On behalf of the constituency I would ask you to make a clear public statement of support for him.

Regards

Kathy Miller & Kathy Runswick
Secretary & Chair Wallasey CLP”

Labour MPs believe the Labour Party's primary purpose is to keep them in a job. They are mistaken. The Labour Parliamentary Party's primary purpose is actually not even to be in Government. The Labour Party's primary purpose is to represent its supporters, whether from the Government or from the Opposition. Ideally by being in government. The same goes for the Conservative and any other party.

Having a Labour Party in Government that does not represent its supporters is the worst of both worlds. With an un-Labour Government and a Tory Opposition, Labour Party supporters are effectively cast adrift.

In fact both Labour and Tory parties have been casting off their supporters over the last 30 years. The British Social Attitudes Survey of 2013 showed both Tories and Labour losing swathes of their traditional supporters. As both parliamentary parties moved to the Right, supporters seemed to have been pushed from Tory and from Labour to None:
 
 
 

The disconnection with traditional supporters is reflected in the takeover of political parties in Parliament by career politicians as shown in a report in 2013 by Parliament's "House of Commons Library". Parties taken over by career politicians who use their parties to support their careers.

A political party's primary purpose is not to keep a few hundred anonymous individuals in comfortable Westminster jobs. 

It is to select people who will represent each party's supporters.

If Labour MPs don't understand this, then they should be replaced. Just as if Tory MPs didn't represent the comfortably off, not just the exceedingly flush, they too should be replaced.
 
Treachery always has unintended consequences. Gove didn't shank Johnson in pursuit of female emancipation. And yet the consequence of his act will likely be the second female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

The Labour MPs' coup wasn't intended to strengthen Jeremy Corbyn, and yet it left him immeasurably stronger. Their rebellion made Corbyn the KingMaker, who can hand the Labour crown that he never wanted to whomever he chooses. The next Labour Leader should be beating a path to Mr.Corbyn's office bearing his CV. The job is in Corbyn's gift.

Perhaps this is Corbyn's destiny:
Step1: Block a new New Labour leader in 2015.
Step2: Anoint a new Labour leader in 2016.
Thereby Corbyn rescues the Labour Party:

Corbyn: “I’ve got you”
Labour Party: “You’ve got me? Whose got you??”
Corbyn: "The party membership! ;)"

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