Today, Labour MPs passed a motion of no confidence on Jeremy Corbyn, the party leader, by 172-40. This is the culmination of nine months of constant attacks against Corbyn by Labour MPs and the media. The immediate trigger for this move was the vote to leave the EU taken in last week's referendum. Consequently, a second leadership election will take place by September. Corbyn is likely to win again.

After Britain voted to leave the EU, David Cameron resigned from his position as Prime Minister. So anyone using rational thinking would have assumed that the Labour Party would have escalated their fight to defend workers' rights against the austerity measures imposed by the Conservative government during negotiations over the country's withdrawal from the EU. But rationality is in short supply in British politics today. Instead, members of Labour's shadow cabinet – led by Hillary Benn – used the defeat of the Remain campaign to launch a long-planned coup against the Labour leader.

It was only last September that Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the party, taking 59.5 percent of the votes by Labour members and supporters. This was a crushing victory over the legacy of Tony Blair. However, when Corbyn won, most Labour Party MPs were horrified. They saw Corbyn as an enemy to be removed at the earliest opportunity. Indeed, not a day went by in which Corbyn's opponents inside the parliamentary party did not publicly attack him in the media. Any and every pretext was used. This insipid campaign was openly encouraged by media outlets, which sought to portray Corbyn as unelectable and out of touch with the real world. The real reason for their hatred is that they are hostile to socialism, which they think is impossible and undesirable.

Corbyn believes that socialism is about bringing people together to fight for social justice and the rights of the majority. He believes the Labour Party lost its way and seeks to return the party to its roots. The Labour Party membership stands by Jeremy Corbyn. But in parliament, 80% of Labour MPs are opposed to Corbyn. Now they are trying to unseat him and usurp control of the party from the members.

Bizarrely, the conspirators are claiming that Jeremy Corbyn did not campaign energetically enough for the EU Remain campaign. True, Corbyn refused to share a platform with David Cameron during the campaign and he refused to give a carte blanche endorsement of the EU. Instead, he argued that freedom of movement, workers' rights and paid maternity leave are positive, and that similar progressive laws and regulation should be protected and built upon. This would require radical reform of the EU. Corbyn did not lie – he honestly set out the problems and benefits of EU membership.

In the end, 63 percent of Labour voters voted to remain in the EU, whereas 58 percent of Conservatives voted to leave. Perhaps more significantly, a You Gov poll showed that politicians swayed only 7 percent of voters in the referendum. The coup plotters who moved against Corbyn claimed that he had lost the EU referendum. This is risible. Evidently, the coup plotters were so excited by the arrival of day X (when they would unleash their coup) that they either did not bother to check the facts or assumed no one else would.

In fact, Corbyn's balanced assessment and his measured support for the EU turned out to be far more in tune with the popular mood than the melodramatic speeches of blindly supportive Remain campaigners.

At a mass demonstration outside parliament on Monday, Corbyn called on his supporters to stand firm and defiantly declared that he would stand in any new leadership contest. The MPs hostile to Corbyn are trying to find a candidate to defeat him. But this will not be easy. All the evidence indicates that Corbyn continues to command mass support amongst party members.

So these Labour MPs might try to form a new party by just declaring one in parliament. However, the Trade Unions are the party's main financiers, and for now they continue to back Corbyn. So, some sort of post-referendum realignment of the parliamentary spectrum may occur, in which many Labour, Liberal and Conservative MPs come together to form a new party or coalition. This was vainly attempted in the 1980s. If Corbyn wins he will certainly introduce changes to the rules to allow sitting MPs to be deselected so that party members can remove those they don't approve of.

To paraphrase the words of a famous poem by Bertolt Brecht:

"If 172 Labour MPs have no confidence in the leader chosen by 250,000 party members, why don't they just abolish the membership and select another?"

Heiko Khoo is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/heikokhoo.htm

Opinion article reflected the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

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