Again assuming Labour would perform badly, senior staff drew up plans to stage yet another leadership challenge immediately after the election. Hoping to improve their odds, they proposed that an electoral college replace the one-member, one-vote system to ensure no leftwing candidates could win.
These same staff had boasted of "political fixing" and interfering in constituency parties to ensure Blairites were selected as parliamentary candidates, rather than those sympathetic to Corbyn.
It was already well known that Labour was beset by factionalism at head office. At the time, some observers even referred to "Blue Labour" and "Red Labour" with the implication that the "blue" faction were really closet Tories. Few probably understood how close to the truth such remarks were.
'Sick' over positive pollsThe dossier reveals that the Blairites in charge of the party machine continued undermining Corbyn, even as it became clear they were wrong and that he could win the 2017 election.
According to the report, correspondence between senior staff including Labour's then-general secretary, Iain McNicol show there was no let-up in efforts to subvert Corbyn's campaign, even as the electoral tide turned in his favour.
Rather than celebrating the fact that the electorate appeared to be warming to Corbyn when he finally had a chance to get his message out during the short period when the broadcast media were forced to provide more balance Labour officials frantically sent messages to each other hoping he would still lose.
When a poll showed the party surging, one official commented to a colleague: "I actually felt quite sick when I saw that YouGov poll last night." The colleague replied that "with a bit of luck" there would soon be "a clear polling decline".
Excitedly, senior staff cited any outlier poll that suggested support for Corbyn was dropping. And they derided party figures, including shadow cabinet ministers such as Emily Thornberry, who offered anything more than formulaic support to Corbyn during the campaign.
'Doing nothing' during electionBut this was not just sniping from the sidelines. Top staff actively worked to sabotage the campaign.
Party bosses set up a secret operation the "key seats team" in one of Labour's offices, from which, according to the report, "a parallel general election campaign was run to support MPs associated with the right wing of the party". A senior official pointed to the "need to throw cash" at the seat of Watson, Corbyn's deputy and major opponent.
Corbyn's inner team found they were refused key information they needed to direct the campaign effectively. They were denied contact details for candidates. And many staff in HQ boasted that they spent the campaign "doing nothing" or pretending to "tap tap busily" at their computers while they plotted against Corbyn online.
Writing this week, two left-wing Labour MPs, John Trickett and Ian Lavery, confirmed that efforts to undermine the 2017 election campaign were palpable at the time.
Party officials, they said, denied both of them information and feedback they needed from doorstep activists to decide where resources would be best allocated and what messaging to use. It was, they wrote, suggested "that we pour resources into seats with large Labour majorities which were never under threat".
The report, and Trickett and Lavery's own description, make clear that party managers wanted to ensure the party's defeat, while also shoring up the majorities of Labour's right-wing candidates to suggest that voters had preferred them.
The aim of party managers was to ensure a Blairite takeover of the party immediately after the election was lost.
'Stunned and reeling'It is therefore hardly surprising that, when Corbyn overturned the Conservative majority and came within a hair's breadth of forming a government himself, there was an outpouring of anger and grief from senior staff.
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