Timing is key for Angela Eagle’s leadership bid against Corbyn

If Angela Eagle announced a move this week it would blunt the force of the justifiable critique of the Iraq War and decisions taken by Blair

The Chilcot report will be published on 6th July 2016 (Getty Images)

To recycle a metaphor used at the time of a Tory leadership in the distant past, Angela Eagle has been handed a revolver by her parliamentary colleagues with which she can end Jeremy Corbyn's extraordinary and not altogether happy leadership of his party. At the moment she seems content to wave it around, threatening to use it if Mr Corbyn doesn't "do the decent thing" and quit his job. The longer she does so, however, the less credible the threat becomes, the more time Momentum and the Corbynites have to prepare its defences and the more it seems that the "coup" against Mr Corbyn has indeed flopped.

Ms Eagle seems worried that her gun will cause a bang and leave a lot of blood on the walls. She is right about that, and her patience in waiting for Mr Corbyn to bend to supposedly irresistible pressure is understandable. She is, though, quite wrong. Mr Corbyn has a track record of defiance going back to at least his election as an MP in 1983. He hasn't changed in the past few weeks. He is no more likely to do what he is told to by Neil Kinnock or Gordon Brown as he ever was. Mr Corbyn, and even more those around him, believe that he has a mandate from the wider party membership and until they decide otherwise he will defy any size of rebellion. He has made that perfectly clear.

The mystery is why Ms Eagle and others ever supposed Mr Corbyn would behave in any way other than with a cussed determination to hang on. Maybe they haven't spent much time socialising with him over the years, but his reputation surely goes before him. A nice man, they say, but one of unusually unbending will.

Maybe Ms Eagle feels that launching a challenge the same time as the Chilcot report is released would vindicate those Corbynites who say that the timing of the challenge by "Blairites" is designed to distract attention from the criticisms of Tony Blair in the report. Asked about the timing of events recently Dennis Skinner is said to have answered with one word: "Iraq". If Ms Eagle, or any other contender such as Owen Smith, announced a move this week it would indeed blunt the force of the justifiable critique of the Iraq War and decisions taken by Mr Blair. That must be conceded. Against that, though, is the fact that Mr Corbyn will be buoyed among activists still resentful about Mr Blair when he makes the widely expected assault on Mr Blair's reputation. Mr Blair's war was illegal and unnecessary, and many lives – British, Iraqi and others – were ended or destroyed because of it. We live still with the consequences. In those circumstances it might be sensible for Ms Eagle to wait until the Chilcot Report is published before she launches her bid to save her party. It would have been rather better it had been done last week or even some months ago.

She and her allies may already have lost the initiative, and don't seem to be able to agree on a single anti-Corbyn candidate (though with preferential voting there is less danger of "splitting the vote"). Oddly, it is Mr Corbyn who looks resolute and strong, appealing directly to his backers in the party, and Ms Eagle who seems to be dithering, issuing rather rubbery ultimatums on the pavement outside her home. The nightmare of a, say, 52 per cent to 48 per cent for a Corbyn leadership in the inevitable election will raise the question of an even more radical change to save the Labour Party.