“WE want our party back” — five words that neatly sum up the attempted coup against Jeremy Corbyn.

Although they were said by former Blairite back-stabber Ian Lucas MP at last Monday’s Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) meeting — to “loud applause,” according to Sky News — many rank-and-file members must have felt a similar sentiment over the past fortnight.

Quite a few have wanted their party back since the early days of New Labour. For them, Corbyn’s landslide leadership victory vindicated their enduring loyalty to the party they love.

At the same meeting, former leader and general election double-loser Neil Kinnock claimed Corbyn should resign because he didn’t have “substantial support of the PLP.” He outlines this mythical parliamentary right to veto in a fascinating leaked audio recording.

With epic lack of self-awareness, he complains that Corbyn fails a bizarre “supermarket test” of electability and is seen as a bit “weird” by the general public.

Both Kinnock and Lucas prove Diane Abbott correct when she wrote in these pages: “This is not the PLP versus Jeremy Corbyn — this is the PLP versus the membership.”

Members overwhelmingly back Jeremy but the political elite insist they know better than the #TrotsRabbleDogs, as Corbynistas are now known on social media.

Calling Corbyn unelectable is a good example of the “big lie” — say something often and loud enough and many people will believe you, no matter what evidence to the contrary.

Not only has membership soared since he became leader — half a million high and rising — but Labour has triumphed at the ballot box with a string of by-election, mayoral and council victories.

And many members believe that Labour can’t win without Corbyn, because it will take a mass movement to beat the Tories’ mass money and Murdoch’s mass media.

Last week’s long-awaited publication of the Chilcot Report is a reminder of another big lie — that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction ready to launch in 45 minutes.

Tony Blair had presented an urgent case for war “with a certainty that was not justified,” Chilcot pointed out in one of his many damning judgements.

The former Labour leader “chose to invade before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted,” made policy on “flawed intelligence and assessments” and knew that the threat of terrorism would be “heightened by military action against Iraq.”

But it’s by unpicking the war’s legality that Chilcot reveals Blair’s biggest vulnerability.

We now know that government lawyers told Blair less than a week before he started dropping bombs on Baghdad that it was an “essential part of the legal basis for military action” to have “strong evidence that Iraq has failed to comply with and co-operate fully in the implementation of resolution 1441” concerning UN weapons inspectors.

Blair’s office replied within 24 hours that it was his “unequivocal view that Iraq is in further material breach of its obligations” — but Chilcot insists it’s “unclear” how he could be have been so sure.

With this one word, Chilcot blows apart the entire legal case for war. There was no evidence Iraq had been in further material breach — and the report implies that Blair just invented this in the rush to war, reaffirming his reputation as a dishonest war criminal.

How depressing to see the same Labour MPs who fell for Blair’s deception back then falling into the same trap now.

Blair could only get away with his warmongering by suckering so-called centrist Labour MPs such as Angela Eagle and Tom Watson into backing the Iraq attack.

Now is their moment to show true remorse, break from Blair’s grip and stand up for every member who wants them to give Corbyn a chance.

Instead, Watson walked away from “peace talks” with trade unions on Saturday, complaining that Corbyn “has publicly declared his intention to continue as leader come what may.”

In response, Unite leader Len McCluskey condemned Watson’s “sabotage” and insisted it was “absolutely clear from the outset of these discussions that Jeremy Corbyn’s resignation as the leader was not on the agenda.”

Immediately after Watson’s statement, Eagle once again pre-announced her intent to challenge Corbyn — promising to “explain my vision for the country” at some point today while at least 50 supportive MPs and MEPs add their names to the wall of shame.

But having been so demonstrably duped by Blair over Iraq, she has no credibility to lead Labour, especially after Corbyn’s powerful apology on behalf of his party last week.

John Prescott, who was deputy prime minister at the time of the invasion, went further than Corbyn yesterday by admitting that the war broke international law.

“A day doesn’t go by when I don’t think of the decision we made to go to war,” he revealed. “I will live with the decision of going to war and its catastrophic consequences for the rest of my life.”

Eagle’s eagerness to topple Saddam stands in stark contrast to Corbyn’s anti-war activism, memorably leading over a million peace protesters to Hyde Park.

Yet centrist rebel MPs have swallowed the big Blairite lie that their leader is electoral poison — and it looks like some of their followers have too. YouGov’s monthly Labour poll shows a spike in cynicism across the party.

Many members have stopped believing Corbyn is prepared to compromise on some of his principles for the sake of party unity and winning wider support.

The proportion who think he has “moderated his views since he has been Labour leader” and “was right to make these compromises” has halved from 58 per cent a month ago to 29 per cent, with most of them now joining the “cynics” who say he hasn’t moderated his views nearly enough.

This change of opinion is present even among those who voted for Corbyn last year, with one in 10 of them switching from “realist” to “cynic” — but the data suggest that some centrists are splitting.

Until now, members who voted for Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper have had similar views on the leadership.

But the coup changed that. The proportion of Burnhamites who think Corbyn should dig in and not concede an inch to the Blairites — becoming so-called “believers” who say their leader “is right to stick to his principles” — has doubled to 20 per cent.

There’s no such realisation among the Cooperites, a third of whom have made the switch from “realist” to “cynic” — double the number of Burnham backers who did the same.

This reflects the position in Parliament, with Burnham one of the few centrists in the shadow cabinet refusing to resign.
Assuming Eagle follows through with her threat, tomorrow’s meeting of the National Executive Committee (NEC) will decide the rules of the contest, including whether the sitting leader automatically gets to defend his title.

If the NEC ignores published legal advice and effectively blocks Corbyn from the ballot it would trigger full-scale civil war, with hundreds of thousands of committed activists furiously fighting against a fifth-column existential threat to their party.

Public opinion has had time to turn against this coup. The Tory and Ukip leaders have both resigned, along with most of Labour’s shadow cabinet, and people are starting to wonder why Corbyn should walk away too. By sticking to his post, he’s earned respect and sympathy far and wide.

I have a terrible confession to make — I backed Eagle for deputy leader last year. Whatever her strengths, she still came fourth with a dismal 16 per cent of the vote, but somehow she’s supposed to make Labour electable again.

Blair’s closest partner in crime Peter Mandelson has been blatantly egging Eagle on, marching in and out of her office like he still owns the place.

She should follow the example of fellow centrist MP Owen Smith, who said on Saturday he was “extremely concerned that a small number of people from both the left and right of our party seem intent on letting it split.”

Smith is currently putting party unity above his leadership ambitions. Eagle, despite claiming yesterday that unions “know they’ve got a friend in me,” will never be forgiven by the labour movement if she doesn’t do the same.