In the Labour civil war, is Corbyn the medieval plotting king or the ruler of chaos?

How convenient that Jeremy Corbyn left the meeting of Labour’s national executive just before the chair of his supporters’ organisation proposed a motion to abolish the post of deputy leader of the party.

This allowed Corbyn, like a medieval king, to be absent while his knights discussed getting rid of a turbulent priest, only to step in the next morning to urge conciliation and restraint.

I don’t know if Corbyn knew of Jon Lansman’s plan to abolish Tom Watson. Lansman is quite capable of acting on his own. He tried to become Labour general secretary, but Corbyn chose Jennie Formby instead, the candidate backed by the Unite union.

On the other hand, you would think Lansman, as organiser of Corbyn’s leadership campaigns and chair of Momentum, would check with the leader before launching an assault that would be seen as being done in Corbyn’s name.

So it may be that Corbyn was part of a plot to launch the surprise attack on Friday and to see how it played out overnight. If the reaction was too hostile – as it seems to have been – Corbyn could play the role of magnanimous monarch and tell his zealous courtiers to cool it.

My view is that these things are usually chaos, ego and misunderstanding rather than conspiracy, and that, if Corbyn knew about it, what mattered was his decision this morning – to call the whole thing off.

This is Corbyn, a cross between mob boss – “Leave it, Jon, ’e’s not worth it” – and Henry II. His behaviour is consistent. He avoided another row, over reinstating the old Clause IV of the party’s rules, which promised the “common ownership of the means of production”, by the same device of a review.

It’s possible that Lansman is worried about what happens after Corbyn. Like a courtier, he frets about the succession, but it is not an easy conversation to have with the king.

Hence a rule change that was passed today seeking to subject an acting leader of the party to the national executive, and to prevent him or her from altering the “composition” of the cabinet, shadow cabinet or national executive.

Even this, though, seems like a haywire plot, because the change leaves this clause in the rule book: “When the party is in opposition and the party leader, for whatever reason, becomes permanently unavailable, the deputy leader shall automatically become party leader on a pro-tem basis.”

In other words, now that the plan to abolish Tom Watson has failed, he would automatically become leader if anything happened to Corbyn. (This applies only while the party is in opposition; in government, it has long been the rule that the Labour cabinet would choose one of its members to be party leader – and prime minister – if the leader becomes “permanently unavailable”.)

So I think the speculation that Corbyn has told his inner circle he wants to step down is misplaced. If he had said that, his supporters would have tried to change the automatic succession rule rather than take the risk of trying to abolish the deputy leader post altogether.

They expect Corbyn to lead the party into an election fairly soon. In that election he will adopt another position that seems monarchical. As with the Queen’s views on Brexit, there is speculation about his true beliefs. As with the Queen, he intends to stay above the fray. He is, as he said this week, “a servant of the people”. As prime minister he would lead the country out of the EU or keep it in depending on what the people decided in a second referendum.

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Well, he’s either like the Queen or like Harold Wilson, who expressed no view on Europe in the October 1974 election, but who then urged the people to vote to stay in on his renegotiated terms.

Corbyn announced his timetable today. He will be neutral in the election campaign; if he wins, he will negotiate a “sensible leave deal” within three months; a special Labour conference will decide the party’s position (it will be “Remain”, by the way); and Corbyn will then advocate that position in a referendum to be held within six months.

It is an unusual form of leadership. But then, as with the monarchy, perhaps it wouldn’t do to “let in daylight upon magic”.