2020 Labour Leadership Election

[Intell]

He did.

As would John Smith have, had he lived.

Tories were in such a dire state by 1997 that not even the most friendly press could save them.

The same could be said of the Tories in the last 3 years...

No, It couldn't, maybe without Brexit, but not with it.

[Intell]

I think Dan Jarvis is a good shout. He's a Northerner, ex-Army,  but the question remains as to why he didnt run in 2015.

Starner would be a way to bring the party together if he continues most of Corbyn's 2017 manifesto, just in a more sensible manner.

Abbott or McDonnell would be a repeat of the previous election.

In terms of what will actually happen...probably a member of the Soft Left Momentum can tolerate.

"Momentum" the activist wing will only 'tolerate' a candidate on the hard left, the party membership however could be willing to vote for a soft left candidate.

[Intell]

Jarvis had a terrible result in his own seat, partly through local stick for now having "two jobs". He has a good political "life story", but hasn't shown that much sign of a decent strategy to go with it.

(sorry to mention her yet again, but Rayner scores well on the "life story" thing, and actually has the political skills to go with it - the more I think about it the more I am liking the cut of her jib)

How strong is the "time for a female leader" sentiment within the party?

Pretty strong I would say. Though they will have to be on at least of the centre-left of the party as well (so Thornberry has at least a plausible chance of it, long time pundits favourite Cooper does not)

Nandy would be by far the better candidate for the simple fact we don't need a labour to replace Corbyn be one constituency south of him (or anywhere in London for that fact).

[Intell]

https://twitter.com/siennamarla/status/1206138279264948224?s=19

Thornberry probably won't win.

[Intell]

I do think that RLB may have to do a bit of judicious distancing from the negative aspects of Corbyn(ism) if she not only wants to win, but be a success afterwards. That will of course be a quite tricky thing to pull off successfully, but if she manages that it will show that she does have political skills.

Starmer is favored by the betting markets, do you know why? I would have thought it would be hard for a London remainer to win.

The party membership is overwhelmingly pro-remain (even more than they're pro-corbyn).

[Intell]

Supporting Lisa Nandy/Rayner.

[Intell]

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ian-lavery-communities-represented-labour-21192144

Current debate on labour twitter; is he wanting to run, is he running to make RLB look less left or is he just enjoying his moment of fame?

Although a better article than Pidcock; but a puzzling conclusion that de-industrialisation hurt Labour in this election (it's obviously a reason in the long term decline of social democracy but Labour won these seats 2 & 4 years ago!)

It didn't help that Lavery went to every PLP meeting MPs 'we're more ready than ever' and was one of the loudest supporters of an early GE...

North West Durham: Labour vote

1992: 26,734
2001: 24,526
2005: 21,312
2010: 18,539

-8225

Bolsover

1992: 33, 978
2001: 26, 249
2005: 25, 217
2010: 21, 994

-11, 984

Jarrow

1992: 28,956
2001: 22,777
2005: 20,554
2010: 20,910

-8046

Long term dislingering of working class politics to a party has a culmination, in the uk it was 2019.

Also there is no reason why Corbyn would be hated by the working classes, because he is a cooky leftist while the middle classes of Battersea and Putney are like nah he's fine. Any leader from the left would be disliked by the working classes as labor policies have not materially improved their lives since left parties embraced liberalism. In 1983, Foot was a radical that hated the UK and was supportive of unilateral disarmament, the industrial working class were fine with that, while the middle classes/lower-middle classes in London swung heavily against the Labour Party, for being too radical.

Clinton was a centrist, she was hated most in white working class industrial areas and saw the greatest swings agains her in those areas.

Shorten was basically a soft-left technocrat (Owen smith) and he saw the largest swings against him in working class areas especially in rural areas but also in outer-surbuban lower middle class areas, both of which were labor heartlands, and this lost him the unlosable election.

[Intell]

Though in 1983 the Tories were closer to winning many of the "red wall" seats than they ever again would be before last month, so Foot's appeal there shouldn't be overstated.

Foot won those 'red wall' seats in a complete landslide, where the conservative-labour difference was 14.8%, meanwhile in 2019, the conservative-labour difference was 11.4% yet labour lost a lot of these seats.

[Intell]

YouGov / Labour members

Demographic split of Keir Starmer v Rebecca Long-Bailey in head to head

KS/RLB %

All: 61/39

Male: 62/38
Female 61/39

18-39 55/45
40-59 60/40
60+ 72/28

2016 Remain 64/36
2016 Leave  40/60

ABC1 65/35
C2DE 51/49

[Intell]

- Nandy is lightweight and "sounds dumb"

Which is sure to be a major handicap against the famously articulate Boris Johnson.

Lisa Nandy is brown, you see

huh?

[Intell]

On the contrary, that's what they should do. Labour hasn't won an election since Tony Blair led the party and before that, their last win was in the 1970's. Love it or hate it, neoliberalism allowed them to gain large majorities in Parliament under Blair. If Labour is smart, they will move to the center.

New Labour was not what you think it was. The point was to advance towards socialist goals through market mechanisms and to sell this with a certain populist panache. The biggest promise of all was to save the welfare state, to improve other public services and to tackle persistent social problems through a massive injection of cash to be extracted, in the first instance, from a windfall tax on the profits of questionably privatised utilities!

Tony Blair disagrees with that right now.

[Intell]

Interesting about Lisa Nandy, her father was a marxist which was the case with Ed Millibrand and Corbyn's most likely as well.

[Intell]

On the contrary, that's what they should do. Labour hasn't won an election since Tony Blair led the party and before that, their last win was in the 1970's. Love it or hate it, neoliberalism allowed them to gain large majorities in Parliament under Blair. If Labour is smart, they will move to the center.

New Labour was not what you think it was. The point was to advance towards socialist goals through market mechanisms and to sell this with a certain populist panache. The biggest promise of all was to save the welfare state, to improve other public services and to tackle persistent social problems through a massive injection of cash to be extracted, in the first instance, from a windfall tax on the profits of questionably privatised utilities!

It was Butskellism for a post Thatcherite Britain. New Labour  even had a now long forgotten obsession with creating full employment, in part by creating jobs/training. It spent big. Bigger (as a percentage of GDP) than most post war governments reaching 48%. Even Corbyn didn't propose as much.

While Labour would rather eat bees than look to the SNP in Scotland which now has both built in support and geographically well spread support even after 12 years, perhaps it should. It's replaced Labour completely and ingerited it's 'stop the Tories' appeal.

Part of the reason

Nationalistic rhetoric tends to be popular.

[Intell]

On the contrary, that's what they should do. Labour hasn't won an election since Tony Blair led the party and before that, their last win was in the 1970's. Love it or hate it, neoliberalism allowed them to gain large majorities in Parliament under Blair. If Labour is smart, they will move to the center.

New Labour was not what you think it was. The point was to advance towards socialist goals through market mechanisms and to sell this with a certain populist panache. The biggest promise of all was to save the welfare state, to improve other public services and to tackle persistent social problems through a massive injection of cash to be extracted, in the first instance, from a windfall tax on the profits of questionably privatised utilities!

It was Butskellism for a post Thatcherite Britain. New Labour  even had a now long forgotten obsession with creating full employment, in part by creating jobs/training. It spent big. Bigger (as a percentage of GDP) than most post war governments reaching 48%. Even Corbyn didn't propose as much.

While Labour would rather eat bees than look to the SNP in Scotland which now has both built in support and geographically well spread support even after 12 years, perhaps it should. It's replaced Labour completely and ingerited it's 'stop the Tories' appeal.

Part of the reason

Nationalistic rhetoric tends to be popular.

Conversely internationalist rhetoric is the SNP's bread and butter; Scotland in Europe has been their consistent aim for over thirty years.

Yes, but the SNP is most likely largely popular because of their patriotic independent Scotland message.

[Intell]

EXCLUSIVE: Long-Bailey backs stricter abortion laws

Asked if the overall time-limit for abortion should be reduced, Long-Bailey pledged that the Labour Party would consult on any changes to abortion regulations, and that she would "play her part" in "ensuring that [the Catholic Church's] views are heard."

If this is true, then wtf. She'll go down as Tim Farron 2.0

Long Bailey is seriously a FF isn't she. Two beautiful candidates in this race, Long Bailey and Nandy going to be hard to pick between them.

[Intell]

Jeremy Hunt isn't even in cabinet, let alone a top ministry, and that didn't hurt Boris at all. So possibly the unity argument is overrated and Starmer should just focus on appealing to the wider public-that will end up bringing unity presumably. However, I'm not sure how the Labour dynamics work exactly and maybe Labour is too different from the Tories for a Boris kind of approach to work.

Though I think Hunt was offered a cabinet post but declined?

And I agree the dynamics of this one are possibly different anyway - if Starmer wins a desire for greater party unity will have been a big part of it, and he will be expected to act appropriately. And bringing back a load of right wingers to the front bench - at the expense of the left presumably - might not be the best way to "appeal to the public" in any case? Especially since Labour's *policies* were by all polling evidence a poor third behind Corbyn and Brexit as an explanation for last month's calamity.

But they were a factor and denialism on that front will do your party no favours.

I agree with your overall point though and Starmer is doubtless smart enough to realise that. As long as some of the more objectionable Corbynites (see Burgon, Richard) are kept miles away from senior posts I don't see how it would contradict the overall message of a Starmer leadership ("We aren't sh!t this time")

Why are they even running, momentum has basically said fyck off to them.

[Intell]

I'm a Nandy/Long Bailey supporter myself.

[Intell]

If I were in the UK, I'd be a Burnham/Corbyn/Nandy voter- don't know how much of those exist.

[Intell]

https://twitter.com/George_Osborne/status/1245359671952781313

This seems like the kind of endorsement that will shift my 2nd round preference from Starmer to Long-Bailey.

[Intell]

https://twitter.com/George_Osborne/status/1245359671952781313

This seems like the kind of endorsement that will shift my 2nd round preference from Starmer to Long-Bailey.

He makes a decent point, in fairness:

Democracy only functions properly if the country is offered a credible alternative, and when it comes to fighting this disease, strong democracies are better equipped than one-party states and dictatorships

And considering it's well-known that Osborne hates BoJo, it's not like this is him playing some sort of 5D chess to help the Tories or anything. I think he'd be delighted to see Labour actually challenging BoJo, & eventually being able to force him out of power.

I don't support archetypes of austerity whose policies kill people. I don't like BoJo but imo BoJo>>>>Osborne and all of these moderate kill the poor tories.

[Intell]

Well, one certainly hopes so

My take on RLB's undoubtedly slightly disappointing result - she blew whatever chance she had when she gave Corbyn "10 out of 10". Sometimes, things really are that simple.

That basically made me immediately rule out supporting her. Yea, I guess that would have been a big factor.

[Intell]

The leadership election really shows how out of touch the Labour Party is to it's working class base.

Hard Remain FBPE London millionaire Starmer vs hard-line corbynista Long Bailey. I guess labour is fine losing the working class and the next election.

[Intell]

The leadership election really shows how out of touch the Labour Party is to it's working class base.

Hard Remain FBPE London millionaire Starmer vs hard-line corbynista Long Bailey. I guess labour is fine losing the working class and the next election.

Of Keir Starmer & Jeremy Corbyn, only one of them was actually born into a working-class background, & it wasn't the latter.

Neither of them are particularly good candidates, Corbyn is a pure ideological socialist who cares more about PALESTINE and ANTI-IMPERALISM than trying to further worker's rights.

Long-Bailey is a fycking corporate lawyer who is stupid enough to say 10/10 on the corbyn leadership.

Starmer represents a hardline middle-class FBPE liberal tendency which turned out so so well in the 2019 election!

Awful choices.

[Intell]

The leadership election really shows how out of touch the Labour Party is to it's working class base.

Hard Remain FBPE London millionaire Starmer vs hard-line corbynista Long Bailey. I guess labour is fine losing the working class and the next election.

Of Keir Starmer & Jeremy Corbyn, only one of them was actually born into a working-class background, & it wasn't the latter.

In fairness I think Intell was criticising the choice between the two, not Starmer winning. He said he was a Nandy backer.

That doesn't make the take any less fundamentally moronic. Nandy's dad was a lecturer and then became the chair of a thinktank, whilst her maternal grandfather was a Liberal MP.

That shouldn't be read as a criticism of her, as I don't think anybody can claim she's used her background to climb the ladder. It's just a complaint that if people are going to try and play prolier-than-thou, the least they could do is spend 30 seconds checking Wikipedia first.

That was not my point, I know that Nandy is from a privileged background, I am just saying that Nandy would represents working class communities/connect to working class voters much better than Starmer who represents a socially liberal, 2nd referendum remain constituencies and Long-Bailey who represents a continuation of Corbynism which cared more about being ideologically pure, talking about #Palestine, protest movements and being #anti-imprealist then advocating for revitalisation of towns and worker's rights.

[Intell]

So Starmer wants to lead the party in a right-wards direction, disappointing but the left-candidate in the race was horrible so we're stuck with this.