2020 Labour Leadership Election

[Paleobrazilian]

https://twitter.com/grahamlithgow/status/1207286997724864515

[CumbrianLefty]

It's not RLB's closeness to Corbyn or Momentum that worries me, it's the Unite link (and the fact that she's quite a boring speaker). Quite annoyed that Rayner, clearly the best of the Corbynites, has subordinated herself before such a hack.

Anyway, I'm fine with either Nandy or Starmer, although I have concerns with both. With Keir, I'm not hugely concerned with the North London rich dude label - it's not like he's a Emily Thornberry or has ostentatious tastes like Roy Jenkins - but I do wonder if his career in human rights makes him vulnerable to Richard Littlejohn style populist takedowns. Nandy seems good as well, but it's all very well saying WE NEED MORE FOCUS ON TOWNS, quite another actually putting it in practice. One of the issues with funding towns in a country as centralized as this is you lead to all sorts of regional resentments between different areas ("Why do the bastards in market town X get priority in the infrastructure roll-out, we're way worse off than them!").

Maybe a "reductio ad absurdum" of this was a post-election vox pop in Leigh, where those switching to Tory seemed most animated not by Corbyn or even Brexit - but that "Wigan (that well known trendy cosmopolitan hub and of course Nandy's seat - Ed) gets everything and we get nothing".

I mean, seriously, where to even start??

[Lord Halifax]

According to BBC candidates for leader need nominations from:  

- at least 10% of Labour MPs (203) and MEPs (10), so presumably 22 (to get above 21.3)

and

- at least 5% of Labour's constituency parties or three affiliated bodies (two of which must be trades unions) adding up to 5% of affiliated members.

Are there any candidates that may be unable to meet these requirements?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

According to BBC candidates for leader need nominations from:  

either

- at least 10% of Labour MPs (203) and MEPs (10), so presumably 22 (to get above 21.3)
- at least 5% of Labour's constituency parties

or

- three affiliated bodies (two of which must be trades unions) adding up to 5% of affiliated members.

Are there any candidates that may be unable to meet these requirements?

This is not correct. All candidates need to hit the PLP requirement plus either the CLP or affiliate requirement.

[Lord Halifax]

...

This is not correct. All candidates need to hit the PLP requirement plus either the CLP or affiliate requirement.

Okay, but are there any candidates that may be unable to meet the requirements? What about Thornberry and Starmer and the second requirement?

[Blair]

I don't want to predict anything re thresholds other than saying RLB will be on the ballot; because she's guaranteed the support of CWU/UNITE & the block of corbynity MPs.

I expect that much like in 2015 some people will make noises about running, go around the tea room and go 'oh god the 40 people who said they liked me won't actually nominate me' and will then fail to get on the ballot.

I haven't gone through the new PLP with a fine tooth comb but I'd want to see a list of declared candidates before working out who doesn't get enough MPs. 

[Blair]

I can see this system getting scrapped though; purely because I haven't met anyone in the party who understands how it will actually work.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

There's a certain poster who should really give his poor caps lock a break. Too much abuse.

[CumbrianLefty]

I don't want to predict anything re thresholds other than saying RLB will be on the ballot; because she's guaranteed the support of CWU/UNITE & the block of corbynity MPs.

I expect that much like in 2015 some people will make noises about running, go around the tea room and go 'oh god the 40 people who said they liked me won't actually nominate me' and will then fail to get on the ballot.

I haven't gone through the new PLP with a fine tooth comb but I'd want to see a list of declared candidates before working out who doesn't get enough MPs. 

Did anybody actually do that then apart from Mary (RIP) Creagh?

(Jarvis ruled himself out from the start)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Potential Candidates - Leadership

1. Declared

Emily Thornberry (Islington South & Finsbury) - Shadow Foreign Secretary. Lawyer; a distinguished Human Rights barrister. Labour's very own Vicar of Bray in factional and ideological terms. A good media performer, yet also gaffe prone. It is hard to assess her performance as Shadow Foreign Secretary as that was an area of policy that LOTO very much monopolised; mostly she was left defending (enthusiastically but not always convincingly) whatever line had obviously come from that direction. Has a reputation as something of a snob, which means she may struggle to get the requisite PLP nominations. Presently engaged in the early stages of defemation litigation against one of the MPs who lost their seat, which one cannot imagine is wonderful PR. Her social background is rather complicated and quite literally Dickensian: he father was a man who later became Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, but she actually grew up in poverty after he abandoned her mother, her and her siblings. The oddest of ducks.

2. As Good As Declared, But Things Can Happen

Rebecca Long-Bailey (Salford & Eccles) - Shadow Business Secretary. Another lawyer - a corporate law solicitor though, at at the property end of that as well (lmao). Left-winger. A protege of John McDonnell's but otherwise a bit of a cipher. A lightweight and a non-entity. Close to Angela Rayner and appears to have done a deal with her (Rayner to run for Deputy etc), which is odd because Rayner is the charismatic one, the one that doesn't come across as actively robotic on television. She has two points in her favour: she represents a constituency in the North of England, and she can point to a working class background, culturally at least (father was a dockside union official).

Lisa Nandy (Wigan) - a backbencher since 2016, formerly Shadow Energy Secretary. Currently runs a think tank called the Centre for Towns. This is a word you may hear rather a lot from her. Towns. Used to work as a policy adviser in the charity sector. Soft Left. Has been mooted as a potential leadership candidate for ages, but has never come so close to actually running as this time. A capable media performer and public speaker (which interesting as she didn't used to be). Has been arguing for years that Labour has been excessively focused on metropolitan areas (not just London but also e.g. Manchester, Birmingham etc) and metropolitan concerns to the exclusion of the rest of the country - this will almost certainly be her main pitch. She represents (of course!) a town in the North of England and is herself a Northerner; she grew up in Bury, which is a town. Her father is Dipak Nandy, a Marxist academic originally from Bengal. She is also the granddaughter of Frank Byers, a West Country Liberal MP in the 1940s and later the Liberals leader in the Lords. Towns.

Sir Keir Starmer (Holborn & St Pancras) - Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting The European Union. Lawyer, well, a bit more than that. The grandest of Labour barristers: Director of Public Prosecutions 2008-13, one-time join head of the Doughty Street Chambers, involved in the McLibel case and there's a long list of things that could be noted here. He doesn't like the 'Sir', but, well, he has it. His exact factional and ideological position is not certain. The general assumption is Soft Left (after all, he has served in the Shadow Cabinet post-2016), but this may not be accurate. Most likely is that he is just not much of a factionalist at all. He is, needless to say, an effective media performer and public speaker. He is a Londoner (Southwark born and bred) and represents a London constituency. This will be held against him (somewhat hypocritically, one suspects, but welcome to THIGMOO). Working class background; actually the most 'ordinary' working class background of any semi-certain contender. Very, very Labour background as well, as the name testifies. Curiously, if he were to grow a beard he would look strikingly like his namesake: similar face.

3. Strongly Rumoured...

Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract & Castleford) - Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee and previously... well, you know the story here. By this point she qualifies as being on the Right. If she were to run it would be interesting to see if she goes for a Turn The Clock Back approach or something new; either way I'm not sure if a figure so embedded with all that has happened should run. Labour Aristocracy background (in the modern rather than historical sense; father was a Union General Secretary) and represents a seat in the North of England. As said seat is normally a very strong one but this time she was only narrowly returned - difficult to understand quite how violently hated Corbyn is in normally solid Labour milieus in the old Yorkshire coalfield unless you have personal links to them, as I do - I suppose she might have things to say. But it still strikes me as an error.

Clive Lewis (Norwich South) - Shadow Minister for some meaningless post. I've rarely come across more openly obvious wallet inspectors in the Labour Party and that's saying a lot. Used to be Soft Left, currently assumes the form of a harder kind. You just know that back in the day he'd have been firmly Blairite. I refuse to take a potential candidacy from this direction seriously unless forced to.

Jess Phillips (Birmingham Yardley) - Self-crowned Queen of Mercia, Empress of the Banter Islands and Princess Bishop of the Motormouth Marches. Local government/charity background in terms of prior employment. One could try to place Phillips in to an ideological or factional bracket, but this would be an error. She is primarily a gadfly. Very hostile to the present leadership and with a famously bad relationship with just about everyone even vaguely associated with it. She does have a genuine popular following of sorts, though how many presently have a vote I'm not sure. Still, beware of the power of Mumsnet. If they put their collective Will to it I'm sure they could do entryism better than Trots or even the Canadian wing of the SAD. Phillips likes to imply that she comes from a working class background, but she doesn't. She is, however, most definitely a Brummie, and while the focus has been on Labour's poor performance in the North of England, results in the Midlands were even more disturbing.

4. Their Names Have Been Mentioned, But Is It Likely, Actually?

Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) - Shadow Secretary of State for Health. Apparatchik. Soft Left; always very close to Ed Miliband. Not the worst media performer but is very... well... he's an apparatchik, you know? His whole life. And that comes across. You know the style. Those leaked comments in the last week of the GE might hurt him were he to run (I guess?) even though a) it was more than a bit disgusting that they were leaked by a 'friend' and b) it isn't as if he said anything that wasn't true. Is he actually ambitious? Almost as much of a cipher as Long-Bailey, frankly.

Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) - Mayor of the Sheffield City Region. Army man: officer in the Parachute Regiment, rising to the rank of Major. Served in (amongst other places) Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. Was, hilariously, a witness to the Pristina Airport Incident (you know, when Wesley Clark tried to start the Third World War). Has often been mooted as a possible leadership candidate (mostly because: ARMY MAN. HARD), but it has never been clear if he's actually ambitious in that way. Aligned with whatever passes for the Right these days, but this is complicated as well: his personal views on social policy and economics are known to be rather left-wing, which is why the Progress mob have always been wary of him.

David Lammy (Tottenham) - currently a backbencher. An interesting figure. A lot of people who don't know the Labour Party assume that Lammy must be a left-winger because he is black and is active on minority rights issues. And he also nominated Abbott in 2010 and Corbyn in 2015. But he isn't. He's solidly on the Right, in a rather communitarian kind of way. He nominated Abbott and Corbyn to 'broaden the debate' (a phrase we shall never hear again, one suspects). I don't know whether he really is actually ambitious in this way; he's never shown sign of it before. But we live in strange times. Working class, frankly poor and deprived, background. And his politics - including the communitarian stuff - is rooted in that.

A.N. Other (Grimtown East) - there's always space for another isn't there.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Potential Candidates - Deputy Leadership

1. Declared

Dawn Butler (Brent Central) - Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities. Left-winger, though what you might think of as an independent left-winger. As someone who lost what had been a safe seat and then regained it, I suppose she could have a personal insight in certain recent events that might be of use. Not the worst media performer, but a bit gaffe prone. GMB official before going into politics. Background is second generation immigrant lower middle class.

Conor McGinn (St Helens North) - Backbencher, though has had minor shadow roles in the past. Right-winger. A certain sort of machine politician who has always worked in or around politics, skipping from one organisation to another, many of which relate to the Irish diaspora here. McGinn is from Northern Ireland, from County Armagh, and his father was once a Sinn Fein councillor. A Fabian and also active in the strange and mysterious Labour Party Irish Society.

Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham Perry Barr) - Shadow Minster of State for Europe. Right-winger. Hilarious, sketchy Mirpur-born Birmingham machine politician. Friend and ally/crony of Tom Watson's. Never knowingly one of Labour's intellectuals, he is nevertheless, quite amazingly, not the potential candidate for this post with the lowest IQ (see, Burgon, Richard). Another trade unionist; the former AEEU, now (via Amicus) the engineering section of Unite.

Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) - Shadow Secretary of State for Education. Left-winger and seemingly part of a de-facto slate with Long-Bailey (see above) but her relationship to the Left cadre is a little murky, a little grey. She's not against it or even properly independent of it, but she's not exactly of it either. Another trade unionist! Unison this time; she was a care worker. Capable media performer, has a certain brash charisma of sorts. Working class background and, as everyone knows, left school with no qualifications due to pregnancy.

2. I'm Very, Very Sorry But These People Appear To Be Considering It As Well...

Richard Burgon (Leeds East) - Shadow Secretary of State for Justice. Left-winger and a fully-paid up member of the Left cadre. Prize moron. Solicitor. A complete fucking idiot who was selected for his seat because of who his uncle is (Colin Burgon, well regarded MP on the Left with very good connections across Leeds Labour), so, yes, a product of an unusually literal case of nepotism. A media performer so bad that he's quite unintentionally entertaining. His candidacy is sponsored by the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Barry Gardiner (Brent North) - Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade. On the left-wing... of the BJP. He isn't Hindu and he isn't even Indian (he is a Scottish Anglican), but such things are mere trivialities to the King of the Cranks. Perhaps it began as pandering to his constituents (many of whom are of Indian extraction, and many of these Gujarati Patels) but by this point it is all quite sincere. He is actually one of Labour's best media performers, which is why, to the horrified amusement of many, he became a senior Party figure during the Corbyn years. He has a background in academic philosophy and shipping insurance. Oh, and he is very pro-China as well.

[CumbrianLefty]

I actually quite like Lewis

His military background and admitted past struggles with depression (still very much a taboo subject and even more with politicians than more generally) might also be worth mentioning tbh.

(also, he was pretty universally described as "hard left" when first elected in 2015 IIRC)

One other thing you might have mentioned about Lammy is that he is very, *very*, VERY pro-remain. Could well be the "rejoin the EU literally the day after we have left" candidate - which actually might be a useful foil to Starmer/Thornberry if you are being cynical.......

[Intell]

Supporting Lisa Nandy/Rayner.

[Roblox]

I like Starmer the best of the potential candidates, by a pretty long distance too.

[Oryxslayer]

The clear thing that Nandy has going for her is that she has a explanation for why Labour is losing that isn't based on ideology. It's the kind of thing that I think a lot of people was to see, an argument that is not backwards to factional fights but forwards towards a different Labour priority-wise (but still with factions) than what came before. I guess we will see if the others have such an approach in the coming weeks, but it's her advantage for now.

[Horus]

Tentatively supporting Clive Lewis.

[brucejoel99]

I don't want to predict anything re thresholds other than saying RLB will be on the ballot; because she's guaranteed the support of CWU/UNITE & the block of corbynity MPs.

I expect that much like in 2015 some people will make noises about running, go around the tea room and go 'oh god the 40 people who said they liked me won't actually nominate me' and will then fail to get on the ballot.

I haven't gone through the new PLP with a fine tooth comb but I'd want to see a list of declared candidates before working out who doesn't get enough MPs. 

Did anybody actually do that then apart from Mary (RIP) Creagh?

(Jarvis ruled himself out from the start)

Chuka

[Antonio the Sixth]

Supporting Lisa Nandy/Rayner.

Same.

There's actually a lot I deeply admire about Starmer (and I could definitely live with him as leader if it comes to that), but his strong Remain stance is disqualifying to me. Embracing Remain will be the death of Labour.

[CumbrianLefty]

Supporting Lisa Nandy/Rayner.

Same.

There's actually a lot I deeply admire about Starmer (and I could definitely live with him as leader if it comes to that), but his strong Remain stance is disqualifying to me. Embracing Remain will be the death of Labour.

Depends if people bang on and on about it after Jan 31 2020 or not.

Personally, I am happy to let the LibDems cement their status as a minor "niche" party by doing that.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The whole Brexit issue is about to transform, yes. Of course, it should be no consolation because a landslide loss is a landslide loss is a landslide loss, but one consequence will be the removal of BREXIT as a wickedly effective wedge-issue and motivator for otherwise infrequent-not-very-political-voters to the benefit of the government. It may turn out they'd have done better to win by less. Not that they'll mind at this moment, not at this moment.

[DaWN]

So if Brexit is a disaster, Labour are supposed to go 'this was still a fantastic idea!'? Perhaps a bit of nuance and adaptability might be in order, although that's obviously a bit of an ask for today's Labour party.

I'd be happy with Starmer and content with Nandy. Everyone else would be at best a sideways step from Corbyn and Wrong-Failey might even be a step down.

[CumbrianLefty]

If it does indeed turn out that Brexit is the disaster some have predicted, what we should do is everything we can to ensure that (just for once) the blame for that is placed where it belongs - the Tories.

[Gass3268]

David Lammy is probably as well known in the US as a backbencher can be. Due to his days at Havard Law school, he has connections with many in Obama albumi orbit. This has resulted in him becoming the British "expert" on the Crooked Media podcast network and I think he's had a few appearences on MSNBC when they need someone to talk about Brexit and what not.

[Paleobrazilian]

Clive Lewis is officially in.

[CumbrianLefty]

Starmer's pitch is genuinely interesting. It might become even more so if Phillips does indeed join the fray and thus becomes the natural candidate for the "Core Group Hostile" tendency.