2020 Labour Leadership Election

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Why no mention of London mayor Sadiq Khan?

He is not an MP.

Why would electing the mayor of London be a good idea if you're trying to distance yourself from being viewed as the party of the metropolitan elites?

The incumbent #populist Prime Minister was Mayor of London for eight years.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Long-Baily does not have the Baggage that the Inner Circle Corbynites have, people like Burgon, Abbott, McDonnell.

Her colleagues in her office reportedly call her "Rebecca Wrong Daily." Make of that what you will.

tbf, that's a pretty low-hanging (but genuinely funny!) pun.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Plus, it's not like the next leader will have a deep bench of MPs to build his/her shadow cabinet.

Let's not exaggerate. Sure, a lot of heavyweights are gone now and a lot of the PLP does comprise toxic nitwits, but there are still plenty of wonderful Labour MPs among the 202 remaining in the Commons. It's not like the Lib Dems who have to pad their "frontbench team" with MSPs/AMs/MEPs/peers.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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.

Blair has drifted well to the right since leaving office.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Awfully tempted to support RLB if she's getting anti-Catholic attacks for not being Maximum Woke on abortion...but no, I still think she'd probably be a disaster overall.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Awfully tempted to support RLB if she's getting anti-Catholic attacks for not being Maximum Woke on abortion...but no, I still think she'd probably be a disaster overall.

She's not really getting 'attacked' for it. Certainly she's being attacked in lieu of being a perceived Momentum stooge and telling priests she'd advocate for them when there's little difference between how lay Catholics view the current legislation versus other Christian faiths and the non religious. Much of the 'omg it's anti-Catholic' seems to be coming from the right wing media who can get traction out of such headlines and don't give a sh-t about her or Labour. Indeed a quick search shows in the top 3 stories from each newspaper it's in 2 for the Telegraph, 1 for the Times, 1 for the Sun (including a 'she took drugs' story) and none in the Mirror, Guardian etc.

And personally for me there's nothing 'Maximum Woke' (curiously phrased as 'woke literati' in one of the Telegraph articles :/ ) in supporting fifty year old fairly restrictive legislation which even maximum choice pro-choice advocates are reluctant to touch less it upset the balance and toxify/Americanise the issue into some macabre team sport.

The Church are itching to open that box and she does herself no favours in throwing them meat.

Thanks for clarifying the situation.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Here lies the Labour Party of the UK, who through trying to get rid of the Blair disease succumbed from a multi-pronged assault by Capital. (1900–2020)

oh come on

One can not deny the truth when a knighted multimillionaire is running the show.

Clement Attlee was literally an earl by the end of his life but go off I guess.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

So, plenty of familiar faces (RED ED IS BACK, BABY) but lots of new ones too, with the most obnoxious Corbyn orbiters sent into exile but not much in the way of blatant ideological/factional slant otherwise?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

So, in terms of BAME representation in the Shadow Cabinet, we have Nandy (Bengali), Lammy (black), Miliband (Jewish), Debbonaire (Tamil), Gill (Sikh), de Cordova (black), Allin-Khan (Pakistani), and Vaz (Goan). Anybody I'm missing?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

So, in terms of BAME representation in the Shadow Cabinet, we have Nandy (Bengali), Lammy (black), Miliband (Jewish), Debbonaire (Tamil), Gill (Sikh), de Cordova (black), Allin-Khan (Pakistani), and Vaz (Goan). Anybody I'm missing?

Jews aren't BAME, certainly not Polish Jews.

I don't know the exact definition of the term; I just know that Jews are perceived as more of "a minority" in Britain than in the US. My mistake.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Kendall back at Social Care? Oof.

It does make sense that the right would be overrepresented in the junior positions considering the center-to-left skew of the SC, though.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

If you mouth stuff about ‘Zionists not understanding English irony’ then imo expect people to get a bit worried.

Some people might be worried, yes. I'd hope they'd get similarly worried about anti-muslim sentiment in a leader responsible for 100 000 civilian deaths in Iraq, but I suppose as long as Blair didn't give a dodgy quote beforehand it's all above board.

I know I'm American so my opinion really doesn't affect anything, but I think Blair and Corbyn are both awful, and I'd be shocked if there weren't a significant contingent among Starmer's people and among the Labour base as a whole who feel the same way. There's a big, fat, very well-populated grey area between Blairism and Corbynism within the spectrum of Labour politics, and the idea that those are the only options is classic extremist/ideologue "with us or against us" rhetoric. And, yes, both sides do it.