This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[Blair]

A taste of why the Labour Party can be unpopular:

'When a Labour canvasser appeared on a doorstep in the Tooting area of London this week, they were greeted with a blunt “I’m voting Tory”. Given Sadiq Khan’s former parliamentary seat was a tight marginal not so long ago, that’s perhaps no surprise. But what was shocking was the Labour activist’s reply. “You need to check your values,” they told the astonished voter.'

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/keir-starmer-labour-hartlepool-analysis_uk_60959a24e4b0ae3c687e5904

That sort of thing has always happened with activists of all parties.

(so in that sense at least, a complete nothingburger)

Do you think a Tory activist would say to a Labour voter 'you have the wrong values?'
This is an isolated incident, but I think it neatly illustrates some of the problems a London-centric, 'woke' Labour Party faces.

The incident was in London though so this talking point doesn't even make sense?

[Blair]

Political activists in both parties are largely well meaning, slightly introverted and often retired!

All parties attract activists who you do not want on the doorstep, or equally people who say things that reflect awfully... sometimes they even become MPs!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50474572

[Blair]

Yeah his article ended with 'Labour need to win the working class' which is a rather simplistic...

In news the party appears to be doing much better in both the South-West England Mayor Election & the Cambridgeshire-Peterborough one- both of these fit onto rather weird geographic areas & at least demonstrate that Labour are making in-roads. 

These results both seem to be a sign of Labours success in these areas but equally the Conservatives relatively toxicity in some of its much safer seats.

[Blair]

I very very very much hope that she is given a top level shadow cabinet position & that this is part of a mutual re-organisation.

If it isn't and the solution to losing is to sack the deputy who has a large following in the PLP & the SCG then this shows some galaxy brain level thinking.

Besides- we had two good results this afternoon!!! We could have at least waited until Monday and had a bit of reflection of the full results... but of course we're not allowed this.

What was the Barbara Castle quote about this 'strange and mystifying' party of ours?

[Blair]

One of the worse decisions in the latter Corbyn era was the botched effort to get rid of Tom Watson without any real planning when everyone was feeling rather emotional- this move is even more idiotic than that and poses serious questions about what on earth is going on...

[Blair]

Why not announce this first?

https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1391098005521055744

[Blair]

Oh lord this would be the 3rd leader to sack Nick Brown & well we all know what happened after that...

https://twitter.com/REWearmouth/status/1391111269999169536

[Blair]

I hear he blames her for the selection of the candidate in Hartlepool.

Anyway, this has been handled poorly and I don't know what Starmer is thinking.

Not sure why- Starmer's office personally picked the candidate! 

[Blair]

Any news around Ian Austin?

Has he formally joined the Tories yet?

He positions himself as a Blairite, and Mr Johnson - except to a degree perhaps on public spending - is definitely not a Blairite.

What do you dislike about him?

These things matter to about 5 people within Labour but he's a brownite- he use to work for Gordon Brown & was then his PPS- and backed Ed Balls (a sign of being an ultra brownite fwiw)

I'm not sure if I did a post about it a while back but the men (yes it's all men) who worked for Gordon Brown have gone on to have rather combative careers in Westminster, most of which have ended up in failure.

Ed Balls lost his seat, Watson lost his peerage, Michael Dugher works for British Gambling & Chris Leslie for the debt collection industry group. They very much typified the worse elements of Westminster politics, while insisting that they were miles better than it. These were people who spent the last two years of Blairs government basically saying how awfully ran it was (they had a point!) and then proceeded to get in the car and avoid the ditch offered by Blair, only to end up in lake!  

[Blair]

Oh god rumours are circulating that the reshuffle is either getting delayed or Rayner is going to actually keep her job...  

I don't think a good decision has ever been on the weekend in the Labour Party.

On a wider note I saw someone suggest that these moves are coming because while LOTO is proudly 'offline' in terms of twitter & parts of the Labour movement- they're very obsessed with the lobby & media coverage.

There's a suggestion that Keir took badly to his staff being briefed against by Rayners people- he has form for this, he got very ratty in a hustings when he was questioned over his staffs link to a lobbying firm & recently had a rant at Shadow Cabinet about briefing.

One of Starmers assets was his willingness to pretty much ignore perceived wisdom within Labour about what you can & can't do do- but this obviously has it's flaws- it feels like he still thinks he's just a shadow Brexit secretary or DPP.

[Blair]

He's not wrong!

https://twitter.com/johnmcdonnellMP/status/1391494173140865029

[Blair]

This is a weird reshuffle; which just sees Dodds, Reeves & Rayner switch places. Dodds getting sacked would be the leading story if it wasn't for the dust up between Starmer & Rayner...

I assume the junior positions are staying the same. If they are then it's barely a reshuffle, and seems quite similar to the botched & weird one that Ed M had to do in 2011 after Alan Johnson left.

Also I just realised the fabled return of Hillary Benn & Yvette Cooper hasn't happened...

[Blair]

It's partly wanting to spread the pain but it is good to see someone remind everybody that the huge challenges facing Labour equally apply to the Liberal Democrats- a party who made tactical errors at the last election that even Labour couldn't dream of.

Some of the article is babble though- the below is true, but there's very little in terms of how a Labour Government would actually shape the impact that these changes would have on politics- the Peter Mandelson interview in the NS touched on the Blairitie view that we should avoid punishing the gig economy for refusing to give its workers full time rights...

. We are living through the most far-reaching upheaval since the 19th-century Industrial Revolution: a technology revolution of the internet, AI, quantum computing, extraordinary advances in genomics, bioscience, clean energy, nutrition, gaming, financial payments, satellite imagery – everything, every sphere of work, leisure and life is subject to its transformative power. The question is how it is used: to control humanity or liberate it, to provide opportunities for those presently without opportunity, or to put even more power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of those already well off.

[Blair]

What's more significant is that we've moved to the stage were the various figures & faction are either trying to pull Starmer in one direction or feel the need for an ideological debate (there was a period in Ed M's leadership where this happened)

[Blair]

I see that Howard Beckett has managed to outdo himself again.

The one thing that unites most of the Labour movement was disliking him...

He’s been running an absolutely ridiculous campaign for GS which is more akin to to running for a CLP exec- he promised to spend members money taking Bojo to court for manslaughter.

[Blair]

This is one of those good tests of seeing how far certain people are willing to go to defend their faction...

The more interesting thing will be what UNITE do; I expect they will (like some of the left) turn this into an issue about process rather than trying to defend a pretty awful tweet from someone who could be head of their union.

If they were sensible they’d suspend him too and just let Turner win....

[Blair]

I also refer back to my point that Twitter is awful for Labour...

[Blair]

Sharon Hodgson has been appointed as Keirs new PPS.

She is generally seen as quite competent and a campaigning MP. She’s an ex UNISON rep, has a seat in the the north east and served in Jeremy’s front bench but also was a government whip back in the day. A relatively non factional pick.

[Blair]

Progress & the Policy Network are dissolving & merging.

This is being reported as news, despite the fact that Progress has barely existed for the last 4 years & has become the junior party to Labour first... which says something.

[Blair]

Came here to post that

Starmer has given an interview to the new entity which is called Progressive Britain.  It's boring and full of cliché.

Also Burnham has an interview in the Observer this am which is mildly interesting although he says nothing in particular that we didn't know already.

I thought it was relatively newsworthy as he very heavily hints towards running for a Westminster seat in 2023/2034- as much as I like Andy (I voted for him in 2015) it does smell of fighting the last battle to pick him after we lose an election!

[Blair]

He's been to the Keir school of responsibility! 

https://twitter.com/siennamarla/status/1394349889706991616

[Blair]

This also doesn't really make sense given that Byrne was expecting to run in 2020

[Blair]

It was always a bit of an ask given Street's popularity. Why not just admit as much?

I keep forgetting that the reason why the coverage of the Metro mayors was so well weird is because they’ve only existed for one cycle (I even read that it was widely thought that they would get abolished by the central government if they expected them at a time labour swept all of them)

[Blair]

Ah another rule change...

https://twitter.com/siennamarla/status/1395028031266299912

[Blair]

Ah another rule change...

https://twitter.com/siennamarla/status/1395028031266299912

This rule has been waived before, including for some byelections.

(maybe most famously, Wirral South not long before the 1997 GE)

And for Keir! But there was a good point made on Labour twitter that there's a difference between waiving it for civil servants & politically restricted roles and waiving it for people who might not have been members out of choice.

It just seems strange that LOTO are once again picking a candidate & playing around with the normal* way of doing it after getting burnt badly- Kim Leadbeater could be a much better candidate than Dr Paul though.

*Normal with the preface that virtually every Labour leader has done this at by-elections; if you look through the list of people elected at by-elections for Labour they're often either ex-SPADs or inept people selected to stop some other faction.