2020 Labour Leadership Election

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Why isn't Watson running?

Because he retired from politics this election?

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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!").

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Those survey figures make sense; we know that Starmer is well-liked by Labour members, we know that a certain proportion will back a cheese sandwich if said sandwich is seen as the 'official' Left candidate, we know that Thornberry is respected but not liked, that Cooper is seen as yesterday's woman, and the rest is basically name recognition.

Alternatively, vigorously opposing small-minded Brexiteerism wasn't and isn't just a flash in the Labour pan but is actually at the heart of the party's political identity. I think an understated number of Labour people feel that Corbyn's weird fence-straddling on the issue not only didn't help win many Leave constituencies, but it didn't help prevent Britain from trading its global standing and societal openness for atavistic Brexit knuckle-dragging. The idea that this is primarily a Blairite/Corbynite civil war is actually overstated, because the Blairites lost and lost badly and the party is a Corbynite party. For many Starmer presents an opportunity to do Corbynism in a competitive, credible, and more firmly European way. Frankly, they seem exactly right about that.

Bless.

It was Labour, particularly the left of the party, that opposed the European Community in the first place. It was the Tories from Heath onwards who were fans. Being pro-EU was quintessentially a Blairite/New Labour project, it has nothing to do with the traditional left in this country.

Besides I have bad news for you, Starmer said today Remain is dead.

You may be one of the few who sees the Brexit issue solely within the bounds of formal EU membership. I, and I suspect the half of the UK that opposes Brexit, does not. The question now is not whether the UK should remain an EU member but rather whether the same xenophobia and atavistic smallness, the same mindless populism, that launched the whole Brexit process should dominate the public discourse in Britain. I assure you that's very much an open and central question in Labour and throughout the country.

Then the question is, can the UK remain internationalist even outside of the EU, and to me the answer is an emphatic "duh". Although there obviously is a lot of vulgar isolationism around, there are plenty of people in the Leave cadre with internationalist views, and the party doesn't exactly lack for people in its past (going back to Gaitskell) who were stridently  internationalist and interested in building a democratic and decolonized Commonwealth over the European project.

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Yeah, the Cameronite socially liberal program was less a transformative overhaul of the Conservatives, more of a failed attempt to hide the weirdos and cranks with socially conservative pet issues that literally three people care about. Its one thing to campaign on popular immigration cuts (which Cameron did just as much as Boris) quite another if one of your backbenchers is launching a campaign to restore gollywogs to jam jars or trying to make Thatcher Memorial Day or whatever. I think it was SSM where he overreached though - lots of opposition came out of the woodwork to slow the legislation, which itself created resentment amongst swing voters (who supported SSM, but who often said things like "aren't there more important things right now?" Etc.); that's when ukip first started increasing its vote iirc.

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Why the love for the lady who wants to apply martial law to Scotland?

Nandy's position on Scotland isn't all that radical if I understand it correctly. Certainly nothing too bad.

Plus Labour only has 1 Scottish seat anyways so it is not like they can go much lower.

Hypothetically, if hardline British unionism were to make Labour win a significant amount of votes South of the border, triaging Scotland would be a good tradeoff. Labour loses their lone Scottish seat and instrad flips back a dozen English seats (no net effect in Wales I imagine). Hell, it would even reinforce the SNP as well, allowing them to flip back the Tory seats in Scotland, allowing Labour to rule.

And not too unlike here, a hung parliament = Labour government; unless the Lib Dems (or SNP) feel suicidal.

Britain isn't Spain.

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https://mobile.twitter.com/paulmasonnews/status/1246376056807972864

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I liked Trickett tbh: one of the more underrated members of the Corbyn team.

Thomas-Symonds is one for the Labour history nerds: has done some autobiographies of people like Bevan and Attlee.

Ashworth will continue on with the Health portfolio. Hilariously, Nick "Talleyrand" Brown has yet again survived into a new regime; presumably he has an eight leaved clover or something.

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For what it's worth the incoming Shadow Cabinet is a lot less "London-centric" than before, where a healthy walk could have taken you through the constituencies of Corbyn, Starmer, Abbott and Thornberry; in addition to McDonnell basically all the top jobs were taken by Londonders.

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Interestingly Johnathan Reynolds, despite certainly not being on the left, is a supporter of a Universal Basic Income; which could be interesting given his portfolio.

@MaxQue, Nandy was taken out of context with the Catalonia thing.

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Basically this is the sort of cabinet that Miliband would have chosen if he had got a real mandate.

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the vibe I got from the leaks is grown up student politicians, which is to be expected. Not that I imagine the contents of other parties' groupchats would be particularly edifying material, but is it too much to want an apolitical party bureaucracy that isn't staffed by the spouses of MP's (freaking Phil Woolas's wife was in there, blast from the past) and union heavies rotating their guys out in turn?