2020 Labour Leadership Election

[brucejoel99]

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.

[brucejoel99]

I think the fact that this 'endorsement' only came after the polls had closed shows that Osborne knows this will go down very badly indeed with most Labour voters, which also suggests that he's not necessarily doing this with Starmer's best interests in mind.

He may not be Johnson's biggest fan (although he's not a particularly outspoken opponent either), but fundamentally he's a very partisan Tory and the most generous interpretation you can put on this is that he'd be quite happy for everybody to lose the next election.

This really understates just how much Osborne greatly dislikes the current Tory leadership. Osborne & Cameron had it all stitched up: take over the party, privatize this, do dodgy dealings with that, & make loads of money for 'OUR' friends. Then there's a massive coup against them over the EU, the party leadership changes hands, & suddenly, the once cool in-crowd, who used to strut around No. 10 acting all busy & important are out in the cold while the new in-crowd are partying it up in your old house & making money for 'THEIR' friends.

He used to be the big man, & now he's (along with Cameron) been totally shunned. This is why he wants Starmer: because seems the most likely candidate to offer a credible opposition &, as such, to cause BoJo trouble.

[brucejoel99]

I think the fact that this 'endorsement' only came after the polls had closed shows that Osborne knows this will go down very badly indeed with most Labour voters, which also suggests that he's not necessarily doing this with Starmer's best interests in mind.

He may not be Johnson's biggest fan (although he's not a particularly outspoken opponent either), but fundamentally he's a very partisan Tory and the most generous interpretation you can put on this is that he'd be quite happy for everybody to lose the next election.

This really understates just how much Osborne greatly dislikes the current Tory leadership. Osborne & Cameron had it all stitched up: take over the party, privatize this, do dodgy dealings with that, & make loads of money for 'OUR' friends. Then there's a massive coup against them over the EU, the party leadership changes hands, & suddenly, the once cool in-crowd, who used to strut around No. 10 acting all busy & important are out in the cold while the new in-crowd are partying it up in your old house & making money for 'THEIR' friends.

He used to be the big man, & now he's (along with Cameron) been totally shunned. This is why he wants Starmer: because seems the most likely candidate to offer a credible opposition &, as such, to cause BoJo trouble.

Sorry, but this is flat-out wrong. That was his attitude to May, it's not his attitude to Johnson, who is fundamentally part of the same crowd as Osborne and Cameron, just much less loyal to it.

May didn't screw them over on the EU just to further her political standing. He did. Pretty clear as to why (as it is with Cameron, whose current disgust for BoJo is the worst-kept secret in Britain) he hates BoJo.

[brucejoel99]

A new dawn has broken.

[brucejoel99]

Glad Starmer has won a clear mandate. I have my reservations about him, but he was clearly the best person for the job out of the three in contention.

That said. I was one of those who said in December that it was ridiculous to assume the Tories were destined to win in 2024. Now I'll issue the opposite warning and say that, while I'm cautiously optimistic about Starmer being a capable leader, that alone is not enough to assure victory for Labour (and neither is BoJo's blatant incompetence).

Yeah, anybody is gonna have a tough time going up against BoJo in a general election. It's a sad fact but people warm up to BoJo, & that's a very powerful thing in politics (though for all we know, COVID could end up flipping that in an instant).

If nothing else, I'm relieved RLB didn't win; Labour wouldn't have stood a chance with her. I personally wouldn't have ruled out Nandy, but it's all academic now. Good luck to Starmer; hopefully the party can indeed get behind him now.

[brucejoel99]

Interesting appointments! Not sure what Nandy is doing at Foreign though, surely she would have made more sense placed elsewhere?

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

T O W N S

[brucejoel99]

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.

If you can't recognize the working-class & socialist roots of Keir Starmer, then there's nothing that can be done.

[brucejoel99]

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.

[brucejoel99]

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.

My mistake

[brucejoel99]

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.

Agreed on Corbyn, though it's not so much socialist policies that have turned the working-class away so much as it is whatever "revolutionary socialism" LARP that Corbyn, McDonnell & his hardline supporters are keen on.

But with regards to Starmer, if he can bring socialist policies to the table without feeling the need to fetishize authoritarian left-wing governments & halts the party's descent into coo-coo woke politics (which looks promising - maintaining their economic policies, etc.; he's obviously intelligent enough to know that capitulating to the centrists too much will be a recipe for disaster that would only foster further division), then he'll have a much better time with the electorate than his predecessor.

[brucejoel99]

You're confusing origins with outlook. Coming from a working class background but aspiring to ingratiate oneself into the system (and being satisfied with the few measly tweaks possible by working 'from the inside'), as Keir did, is to adopt a fundamentally conservative outlook.

So it's a bad thing that Starmer grew up in a poor, working-class home & worked his ass off to become one of the top lawyers in the UK before then using that position to literally advocate for & defend workers' rights? K.

I thought leftists could/would/should at least respect him for that. Sure, he's not a cranky socialist who thinks he's in the '70s but he also isn't some nEoLiBeRaL bLaIrItE.

[brucejoel99]

Ed Miliband, Shadow Business, Energy and Industrial Secretary

Comeback?

We now have chaos & Ed Miliband, but correlation doesn't equal causation.

[brucejoel99]

Ed Miliband will be the biggest news; back in part of the department he use to run (climate is now part of Business) A very sensible move seeing as BEIS will be on the frontline over Covid & for his many faults Ed knows how to do Government & do media lines. A return was suggested under Corbyn & Ed is actually friends with Keir- having asked him to run in 2015.

To be an MP (since he was a member of the 2015 intake) or for Leader in the Corbyn/Burnham/Cooper/Kendall election?

[brucejoel99]

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?

Yeah, I love how non-offensive this selection is. Seems like he's shunned anybody, left or right, who'd be anything other than serious & professional at all times (Jess Phillips & Clive Lewis, for example).

[brucejoel99]

Now that Boris Johnson is gravely ill in the ICU, we have to consider the possibility that Starmer will be up against someone other than BoJo in the next election...

That's a bit grim, but regardless, that'd be a discussion for the UK thread, not this leadership election thread.

[brucejoel99]

Kendall back at Social Care? Oof.

At least she (like seemingly all of the Starmer front bench) is in a position that she'd be expected to do well in.

[brucejoel99]

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.

To be fair, at least the 'right-wingers' aren't in major positions. And people on the left were worried about there being no left-wingers at all in any of these positions; in actuality, there are quite a few on the Starmer front bench.

[brucejoel99]

The Middle East brief given to Wayne David, who broke the whip to vote for the continued Saudi blockade of Yemen.

I feel like this clashes with Keir's 4th pledge.

[brucejoel99]

Good tweet

https://twitter.com/steamedhamms/status/1248582883306078213?s=19

NO HE CAN'T BACK A MEDAL CAMPAIGN, HE'S EXPOSED HIMSELF AS A NEO LIBERAL TRAITOR TO THE WORKING CLASS BASED ON THIS ONE HEADLINE AND COMPLETELY CONTRARY TO EVERYTHING HE'S ALREADY SAID! YOU JUST CAN'T SEE AS CLEARLY AS WE CAN???