This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[EastAnglianLefty]

And for Welsh Representative, well, Carwyn won. Holland re-elected Treasurer ('re-elected' really: half the vote cast by TU block vote and that was totally sewn up), GV candidates win Youth Rep and Disability Rep posts, but, again, this was near-certain given the TU nominations and the same rule as for Treasurer.

Actually, disability rep was surprisingly close - especially as the GV candidate there is a less obviously toxic candidate than the youth rep.

That's a good 2 or 3 seats fewer than LtW expected to gain. Signs of hope for the left of the party.

I seriously doubt LtW expected to win 5 seats, and 6 were never on the cards. Realistically their best case scenario was getting 4 candidates elected and Jackman or one of the Tribune slate beating the fourth GV candidate.

EDIT: One other point: reading between the lines, there seems to have been a much strong alphabet effect than normal. I suspect this may have been exacerbated by the ballot and candidate information being all online, whereas in previous years they've generally sent out a candidate booklet.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Of course some are hypocritical in castigating the likes of Abbott whilst giving Blair a free pass, but the fact remains that DA happily appeared on a platform with people who are basically genocide deniers. Apologising was the least she could do.

And this sort of thing keeps happening because of the extremely reductive and simplistic "anti-imperialism" that so many on the Labour left subscribe to. At its crudest this seems to boil down to a genuine belief that the US, UK and (of course) Israel are literally the only bad countries in the world.

Well, by the same logic you could argue the reason this sort of thing keeps happening is because so many on the Labour right refuse to denounce clearly bad behaviour by the US, UK, Israel, or others despite loudly proclaiming their support for human rights, international law, and their own ideological faction's ethical superiority.

I mean you could, but given that the Labour leadership voted to recognise Palestine in 2014 and that the Shadow Foreign Secretary (and most right-coded leadership candidate) is a former chair of Labour Friends of Palestine, it might not be the most convincing argument.

If your definition of the Labour right is fundamentally 'Luke Akehurst', you're left with a set of beliefs that I'm not even convinced Luke Akehurst believes.

[EastAnglianLefty]

And his suspension has been ended with a formal warning. No word yet on whether the Labour whip will be restored - on the one hand Starmer's statement on the matter sounded seriously unimpressed, on the other hand he may not be eager for this to run and run.

[EastAnglianLefty]

So much hot air for several reasons, one of which is that the signatures of forty MPs would be needed and the numbers for that are just not there. Long Bailey did not manage to hit that total for the contest earlier this year,* quite a bit short, actually.

_{*Threshold is twenty per cent for challenges, ten per cent in the event of a vacancy.}

This is true, but I'm a little disappointed we won't get to see Ian Lavery being repeatedly asked to explain why the NUM pension pot was used to buy him a house.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Weekend polls show Labour's/Starmer's ratings to have taken a turn for the worse - kicking Corbyn's future into the long grass for a few months may yet prove to have been the wisest option.

Only one poll, and from a particularly unimpressive pollster at that. Might be indicative, but not anything worth fretting about just yet.

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's probably a good thing that this happened now rather than in three years time. I think this will be mostly forgotten from all but the biggest Corbyn diehards.

Still I don't think Starmer's handled this well at all.

Optimistic of you to hope this will be concluded in three years' time. There needs to be an independent complaints procedure implemented by September (which has to be signed off by party conference, which isn't supposed to meet until next September); then there are at least a dozen MPs (including Corbyn) who are likely to be investigated via that new procedure; then there's the issue that the suspension is supposed to be reviewed in 3 months time; then there's the fact that Corbyn is temperamentally unable to admit fault. There was never a realistic way to deal with this that didn't leave somebody very upset.

[EastAnglianLefty]

It should be remembered that being the chair of the NEC has no special powers, so this is an even more pointless thing to get in a huff about than it appears at first glance.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Jon Lansman actually had quite a measured view on this whole matter which was that A.) Margaret Beckett is hardly an active member of the Labour Right B.) The Leadership/Labour 'Right' have a majority on the NEC & the left need to accept that.

It's interesting that this appears to quickly be becoming an issue where the union-left is controlling the show; with Lansman off the NEC there's no-one whose really that experienced. Momemtum are a bit of a hollowed out force (if they can't turn out members for the leadership race/ face NEC races under new rules they're quite weak)

But ultimately if you let a clique within UNITE run the show then the obvious thing is going to happen! The stuff below is an example of the rubbish they come out with that has no strategy A.) They were hardly quiet before? B.) He just lost an internal election in UNITE with the platform of 'well Keir is a scab' C.) Grenfell has no relevance to this?

https://twitter.com/BeckettUnite/status/1331191175970238465

Not only is Grenfell not relevant, but firefighters (through no fault of their own) didn't come out of that catastrophe with their reputations enhanced.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I think the 2005 intake also wasn't great in that regard.

That was also a particularly New Labour intake, partly because the right of the party has generally been much better at managing selection processes in recent years than the left (even when the process isn't stitched up, and occasionally even when it has been stitched up against them.)

[EastAnglianLefty]

Partly it's a question of what those MPs are aiming to do. For example, the highest ambition of much of the 2005 Labour intake was to get a junior ministerial job, and as a result they tended to struggle with the rather different requirements of an effective opposition MP.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Also, the elections are all about trying to stitch things up before any ballot is cast, and not using FPTP would make that harder to do.

[EastAnglianLefty]

An interesting view; as always it was interesting to read Stephen Bush's responses to his article where he said was unsure how much of this was boredom (journos can't write Labour splits story or Keir cleans house anymore & need something to do), people in the party egging it on (who believe they should be in the shadow cabinet) or just general weakness in Keir's team.

It's interesting that this appears to have been briefed by people in the Shadow Cabinet.

My only mild annoyance is towards people from all wings of the party who seem to be convinced that there's some sort of alternative in the wings...

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2021/02/consensus-forming-among-commentariat-keir-starmer-not-job-does-it-matter

The part about politicians getting absurdly restless and desperate to talk about anything/give their opinions on how things *ought to be done* to anyone strikes me as pretty accurate.

Personally I feel the line about Starmer "stalling" given elections and campaigns right now are, much like the rest of our lives, stalled. Seems like these takes can wait until the May elections, can't they?

Even more so with journalists: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/05/britons-drama-keir-starmer-labour-leader-competence

This is a classic case of somebody who is a gossip columnist by background mistaking their short attention span and love of drama for a national characteristic.

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's actually extremely similar to Johnson's original appeal, in that it rests on daft similes and sentences deliberately designed to appear as if they're getting away from themselves. The style substitutes Latin tags for popbitch-style asides, but otherwise it's very close.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Starmer's big speech on the economy today. Some of the uber-online left doing their best to get very upset about it, but arguably the continuities with the previous regime clearly outweigh the departures.

Seems like they had good reason to be derisive. Even the Guardian is struggling to put a happy face on it.

"... he was careful to promise that good government must be the partner of good business, not its enemy."

Could have been written by the Daily Mail.

Reassuring for the BBC to know that there's no such person as Paul Dacre, it's just John McDonnell wearing a wig.

[EastAnglianLefty]

"Oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them" is a cliché, but it's a cliché for a reason.

Labour tends to focus too much, knowingly or not, on their plan for re-election, rather than getting elected in the first place.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Disagree. When people get fired from the Observer the New Statesman tends to employ them for a year or two until Cowley finds a new fad.

[EastAnglianLefty]

East and West Ham CLPs have been suspended after accusations of entryism: https://twitter.com/siennamarla/status/1370432204808056838

The problem is that Labour is also complaining that the Met is investigating allegations of electoral fraud relating to this, whereas the Met say they looked at it and concluded an investigation wasn't required.

Local parties being places into special measures isn't that unusual (although Newham hasn't had a reputation for being particularly odd - a few Rahmanites but generally much quieter than neighbouring Tower Hamlets.) However, alleging criminality that doesn't stand up to ten minutes of investigation is not a great look.

I think a lot of the criticism Starmer has come in for has been unfair. On the other hand, the appointment of Evans as General Secretary looks more and more like a bad misstep and it's hard to see him holding on the post much longer on this trajectory.

[EastAnglianLefty]

As a general rule the police are very reluctant to get involved in the internal affairs of political parties unless there's really clear evidence of serious criminality. So "no evidence" from the standpoint of the police doesn't mean there's nothing going on. But it's fairly clear that at a minimum this has been carried out in a sloppy manner, and that's the generous interpretation.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The report is here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/liverpool-city-council-best-value-inspection-report

Notably the introduction suggests that Liverpool is a great example of Conquest's Third Law of Politics in action, which is about as damning a comment as you can get.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Though if she does get the nod, it reduces the already small chances of the NIP being a meaningful factor in the by-election - Hartlepool might be willing to vote for a monkey, but it isn't going to vote for a woman from west Yorkshire.

[EastAnglianLefty]

What's also notable is that there are instances of bastardry being ascribed to Starmer's team, particularly relating to Hartlepool and Liverpool. It's just that the decisions that people tried to force through in those cases were  observably not the best decisions (Williams is as good a candidate as any other, but the CLP would have selected him anyway; Smith was not a good choice to review Liverpool Labour if you didn't want to start an unnecessary punch-up.)

This is rather a theme. There are a lot of people who believe in toughness as an absolute virtue, and continue to do so even as the tough option repeatedly gets worst outcomes than sensibly negotiated options.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I think the main purpose of the review is to deselect as many councillors as possible with the minimum amount of fuss, on the basis that a lot of the worst bits of the scandal are clearly sub judice and beyond that the way SRAs were handed out is never likely to lead to criminal prosecution but does create reasonable doubt about the trustworthiness of a lot of the recipients.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I regret to inform everyone that Emily Thornberry has become a big beast. Ironically one who said journalist says needs to be in the Shadow Cabinet!

I'm confused. She already is in the Shadow Cabinet.

[EastAnglianLefty]

This would appear to be a specific 'the Labour Party in the West Midlands is an absolute binfire' issue.

The issues here are specific to the West Midlands conurbation, but in fairness the Labour Party in the rest of the Midlands is also a binfire. In Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire they've been struggling for decades because they've been unable to make the fairly obvious case that the low-waged largely Eastern European employment in the area that is very unpopular is almost all at businesses that financially prop up the Conservative Party locally.

Regarding the UNITE election, it's worth remembering that a) turnout will be very low, because it's a union election and b) it's FPTP, because UK unions are sceptical of alternate electoral systems because they fear they're harder to stitch up. This does mean some quite odd outcomes are eminently plausible.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Factionalism in the Labour Party is a lot like factionalism within the clergy of the Church of England: in both cases a big part of the problem is that new recruits are immediately introduced to factional groupings and are usually immediately indoctrinated into one of them (often for reasons that might as well be random) and then they learn everything else about the institution and life in it through the factional grouping they have become attached to. The only difference is that the factional groupings in the CofE do, at least, still map on neatly to actual disputes about fundamental matters: the current roster of Labour Party factions mostly date to the late Cold War and their alignment to each other is entirely from that period. In practice this actually adds to the unpleasantness.

All sides often talk about stuff from the 1980s as if it was last week.

Though this isn't new. After all, the reason that getting rid of Clause IV was viewed as significant was that Gaitskell had tried and failed to get rid of it.