Labour Party leadership election 2015

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...even though Corbyn doesn't remember anymore, so if Abou Jahjah....

In fairness to Corbyn this is quite plausible. He's a campaigning backbench MP (on about eighty different issues) of the workaholic variety: most of the people he meets in that capacity will have been introduced to him by others and will pass before him as a bit of a blur. Of course he makes the problems that come with this (at least if such a person suddenly becomes a senior politician) worse by the fact that he shares the classic hard left tendency to make ingratiating remarks, but that's a different matter.

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I eagerly await the outcome of the Conference Arrangement Committee elections!

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Well... we didn't intend to run an open primary...

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The idea of the Registered Supporters Scheme was actually to allow people who support Labour strongly but have no interest in joining a political party to have a formal role in the Party structure. I'm not sure why this was thought to be a workable idea either, but it was. It didn't work initially (because its a terrible idea), but somehow it ended up being reborn as part of the 'solution' to the 'crisis' brought about by the Falkirk nonsense. But apparently no one realised that all they were creating was a cheap ticket to a leadership election. And unfortunately it turns out to be rather difficult to deal with the entryist issue - which given its history Labour has to take seriously - when we aren't talking of actual membership: all you're left with are rather crude methods.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It was reborn, packaged with OMOV, for a certain goal by some - to open up the membership and dilute certain sections of the Labour Party's influence - and of course Falkirk was their non-justification.

Well it was demanded as part of the 'solution' by certain people for reasons that still make very little sense but can (I guess) be put down to certain people being completely delusional about the appeal of their particular internal brand to a wider public.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

As someone who wasn't around in the 1980's how similar is Corbyn's campaign similar to Benn's campaign for labour party democracy?

I wasn't around in the 1980s either (other than as a small child!) but the answer is that everything is much more civilised from everyone. Or at least I've not heard of any comradely doorstepping yet. I guess I'll maybe change my mind if I do. By the early 1980s there had been bitter factional conflict at CLP level for a decade with all of the toxins that will inevitably build up if that happens. Additionally the content of Corbyn's campaign is much more moderate than what the Bennite Left advocated: isn't it ironic that Corbyn has compromised with the (s)electorate but Kendall has refused to?

CLPD should be capitalised tho'. They're still around actually and are very important to the Corbyn campaign: the 'Grassroots Alliance' is a front organisation.

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Funnily enough we looked and 1 out of 16 Kendall voters have put Corbyn as there 2... make of that what you will haha

At our nomination meeting, one of the three people brave enough to vote for Kendall also second preferenced Corbyn, so these strange ones do exist!

Je t'aime THIGMOO.

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A fair few of the policies Corbyn has been advocating could be quite popular (the nationalisation of the train franchises - the railways themselves already being in public hands and without compensation as well lmao - being one of them), the questionable part is how they're sold. People like Labour to bash vested interests and to stick up for ordinary people. Remember the windfall taxes on privatised utilities? Comrades, that was Blair. People are less keen on things being advocated for what look like dogmatic reasons.

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My general view on the issue of foreign state corporations losing out due to nationalisation can be summed up roughly as 'cry me a river', but, yes, sensitivity would be required.

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The answer to your second question is that foreign policy in general is waaaaaaaaay less important to the electorate than it was during the Cold War (understandably: the existential threat is gone after all) and so it is less important to politicians (who aren't foreign policy obsessives) as well.

And the answer to the first is that the position conflicts with that of the FCO and the diplomatic establishment (inc. academics etc) generally.

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I would caution against nostalgia (because there are sh!tty things about every period), but it is a fact that the increases in material wealth in recent decades in Britain have not exactly been evenly distributed across society: actually the benefit has accrued almost entirely to the managerial classes and to private sector professionals. Living standards for working class people (however defined) in Britain peaked at some point in the 1970s: what good times there have been subsequently have been fueled by credit and government spending, subsequently when there have been bad times guess who has tended to bear the brunt of it. There's also a new dimension, and that is age. With the exception of the inevitable gilded minority, things are terrible for the young at present: this has been a major factor in galvanising support for Corbyn.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Hmm? Mass immigration from the Subcontinent happened between a pretty narrowly defined window (late 50s through to mid 70s) with the last really big primary influxes happening after the Bangladesh Liberation War and the expulsion of the various Indian communities in East Africa.

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...what are we even arguing about now?

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Some of the policies of the Wilson government in 1964 were quite left wing though. Remember the Department For Economic Affairs? This initiated Labour's 5 year plan for the British economy (slightly akin to the Soviet Union's 5 year plans of the 30's and 40's).

That was actually a pet project of the Right of the Party (Gaitskell might not have been a massive fan of nationalisation but he was hugely in favour of Planning) which is why George Brown wanted (and got) it and is why it faded away into obscurity when he was moved elsewhere.

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I'm not sure Walden's take on Wilson can be regard as Gospel...

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It's kind of unbelievable that Labour could go from the "New Labour" Blair/Brown era to being led by a far leftist within the span of just a few years.

THIGMOO is an amazing thing sometimes.

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Heh, I had to google that one.

Do you imagine there'll any attempt at 'reconciliation' if he wins, or will it be a case of factional warfare 24/7?

Its a classic for a reason.

Quite possibly both. The balance of the two will depend to a considerable extent on how he acts when (if, etc) he wins, and that's not something we can be entirely sure of. My hope is that he understands that the forces that have pushed him forward are totally different to that which propelled the Left in the 70s and 80s, because that would immediately make things easier for all concerned. And on that I'm really not sure: on the one hand he's a clever man, on the other he can also be a bit of a foolish one at times.

Personally I'm worried about the speed at which the inner factionalist in a lot of people has been unleashed in recent months, but slightly encouraged by the fact that there doesn't seem to be much enthusiasm for that type of thing in the wider Party (i.e. so far its just the sort of people - whether Right or Left - who care deeply about the outcome of NEC elections). Things were different back in the 80s.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's quite likely to be another chance at choosing the leader for the next election anyway; he'll be 70 by 2020 and he supposedly didn't particularly want the job.

He's even gone as far as to suggest that if he's dragging Labour down in the polls then he'll go. Which is... er... unusual language for a leadership candidate.

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That at least shouldn't be a serious concern: this parliament has five years to run and the Tories are due their own (doubtless spectacularly nasty) leadership contest of their own towards the end of it.

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I'm not so sure. It is 2015. A lot could happen in five years and the Tories won't get more popular in office. Labour winning the 2020 general election doesn't have to be a pipe dream.

Ah, but such miserablism is the Labour Party way you see. A book was published shortly after the 1959 election with the title of Must Labour Lose?: the argument of the book was that unless Labour made massive changes then the answer was 'yes'. Labour did not make massive changes and was highly resistant to even very minor ones. Guess who won the next election.

The thing I would point out is that the Tories are also due a leadership election in this parliament. It's unlikely to be a clusterfyck in the way that Labour's has been/is, but it will likely be a clusterfyck all the same.

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Another interesting Akehurst piece here. Obviously he stands where he stands (and you might want to factor that in to what he writes I guess) but its worth your time.

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Well almost all of the registered supporters registered as such in order to vote in the leadership contest so it would be pretty shocking if turnout from them was not highest.

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Saturday

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Why is Burnham polling so low? I assumed he'd end up being Corbyn's main opponent. He's probably the best choice to keep the party together.

Well we don't know what's actually happened yet, but Burnham has run a very nervy campaign (that has also felt pretty subdued at times) and his attempt to be a basically crossfactional candidate has not been... er... let us say that he's not done that as well as Khan did for the Mayoral selection. He can be a much stronger performer than he has been over the past few months so its all kind of disappointing.

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Again, I have half a suspicion (and it is totally uninformed) that this might be one of those weird situations where he either wins by a lot or loses narrowly. A lot of people with conflicting feelings making a lot of individual decisions: I tend to think that they will mostly have turned out to have broken the same way, whatever that is.

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The issue was whether the great mass that is the Soft Left would get cold feet or not; they did not.