This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[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

[Geoffrey Howe]

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.

[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! 

[beesley]

Will be bad if it appears that Northern MPs have lost out with the demotion of Rayner, Nandy, and McDonald. Appointing Streeting, Reeves and Philips would be a very good choice if your goal was angering Twitter lefties though.

[Geoffrey Howe]

Any news around Ian Austin?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I would watch an epic biopIc about Nick Brown's career.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't understand.

Well a few hours later and things are no clearer. My recommendation is that senior people in the Labour Party and their aides, assistants and associates need to drink less and get more sleep. Then maybe this sort of thing might not seem so... characteristic.

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

Burnham is saying some interesting things.

[GoTfan]

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...

So much for "I take full responsibility"...

I did like Starmer when he was elected but I think it's really starting to seem that he isn't up for the huge task of rehabilitating Labour right now.

At the risk of seeming overly cynical, I don't think Starmer (or, more accurately, his advisory team) is interested in rehabilitating Labour right now. He's interesting in purging it of what he sees as its 'problem'.

In other words, more interested in carrying on their war with the party's left wing.

[morgieb]

This is commiting seppuku at its finest. Fairly ashamed I was duped.

[CumbrianLefty]

Any news around Ian Austin?

Has he formally joined the Tories yet?

[Geoffrey Howe]

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?

[CumbrianLefty]

Almost everything??

[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!  

[Geoffrey Howe]

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!  

I remember him calling himself a Blairite, which is a brave thing to do in the modern Labour Party.

[CumbrianLefty]

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!  

John Woodcock was another of this rather unlovely group.

[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.

[CumbrianLefty]

What many saw as potential strengths for Starmer when he was voted in as Labour leader are, at the present time and circumstances, weaknesses. I think this is hard to deny, and to a degree it is just bad luck, but moping about that won't get you very far.

[Geoffrey Howe]

The Manchester Guardian has some background on the Rayner sacking:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/09/how-labour-fault-lines-led-to-a-seismic-event-with-angela-rayners-sacking

[Lumine]

Well, looks like the reshuffle is finally underway after two days of self-inflicted catastrophe. Apparently it goes something like this:

-Anneliese Dodds (Shadow Chancellor) demoted to party chair, replaced with Rachel Reeves.
-Nick Brown (Chief Whip) sacked (again!)
-Rayner moved to shadow Gove at the Cabinet Office (replacing Reeves).
-Valerie Vaz (Shadow Leader of the House) leaves, replaced with Thangam Debbonaire.

There was talk of Starmer sacking/demoting Nandy (Foreign) and Ashworth (Health) for some reason, but that seems to have gone nowhere.

[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...

[Geoffrey Howe]

Just been flicking through Denis Healey's autobiography and, related to this, he pins the beginning of Labour's demise in the second Wilson term (1966-70). And of course during this came the Rivers of Blood speech.

One could argue that Labour's demise began in 1951...

[Conservatopia]

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...

Apparently the Times specifically requested that Cooper and Benn be left out otherwise they would have nothing to write about on Sunday mornings.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

I think the whole point of electing someone like Keir Starmer as leader is that they're hopefully not going to panic and make chaotic decisions with completely predictably poor results at the first sign of trouble, and so him doing exactly that sort of defeats the point.

Bring in the Drakeford Regency.