This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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

This particular polling firm has had the two major parties a MoE away from 40% since the end of July, with movement around that line sometimes going this way and sometimes that way.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Starmer has a problem. Boris elicits love or hatred. Starmer elicits...nothing. Assuming 'one more heave' with Starmer is dangerous.

One of the annoying things about the pandemic is that it's harder to keep an ear to the ground as usual, but I have noticed a degree of warmth from some people who are in one of his more obvious target audiences. But all is very early, still.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

each time it becomes more ineffective & more self-destructing until you end up trying to do a leadership contest because there's nothing else left to do!

Except that, in this case, they literally do not have the numbers to get to that point! So there isn't even a station at the end of the line marked 'sweet release of death'.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

It's a dispute about an actual honorific.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Doesn't it have some small powers?

I remember reading that Tom Watson & Angela Rayner only exist because the the NEC motion to remove the position of deputy leader was ruled as out of order by the UNISON NEC member who was Vice-Chair (I think the Chair was either awol or expected to be chairing it?)

It's one of those funny posts that is mostly purely ceremonial, but can be important in a tense situation. Very British.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Can we file this one under 'nature is healing'?

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Only since about Friday evening, before then it was all "but what will Labour do??"

As if that was *the* most important thing.

Part of the problem is that Labour - for all it's byzantine silliness - is a much less opaque organisation. Easier to get good gossip, easier to get actual information, easier to put together stories quickly for a deadline. Even the most paranoid people in Labour talk.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Corbyn's leadership not only ignored the media, it was handing them ammunition with unforced errors and gaffes.

Well yeah, though that was partly a consequence of not being bothered by them.

Yes, it led to a certain arrogance and then to sloppiness. But Labour's press management has been very poor since - we might as well be honest about this - Campbell left his post. Corbyn era an absolute nadir, but not something that came out of nowhere.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

https://twitter.com/GuyLabour/status/1335925447947857921

it me

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's speculation around a couple of junior shadows, mostly representing London constituencies.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Although in the wider scheme it does show Labour's problem; a lack of talented people to do the relative grunt work of being a junior minister.

In terms of ability there's not much question that this is the worst PLP in living memory. It's a problem. The 'good' news is that, somehow, the government benches are just as weak.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Christina McAnea has been elected as UNISON General Secretary.

There was some worry among the leadership that Roger McKenzie would win & deprive the leadership of the two reliable votes that UNISON provide on the NEC. The result wasn't close but it looks like there was a splintering of the left vote as she only got 47%. (JC supported McKenzie but Mac the Knife supported one of the others)

Although I know these things are often a lot more about union politics than Labour politics.

Full results: McAnea 63,900 (47.7), Holmes 45,220 (33.8 ), McKenzie 14,450 (10.8 ), Pierre 10,382 (7.8 )

The surprise is quite how poor McKenzie's performance was. Turnout very low (5%) but that's normal in these contests.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

On the one hand, yes, on the other hand it isn't as if most people who actually vote in them would even use their transfers.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yes, but it was the Cooper campaign that was responsible for the galaxy-brain move of ensuring that a certain somebody made the ballot, and it was the Cooper campaign that was responsible for a certain whipped stance on a certain parliamentary vote; both moves designed to wreck Burnham's campaign. Which, I suppose, they did. However...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Unite Scotland has endorsed Monica Lennon.

https://unitetheunion.org/news-events/news/2021/january/joint-press-release-unite-scotland-endorses-monica-lennon-for-scottish-labour-leader/

Perhaps more telling is that USDAW have endorsed Sarwar. Ordinarily that, too, would be 'water is wet', but back in 2017 Sarwar was cold-shouldered by the unions and only managed a nomination from Community.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Though that applies both ways - eg I will be surprised if Sandwell is still a one party state after May.

Mind you, everyone was surprised that it still was after the 2019 locals!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

FWIW someone is briefing to the Times that Keir needs to do more to embrace business & aspiration (or whatever the stupid buzzword is) so we can work out where the stories from the last week have come...

Nature is Healing.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Hywel Francis, historian of the South Wales coalfield and Labour MP for Aberavon has died. He was seventy four. The son of Dai Francis (the leader of the South Wales NUM in the 60s and early 70s), he was particularly well known as one of the co-authors (along with Dai Smith)* of The Fed, for Miners Against Fascism: Wales and the Spanish Civil War, and for founding the South Wales Miners Library. He was one of the founding members of the historical society Llafur and at the time of his death was its President.

_{*Father of Owen Smith. South Wales is a small world.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There is a major corruption scandal raging in the city at present (it is, in fact, the reason for the vacancy) and if certain rumours are to believed it may possibly involve a certain large institution rather prominent in Labour Party circles and especially so in and around the city of Liverpool.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The electorate is very volatile at present (this can be considered as a 'permanent' feature) and so will ever be prone to shifting about a lot, and at the moment very few people are paying much attention to politics - people instead are by and large tending to their own gardens, a fact that a) makes it harder to poll and b) means that polling will be even more volatile (this can be considered as a 'temporary' feature, a result of the pandemic). That's the first point. The second, a point to be combined with the first, is that the standard MoE on a British poll is about 3%. Taking the wider picture together, we've moved from a situation where the government had a massive lead, to a situation where it had a modest lead, to a situation where things were tied, and now back to a situation where the government has a modest lead (in all cases there were outliers in this or that direction every so often. It is possible, quite probably really, that the unusual situation increases the likelihood of bad samples as well). Except for the movement away from the first of these, the shifts required have not been particularly large. It is very hard to say how 'real' any of this is or has been. As for Starmer's personal ratings, the salient fact remains that the 'uncertain' category (however it is phrased) is very high.

A broader point: a lot of opposition parties across the World have been struggling the polls throughout the pandemic, generally more so (particularly when the various contexts are considered) than Labour here. It is fairly obvious why: it isn't just or even mostly that some voters feel a sense of loyalty to 'the Government' during a national crisis, but that the issue drowns out all others* and is hard to 'do politics' with as it is not a normal political issue. Patterns of media exposure are also abnormal: government ministers are routinely on the television in a technocratic context rather than a conventional political one.

_{*In fact attempts by some government ministers to draw attention to this or that non-pandemic related issue have generally fallen on ground as stony as that which shadow ministers have found when they try the same.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It is very unlikely that Labour will pick a candidate who is not from Teesside and the only reason why I write 'very unlikely' rather than 'completely implausible' is because of the outside chance of someone from East Durham being picked.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Thought of the day- what is the most hilarious/depressing/inept example of selection rigging in Labour history?

Patrick Gordon Walker at the 1965 Leyton by-election.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Thought of the day- what is the most hilarious/depressing/inept example of selection rigging in Labour history?

Patrick Gordon Walker at the 1965 Leyton by-election.

There is a story here. I'd like to hear it!

After he lost Smethwick at the 1964 General Election under... er... well... controversial circumstances... Gordon Walker, who had been Shadow Foreign Secretary, was appointed as Foreign Secretary anyway, and it was decided to engineer a by-election to get him back into the Commons. It was decided that Leyton would be a good bet: it had an elderly MP (Reg Sorensen, who had represented the area since 1929, less the 1931-5 Parliament) who presumably wouldn't object to being given a seat in the Lords and a solid majority. So old Sorensen was kicked upstairs, a by-election declared and Gordon Walker selected as candidate. And proceeded to lose: there was significant local irritation at the unnecessary election, Gordon Walker was never a very good candidate, and the issues that had done him in at Smethwick followed him to Leyton (which was actually quite a similar area in certain critical respects). He had little choice but to resign as Foreign Secretary, but was selected again for Leyton at the 1966 General Election, won it back and then spent two years as a strikingly undistinguished minor member of the Wilson cabinet.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The sight of left wing s***posters rushing to canonise classic machine politician Anderson

Who had recently been developing increasingly warm relations with the government, even allowing them to use his administration as a contrast with That Nasty Man Burnham without a murmur.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The interesting thing about all this tittle-tattle - and it is about the only interesting thing - is how boilerplate it is. Change a few words here and there (and honestly it really only is a few) and we have comments of a sort that have been aimed at every Labour leader since Gaitskell, with the partial exception of Blair at his zenith. I have to laugh at the large number that fit into the 'doesn't understand Real Politics and isn't enough of an absolute bastard' category of 'criticism', if that is the correct word. What a thoroughly bizarre attitude, what a way to tell on yourself.