This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Christian Wolmar, another person who has been desperate for a while to get in parliament, also probably in.

[CumbrianLefty]

He is about the same age as Corbyn, so perhaps unlikely.

[Pericles]

Amazing how a Tory MP talks and Labour talking points come out. "The Shadow Chancellor stands for exactly the same as the last Labour government", come on guys, how out of touch can you be?!
https://twitter.com/GullisJonathan/status/1791393845722137061

[CumbrianLefty]

Mind you, its Gullis. There have been more sentient boulders.

[Blair]

Thought the scale of vacancies was worth posting here alone; John Cryer the PLP chair is quitting, along with former Ministers like Kevin Brennan.

Virendra Sharma is also standing down.

Much like in 2010 & 2017 it will mean the NEC will be in a position to appoint in some rather safe seats...

[CumbrianLefty]

A few more Labour MP retirements today too.

Some at least were clearly meant to be announced in the summer and had to be brought forward because of the PM's "surprise" decision.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Missed this at the time:

For those interested, David Lammy has just dropped an essay on the next Labour government’s foreign policy, progressive clichéism.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-kingdom/case-progressive-realism-david-lammy?

“Progressive Realism”

 

[Pres Mike]

Anyway, do we know how many of the rest of the Thirty Seven are still alive? There's obviously Kinnock himself, of course.

What is the 37?

[Ancestral Republican]

Abdul Hai stabbed a child to death in an unprovoked, racist murder and now his good pal Sir Keith (who he worked with on a 'youth safety taskforce') wants to get him into Parliament.

As long as he didn't support Corbyn in 2015 he's a good man in Keir's book.

[Pres Mike]

Presumably a woman, otherwise we would have had two non-heterosexual Prime Ministers in a row and three non-heterosexual major party leaders in the 1970 and the two 1974 general elections.

What?

[Hnv1]

Missed this at the time:

For those interested, David Lammy has just dropped an essay on the next Labour government’s foreign policy, progressive clichéism.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-kingdom/case-progressive-realism-david-lammy?

“Progressive Realism”

 

I actually found it as a decent approach all things considered. A strong scent of Blairism though, I wonder how that will go down.

[Pericles]

The General Secretary of Unite attacks Labour for refusing to 'rebalance the country in favour of working people'-

The imbalance in power in the workplace is borne out by two facts. First, weekly median pay for full-time workers in Britain is lower in real terms now than before Labour was elected in 1997. Second, the profit margins of the average British business have increased by 30% since before the pandemic.

Is Labour going to change in any serious way the balance of forces? I am increasingly sceptical. The rowbacks on specific issues, such as moving away from a total ban on fire and rehire, signal the direction of travel. For further evidence, look at the planned introduction of sectoral bargaining, which is now on life support.

Limited to one sector and lacking any sort of clarity as to whether actual negotiations on issues such as pay will take place, this important policy will without doubt be watered down still further as part of the much-trumpeted “consultation”. If collective bargaining is not restored to a respectable level, the new deal will not deliver real change for workers where it matters, in their pockets.

She did make clear she is endorsing Labour in the general election though. Even so, the timing of this article is likely to be more attention-grabbing than its content.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It is a very silly argument, but then her audience is neither the general public nor the bulk of her union's members. Unite's toxic internal politics are what they are.

[CumbrianLefty]

Presumably a woman, otherwise we would have had two non-heterosexual Prime Ministers in a row and three non-heterosexual major party leaders in the 1970 and the two 1974 general elections.

What?

Harold Wilson was very much heterosexual, no need to worry on that score

It is a pretty undisputed matter of record that Jeremy Thorpe was primarily attracted to men - though he did marry and have children, neither of which was true of Edward Heath. About whom there were rumours even at the time, but very little has ever been reliably confirmed. Very possibly a "gay incel".