This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

If you are referring to that Rachel Sylvester piece for the previous example, there are two culprits on the shadow Treasury front bench who stand out as obvious suspects. One is garrulous and factional but also relatively flexible in their actual views, the other less "talkative" but more ideological.

Which actually makes me suspect the latter more in that case.

Who is the "garrulous and factional" and who is the "less "talkative" but more ideological"?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

OK then, not everybody will understand the code

Streeting and McFadden, respectively.

ah, ok.
Why do I get the impression Wes Streeting likes intrigue of this sort too much for his own good?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

According to John Curtis many northern voters were enticed by the prospect of pork-barrel spending if they elected Tories.

Is that believable?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

According to John Curtis many northern voters were enticed by the prospect of pork-barrel spending if they elected Tories.

Is that believable?

Yes. They have been spending lots of money in seats that just happen to be Tory marginals in the North. Apparently the Tory metro mayors have been pushing this message - if you want investment from the government, vote Tory.

Well, if that's not a clever use of the government's power of the purse, I don't know what is.
That does sound like something that would help explain the swings in Hartlepool.
It also strikes me as something the Osbourne-era Tories wouldn't have been as effective at. It seems we have a Tory party perfectly geared towards winning Northern votes.
What can Labour do? It doesn't control the agenda (the government does).
And I can't imagine a scenario where Labor wins government without Hartlepool.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

And as for turnout drops being uniform - whilst this was *mostly* the case in 2001 it was rather less so four years earlier when the drop was concentrated in safe Labour seats (and some really hardcore areas, eg inner Manchester and Liverpool, had seen a fall against the trend in *1992*)

Does this actually argue against the point? Manchester and Liverpool are known for many things, but high life expectancy is not one of them, so you'd expect any cyclical decline in turnout to manifest there first.

Interesting observation.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Fun fact about Margeret Beckett: she was the last Labour party leader to preside over the party during a British European Parliament election that made use of first-past-the-post.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Is Coyne a particularly colorful figure, by Westminster standards?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Is Coyne a particularly colorful figure, by Westminster standards?

If you mean 'is he a drunk?', then by this point I don't think even he would deny that.

I saw his Wikipedia and they talked about his...colorful language. Since those are just parts of the assessment and I had no yardstick to compare him overall, I wondered...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://twitter.com/hzeffman/status/1523615481676333056?s=20&t=o8-pI37AvYZHN...

Draws a decent contrast with the PM, doesn't it?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This kind of feels like a pre-election equivalent of Tony Blair's campaign messaging in 2001 aimed at "One Nation Conservatives".

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

A proper 'the Welsh Labour Movement!' story here, absolute classic.

The summary version is that both Gething and Miles attended hustings put on by Unite, after which a committee met to endorse a candidate. At which point it emerged that an apparently new procedural rule meant that Miles could not be endorsed as he had not 'held elected lay office as a representative of workers' and so Gething was endorsed unopposed. Miles is not very happy.

What a victory for the Labour Movement of Wales over the Welsh Labour Movement in the long run that was.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Correct me if I've read the reports wrong, but - after a "crunch meeting" today, Labour *aren't* dropping the £28 billion green energy target, and the same staffers who spend their time briefing against green policies and Ed Miliband are now turning their sights on Sue Gray because she backed the policy?

Whoever this is - are they really useful enough that it's worth this constant sniping to journalists at the Times?

It's like the £28 billion. They're not actually mad at Ed Miliband for that (idk maybe the securonomics true believers are) but rather because he spared David Miliband the ignominy of leading the Labour party to 220 seats. Likewise, they're mad at Sue Gray because she told them to stop acting like children with the briefing against Andy Burnham.

"DM would have done worse than EM in 2015" is certainly underpriced as a possibility by most.

I'm not sure how likely it actually is, but it is certainly more credible than the "Len McCluskey single handedly stymied our GREAT LOST LEADER who would have led Labour to a landslide in 2015" zombie myth still uncritically swallowed by much of FBPE/briefcase online ur-centrism.

Would any Labour leader have won 2015?