This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[beesley]

Certainly, by-elections are not the be all and end all. One thinks of the by-elections in the Thatcher years where absurdly safe seats would be lost or very nearly lost to the Alliance at a high turnout, though she did very well in 1983 and 1987. (Interestingly, this made Mrs Thatcher very wary of appointing qualified British MPs to international institutions for fear of double-point swings.)

For what it's worth the Liberal Democrats couldn't even retain one of their Tory by-election gains at the 97 General Election: Christchurch, formerly held by one of my favourite former MPs Robert Adley until his death in 1993. The Liberal Democrats benefitted from Labour not fielding a challenge in the by election but even then their 16000 majority was impressive, and they still lost it four years later. The Liberal Democrat Victor, Diana Maddock, passed away fairly recently.

[beesley]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4e/CLP_Nominations_2020.png/1200px-CLP_Nominations_2020.png

The CLP nominations are actually quite a good benchmark; I don't think we have the results by region but I might be wrong.

Which colour is which? (Thanks for this though)

Purple - Starmer
Yellow - Long-Bailey
Green - Nandy
Blue - Thornberry (most of these were CLPs that nominated later trying to get her on the ballot)
Black - No nomination

Starmer did win a majority of CLP nominations. In areas with fewer Labour members I doubt extrapolating the data is useful to providing a regional picture. For example New Forest East is a smaller CLP but with fairly active left-wing members.

[beesley]

How does it reflect on Starmer if Labour loses Hartlepool?

Not well by default because the media/many Corbyn supporters will treat any loss there as something that 'poses serious questions for the future of the Labour Party' regardless of any other results and people will buy into that ahead of reaching a proper conclusion.

[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.

[beesley]

Hopefully the documentary makes fun of people just as much as the 2017 one.

[beesley]

https://twitter.com/Phil_Brickell/status/1403730502507544577?s=20

For all the complaining about 'twitter lefties' (which is often deserved), the moderates can be just as daft. I refer to the tweeter, not Jerry Hicks who I believe supports Beckett.

[beesley]

https://twitter.com/siennamarla/status/1404836467654987779?s=20

Not officially confirmed - people blaming Beckett but that's almost instinctive.

[beesley]

https://twitter.com/siennamarla/status/1405829184593829889?s=20

It seems this was the safest option for the left of Unite to maintain power.

[beesley]

Quite a big issue is that Starmer seems to be in the late 2014 Miliband mode where he just has absolutely no political authority- the hope was that winning Batley would give him a boost but it's just going to be waiting for the 2022 elections.

And with this Labour party, are they (and should they be) willing to wait that long? I'm not convinced.

[beesley]

Quite a big issue is that Starmer seems to be in the late 2014 Miliband mode where he just has absolutely no political authority- the hope was that winning Batley would give him a boost but it's just going to be waiting for the 2022 elections.

And with this Labour party, are they (and should they be) willing to wait that long? I'm not convinced.

Well the Labour Party only tends to do stuff (and often in a half-hearted way) when people get very angry quickly after an electoral wobble- Batley & Spen is a trigger, but I can't see what other event causes someone to launch a leadership bid in say December 2021.

Fair point. Of course with Miliband as much as people had doubts and misgivings about his leadership he had been leading in the polls for most of his tenure.

[beesley]

I’m not sure if this is a West Midlands Labour thing or a TGWU thing…

https://labourlist.org/2021/07/jack-dromey-why-im-backing-steve-turner-as-unites-next-general-secretary/

It also seems to be a personal thing - Dromey goes back a long time in both the union movement (and partly in his role as Party Treasurer). He's not really a factional person either, from what I recall.

[beesley]

Honestly, this and the whole speaker having to represent a constituency farce makes me take a very strange look when British people criticise the American electoral college for being anti-democratic given their own system democratic deficits. 

Most British people who are even knowledgeable enough to criticise the Electoral College probably maintain the transferrable criticisms when discussing the UK's First Past The Post Electoral System, particularly if those criticisms include disproportionality. In any case, given the fact the Speaker does do constituency work and their role doesn't prevent them from doing so, that's hardly an equally significant aspect of British democracy compared to the criticisms of the US electoral college. Where the criticism does not apply is the adherence to the democratic principle of one person, one vote, when you take into account the existence of ridiculous bodies like the Senate that further distort the Electoral College with no major benefit for representation as a whole and good governance. Anyway, why shouldn't British people be allowed to criticise other countries' systems?

[beesley]

Does anybody have any inkling as to who the favourite to be Labour's candidate in the South Yorkshire Mayoral Election is? I haven't been paying attention to the state of the race.

[beesley]

Does anybody have any inkling as to who the favourite to be Labour's candidate in the South Yorkshire Mayoral Election is? I haven't been paying attention to the state of the race.

A hunch would be Oliver Coppard- who imo should be the Sheffield Hallam MP. He stood against Nick Clegg in 2015 and your seat is actually one of the most depressing things about that night.

I know the left and some trade unions are backing someone else- I know next to nothing about South Yorkshire Labour stuff though.

Yeah - I like everyone else have heard nothing but good about Oliver Coppard. That left candidate is Lewis Dagnall who I believe is a Sheffield Councillor and the husband of Olivia Blake MP. From what I've seen he's campaigning heavily on transport - timely given the Stagecoach strike in Sheffield and Barnsley. However I've no idea how he's doing.

[beesley]

What is the general consensus on Reeves? From what I’ve seen, she seems like a rather effective communicator, better than Sir Keir. Of course she also shadows the most popular government Minister, but she appears to be up to the challenge.

The public probably don't know her well enough to have a 'consensus' beyond those who like Keir also largely liking her - not a huge generator of enthusiasm beyond avowed Labour moderates but having several other qualities associated with Keir - being trustworthy and a safe pair of hands. She has a decent presence compared to other Shadow Cabinet Ministers and certainly compared to her predecessor, but not as much as Ed Balls or John McDonnell did - though that is largely due to the political landscape we are in and the position she holds. She has certainly has time and room to grow further in the role.

The Labour left have some gripes with her - not just the predictable ones, but whilst serving as Shadow DWP Secretary she did come up with a proposal in which the unemployed would lose benefits were they not to take a guaranteed job, and made some comments along those lines, which caused controversy at the time and appears to have been seized upon since.

[beesley]

https://labourlist.org/2022/01/who-and-what-does-labour-stand-for-labours-covenant-offers-an-answer/

Enjoyed this abstract from Jon Cruddas in LabourList today - I haven't read the document itself - but skimming through these sort of ideas are exactly the sort of thing I would like to see. It's essential that they are messaged well. Of course this is not official Labour Party Policy and was conducted through a different process (but one that I generally approve of).

Rachel Reeves also came out today and changed course on the large-scale nationalisations that Corbyn's Labour promised, and I don't think the 'Green New Deal' is staying either. I don't necessarily agree with those moves, but then who am I?

On a side note the perception of Jon Cruddas really is a microcosm of how Labour has changed in the last 15 or so years.

[beesley]

https://twitter.com/BenPBradshaw/status/1489133080573280256?s=20&t=D1YUT9NbR...

A loss to the party but an even bigger loss to Exeter.

[beesley]

Fun to see that Ed Miliband has a much more marginal seat than the unsuccessful candidate he was supporting here, who is now the MP for Luton North.

They literaved carved it into stone "CONTROLS ON IMMIGRATION"

Well, you may or may not remember that at the time Lucy Powell said words to the effect of 'just because it's carved into stone, does not mean we will do them'.

[beesley]

I don't think that was intended as a serious comment anyway.

[beesley]

I think he was one of the few mps at risk of being deselect in 2019

Yes, and relative to pretty much everyone on that wing, not entirely unsurprisingly. The person I was most surprised about being triggered was Diana Johnson, though I assume that was a local thing.

[beesley]

I think he was one of the few mps at risk of being deselect in 2019

Yes, and relative to pretty much everyone on that wing, not entirely unsurprisingly. The person I was most surprised about being triggered was Diana Johnson, though I assume that was a local thing.

Iirc it was local and generational; she is from right and always came across as a parliamentarian rather than a constituency MP.

Funnily enough every triggered MP was triggered because of local factors and it was just as likely to be done by the right.

There are also some like Virenda Sharma who I don’t think actually have a faction or ideology.

Yes, she was a London Assembly member before becoming MP after all. Impressive in parliament, I've always thought, but the reasoning makes sense.

[beesley]

I think he was one of the few mps at risk of being deselect in 2019

Yes, and relative to pretty much everyone on that wing, not entirely unsurprisingly. The person I was most surprised about being triggered was Diana Johnson, though I assume that was a local thing.

Iirc it was local and generational; she is from right and always came across as a parliamentarian rather than a constituency MP.

Funnily enough every triggered MP was triggered because of local factors and it was just as likely to be done by the right.

There are also some like Virenda Sharma who I don’t think actually have a faction or ideology.

How(and also why) do you become an MP without one ?

Not having a particular faction or ideology within Labour doesn't prevent you from being a good advocate for Labour's values and policies - being a party member usually proves that commitment, and being an impressive candidate can easily be enough to be selected instead of factional allegiance (even if voting is split on factional lines). Keir Starmer is an example of this - other than educated guesses who knows what faction he was actually aligned with if any when he was selected. And just like in the US being aligned with a faction is not deterministic enough to get an accurate reading of a particular candidate - take the mix of people in the Blue Dogs over time, or the differences in the SCG membership now.

In Sharma's case he had no presence in his local Labour Party at all and his advanced age probably reinforces that distance. But he does have a clear set of issues that he focuses on within Parliament. I have no idea how he got selected though.

[beesley]

I think he was one of the few mps at risk of being deselect in 2019

Yes, and relative to pretty much everyone on that wing, not entirely unsurprisingly. The person I was most surprised about being triggered was Diana Johnson, though I assume that was a local thing.

Iirc it was local and generational; she is from right and always came across as a parliamentarian rather than a constituency MP.

Funnily enough every triggered MP was triggered because of local factors and it was just as likely to be done by the right.

There are also some like Virenda Sharma who I don’t think actually have a faction or ideology.

How(and also why) do you become an MP without one ?

Not having a particular faction or ideology within Labour doesn't prevent you from being a good advocate for Labour's values and policies - being a party member usually proves that commitment, and being an impressive candidate can easily be enough to be selected instead of factional allegiance (even if voting is split on factional lines). Keir Starmer is an example of this - other than educated guesses who knows what faction he was actually aligned with if any when he was selected. And just like in the US being aligned with a faction is not deterministic enough to get an accurate reading of a particular candidate - take the mix of people in the Blue Dogs over time, or the differences in the SCG membership now.

In Sharma's case he had no presence in his local Labour Party at all and his advanced age probably reinforces that distance. But he does have a clear set of issues that he focuses on within Parliament. I have no idea how he got selected though.

It was very much the Milibandite tendency- if this counts as a faction. He was privately backed by Ed for his selection & was endorsed by Neil Kinnock. It was reported that he would have been made Attorney General if Ed had won in 2015.

There are remarkable parallels between his selection in 2014 & his election in 2020- prepared very early on, faced a weak field, had a good campaign etc.

In fairness, if people are being selected for their political affiliations in the old country, the Indian National Congress is about as inoffensive as it gets.

Absolutely, and that was basically the point as well: in a CLP which also contains significant CPI (via whatever is left of the IWA) and Sikh Nationalist elements (some of the latter o/c stormed out and defected to the Tories when their man was not selected; this did not work out well for them in the end) a Congress Man works reasonably well as some sort of compromise of sorts. His predecessor was from a CPI background, though actually spent a few years in the early 1980s in the SDP. Not that that's necessarily entirely contradictory, as you know.

There is also the equally funny situation in selections where various cross-community groups in the local area end up backing someone to stop an 'outsider' (e.g someone from another Borough) getting the seat- see Feltham & Heston in 2011.

Also some recent cases where the opposite happened because it  was assumed that would happen and the leadership picked out a candidate - only for the local party to do the opposite. Coventry North West was an example in 2020. Normally this involves leaving out frontrunners - Southwark has a lot of moderate/non-Corbynite councillors yet the only moderate candidate for the London Assembly seat was from Bromley, and was still selected.

[beesley]

Small PLP scuffle yesterday - Labour chief whip called on the 11 MPs who signed the Stop the War letter on Ukraine (widely seen as suggesting Ukraine shared equal responsibility for the invasion) to retract their signatures (subtext clearly suggesting whip would be withdrawn if they refused).

Diane Abbott broke rank first and recanted her signature, and the remaining 10 (including McDonnell, Sultana and Burgon) followed shortly after.

Unclear whether the two suspended MPs (Corbyn and Webbe) recanted.

Either way, Owen Jones went on a tirade about Starmer creating divisions, and most people ignored him.

Just thought it was worth putting here because it had shades of Kinnock scrapping with Militant. Also, have to wonder what the optics would have been like if Starmer had actually done it, and dismissed a full 1/3 of the Socialist Campaign Group from the party in a single afternoon.

Also, this was very much that wing of the SCG. None of the MPs who formed the breakway grouping (Russell-Moyle, Whittome etc.) appear to have signed.

[beesley]

The Grassroots Voice slate won 5CLP seats on the NEC last time but are only running 4 candidates this election - incumbents Mish Rahman, Gemma Bolton and Yasmine Dar and Young Labour Chair Jess Barnard. Not confident? It wouldn't be a surprise.