This Once Great Movement Of Ours

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When did Corrie become a daytime soap?

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I think the very oldest millennials may have just about been able to vote in 2001.

Youth turnout in that election was, unsurprisingly, dire. Don't have the precise estimate on me but IIRC Mori put it at somewhere around 30%.

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Are we allowed to make Neil Kinnock jokes about this?

Let's hire a taxi...

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On that subject my favourite misreading of the Labour party was when a 'senior source' compared Tom Watson versus Caroline Flint in 2015 deputy leaders race as a redux of the 1982 deputy race...

Which one was supposed to be which? Watson seems more akin to Healey in personality terms, but at that point he was more known for his attacks on the Murdoch empire and thus was relatively popular with the left of the party.

Flint is closer to Benn's views on Europe, although perhaps not in 2015.

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Burnham is saying some interesting things.

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I wasn't previously a fan of his, but I have to give Starmer credit here. The way to win those crucial votes in Hastings, Blyth and Ipswich is to change the Labour Party's leadership election rules. Other insignificant issues such as health, education, tax and general aspirations need not be considered.

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Thornberry to replace NTS is now the rumour.

She's been seen as dying a slow political death since her hapless leadership. Would be a genuinely significant appointment, and one that Patel might not welcome.

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Now it's Lammy to FCO, with Cooper indeed going to Home.

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Harriet Harman retiring. Despite having many opinions about her she will be a lose for Parliament.

Others retiring include Barry Sherman, Margaret Hodge and Alex Cunningham. I expect we’ll see a fair few more- boundary changes, the stress of the last 5 years and the safe knowledge that they can hand over to successors of their choice will all be a factor.

The less said about Harman's second acting spell as leader the better.

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Rosa Luxemburg isn't just admired by fringe ultra-leftists tbf.

The spartacist uprising is way too over mythologized as well as the narrative of the SPD betrayal.

She was far from perfect, but her recognition that socialism could only be achieved under democracy went sadly unheeded by certain others of her political stripe.

? Luxembourg supported armed uprisings against the democratic SPD government.

Both of those can be true, as contradictory as they may be.

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https://twitter.com/NJ_Timothy/status/1486332405271212032?s=20

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The people criticising her for that don't consider her as on the party's "left" and mostly never have.

Not sure how someone who supported Rebecca Long-Bailey isn't on the party's left wing.

Whilst Rayner is clearly on the left, all leadership candidates get support from seemingly unlikely sources. Dennis Skinner supporting David Miliband is a prime example, and even Liz Kendall's fringe neo-Blairite campaign had some support from people not associated with that school of thought.

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Isn't Streeting more economically interventionist than the average 'Blairite'? That could be useful in a hypothetical leadership election in the near future, given the times we are living in.

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

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Sqwawkbox (I know, I know) seem pretty convinced that Starmer has been fined and are predictably getting rather excited about the prospect.

Their evidence is that they texted Starmer and he didn’t text back.

I think they also say something about word spreading through the Labour Party. Still, more likely to be BS than not.

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Starmer and Rayner looked quite cheerful at Pride yesterday, particularly for people who are about to resign.

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The entire era of the Corbyn leadership is going to be a goldmine for writers of those (generally silly) counterfactuals for the rest of time. What if he had campaigned a bit more strongly for Remain, what if the 2017 campaign had lasted another week, what if he had formed a unity government during the perils of 2019 etc.

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Nick Brown, the former chief whip, has been suspended following a complaint.

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Rupa Huq has the whip suspended for being stupid enough to say something stupid on today of all days.

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A lot of people within the press and media still haven't gotten over the 2010 Labour leadership election. The narrowness of it probably made it even more painful.

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Just stirring the nest here:

How would you chaps react to a hypothetical story in the Times or the Tel saying that Chuka wants to make a comeback as a Labour MP?

With amusement. Umunna actually defected to an enemy party, any prospects of him being a Labour MP again are negligible at best. Some of the others who fled in 2019 might have a better chance due to being less attention seeking.

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I can’t imagine Umunna’s choice to run in Cities of London and Westminster, (producing some spectacular vote-splitting that let the Conservative limp to victory with under 40% of the vote) exactly endeared him to the party either…

It was also the most predictable choice of seat that he could have made, as someone who was overhyped by the bubble for a long time

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Oh, and for any who aren't already aware "not a fan" about Umunna above is ironic understatement.

In reality, I despise the man with the force of a thousand suns

Look up the "British Obama" episode from his earliest days in politics if you want a laugh.

He turned out to be less than a British Cory Booker.

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Putting aside actual Nazis, fascists and Stalinists, I can't think of an uglier prospect than Berger vs. Corbyn in a constituency contest. Thank God that this has now apparently been ruled out.       

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Its all gone a bit quiet on the Sue Grey front, maybe it really was a non-story after all?

Just the way she wants it I imagine.

A Google search on her states that she (clearly a person of some power and influence) was born in either 1957 or 1958. Meanwhile the exact dates of birth of various Sunday League footballers are easily obtained.