Current Labour Leadership Election

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JimBentley
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Current Labour Leadership Election

Post by JimBentley »

I say "current" as I imagine this may well become an annual event until certain interests have ensured that the Right Candidate is in place. Somebody who won't rock the boat too much, someone who is amenable to bending policy to indulge an outside interest, someone telegenic and given to glib soundbites in place of policies; another Tony Blair really.

Owen Smith - and I would guess that most people (other than politics nerds like me and Gevin) had never heard of him before this week - is not that person. Prior to entering Parliament, he was a lobbyist for Pfizer and an enthusiast of privatisation of areas of the NHS; more worryingly, he hailed the involvement of PFI (Private Finance Initiative) in the building of a new hospital in his constituency as a Good Thing, despite the well-documented long-term disastrous results of such deals. He also said that - had he been in parliament at the time - he would have voted for the Iraq war (and no doubt, like Eagle et al, would have voted against an investigation into the events).

Out of interest, who here is a Labour member who is eligible for the vote? Have we any Labour members who joined in the last six mimths (ineligible)? And are there any of the £25 members? I admire any attempts to bolster Labour support but I did think that this two-day twenty-five quid stunt was pretty low, but due to the Executive Committee, perfectly legal(once they'd rid the room of "non-conformists").

They've tried digging up stories from Corbyn's past and found there were precious few, They'd tried parading a bunch of blatantly anti-Corbyn talking heads (and I would suggest, not only anti-Corbyn but anti the whole Labour movement as I understand it).

The NEC have tried to remove him from the ballot. The parliamentary party have tried to insist that he needs fifty nominations to stand (despite the fact that being the incumbent, this distinction does not apply). The newspapers (aside from the Morning Star but then that's a given) and to a lesser extent, The Mirror, have been unrelentingly negative about Corbyn. He cannot lead! He doesn't wear a tie! He rebelled against increasingly toxic Labour motions! He repeatedly pointed out that the Labour Party was putting itself in danger by chasing short-term Tory/Lib Dem swingers at the expense of their core vote (spectacularly proven at the 2015 GE).

And now that all the dirty tricks all seem to have failed and Corbyn is more popular than ever amongst the party membership, winning easily once again, what the fuck are the rebel PLP MPs going to do?

I don't see mass deselections but I think there may well be a few crossing-the-floors; there are a number of marginals that would suit such aims (for either of the major parties (and there's even a couple of three-way marginals that are always fun).
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Ian Volante
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Re: Current Labour Leadership Election

Post by Ian Volante »

I read an interesting piece yesterday on the parallels between the current situation and the split that occurred in 1981. As that article says however, it's bloody tough to split a party, so anyone doing it needs to be very brave and very sure of themselves and their support.
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Gavin Chipper
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Re: Current Labour Leadership Election

Post by Gavin Chipper »

This is all very interesting. There appears to be a massive mismatch between Labour MPs and the party membership, and wherever you stand on this, trouble appears to lie ahead.

As for Corbyn not being able to lead, this article on media bias is quite interesting.

But then there has been other stuff about him too from MPs.

But regardless of how he has been as leader, a lot of Labour MPs were against him from the start before they could have known what he would be like as a leader. It's been there all along, and I would say that the constant negativity aired in public by Labour MPs has been the biggest problem for Labour. There were always mutterings about getting rid of Gordon Brown when he was leader and that he was actually a crap leader, but they were largely rumours and MPs generally presented a united front in public, apart from that one failed coup. But it's been quite embarrassing how many Labour MPs have been in public since Corbyn's been leader.

How Corbyn has actually been as leader is secondary to that - the damage has been done by many of the Labour MPs.

And the other problem is the lack of an alternative who is viewed positively by Labour members. As far as I understand (and I might be wrong), Jeremy Corbyn never had any particular burning desire to be leader, and he's remaining where he is because he knows that many people want him there. Because of the Blair years in particular, most Labour MPs aren't particularly "left wing" any more, and don't have the views that the membership want. So if there was a better "leader" with the right (i.e. left) politics then maybe Corbyn could just step down, but there doesn't appear to be, so Corbyn has to fight on.

But are Corbyn's policies too "left wing" thus making him unelectable? I don't think so. If you give people policies without connecting them to a party, people are often way to the left of the parties they vote for. What the media and many in parliament view as extreme left is not by the standards of normal people. Can people point to any extreme policies of his? Not wanting to renew Trident might be seen as extreme by some MPs and some in the media, but among ordinary people, it's not. Ditto renationalising the railways.

Also, remember the 2015 election debates. "Too left" Ed Miliband was made to look a bit "right" by Nicola Sturgeon and Leanne Wood, and these people aren't generally seen as extreme. It's all about perceptions.

But as I say, I've no idea what Corbyn is like dealing with his MPs, and maybe he doesn't have the uber charisma on TV (because obviously David Cameron is the most charismatic guy ever). But we're stuck in this position now because there is a shortage of Labour MPs with the politics that the membership wants.
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Re: Current Labour Leadership Election

Post by Gavin Chipper »

A split would be interesting by the way. Maybe it would hand easy victory t the Tories, but the demand for proportional representation would surely reach an all-time high with the Tories surely the only party opposing it, and all the others going mental for it.
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JimBentley
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Re: Current Labour Leadership Election

Post by JimBentley »

Gavin Chipper wrote:...the demand for proportional representation would surely reach an all-time high with the Tories surely the only party opposing it, and all the others going mental for it.
If our elected MPs weren't (in the main) such self-serving bastards, this would have happened ages ago. There's a lot of politicians from both the main parties that wouldn't have stood a chance of being elected were it not for the Labour or Conservative "brand" in their particular constituency. It's who you know, not what you believe, and it's led to a somewhat bizarre situation where some MPs just seem to be in the wrong party.

Based on the current situation, the main groupings could well be:

1 block = LIBERTARIANS: UKIP voters/Conservative voters who hate the EU and foreigners/the BNP and EDL/other assorted right-wing weirdos, etc.

1 block = CENTRE RIGHT, consisting of moderate Conservatives, right-leaning Labour and some Lib Dems

1 block = CENTRE LEFT, consisting of moderate Labour, left-leaning Conservatives and the rest of the Lib Dems

1 block = IDEALISTS, consisting of left-wing Labour, Greens, SWP, TUSC and so on, plus other assorted nutters

I don't know what the outcome of such an election would be but it would be, as you say,
Gavin Chipper wrote:interesting
But we're going off-topic.
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