Labour Party leadership election 2015

[Phony Moderate]

Maybe Corbyn should try directly insulting the electorate - it worked for Paul Keating in 1993.

[Phony Moderate]

Politics doesn't work like this, it really doesn't, sorry.

Well, modern politics certainly, given that it is based on mindless PC soundbites and not much else. Bring back Tony Benn...and Enoch Powell for that matter.

[Phony Moderate]

Politics doesn't work like this, it really doesn't, sorry.

Well, modern politics certainly, given that it is based on mindless PC soundbites and not much else. Bring back Tony Benn...and Enoch Powell for that matter.

No - no - you misunderstand me. Even Benn or Powell would not have refused a microphone put under their nose, or treated it as if it were low-level harassment. They would have had a pithy word, or even a Benn-type comment about how they'd had a wonderful rally just now and now they were off to the Miners' Gala with a cheese sandwich and a Thermos of tea... but Corbyn seems not to want to engage.

This is the world of 24-hour news. The world of true believers may think there is something noble in the thing; that it can be explained as 'not engaging with mindless PC soundbites' and so on. But I come from Nuneaton, kid. My finger rests on that bellwether. It sees the heir-but-two to Blair shouting angrily at the camera. It's not listening to how these things may be explained away. Corbyn needs to stop doing them in the first place.

This gives even me, most hyper-partisan of the hyper-partisans, not much pleasure.

I understand your point - if Corbyn stated that the "IRA were less evil than Thatcher" or whatever then it would, I suspect, go down better than simply ignoring the cameras. I mentioned Paul Keating previously - he won a federal election despite referring to his opponents as "brain damaged" and "dessicated coconuts" and so on, plus he described a reccesssion as "one that we have to have".

He needs to be less PC if anything and state what he thinks.

[Phony Moderate]

Can we somehow make Eric Joyce leader?

Anyway, yeah, I feel it is only a matter of time before Dan Jarvis makes a move.

[Phony Moderate]

Some Hillary SuperPAC is going to attack Sanders because Corbyn praised Chavez. I know, it makes so much sense.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-jeremy-corbyn_55f73339e4b00e2cd5e79e11

The Clintons have shook hands with Tony Blair; Tony Blair once led a party that sings 'The Red Flag' at its annual conferences.

[Phony Moderate]

Gaps between post-war Labour and Tory leaders' first elections to Parliament and becoming leader:

Corbyn - 32 years
Miliband - 5 years
Brown - 24 years
Blair - 11 years
Smith - 22 years
Kinnock - 13 years
Foot - 35 years
Callaghan - 31 years
Wilson - 18 years
Gaitskell - 10 years
Attlee - 13 years

Cameron - 4 years
Howard - 20 years
IDS - 9 years
Hague - 8 years
Major - 11 years
Thatcher - 16 years
Heath - 15 years
Douglas-Home - 33 years
Macmillan - 33 years
Eden - 32 years
Churchill - 40 years

[Phony Moderate]

Had one of the other three been elected then it is probably fair to say that they wouldn't have dominated the news cycle for the past four days, right?

[Phony Moderate]

http://www.newstatesman.com/2015/09/new-faction-has-emerged-and-it-could-decide-labour-s-future-soft-right

[Phony Moderate]

The soft left is seen as more pragmatic, less faction-orientated and likely to work with the right of the party. The very term 'soft left' traces its origins, I think, back to the 1981 deputy leadership election when Kinnock and other Tribune MPs declined to support Tony Benn.

Though the differences between the left and the right in general have always been more about approach and style than policy.

[Phony Moderate]

A lot of historical analogies have been made recently. How about these?

Ramsay MacDonald - Tony Blair (Scottish-born, very popular at first, but ultimately became loathed by the party base to the point of being virtually erased from party history)
Arthur Henderson - Gordon Brown/Ed Miliband (tried to move the party on from their predecessors; electorally failed due to a perception of economic incompetence)
George Lansbury - Jeremy Corbyn (elderly, principled and controversial left-wingers representing a London constituency (though both were born outside of London), disliked by their PLPs)
Clement Attlee - Some fairly inoffensive but principled and well-respected London MP...Jon Cruddas?

Most of the above is probably silly but whatevs.

[Phony Moderate]

I do not see that a Labour minority government, dependent upon SNP acceptance that a Labour government would be better than a Conservative one, would be impossible.

The British hostility to Irish nationalism, in 1886-1914, was considerably stronger than English antipathy to the SNP. It did not prevent Liberal minority governments being formed in 1892-95 and 1910-14.

But thanks to our wonderful media the SNP did effect the way many people voted.