Labour Party leadership election 2015

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There have been vague rumours of an upset.

[afleitch]

There have been vague rumours of an upset.

I've heard that too. Kezia is the sensible choice on the basis is that she's at Holyrood, is actually not that bad at FMQ's and is also easily replaceable. Ian Murray has been rather...subtle with his 'family man' rhetoric the insinuations of which I won't go into here. If he wins, it's not clear who will lead at Holyrood where at the moment Iain Gray is doing the honours, especially if Gordon Mathieson (who's one FOI request away from trouble) gets the deputyship.

[Hifly]

There have been vague rumours of an upset.

I've heard that too. Kezia is the sensible choice on the basis is that she's at Holyrood, is actually not that bad at FMQ's and is also easily replaceable. Ian Murray has been rather...subtle with his 'family man' rhetoric the insinuations of which I won't go into here. If he wins, it's not clear who will lead at Holyrood where at the moment Iain Gray is doing the honours, especially if Gordon Mathieson (who's one FOI request away from trouble) gets the deputyship.

err what?

[MaxQue]

There have been vague rumours of an upset.

I've heard that too. Kezia is the sensible choice on the basis is that she's at Holyrood, is actually not that bad at FMQ's and is also easily replaceable. Ian Murray has been rather...subtle with his 'family man' rhetoric the insinuations of which I won't go into here. If he wins, it's not clear who will lead at Holyrood where at the moment Iain Gray is doing the honours, especially if Gordon Mathieson (who's one FOI request away from trouble) gets the deputyship.

Ian Murray isn't running, as far as I know.

[afleitch]

What a gargantuan brain fart that was

[Silent Hunter]

Kezia has won with Alex Rowley elected Deputy.

[Phony Moderate]

Kezia has won with Alex Rowley elected Deputy.

Leader: Dugdale - 72.1%, Macintosh 27.9%
Deputy first round: Rowley 37.4%, Matheson 32.2%, Baker 30.4%. Second round: Rowley 55.5%, Matheson 44.5%

[Phony Moderate]

Just received an impressive booklet from Watson.

[Silent Hunter]

I see there is a Survation poll that comes across well for Corbyn but voters won't see one clip of him, they will see four and a half years worth of media coverage, some of which will be very negative.

[Leftbehind]

I see there is a Survation poll that comes across well for Corbyn but voters won't see one clip of him, they will see four and a half years worth of media coverage, some of which will be very negative.

It's not as if there hasn't been plenty of that already. Even the Marr interview that they reportedly played, that went down well, had Marr trying to tie him down as a Marxist!

Reading earlier about it in the Guardian, the article also mentioned another poll:

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So I went to check and the opposite is the case: Corbyn does better in the C2DE. I assume they just felt it worth noting that he led the pack amongst the ABC1's, perhaps contrary to their assumptions?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well those rumours turned out to be total trash didn't they? Thankfully...

[ChrisDR68]

In terms of formal mechanics... I don't have the new rules in front of me presently, but I believe a new leadership election would be triggered if a candidate secured the backing of a fifth of the PLP. The incumbent would be entitled to seek re-election were that to happen.

Whatever the rules are regarding such things the Labour Party simply doesn't do that sort of thing. Probably to do with forevermore being labelled a Judas or traitor from within the movement (and let's be honest... Labour supporters are obsessed with these terms even without trying to get rid of the incumbent leader in a leadership challenge).

If Jeremy Corbyn wins he'll stay until he himself resigns from the position. I'll eat my hat if that doesn't turn out to be the case

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Whatever the rules are regarding such things the Labour Party simply doesn't do that sort of thing. Probably to do with forevermore being labelled a Judas or traitor from within the movement (and let's be honest... Labour supporters are obsessed with these terms even without trying to get rid of the incumbent leader in a leadership challenge).

There has indeed not been a leadership challenge since 1988 and there has not been a successful one since 1922 (and some people don't count that as a real challenge as the remit of the post had just been radically extended). I suspect that any maneuvering will be try to force him out rather than to mount a challenge.

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Quite likely, although that's rather different from saying that (if elected) he's likely to lead the Party into the next election.

[Blair]

I see there is a Survation poll that comes across well for Corbyn but voters won't see one clip of him, they will see four and a half years worth of media coverage, some of which will be very negative.

Yeah, the assumption in 2010 was that Ed connected well with the voters, and basically got rid of the bad new labour stuff. There's serious concerns over his links to anti-Semitic groups, and despite the noise from the left I don't think this country prefers Hamas over Israel. It will be absolutely brutal-if people like me can find stuff on Corbyn through a quick google search no doubt the tories will find some bad comments. Likewise look at how much of a liability Ed Balls was, someone like John Mcdonnell or Dianne Abbot ( I just forgot she was in the SC for 3 years, and she didn't even get sacked for racist comments!)

Just received an impressive booklet from Watson.

That managed to win my vote for him, he's a shameless trade union hack but Caroline Flint has been awful in this campaign, and the others are all dull without the strength to make a difference. Standing up to Murdoch shows a lot of balls



On any leadership challenge anyone who's read The End of a Party by AR knows how awful labour are at getting rid of leaders. Sure Brown and Blair were political beasts but it took Brown 5 years of open warfare to get rid of Blair, and then the Blairities fluffed challenging Brown in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. Let's not forgot Miliband's near death coup in 2014-I reckoned that either Cooper or Burnham was beyond those rumours, yet both waited until now, and it looks like they've done a David Miliband

[Phony Moderate]

IMO Labour would've done better with Balls as leader and Ed as Shadow Chancellor instead of the other way around. Balls could've unleashed the works at PMQs and Ed as a geeky technocratic type may have been better suited.

[Silent Hunter]

Here's the thing. Today is the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Between then (the 1945 election was before VJ Day) and 1997, Labour won precisely one working majority.

Also, I read the transcript of Corbyn's interview. Answering a question "Are you a Marxist?" with "I'm not sure" is not likely to help win over Middle England.

Labour is unlikely to win 40 seats in Scotland unless the SNP self-destructs; 20 is a realistic goal. To get an overall majority in a 600-seat Commons, Labour has to pick up 80 seats in England - and they'll pretty much all have to be from the Tories.

[Blair]

Here's the thing. Today is the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Between then (the 1945 election was before VJ Day) and 1997, Labour won precisely one working majority.

Also, I read the transcript of Corbyn's interview. Answering a question "Are you a Marxist?" with "I'm not sure" is not likely to help win over Middle England.

Labour is unlikely to win 40 seats in Scotland unless the SNP self-destructs; 20 is a realistic goal. To get an overall majority in a 600-seat Commons, Labour has to pick up 80 seats in England - and they'll pretty much all have to be from the Tories.

But remember the 40% who don't vote will all vote for Corbyn because austerity is bad, all students will vote for him because he'll cancel student debt and he's not actually that left wing

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Worth noting that Corbyn still believes in the old Bennite oddity about having annual leadership contests.

On any leadership challenge anyone who's read The End of a Party by AR knows how awful labour are at getting rid of leaders.

Is that actually a bad thing in general though? The Australian experience suggests otherwise.

[Leftbehind]

Here's the thing. Today is the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Between then (the 1945 election was before VJ Day) and 1997, Labour won precisely one working majority.

If New Labour proved anything, it was that huge majorities are meaningless with a leader not willing to do anything with them. Speaking of meaningless, the idiosyncrasies of FPTP rewards are not reflective of actual desire. See how it robbed Attlee in 1950 & 1951 whilst rewarding Blair in 2005 and the Tories this year.

Also, I read the transcript of Corbyn's interview. Answering a question "Are you a Marxist?" with "I'm not sure" is not likely to help win over Middle England.

Foot was leading the polls pretty handsomely before the split, and he was happy to tell news reporters he was a Marxist.

Labour is unlikely to win 40 seats in Scotland unless the SNP self-destructs; 20 is a realistic goal. To get an overall majority in a 600-seat Commons, Labour has to pick up 80 seats in England - and they'll pretty much all have to be from the Tories.

Labour is unlikely to win a majority in the first place, Curtice has made it perfectly plain that unless Labour take back Scotland they need in excess of a 13 point lead to take enought seats from the Tories. I maintain Corbyn is the best leader to help do that in Scotland, and with those you're then looking at a more realistic prospect for Tory marginals. Many of which can be won back with just the reversal of the Greens and disillusionment. 

[Leftbehind]

Yeah, the assumption in 2010 was that Ed connected well with the voters, and basically got rid of the bad new labour stuff. There's serious concerns over his links to anti-Semitic groups, and despite the noise from the left I don't think this country prefers Hamas over Israel. It will be absolutely brutal-if people like me can find stuff on Corbyn through a quick google search no doubt the tories will find some bad comments. Likewise look at how much of a liability Ed Balls was, someone like John Mcdonnell or Dianne Abbot ( I just forgot she was in the SC for 3 years, and she didn't even get sacked for racist comments!)

These serious concerns are a bit overblown. Israel/Palestine generate a lot of heat and noise, but the general public aren't interested, and appear to be slightly more sympathetic to the Palestinians. I don't think it's the death knell that the Right believe it is - and the charges usually amount to little more than guilt by association and ungenerous readings of his comments.

But remember the 40% who don't vote will all vote for Corbyn because austerity is bad, all students will vote for him because he'll cancel student debt and he's not actually that left wing

It's a fairly uncontroversial statement that Labour is hit disproportionately by abstention, and that the prospect of removal of £30K debt is a good incentive for youth turnout. Corbyn's left-wing, but for the most part, his platform isn't - and is actually closer to the public than Blairites on a number of issues (and even on stuff it isn't - immigration etc, isn't significantly worse).

[Blair]

If New Labour proved anything, it was that huge majorities are meaningless with a leader not willing to do anything with them. Speaking of meaningless, the idiosyncrasies of FPTP rewards are not reflective of actual desire. See how it robbed Attlee in 1950 & 1951 whilst rewarding Blair in 2005 and the Tories this year.

look as a member of the LGBT community it's clear that Blair did a lot of good with his 150 seat majority-repealed section 28, introduced gay adoption and civil partnerships and appointed the first gay cabinet member. If we want to expand that it's concerning that labour members have such blinkered views- minimum wage, house of lords reform, maternity leave doubled, paternity leave introduced, crime cut by 32%, 14,000 new police officers, double funding for each school child, peace in north Ireland, Sierra Leon saved, Milosevic stopped in Kosovo, increased rights at work, child tax credits, inner city schools rebuild, the Olympics brought to London and the NHS reborn with 85,000 new nurses and 35,000 new doctors. Blair did a lot of good

It's been 8 years since he resigned, and we're still arguing over it

Foot was leading the polls pretty handsomely before the split, and he was happy to tell news reporters he was a Marxist.

Labour is unlikely to win a majority in the first place, Curtice has made it perfectly plain that unless Labour take back Scotland they need in excess of a 13 point lead to take enought seats from the Tories. I maintain Corbyn is the best leader to help do that in Scotland, and with those you're then looking at a more realistic prospect for Tory marginals. Many of which can be won back with just the reversal of the Greens and disillusionment. 

Foot was an awful leader and quite frankly that's the one election where I would have struggled to vote Labour because you can't run on leaving the EU and scrapping Trident during the Cold War-I'm not even a hawk but that's too far.

We need to stop seeing Scotland as this far away socialist paradise because frankly we can't build our strategy around winning it back if we lose 80-100 of our target seats in England. Tbh as awful as it I'd support a progressive unionist party in scotland under a federal system but that's another day. Scotland has become this promised land for the left of the party when its a combination of nationalism, FPTP (SNP only had 50%) and the indy ref. Sure SNP voters are probably more left wing but we can't win scotland on the lazy analysis of muh socialism. We hadn't been doing voter ID since 2011 and we wondered why people didn't connect. There isn't a short answer for scotland, and even if if it is winning every seat in Scotland is pointless if we get fail in England and Wales.

I don't have the polling on me but it's another myth that all green voters will come back to labour when there's 50% of them who thought Labour are too pro-welfare, and wanted to vote green to put a finger up the establishment. I'm skeptical again of the idea that Corbyn will simply just unite the left because we heard that Miliband in 2010 would pick up all the Lib dem vote.

These serious concerns are a bit overblown. Israel/Palestine generate a lot of heat and noise, but the general public aren't interested, and appear to be slightly more sympathetic to the Palestinians. I don't think it's the death knell that the Right believe it is - and the charges usually amount to little more than guilt by association and ungenerous readings of his comments.

So since the public aren't interested we should just pretend its not important.   I'm sympathetic to Palestine, and support the vote in parliament last year but Corbyn takes it to a new level. Calling Hamas a force for ''social justice and peace'', sharing a stage with know anti-Semites and donating to someone who doubts the holocaust is hardly progressive. Corbyn is of the foreign policy school that gets into bed with people that we'd absolutely kill the right for talking to.

The Jewish Chronicles allegations appear to be pretty bad, and I've yet to see a good rebuttal apart from saying that JC is committed to peace in the Middle East and works with all parties. It's really not going to look good to have a bloke who seems to be close to Hamas and the whole anti-Israel movement

[Phony Moderate]

Received an email from Dan Jarvis (who has barely said a dickie bird during this campaign) urging a vote for Creasy for Deputy. So he backs a Burnham/Creasy ticket, which funnily enough was my idea of a dream ticket right after the GE.

[DavidB.]

What are the chances of Corbyn becoming party leader at this point?

[Phony Moderate]

What are the chances of Corbyn becoming party leader at this point?

Pretty high (he has a 37-point lead after all) but not certain. What is certain is that things will get nasty after September 12th no matter the result.

[Silent Hunter]

unless Labour take back Scotland they need in excess of a 13 point lead to take enought seats from the Tories. I maintain Corbyn is the best leader to help do that in Scotland, and with those you're then looking at a more realistic prospect for Tory marginals. Many of which can be won back with just the reversal of the Greens and disillusionment.  

Labour taking back Scotland is a hard ask; there is a significant number of people who voted SNP because they're Scottish nationalists who want independence.

The SNP got 50% of the Scottish vote and Labour got 24.3% in 2015; there was a 24% swing or thereabouts from Labour to the Nationalists. Not very likely to be reversed in one election, if ever.

Also - on the current boundaries using the UNS calculator on Electoral Calculus - if the Green vote was at 2010 levels and the extra supporters voted Labour, Labour would only pick up nine seats and the Tories would have 324. With Sinn Fein not taking their seats, that's a Conservative majority.

There is no path to a Labour government, majority or minority, that does not involving flipping Conservative held marginals in England. Here is the current Labour list, again the boundaries will change a lot before 2020. We need to probably flip 60 marginals in England to get an overall majority -  we don't want a minority government, because there is every chance we won't get a second term at any rate (Labour has only increased its majority by a significant amount once - in 1966) - and probably more like 80 for a working majority. I strongly doubt that there are 6,526 non-voters in Crawley who are just waiting to cast their first vote for Corbyn.

In addition, while Corbyn may well hoover up Greens and the SNP, there is a real risk he looses white working class voters with right-leaning views to UKIP or the Tories.

Emulating Syriza may seem a good idea, but Syriza got 36.34% of the vote in a PR system... and wouldn't have even been able to form a government without that 50 seat bonus. 36% may have won us a General Election in 2005, but I doubt it will be enough in 2020.

This report from the Fabian Society is worth reading as well as a final point.