Labour Party leadership election 2015

[ObserverIE]

Oh come on, why would Ed Milliband need to step aside? It's not his fault Labour lost the election. It was all because of these SNP scumbags stealing a God-given Labour seats

The Conservatives won more than half of the seats - even if every Scottish seat had gone Labour, they would have still lose the election

Although they came in useful south of the border for subtle dog-whistling like this:

[ObserverIE]

basically, shameless populism.

Shameless populism plus meddling with the electoral system to their own advantage.

[ObserverIE]

Unlike Leicester South, West is historically a very Right-leaning CLP (selecting in succession her, Patricia Hewitt and... er... Greville Janner) so she ought to given that she's the local MP.

Although Hewitt had a reputation as a Bennite back in the 80s when that was the correct position for Vicars of Bray to hold.

[ObserverIE]

1) Burnham
2) Cooper
3) Corbyn
4) Kendall

I like Corbyn, but I'm not a fan of pointless factional warfare. Kendall is basically a walking disaster.

This.

[ObserverIE]

I don't even think many of the (southern) Irish support a United Ireland any more; more trouble than it's worth for them.

It's not polled often, but there is some data.

On support within the republic for a united Ireland:

Date	Poll	For	Against
2012	MRBI/Irish Times	64	8
2010	RedC/Sunday Times	57	22
2006	RedC/Sunday Business Post	80	10

I stand corrected, but I see it's dropped a lot in recent years. Is it really something people get worked up about?

It's desirable in theory but not considered to be likely to be on the agenda any time soon unless something unexpected happens in Northern Ireland. 2010 - in the middle of the economic collapse and the lead-up to the bail-out - was probably the peak for the feeling that the Republic was a failed state.