Labour Party leadership election 2015

[ViaActiva]

God this leadership election is depressing. The mainstream of the party is completely bereft of any ideas - Yvette looks like she was forced into it by Balls losing and is so incredibly robotic and false, Burnham is just dim and brazen in his lack of beliefs and principle. I like Kendall but she jettisoned any chance of winning by running under the Blairite banner, which is a shame as she's a far cut above and more down to earth than the usual Progress fools. Which leaves a well intentioned Bennite who is likely to lead Labour down the path to an even worse defeat than 2015.

The terrible quality of candidates we have makes me wonder there could have been another option:

- Lisa Nandy: down to earth, intelligent and principled, would unite the Left and Right of the Party.
- Gavin Shuker: young but very impressive and as a Lutonian, understands Middle England.
- Rushanara Ali: probably not ready yet, but
- Alan Johnson or Hillary Benn: similar to Michael Howard, would be a 'safe pair of hands'.
- If Caroline Flint, Stella Creasy or Ben Bradshaw had run for the leadership proper, they could have given the others a run for their money.

Dan Jarvis would be ideal if he were available.

[ViaActiva]

I think there's a tendency to be nostalgic about 1976. I mean they're all far better than everyone today but even then Crosland was an academic who was not suited to parliamentary politics at all (think Jon Cruddas), Jenkins was completely out-of-touch with the party both socially and ideologically, Foot was unelectable, and Healey was intellectually brilliant but was terrible with people and would have torn the party apart. The victor Callaghan was the only truly great leader and is criminally underrated as a Prime Minister, without him the Labour government would have collapsed in 1976 over the IMF Crisis and it's unlikely that Labour would have ever been trusted to govern again.

[ViaActiva]

I also neglected to mention Benn, of course, who was nuts.

[ViaActiva]

I also neglected to mention Benn, of course, who was nuts.

Rates Ben Bradshaw but classes Benn as nuts.

Rates Ben Bradshaw.

Classes Benn as nuts.

...

Hey it's not just me who's claimed that Benn was nuts. So did Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock and Harold Wilson - but I guess that makes them Blairites in the modern parlance of the Labour Party right?

This is the guy who supported punitive tariffs on foreign imports and the nationalisation of Britain's 25 top companies - policies which would have cut Britain off from any foreign investment, annihilated British manufacturing, led to retaliative tariffs and a world recession that would have made the social consequences of Thatcherism seem moderate by comparison. He almost destroyed the Labour Party by allying himself with Militant and Trotskyite entryists, a fact that everyone on the traditional left recognised. Like Corbyn he was a decent and principled man sure, but his ideas were totally wrong and enabled the success of Thatcher.

Then and now, the only way Labour is going to help the most vulnerable people in society is by winning the next election. Winning elections means convincing people who voted Conservative in 2010 and 2015 to vote for Labour. I supported Ed Miliband in 2010 and I rejoiced at the party moving more to the left and away from the Blairite legacy, but we've now seen the results of standing on a platform that is perceived as too left-wing and that has little to say to the majority of people in this country.

I'm from Ipswich, a seat which we needed to win and should have won, Labour's campaign was completely out-of-touch, based on fear-mongering and saying what activists wanted to hear i.e. 'Evil Tories destroying our NHS', 'Bedroom Tax' - rather than engaging with local issues and listening to people. The Conservative MP actually increased his majority substantially - which is a great shame because there is a lot of deprivation here and a lot of people will get hit by the welfare and tax credit cuts. To win in Middle England - places like Ipswich, Bedford, Nuneaton we can't rely on the same activist echo-chamber, we have to restore Labour's credibility on the economy and propose policies that will help lower middle class voters who have become increasingly convinced that the Labour Party has no relevance for them anymore. Listening to people means realising that Tories are not inherently bad people - we risk ending up as a tiny sect if many of our activists adopt a tribal, inward looking attitude.

I just don't see how Jeremy Corbyn is going to convince 2015 Tory voters to vote Labour - he is only likely to make Labour even less credible and relevant to the very voters that Labour needs to win over if it is ever going to have a chance to help the most vulnerable people in society. Now I'm not saying that Burnham, Cooper or Kendall are guaranteed to achieve victory for Labour in 2020, but we desperately need to stay relevant, make progress in re-building our support and keep the media's focus on the consequences of Tory policy and not our infighting.

[ViaActiva]

A poll asking why Labour lost. Note which listed reason comes bottom.

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/f4tu4iec6t/TimesLabourSurvey_Results_150720_W.pdf

It comes bottom because there's already more specific prompts for exactly that issue:

Highest responses from Conservative voters:

Ed Miliband was not good enough as a party leader - 57%
Labour failed to admit its mistakes in the run up to the banking crisis and recession - 40%
Labour did not have a plausible policy for reducing the government’s deficit - 37%
Labour was not tough enough on immigration and welfare spending - 33%

I'd like to hear how Jeremy Corbyn is the answer to these problems.

[ViaActiva]

On the subject of market research, here's some more:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/271940748/Listening-to-Labour-s-Lost-Labour-Voters-bbm-Research-July-2015

[ViaActiva]

Alan Johnson has endorsed Cooper. Given that he's a well liked figure amongst ordinary Labour members this is decent news for her. He's also used his endorsement to take a pop at CWU General Secretary Dave Ward for the manner in which he issued the CWU endorsement of Corbyn. Johnson, of course, is a former CWU General Secretary.

Seems to support the narrative that Burnham is slipping into third place. I still I can't decide whether I'd prefer him to Yvette.

[ViaActiva]

The image of politicians, whether justly or unjustly, does matter to voters - it certainly hindered Labour in 2015 with Miliband as leader, who was pilloried in the press and couldn't cut through to the public at all. Of course there were wider factors - the deficit of the last Labour government, credibility on the economy, immigration, the party becoming increasingly out-of-touch etc., but the fact that Miliband alienated so many people was very significant. Contrast this with Blair's connection with Middle England and swing voters - for all his faults this cannot be denied.

[ViaActiva]

This is a really good article that pretty much sums up my view on the race:
https://medium.com/@danielelton/many-blairites-are-infuriating-but-i-m-voting-kendall-2d89bd5950bc

[ViaActiva]

Sorry but the idea that Labour lost the 1983 election due to the SDP and the Falklands War is absolute nonsense. Analysis (see Appendix) of second preferences showed that Liberal/SDP voters were more likely to favour Thatcher's Conservatives than Labour in 1983 (43% to 36%). Let that sink in more a moment. If the SDP had never happened, it's likely that Labour's defeat would have been even worse - as middle class voters who opted for the SDP in 1983 would have gone for Thatcher instead.

The Conservatives were recovering in the polls before the Falklands War, as the temporary surge of the Alliance due to by-election victories inevitably slid away and the economy began to recover. There's a reason that Thatcher called the election in 1983 and not in 1984 - she knew she was going to win. I think that Labour could have done slightly better if the War had never happened - but in this case Thatcher would have delayed the election a year, and with the economy in good shape, it's likely the result would have been similar.

Polls mid-Parliament are always a referendum on the current government and not an accurate reflection of voting choices. Thatcher's government was very unpopular, but when it came to voting, many felt there was no alternative. Polls always move back towards the government towards the election...otherwise Mr. Miliband would be Prime Minister now (even assuming that the final polls were off to the same degree!).

Labour won just 27% in 1983. Labour were still blamed for the Winter of Discontent and trade union militancy. The Bennite insurgency of 1979-81 completely destroyed the constitutional balance in the Party and left the Party a shambles - who could possibly vote for a Labour leadership that couldn't control its own Party, let alone the country? Labour lost the election well before the Limehouse Declaration and the Falklands War.

[ViaActiva]

Agreed that it's going to be a complete bloodbath when he's elected. The Conservative press are going to rip him to shreds every week. Listening to him on World at One, it's clear that he has a thin skin and is easily rattled, so expect some memorable car crash interviews. Every policy he tries to announce will be immediately denounced by all the grandees of the Labour Right (Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt have already formed a splinter group). The Left will become defensive and paranoid, and the Party will collapse further into in-fighting. Given Corbyn's evident lack of passion for holding the position of leader, I wouldn't be surprised if he resigns after a few months, leading to another contest. The Left will cry betrayal and they'll probably be mass defections to the Greens.

[ViaActiva]

Ohnoes! If we elect somebody vaguely left-wing and willing to believe in a few things and change a few things, the evil right-wing media and politicians will destroy him in the media and in politics!

Ohnoes! If we elect somebody vaguely left-wing and willing to believe in a few things and change a few things, the evil right-wing media and politicians will destroy him in the media and in politics! Let's rather elect somebody who doesn't stand for any change at all so we can win the election and... do what exactly?

At some point you gotta ask yourselves: what's Labour for ?

See, there were a lot of people who took that attitude from 1979-1997, but what did Labour do in government after 1997? Rough sleeping cut by two thirds, doubling international aid, the Minimum Wage, massive improvements in health and education, tax credits, winter fuel payments, a revolution in childcare with SureStart, a significant fall in crime, House of Lords reform (albeit limited), repeal of Section 28, the introduction of civil partnerships... we could go on and on. Now I'm pretty critical of a lot of New Labour (Blair's catastrophic foreign policy, his presidentialism, a lot of the anti-terror legislation, the disdain for the grassroots of the party) but to say that Labour cannot achieve anything by compromising with mainstream opinion in the country is nonsense and will consign the party to complete irrelevance.

Corbyn has beliefs, right, but they're nuts. Nationalising the energy companies? Raising money through a tax gap of which one sixth is actually collectable? This isn't real change that people can seriously believe in, it's blind hope. It will lead to even more disillusionment with politics when people realise that Labour is completely impotent and untrustworthy and that the Tories are effectively a one party state.

Now of course the other candidates have had terrible campaigns, but at least they're beginning to advocate some ideas that actually make sense: universal free childcare, investment in science and manufacturing, the integration of social care, devolution of power. It's clear that there is a vacuum of ideas and an inspiring programme of government within the party at the moment, but we can at least elect a leader who is passionate about building on a winning programme and not assuming the position because of some vague belief in 'broadening the debate' within the party.