Labour Party (UK) Leadership Election, 2016

[IceAgeComing]

If Angela Eagle won the the labour leadership, she would be the first leader from LGBT community in the labour party and second in the UK after Ruth Davidson.

If you're counting Ruth Davidson then you surely have to count Kezia Dugdale (leader of Scottish Labour): and if you go to parties outside the big 2 then you have a few others - Pat Harvie comes to mind for a start...

[IceAgeComing]

Yeah, he had 49% of members and 56% of unions and affiliated groups. 

I expected them to raise the amount for registered supporters although maybe not as much as £25: I didn't expect a six-month membership freeze and that's something that I think is incredibly unfair; its normal to have a cut-off point but that's just obscene.

[IceAgeComing]

Again, the type of people who go to CLP meetings are a bit different from the wider membership - it suggests that Corbyn is in front sure, but honestly that's what you'd expect considering that his supporters are probably more likely to be the sort of people that'd go to CLP meetings.  Could be wrong though; I'm not a Labour party expert.

[IceAgeComing]

I'm on the left and support Corbyn  (although I'm not a Labour member so that honestly means nothing; although I was probably the only person in the country who moved from the SNP to Labour in may, on the constituency vote at least, I naturally voted for the Greens on the list), I think part of the issue is that it's very hard to win an election just by campaigning that you're not something, especially in an internal election among the left.  I've not been following it since its summer and I have other things to do rather than follow an awful leadership election, but from what I've seen from my friends who are in the Labour party is that although they were always voting for Corbyn (all established members although all were involved with Labour for Independence which means they are slightly abnormal) the Smith campaign's strategy of going "I'm not Corbyn and also a socialist, vote for me!!" isn't working amongst people who are swing voters.  I don't think that there's anyone better around since you need those soft left voters to win something and I doubt that anyone on the right of the party would have done that much better, but if you had policy differences between the candidates rather than just dislike of Corbyn then that might have inspired some more people.  My opinion is that he was never going to lose, even with the things that he's done wrong (the entire EU referendum was a big one for me but I'm probably a little biased considering they are employing me over the winter) he's not angered the membership to the extent that he'll lose a year after getting a huge victory.

To use a slightly tortured American analogy, imagine if Clinton's main primary important wasn't Bernie but instead some boring man in a suit (Mark Warner??) who's entire campaign was "I'm not Hillary!!" with little to no policy differences.  Would the Democratic primaries have been as close as they ended up being?  No, because Sanders actually had the policy differences to inspire people that weren't inspired by Clinton and who wouldn't have supported a generic anti-Hillary candidate - that's why I think Biden might also have done alright if he'd stood.  This analogy is dodgy in a few ways (Clinton is on the right of her party while Corbyn is on the left of his) but I think that it's close enough to show what I'm thinking.

[IceAgeComing]

Question for the brits here from all parties, how do you think Owen Smith would do as Labour leader if he was to take over from Corbyn?

He'd probably get a polling bump; but based on the campaign I can't imagine that he'd be much better and that bump might not be a long term one.  If he won I doubt that he'd go into the next election as leader anyway, I think that if the not-Corbyn bit of the Labour party won this then they'd try to change the party rules to make it hard for a candidate of the left to win again, then he'd stand down and they'd elect someone else.  Could be wrong though!

[IceAgeComing]

The fact that its a dumb idea only makes me more convinced that its going to happen though!