Labour Party leadership election 2015

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Hopefully, no matter what system is used, someone has a good hard look at it before it is actually used and works out what problems there might be that need dealing with. Because all systems have flaws: its hard not to escape the conclusion that what's happened this time is that the new system was approved and then no one glanced at the rules again until the contest had begun.

[Silent Hunter]

This election is turning into a dog's breakfast. If it's close, then the losing side are going to claim "entryism" or "unfair barring" or whatever... so the winner will have questionable legitimacy from the get-go.

[YL]

This election is turning into a dog's breakfast. If it's close, then the losing side are going to claim "entryism" or "unfair barring" or whatever... so the winner will have questionable legitimacy from the get-go.

Do we know how many people have actually been "purged"?

Ultimately any primary-type system (which is what the registered supporter part of this is) accepts a certain amount of infiltration in return for increasing participation in the election, and I'm not aware of many examples where infiltration by opponents has had a clear influence on the result.  There is a slightly odd thing in this case with people in the Greens and far left parties who like Corbyn's politics and want him to be leader but who wouldn't be Labour supporters with another leader -- I suspect the number of far left people in this category is  small but the number of Greens might be a bit bigger -- but with 600,000 voters it'd have to be pretty close for them to be decisive.

IMO the right and centre of the Labour Party ought to be thinking a bit more about why Corbyn is doing so well (not that they can do much about it now) rather than complaining about the system.  And I say that as a registered supporter who will be voting for a candidate other than Corbyn.

[Phony Moderate]

More trouble for Corbyn.

[Silent Hunter]

I was also referring to Tories voting. It may not make much of a difference in reality, but truth is frequently irrelevant in things like this.

[YL]

I was also referring to Tories voting. It may not make much of a difference in reality, but truth is frequently irrelevant in things like this.

Even that is an obvious consequence of the rules of the contest, just like Democrats voting for who they perceive as the biggest nutter in the Republican primary.  The well known names like Tory MPs and that prat Toby Young can of course be removed, but the fact is that if you allow 600,000 people to vote you'll get a few who are playing silly games.

It's also the case that this isn't the first Labour leadership election where some Tories have had a vote.  There are a few strange people who are both Tories and members of Labour-affiliated unions.

[Blair]

Just out of interest who reckons Corbyn will win on the first ballot?

[Phony Moderate]

John Curtice has kind of called it for Corbyn.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Curtice is not an expert on the internal workings of the Labour Party and saying 'well the poll showing a big lead would have to be very wrong for the man shown to have a big lead to lose' is hardly insight. Yes, if Corbyn loses the YouGov survey will have been wrong. Duh.

[Insula Dei]

On a tangential note, it is utterly ridiculous that Dyab Abou Jahjah isn't allowed into the UK.

[Blair]

Looks like Sadiq Khan is going to win the mayoral race as I heard that Corbyn surrogates/staff were handing out his literature at the events in London this week. Not sure how I feel about him-ideologically he's fine but he lacks that vision thing'-although it's a rare asset in the party now

[Phony Moderate]

Assuming that Corbyn's support is as strong as the polls have suggested and assuming that most of it does break for Khan, yes.

[DavidB.]

On a tangential note, it is utterly ridiculous that Dyab Abou Jahjah isn't allowed into the UK.

Are you for real? Abou Jahjah said that he considers every dead British (and Dutch) soldier in Iraq a victory. Even if you're against that war, that's a terrible thing to say and a good reason for barring someone from entering the UK (and the Netherlands). In general, he is nuts in a dangerous way. I'm amazed that the Flemish media seem to keep taking him so seriously, probably because people are shocked by him, leading to more newspapers being sold / more website clicks However, Corbyn actually seems to have led Abou Jahjah on a tour through the British parliament, even though Corbyn doesn't remember anymore, so if Abou Jahjah is being barred from the UK, it's something recent.

[Insula Dei]

On a tangential note, it is utterly ridiculous that Dyab Abou Jahjah isn't allowed into the UK.

Are you for real? Abou Jahjah said that he considers every dead British (and Dutch) soldier in Iraq a victory. Even if you're against that war, that's a terrible thing to say and a good reason for barring someone from entering the UK (and the Netherlands). In general, he is nuts in a dangerous way. I'm amazed that the Flemish media seem to keep taking him so seriously, probably because people are shocked by him, leading to more newspapers being sold / more website clicks However, Corbyn actually seems to have led Abou Jahjah on a tour through the British parliament, even though Corbyn doesn't remember anymore, so if Abou Jahjah is being barred from the UK, it's something recent.

I'm very much for real. Abou Jahjah is nothing more than a go-to fringe 'islamo-leftist' for lazy Flemish newspapers editors needing to fill pages. I don't really see how that makes him a danger to public safety in the United Kingdom. It was annoying when people were hysterical about the guy back in the AEL days, by now it just shows a preference for stock-responses over critical evaluation. As for his comment on dead soldiers (which he rather frantically backpedalled from, by the way), literally thousands of people have said worse things on-line; it strikes me as an absolutely inane thing to do to pretend that he's some sort of scary terrorist with direct links to the Hezbollah leadership. It's as if Louise Mensch was barred from entering Bulgaria.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

tbf I would support barring Louise Mensch from Bulgaria, or from anywhere for that matter, especially Twitter.

[DavidB.]

On a tangential note, it is utterly ridiculous that Dyab Abou Jahjah isn't allowed into the UK.

Are you for real? Abou Jahjah said that he considers every dead British (and Dutch) soldier in Iraq a victory. Even if you're against that war, that's a terrible thing to say and a good reason for barring someone from entering the UK (and the Netherlands). In general, he is nuts in a dangerous way. I'm amazed that the Flemish media seem to keep taking him so seriously, probably because people are shocked by him, leading to more newspapers being sold / more website clicks However, Corbyn actually seems to have led Abou Jahjah on a tour through the British parliament, even though Corbyn doesn't remember anymore, so if Abou Jahjah is being barred from the UK, it's something recent.

I'm very much for real. Abou Jahjah is nothing more than a go-to fringe 'islamo-leftist' for lazy Flemish newspapers editors needing to fill pages. I don't really see how that makes him a danger to public safety in the United Kingdom. It was annoying when people were hysterical about the guy back in the AEL days, by now it just shows a preference for stock-responses over critical evaluation. As for his comment on dead soldiers (which he rather frantically backpedalled from, by the way), literally thousands of people have said worse things on-line; it strikes me as an absolutely inane thing to do to pretend that he's some sort of scary terrorist with direct links to the Hezbollah leadership. It's as if Louise Mensch was barred from entering Bulgaria.

We seem to agree on the lazy media. My point is that unlike some random keybord warrior, this guy actually does have an audience, which makes him more dangerous than random nobodies on their parents' atticks - and this is the reason that banning him from the UK (or, hypothetically, from the Netherlands) doesn't seem so strange to me, even if that would obviously be "just" a symbolic measure.

I considered it much stranger that Geert Wilders wasn't allowed to enter the UK.

But all this doesn't have much to do with the Labour leadership election...

[Leftbehind]

Looks like Sadiq Khan is going to win the mayoral race as I heard that Corbyn surrogates/staff were handing out his literature at the events in London this week. Not sure how I feel about him-ideologically he's fine but he lacks that vision thing'-although it's a rare asset in the party now

Colour me skeptical on every front of this.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

...even though Corbyn doesn't remember anymore, so if Abou Jahjah....

In fairness to Corbyn this is quite plausible. He's a campaigning backbench MP (on about eighty different issues) of the workaholic variety: most of the people he meets in that capacity will have been introduced to him by others and will pass before him as a bit of a blur. Of course he makes the problems that come with this (at least if such a person suddenly becomes a senior politician) worse by the fact that he shares the classic hard left tendency to make ingratiating remarks, but that's a different matter.

[Blair]

His comments about ISIS for example where a good example of the 'philosophical' left where he compared ISIS to the US army in fallejuah or however you spell it

[Silent Hunter]

There's some comment around how he was talking to the IRA before the British government did. Ignoring the fact about whether we should have negotiated with them at all (it's entirely possible that the PIRA might have been crippled anyway after 9/11 due to its American backers pulling out), it ignores the fact that they didn't have a charter calling for the destruction of the UK.

Oh and when Tzipi Livni visited the UK, he wasn't interested in talking with her - he wanted her arrested.

[Blair]

There's some comment around how he was talking to the IRA before the British government did. Ignoring the fact about whether we should have negotiated with them at all (it's entirely possible that the PIRA might have been crippled anyway after 9/11 due to its American backers pulling out), it ignores the fact that they didn't have a charter calling for the destruction of the UK.

Oh and when Tzipi Livni visited the UK, he wasn't interested in talking with her - he wanted her arrested.

Corbyn supporters seem to paint him as some sort of George Mitchell or Tony Blair in Northern Ireland when in reality his idea of a peace settlement would have been a united catholic Ireland-it's funny that the two groups in the labour party who are most anti-Corbyb are the Jewish affiliates and Northern Ireland based groups

[Phony Moderate]

Gordon Brown has voted 1. Cooper, 2. Burnham, 3. Kendall

Dan Hodges has voted 1. Cooper, 2. Burnham, Watson for Deputy and Abbott (!) for London Mayor

[Leftbehind]

Voted:-  1. Corbyn 2. Burnham

1. Watson 2. Eagle

(as well as the leftists for the CAC & North's NPF).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I eagerly await the outcome of the Conference Arrangement Committee elections!

[Hifly]

Katy Clark ♥