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Poll - Next Labour Party Leader - The Final Round

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    #76
    I'm going to stick my neck out and say Ian Murray is a lock for Scotland.

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      #77
      Thornberry for NI

      Comment


        #78
        She might be quite good at that tbh.

        Comment


          #79
          Originally posted by Lucy Waterman View Post
          Anneliese is a good friend of the Waterman family and would be absolutely excellent. (And if she can unite me and Nef in thinking that, anything is possible...!)
          You me and John Mcdonnell, Lucy...

          https://twitter.com/mcortonscott/status/1236971528941690880?s=20

          i had a nice interaction with her in the crowd at one of the Brexit marches without realising who she was. She then went onto the podium.

          Comment


            #80
            Dodds is our local MP - I'd not really heard her talked up as a front-bencher before, but reckon she'd be decent.

            Comment


              #81
              So, did members of the Shadow Cabinet start tweeting their resignations during Starmer's victory speech, or is that only a trick the right pull?

              It is odd how all the talk of how the next leader "needs to be a woman" and how the party is "too Londoncentric" and too "elitist" we've just elected a male lawyer who was born in Southwark and represents a London constituency. I won't even mention his hue - a whiter shade of pale - I don't expect miracles. But I think he serves as something of a rebuke to the more radical / woke / open-minded (delete according to preference) part of the party. You can be Labour and small-c conservative as well, and the preference of the party membership for older white blokes has been made abundantly clear, everytime we've been here. How we respond to that, I'm not sure, but you can't just wish it away.

              In spite of that carping, I think Starmer will be adequate. I don't expect miracles from him, though if Covid 19 takes off proper, he might not need one. The political and economic landscape in a couple of years time will be utterly, utterly different to just now. History books will perhaps congratualte Corbyn on his strategic nous in passing on winning in 2019 - can you imagine what the press would be doing to a Labour government just now, trying to deal with Covid while still getting lost on their way to their ministerial offices and forgetting which side of the House they are meant to sit on?

              It will be interesting to see how Starmer adjusts his position now he's got the prize - was all that somewhat leftish talk during the campaign just a tactic to stall RLB, and will he stomp right? Or is there a genuine, if rather paternalistic, social conscience there?

              Comment


                #82
                Originally posted by White No Sugar View Post
                First leader of any party since Blair who will give the torys something to seriously think about.

                I know a lot of you will no doubt be along to tell me I’m wrong but there’s two U.K. political undeniable truths: No one votes tory because the Labour Party aren’t left wing enough and there’s not enough leftish voters around who don’t vote for the same reason. Regaining power is more important than any single policy. Get in THEN move to the left....

                Awaits slagging.
                We're lucky to have the example of the Blair government to demonstrate the wisdom of what you say. After audaciously sweeping to power in 1997, they immediately instituted a radical programme of economic and social reform, nationalised key industries, confiscated the property of the wealthy, abolished the monarchy and put Rupert Murdoch in jail. Within six months of Blair's election, we were all calling each other comrade - and meaning it. Oh, wait a minute ... But they did outlaw fox hunting. Kinda.

                I've noted the call for pragmatism being voiced a lot in the aftermath of December 2019. That might scribe, Jonathan Freedland, penned a column to that effect back in February.

                Freedland, of course, was a strident Remainer and a vocal critic of Corbyn - both tendencies that contributed to Labour's Austerlitz (with Labour cast in Russian / Holy Roman Empire role, rather than the French) in 2019. Odd how Mr freedland didn't sacrifice his own principles - and bit his pen - in the ruthless pursuit of victory. But I suppose some principles are more important than others, and we're lucky to have wise heads like Mr Freedland to distinguish between the principles that matter, and the ones that don't. I'm sure it is just a co-incidence that the ones that matter are the ones that were important to him, and the ones held by the 'far left,' the 'Corbynites' and 'Momentum' are the ones that need to be put on the backburner. Permanently.
                Last edited by Lurgee; 04-04-2020, 23:38.

                Comment


                  #83
                  Someone's going to Sure Start you, Lurgee.
                  Last edited by DCI Harry Batt; 04-04-2020, 23:36.

                  Comment


                    #84
                    Originally posted by TonTon View Post
                    Someone's going to Sure Start you, Lurgee.
                    If they do, they will only reveal their terminal inability to do irony.

                    Comment


                      #85
                      Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post

                      You me and John Mcdonnell, Lucy...

                      https://twitter.com/mcortonscott/status/1236971528941690880?s=20

                      i had a nice interaction with her in the crowd at one of the Brexit marches without realising who she was. She then went onto the podium.
                      She’s a deeply unfactional person, which is what Starmer needs. Other half is a qualified referee, which should impress some on here!

                      Comment


                        #86
                        Originally posted by Lurgee View Post

                        We're lucky to have the example of the Blair government to demonstrate the wisdom of what you say. After audaciously sweeping to power in 1997, they immediately instituted a radical programme of economic and social reform, nationalised key industries, confiscated the property of the wealthy, abolished the monarchy and put Rupert Murdoch in jail. Within six months of Blair's election, we were all calling each other comrade - and meaning it. Oh, wait a minute ... But they did outlaw fox hunting. Kinda.

                        I've noted the call for pragmatism being voiced a lot in the aftermath of December 2019. That might scribe, Jonathan Freedland, penned a column to that effect back in February.

                        Freedland, of course, was a strident Remainer and a vocal critic of Corbyn - both tendencies that contributed to Labour's Austerlitz (with Labour cast in Russian / Holy Roman Empire role, rather than the French) in 2019. Odd how Mr freedland didn't sacrifice his own principles - and bit his pen - in the ruthless pursuit of victory. But I suppose some principles are more important than others, and we're lucky to have wise heads like Mr Freedland to distinguish between the principles that matter, and the ones that don't. I'm sure it is just a co-incidence that the ones that matter are the ones that were important to him, and the ones held by the 'far left,' the 'Corbynites' and 'Momentum' are the ones that need to be put on the backburner. Permanently.
                        Past performance is not always indicative of future etc.

                        Comment


                          #87
                          Originally posted by Duncan Gardner View Post
                          WNS: did you previously post as 'SunDepoRino?

                          On your points above

                          1 Actually there are both a specific niche minority who vote like that, and generally a larger group that admits to voting irrationally

                          2 Were that wholly true, there would be much less variation in turnout
                          Yes I did and I made the same points on here way back then as well. Also made em back in 84 in the pubs n working men’s clubs of the ex colliery village I was brought up in. The evidence in favour has been stacking up since before then though....



                          Niche minorities and larger than niche minorities won’t won’t put any Labour Leader in Downing Street.

                          Comment


                            #88
                            Whoever the Labour leader is will be monstered by the press anyway. Doesn't matter if they're centre left or left. The only one who has escaped this was Blair and that's because he sold his soul to them

                            Comment


                              #89
                              True, but some are easier to monster than others.

                              Comment


                                #90
                                Dunno, seems like they're all just as monsterable. Ed Milliband got torn to pieces for eating a bacon sandwich wrongly. It's only with Corbyn that the BBC got in on the act as well, but given the apparent closeness of the BBC News hierarchy and Cummings/Johnson I suspect that fate will befall Starmer too

                                Comment


                                  #91
                                  The tabloid campaigns against Miliband were dirty and vicious of course, but it wasn't just the bacon sandwich. He was a soft target more generally.

                                  Comment


                                    #92
                                    When Yes- he was Jewish. See also “two kitchens” and his father father a Holocaust Survivor who served as an intelligence officer in the navy and saw action during the Normandy landings being called a traitor to the country.

                                    With Starmer it’s already started. There are a lot going round on WhatsApp and social media about his failure to prosecute Jimmy Savile when at the DPP.

                                    Comment


                                      #93
                                      Originally posted by White No Sugar View Post
                                      Niche minorities and larger than niche minorities won’t won’t put any Labour Leader in Downing Street.
                                      As you'll have recognised I was nit-picking there (which to be fair you invited with the passive-aggressive challenge )

                                      I don't underestimate the chances of any future Labour or other oppo leader becoming PM, but events may change everything about our archaic political system.

                                      Like you, in 1984 I listened in the working mens' clubs of my ex-industrial area of Belfast. My own ideas were widely ignored and ridiculed, but even I didn't expect that 35 years later the City Council would have twice as many far Left than Ulster Unionist members...

                                      Comment


                                        #94
                                        Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post

                                        With Starmer it’s already started. There are a lot going round on WhatsApp and social media about his failure to prosecute Jimmy Savile when at the DPP.
                                        Indeed. My Tory brother mentioned it. I reminded him that when we were teenagers in the 70s Saville was widely regarded as a creepy weirdo if not nonce. He had a lawyer friend in high places too

                                        Comment


                                          #95
                                          Originally posted by Lurgee View Post

                                          We're lucky to have the example of the Blair government to demonstrate the wisdom of what you say. After audaciously sweeping to power in 1997, they immediately instituted a radical programme of economic and social reform, nationalised key industries, confiscated the property of the wealthy, abolished the monarchy and put Rupert Murdoch in jail. Within six months of Blair's election, we were all calling each other comrade - and meaning it. Oh, wait a minute ... But they did outlaw fox hunting. Kinda.

                                          I've noted the call for pragmatism being voiced a lot in the aftermath of December 2019. That might scribe, Jonathan Freedland, penned a column to that effect back in February.

                                          Freedland, of course, was a strident Remainer and a vocal critic of Corbyn - both tendencies that contributed to Labour's Austerlitz (with Labour cast in Russian / Holy Roman Empire role, rather than the French) in 2019. Odd how Mr freedland didn't sacrifice his own principles - and bit his pen - in the ruthless pursuit of victory. But I suppose some principles are more important than others, and we're lucky to have wise heads like Mr Freedland to distinguish between the principles that matter, and the ones that don't. I'm sure it is just a co-incidence that the ones that matter are the ones that were important to him, and the ones held by the 'far left,' the 'Corbynites' and 'Momentum' are the ones that need to be put on the backburner. Permanently.
                                          Hmm, see this is the sort of thing that I have little patience with. I came across an article I wrote in a college magazine back in 1998, where I was tearing strips of blair and brown for adopting the toriy spending plans for the first three years, plans that they themselves had no intention to stick to. Essentially my point was that this was telling people that they were just going to slap a coat of paint on Thatcherism, because they showed no desire to restore the size of the state from below 40% to somewhere in the mid 40's. Whatever their rhetoric, they were not prepared to raise the taxes, and spend the money to fix all of the problems, and it was obvious from the outset.

                                          The thing is, that Labour were going into the last election having made a promise not to raise taxes on anyone earning under 80K, which is a more meaningful, and pointless constraint than the one engaged in by Blair and Brown. A move that at a stroke renders any meaningful tackling of income inequality virtually impossible, and cripples you ability to increase spending on a huge range of things. It was a promise that rendered all of their other talk just meaningless performative bollocks. I have very little interest in the rhetoric politicians use, to define themselves as being on the left. I am primarily interested in their attitudes on taxation and expenditure. And the last labour manifesto was a flaming bag of dogshit. Full of big rhetoric, combined with timid measures that painted the people involved as economic illiterates who didn't understand what they were trying to do.

                                          To give you an example of what I am talking about. Jeremy Corbyn unveiled Labour's policies for football. They were going to take football back from the hands of billionaires and bad owners and bring football back to the people. I was thinking Fantastic, he's going to change the planning status of all football stadia to drive out all the putative property developers, and unveil a fund of a couple of hundred million quid to enable fan trusts to buy out clubs in trouble, and responding to the imminent collapse of huge swathes of lower tier clubs, by using the opportunity to convert these clubs into tightly regulated, locally owned community clubs.

                                          What we got was fan directors on club boards. I didn't want to talk about it at the time, because people running around actively campaigning, and you don't necessarily want to be as helpful as the anarchists in civil war Barcelona. But this is basically the problem with the last incarnation in a nutshell. Long on rhetoric, short on any structured understanding of the situation, any understanding of what the problems are, and no idea on how to address them. It keeps coming up again and again. It's just nonsensical preaching to the converted, and hyper timid reforms. Things that would have sounded like rallying calls in the 70's, literally no idea of how to operate as a social democratic party as we enter the third decade of the new century.

                                          And that's before you get to brexit. The one major solid unarguable achievement that Corbyn can point to is managing to stop labour coming out in favour of a second referendum. Thank god all that patient triangulation worked out for them so fucking well in the end.

                                          So lets see how this works out. Hopefully Labour can get their fucking act together and stop being such a pointless, shapeless, posturing mess, and work out some serious implementable joined up policies. Lets see them fucking oppose something in a meaningful joined up way. It was commented above that there is next to nothing that an opposition can do, and the thing is that that is not true. They can kick the govt to fucking death over all of the hopelessly incompetent and downright vile and evil things that they do, and propose a possible, coherent alternative. They can try and not be as completely fucking useless as the miliband, and the corbyn versions of the labour party. At least let them be fucking competent. The bar that the labour party has to clear is so much higher than that faced by the fucking tories, who literally planned to kill hundreds of thousands of old people in order to make a point about small govt. It's not enough to just point out how terrible the tories are. That doesn't work on a huge proportion of the english population.

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