Go on then, who do you reckon will win? The Labour Leadership contest, that is...

Craven as it is, he's demonstrated more savvy here than I assumed he was capable of

on one hand sure, but on the other hand when even yr Blairism is a negotiable position of convenience...can't roll my eyes high enough

Well either he himself sees Blairism to be a sham or he's conscious of the fact that most of the electorate do.

Either way between this and the resistance thing with Hunt, he's doing a pretty good job keeping himself relevant whilst hedging hard

I think you are giving him way too much credit, he is just doing what any bland party functionary does when their position becomes under threat - slither into another position and see if they can further themselves from it.

Probably and true enough but at this stage he's slithered more effectively than most other Blairites.

Well, for all that some seem to be considering splitting off like the SDP did, difference was that "Gang of four" were well-known and nobody knows this bunch.

Remind me how that SDP thing worked out for all concerned, must have been some success story for people to be considering it again.

OK, they got people keen for a bit, they had some initial success, but then faded out.

A bit like Badfinger if they were four other blokes also in the Beatles, with the hits they had on their own, and if they subsequently merged with the Rolling Stones.

Oh, and the four who formed the gang all got knighted in the end.

Polly Toynbee came out of with barely a scratch on her.

out of where?

The SDP.

how fair should we be to barely disguised Tories?

Conveyor/Show Trials/Execution sounds pretty fair to me.

A bit of their own medicine.

https://mytiarascrooked.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/tumblr_inline_mhd2xf1ym61r71zdp.gif

Jeremy Corbyn scored an overwhelming lead over his rivals during the Sky News Labour debate, according to an unofficial poll of viewers using Sky Pulse.

The numbers are hilarious:

Jeremy Corbyn 80.7%
Liz Kendall 8.5%
Yvette Cooper 6.1%
Andy Burnham 4.7%.

Some good news for Kendall at last!

We all know David Aaranovitch is a massive cunt but he was reaching the heights on Newsnight last night. Complete, utter failure to engage with anything anybody says. The usual bored jaded nonsense.

Burnham has really tanked this campaign hasn't he? Guessing there'll be a big flow of voters from Burnham to Cooper. Corbyn will win, but the result will be a lot closer than people expect.

He spent a lot of time talking up the common ground he shared with Corbyn and there was that bollocks about "harnessing this energy" and then he disagreed with all Corbyn's policies apart from on Rail nationalisation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXXJ3NrjplY&sns=em

That's what a future PM looks like.

I got an email from John Prescott which started:

Hello comrade! (We can still say that can't we?)

I'm going to break the habit of a lifetime and be brief.

That's what a future PM looks like

nooooooooooooooooooo

She is edgy, with it and post totty #resistanceIsFutile

http://thequietus.com/articles/18714-jeremy-corbyn-labour-election-rally-policies

An interesting read, even if I don't agree with everything it says

(which is more or less what the tweet linking to it said) (by someone off here, I believe)

i disagree where it calls Harriet Harman a man

A penny for Carmody's thoughts on this one :-)

funny how 3 candidates with barely perceptible political differences haven't been able to organise themselves to present a united front against the evil Trot

Its been great as long as Liz Kendall doesn't win whatever the outcome

The distinctions as far as I can tell are that Burnham is prepared to sidle up to him slightly, whereupon Cooper will go full Donald Sutherland and demand that Burnham be punished for it.

And Liz Kendall's a Tory.

Burnham basically going in whichever direction the prevailing wind seemed to be going in has knackered his campaign really, can't see him coming ahead of Cooper.

Pretty sure Kendall has conceded defeat already.

Part of me worries/wonders if Cooper is actually right about the risibly named 'People's QE' but that's for another day. Expect Osborne and Cameron to spend a lot of time telling Corbyn how wrong headed his own party thinks his economic policies are.

Yeah, Kendall has switched over to "we must support whoever wins" - meanwhile a man in a George Osborne mask has started getting the boot in:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/09/george-osborne-labour-generations-work-unravelled

When tories talk about Labour's "Good old days", they don't usually mean anything more recent than 20 years ago, now it seems Kinnock, Blair, Brown and Miliband were "all right really"...

"Burnham is prepared to sidle up to him slightly"

He is actually beyond parody. I was listening to a not very hilarious comedy show on R4 and they did a short impression of each candidate and his sounded even more so than the others, just a straight recording of him talking leadership. I think he will come out of this looking the biggest tool which is saying something considering the competition.

The thing I have enjoyed most about this campaign has been the moments where Blairite tossers who are dealing with their own unexpected irrelevance are reduced to making bluffing statements through gritted teeth about how great it is that the party is having this dialogue etc...

The distinctions as far as I can tell are that Burnham is prepared to sidle up to him slightly, whereupon Cooper will go full Donald Sutherland and demand that Burnham be punished for it.

― Andrew Farrell, Thursday, September 10, 2015 6:24 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't understand this post - could you expand, AF?

Sorry - it's a reference to this picture:

https://jonathanjanz.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/sutherland.jpg

(which I am very probably misusing - I haven't seen the film!)

A longer version would probably be that in so far as the Blairite policy is to stay one inch to the left of the Tories (and so be dragged along in their wake), it's not surprising that as soon as Andy Burnham moves an inch further to the left, Cooper demands that this be punished:

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/08/cooper-vs-burnham-a-panicked-desperate-stunt-straight-out-of-the-ed-balls-playbook/

Ah, ty

In that image from Invasion of the Body Snatchers Donald Sutherland is emitting an alien scream, indicating that he too is now a pod person

That moment terrified me as a child, even more so than the chilling Salem's Lot tvm and the Thatcher Gov combined.

Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I'm kind of annoyed that the BBC are saying that Corbyn was "cheered by fans" rather than by supporters.

Still waiting for Hubert Humphrey to announced the winner.

tomorrow morn?

"ladies and gentlemen... i present to you the next president of the United States.... Hubert... Horatio.... HORNBLOWER!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_dTJTD01n4

i know it's early Saturday morning but the 4 candidate's supporters that Five Live rounded up this morning for a chat are a good reminder of why it's probly best to just ignore parliamentary politics and go and commune with nature for the rest of yr life instead

i feel a little sticky, a little sad

handy to remember that any pleasure in today will be based on the discomfiture of a complacent middle class rather than much real prospect of genuine radicalization tho

also weird sensation sometimes hearing people express ideas that you're sympathetic to pitched back at you as articles of faith rather than explorations of tactics. meme leftism will do most of the newspapers' job for them