How will you vote in the Labour Leadership election?

calz taking great pleasure in not giving KS a preference

got to admit I stuck twos up at and repeatedly said fuck off cunt to his drag and grab ballot icon. A futile and childish gesture for sure but it felt good!

What were your deputy prefs?

1. Dawn Butler
2. Lolchard Burgon

in light of the civility in politics awards I think it behooves us to recall that seemingly futile rudeness is an important part of british political culture and has a fine pedigree, going back at least to what must surely be the origin of "i fart in your general direction" at the siege of exeter, in response to the freshly installed king william gouging out the eyes of a local prisoner to demoralise the inhabitants, one of the ppl of exeter got his bum out and did a fart at them - we can only say fair play

xp but why though

Yeah why Burton?

Burgon

god knows tbh! Angela Rayner is probably a shoe in for deputy anyway and it was just a meaningless anyone but her gesture!

Burton listening to the Meatls has clearly worked!

Meatls, Keir, squalid

fwiw (not much) Burgon was nominated by McDonnell, Abbott, Ribeiro-Addy and the sainted Zarah Sultana. He's the only member of the Socialist Campaign Group running and is the only one who has backed RLB's position on open selection.

Don't tell me no-one has used the nickname, The Burgonmeister, yet?

xp Yeah but he's a known dimwit and a figure of fun. I mean sure Prescott but he was at least somewhat formidable (citation...needed?)

My ballot should be arriving soon #inittogether

credit where credit's due, prescott could throw a punch

If Burgon punches someone in the next 24 hours I'll throw him a preference

Prescott supported Corbyn and was generally better than most of the others in that gov afaict?

Oh, agreed! He was quite a useful presence as well, despite the mockery

think I'm going burgon, butler, rayner

was thinking Burgon could end up being a similar pain in the arse for Starmer that Watson was for Corbz. Not sure there is much strategic advantage in that, but I think the rest of them including Dawn, would prefer him as leader over RLB.

Burgon psyching out Starmer by constantly blasting out metal in the LOTO offices is the only way I can see that happening. And also, it’s a bad look if the membership returns two men.

I don't think there is a realistic chance of Burgon winning, but if he is as socialist as he claims then maybe he might not be happy when Starmer starts going soft on Universal Credit about 3.6 seconds into his tenure!

Burgon's not going to win anyway but I'm not especially convinced by the logic of voting for someone you privately think isn't really competent because they're ideologically aligned, people like that can set the cause back more than advance it. I'm largely unfussed by the results of this contest (partly because it's so obvious who's going to win both positions), but it probably will make me quite angry if Burgon gets more votes than Dawn Butler.

Also if he does get the position under Starmer he'll shut up and do what he's told. Literally impossible for anyone to be a bigger pain in the arse than Watson was.

(Obviously I'm not suggesting voting for someone you actively disagree with, before anyone jumps on that)

I’ve published my list of donors over £1500 https://t.co/zbfn3fWtZm

— Rebecca Long-Bailey (@RLong_Bailey) February 26, 2020

see this fuckers in the pocket of big energy/water companies and shadowy former labour donors who fucked off when Corbyn became leader, this is what transparency looks like.

A Starmer-Burgon result from them being the only two men in it would be pretty fucking offensive tbh

not seen anyone make much of a case for butler beyond general palatability

Worked better with Corbyn leadership despite not being that left
Always willing to speak up against bullshit
Has actual ministerial experience

You’d really have to make the case for Burgon beyond “CLPD candidate” tbh

xps Matt otm!

Burgon as the most senior/prominent leftie in the party would be an absolute bonanza for anyone who wanted to undermine the left. Every time he made a terrible TV appearance they'd be able to point and go 'see?'

I definitely laughed at the 2nd reason though

Ballots begin to drop today.

Vote Dawn Butler number 1 if you want someone who will #PrepareforPower from day one, energise our Labour movement and unite our Party. #Dawn4Deputy pic.twitter.com/vCf9ICqo2G

— (((Dawn Butler))) (@DawnButlerBrent) February 24, 2020

"A Starmer-Burgon result from them being the only two men in it would be pretty fucking offensive tbh"

I don't even want one of the men to win, but I'd take the fool Burgon if it was part of some Faustian pact to have Starmer dumped into the ash heap of Labour Party history.

You’d take Nandy over Starmer?

No, rightly or wrongly I don't even factor her into the equation and just assume she's a wooden spoon shoe in!

but don't think for a minute Starmer wouldn't take a similar road to her, because as you know he follows the path of least resistance - like melt-water.

There's a real mountain to slither down right now.

think I'm going burgon, butler, rayner

burgon, butler, rayner, spy

competence is not some desirable abstract attribute (you cld say all the worst ppl are competent) but a subjective, normative assessment of something situational and it gets raised as an issue in a similar way to realism & being 'out of touch', so I'm always a little wary of it.

afaict butler's biggest pluses are having significant non-union job experience, which I value more than ministerial exp, being a strong liberal*, and being a clear thinker and good communicator (inc some humour even). she strikes me as being measured rather than a watson/phillips type of renegade opinion-haver. rayner is the high energy candidate and has a similar voting record, isn't from london, is an effective part of the party/union machine (a sort of competence which is probably overall slightly more bad than good), and I have a faint suspicion abt the clarity of her liberal convictions, mb unfairly. burgon is the one I agree with most, and open selection is a fundamental q of power and democracy and so imo central. he's the poorest communicator of the three and as w/ rayner he's more of a work in progress shall we say, and the most ripe for patronisation (tho the oxbridge minister for fabulosity arguably deserves it more)

*hi B-)

good breakdown u have my first preference

I guess Rayner is the #towns candidate too, tho Leeds is an overgrown town let's be honest

I will concede she has a slightly risqué rhetorical style that at times codes as dogwhistling. "Forget about [nice, wholesome but slightly abstract thing], how about [other nice, wholesome and fairly concrete thing]!" It's a little bit of a verbal triangulation - it doesn't make me doubt her principles (voting record, always the voting record) but it does render her liable to have ten-second clips of her disseminated among left twitter with accompanying #yikes, #cancelled and so on.

I won't deny I'm naturally drawn to the hi-nrg candidate in any otherwise fairly even circumstances tho, ty ogmor for crystallising it

Could still vote Butler. Will check both voting records and then watch a few videos etc

what do you think the odds are of a shock result here, ogmor? At the moment it seems to me fucking Starmer/Rayner is as short odds as doubling a Schumacher podium finish with Celtic versus some Highland league shitkickers back in the day kind of odds on.

no idea but does seem unlikely, the best hope RLB has is that starmer will lose more votes to nandy than she will, mb esp if starmer seems nailed on?

been quite a bit of debate among labour pals on the q "is rayner daft?". hard to gauge but I can say: rayner's high school < my high school < nandy's high school < owen jones' high school

Butler seems like she would be a good counter-balance to RLB but not to Starmer. I feel like Rayner might be a token leftish ventriloquist's dummy to Starmer's reluctant, electable shift rightwards.

the best hope RLB has is that starmer will lose more votes to nandy than she will, mb esp if starmer seems nailed on?

Only if the new Nandy voters don't bother with second prefs surely?

Both Starmer and Rayner broadly speaking play for the team they're asked to when leaves them both as gigantic unknown quantities in terms of the actual programme that they'd pursue as leader and deputy. If I had to guess I'd still say soft leftish on economic issues, definitely anti-austerity but with a big headline-grabbing rightward shift on law and order.

And #towns obviously.

Hold on here, imago and xyzzz are members of the same political party?

They are in fact, brothers in the Labour Family?

Does it not look like a family dispute to you?

I can't possibly imagine any bitter rivalries and recriminations between members of the same political party.

I'm not sure I explained myself very well in my last post - any voters shifting from Starmer to Nandy are likely to stick Starmer down as second preference anyway. I'm assuming Nandy finishes in third whatever happens but I've really lost any sense of how popular she is with the voter base. My general sense though is that RLB has a baseline below which she pretty much can't fall.