How will you vote in the Labour Leadership election?

And Corbyn hoovered up a load of Green votes - you’ll probably see young people drift back to voting Green unless Labour go as hard on climate change as Corbyn did.

Adding to that that anyone still believing in a mythical era called "the centre ground" where "most voters" can be found is likely to be in for a nasty surprise over the next few years.

Fwiw I think climate change stuff wins way more votes than it repels so it's going to stay. Even Cameron draped himself in the green flag for years in opposition.

I'd love to know what difference between Starmer and Smith/Burnham is tbh. He might have served (or collaborated as a famous sex pest would have it) under Corbyn but I don't there was ever any illusions over which wing of the party he belongs to. I bet their voting records are practically identical and they are all in the same WhatsApp groups etc. The only thing that is different this time is the cowardly bunch of melts in the membership imo.

Like there appears to be a presumption that a Starmer victory means a return to a Miliband approach but I can't see that happening - in large part because of what an electoral damp squib the Miliband era was.

Worth mentioning as well that Johnson and the Tories have barely seen fit to mention Labour since the election. Cameron and Osborne were hammering Labour and banging on about them every day, setting up the austerity narrative. That gives Labour the opportunity to create a more hopeful and less defensive narrative than during the Miliband era. Especially given that Johnson's own narrative is going to be about Britain bouncing back and splurging cash everywhere.

Problem is as much with the special advisers they have around them - Labour's have been useless for a decade at least and the likes of Luke Akeshurst should probably be binned en masse.

Most Starmer supporters aren’t bad people, they’re just people utterly devastated by the election, and a lot of them will have campaigned for the party. It’s better for the left to shut the right out - and the right is absolutely where almost all of the Nandy support is coming from - and Starmer needs the left too. You don’t get that % of votes without a good chunk of left voters.

Bin the Lukes, the Ayeshas and anyone who only bothers to mention poverty when they’re using Sure Start centres to tell the left that Iraq didn’t matter.

Starmer's 10 pledges do commit him to most of the 2019/17 manifesto, including Green New Deal. i expect the devil to come out in the deal. i have to assume that even his terrible advisers aren't stupid enough to revisit the EU in the next 5 years.

in the detail, obv.

I'm guessing the split between Starmer and Nandy among people who really wanted Big Jess is two thirds to one

she should get a key Shadow Cabinet role, Minister for Brummagem or something

Smith's biggest problem, other than his big pharma history, was that he was so personally obnoxious / clownish.

Akehurst has always been a fairly fringe figure, however much he wants to see himself as a major player. Labour First members do have a role in Starmer's inner circle but idk if they're directing it, rather than hitching their wagon, temporarily, to the guy who's going to win. Starmer's presumably smart enough to realise that undiluted Milibandism won't work either with the party base or the electorate. I'm pretty sure Miliband also understands this now.

I wonder which of the money behind his campaign he is delaying disclosure of until next week.

Is Bernie Ecclestone still alive?

Miliband has repeatedly said he wished he followed his own closer to 2017 instincts before, rather than be steered by advisors to the right of him.

Ayesha Hazakaria can get in the sea and while there, find out that the Controls on Immigration mug she rode in on doesn’t float.

Labour First might not be steering him now but the pressure on him from the right of the party will increase as time goes on. When people from the right are emboldened enough to talk about Reeves coming back to the shadow cabinet, as unlikely as that seems right now it does show how the imminent Starmer victory is increasing their confidence. And I wouldn't make any assumptions about the makeup of the membership any more. If most of them voted for *this* then I wouldn't assume they have any political conviction or principals at all tbh.

I wld vote Burnham over Starmer, he's another one who's been better & stronger over the last few years

I don't think Burnham would happily vouch for a lock up minor benefit fraudster reform tbf on him.

For example I'd be worried about commitments to scrap UC would become a compromised Reform UC. There would be so much compromise going on in the direction of the party it will end up Miliband-lite, even though much of the electorate are burnt out on austerity, the Right of Labour have historically got that "they've got nowhere else to go" arrogance to work around right-wing compromises. I don't see green shoots of recovery anywhere, just fucking invasive weeds choking the party to death.

xxxp I think that indicates that the right have the party have very little to do other than to chat shit, tbh.

*of the party

well they are just chatting shit, but nobody is laughing at them now.

i have to assume that even his terrible advisers aren't stupid enough to revisit the EU in the next 5 years.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean here, but I'm pretty sure the EU will be a rock in Labour's shoe whatever happens (and whatever the party's position on it is).

Starmer had said the Brexit policy was fine (it may have been right but it's not something you say given the way that turned out) so I expect more mistakes to be made.

Because as a matter of policy Labour's best move for the next five years is not to mention the EU except in the context of our post-Brexit relationship Andrew. That may not be the right action but it's the only sane one at the moment.

He's probably going to be fucked in the north/midlands even if he doesn't mention the EU, if he does he might as well just stand down because the job will be fucked. I've heard quite a few gammony Labour voters saying they didn't vote in the last election because of his Brexit policy and wont vote for him as leader. Even if the economy is knackered I don't think this brexit divide is just going to disappear in one electoral cycle, studies show the UK electorate aren't the most rational bunch!

Starmer's presumably smart enough to realise that undiluted Milibandism won't work either with the party base or the electorate. I'm pretty sure Miliband also understands this now.

'Milibandism' was never really a thing, was it? I like Ed M quite a lot but he always gave the impression of being blown around by forces further to the right than him - both within the party and outside it. The manner of his victory - both the narrow margin over his brother and the reliance on union votes - meant he never really had the political capital to stamp his authority or give a clear sense of direction, he was always at the mercy of the press and bad advisors.

Corbyn lacked political capital for different reasons but at least he had a big mandate from the membership. Starmer will be in a different situation yet again because if that poll is accurate he'll be the first leader since Blair (!!!) to have a strong mandate from both MPs and members.

Worth pointing out the membership was also heavily in favour of a second referendum, in a democratic party they'd have arrived at that Brexit policy regardless and may indeed have settled on something even more Remainy.

yes that's true and i don't think the policy was down to Starmer alone, but ffs learn the lesson, move on, give the demographics a few years to possibly shift, if rejoining is going to seem desirable that's going to have to come from the ground up. i feel like given British (English) exceptionalism, that desire might never come but let's be optimistic.

I'm talking about the perception of Starmer out there* of him as a Remain poster boy. The pressure from membership was there yes but, he was the one stanning for a policy that was a complete failure.

*in this case a couple of pubs and a park!

If he starts banging on about rejoining the EU immediately then he's a complete idiot, but he's clearly not going to do that.

(some xps)

The context of our post-Brexit relationship is going to grow and grow though, particularly if (as threatened today) Boris might take his ball back as early as June. I'm definitely not suggesting that the next Labour leader do anything to try and stop Brexit, but "what are you proposing to do if you get in?" will be a pretty divisive question.

For the record, I don't think "rejoin! rejoin!" is a good answer, because I can't imagine the EU accepting the UK back when the policy of the other party is going to be "leave again as soon as possible". But it not being a good idea won't stop the loud voices pointing out that it's still a very popular option with voters, let alone the membership.

From a very cynical point of view, and on this specific issue, the drubbing at the election will be good because there really is fuck all that any Labour leader can do on this, and the higher the chance of the shitshow being owned by the Tories, the better.

Yeah he won't do that except he will be seen as one of the chief architects of the Brexit policy and will be painted as such...just sends a signal that after a period of reflection Lab has returned someone like that, except with a nice suit and haircut xp

"nice"

there won't be no grime4starmer campaign that much is sure. When you are a cop (IN A NICE SUIT) who has publicly given your blessing to a foul tory publicity stunt like the night courts during the 2011 riots that is your goose cooked there - a fucking stain on your rep that never washes off. Corbyn was very popular with BAME voters even if labour's law and order stance was a bit rocky under his leadership - he got a lot of younger BAME voters onto the electoral register as well.

the RW narrative on the crash/austerity was v weak so they basically replaced politics with brexit and I think the extreme amt of attention on labour atm is bc it fills the brexit void in the discourse and they haven't worked out what else they can talk about.

reading reams of polling data was part of my post-election coping mechanism and my best guess is that keeping the 2017 policy would have swapped a bunch of seats but wouldn't have made much difference in overall numbers. it might have seen labour return marginally more seats but probably slightly fewer overall votes. my reasoning is that a lot of labour's losses were quite marginal defeats in leave voting seats, with the brexit party-tory pact being effective (and weirdly under-discussed?). overall it looks like labour lost well over a million 2017 voters to lib dems, snp, and greens, which helped flip some leave voting seats, and maybe 700k-1 million pro brexit 2017 labour voters to tories and bxp (with another few hundred k of them sitting out entirely). tories lost over a million remain voters but gained very slightly more leave voters, and helped by the v late surge of bxp voters. 2017 policy would have saved a few seats in the north (for one election at least!) and lost a few in the south, basically.

obv impossible to truly know but despite the dismal result it may well have been the least bad policy, esp given that ime a lot of the lexit types that ppl say don't exist but I somehow keep meeting in the labour party and unions do not actually care that much abt brexit, and that a no-remain policy wld have hurt labour with young & minority voters and party members, which cld have a nasty electoral legacy w/ what is now a huge part of the labour base

I’m thinking the ‘red wall’ seats fell Conservative because the Brexit Party pulled out of every single race where the Tories won and those voters plus disaffected Labour pro-Brexit voters who had no alternative to Lab other than Tories did the dirty deed.

The people I've talked won't cop for that, they told me didn't bother voting. But you just never know what goes on in that ballot booth despite what people say.

voting booth! lol ballot booth wtf!

seen some estimates of 200k ppl who voted leave and lab 2017 switching to lib dems/green/SNP in 2019, including a significant chunk in the red wall. but yes more didn't vote. only half of voters have voted the same way in the last 4 general elections which is an all time low

I think it was only around half the seats Labour lost that they would've held, at least for another electoral term, had BXP not run alongside Tories - assuming the bulk of the BXP vote were 'former Labour never - at least still not yet - Tory'

There’s also the possibility that some of the wc Tory vote was originally Brexit/UKIP.

Stoke on Trent North had a particularly bad turnout drop of around 10% but most other places Labour lost seemed to be down more like 5% or less

lab the beneficiaries of lots of doomed tactical voting too ofc

Think it’s probably Labour voters staying home in the end, and actual levels of switching Lab-Con being relatively low, but we’ll have to wait for the BES report to confirm. Having said all that, the people voting Lib Dem in Kensington, Green in Stroud will forever be cunts of the highest order.

Wait, Labour Leave to the Lib Dems? Jaysis.

Somethib something.. the hated grey squirrel coming over here and taking all our jobs...

Prob at least 3x as many labour remain voters to lib dems but yeah. everyone massively underrates how unusually chaotic and turbulent the electorate has been lately, within constituencies, wards and households even more than between regions or groups.

lab leave > con must have been a big thing unless the issue which has split the Tory party and seen off their leaders for 30 years suddenly stopped mattering to tories bc there wldnt be enough voters to make up the shortfall in tory remain voters otherwise

Datapraxis did the best GE report by miles imo, altho the demographic tribal groupings are p questionable it at least beats the idea that there is any sort of explanatory narrative that features less than abt 20 different things going on simultaneously

Lots of Tory marketing (nearly 4x as well funded as labour sez the electoral commission today) was v much aimed at labour leave voters, Get Brexit Done came up in a focus group meeting in bury iirc and they ran with it

my reasoning is that a lot of labour's losses were quite marginal defeats in leave voting seats, with the brexit party-tory pact being effective (and weirdly under-discussed?).

This was written up fairly quickly, really the main reason for Labour's loss and under-discussed even by Labour in the post-mortem, which suits a lot of people.

https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/13/brexit-party-nigel-farage-boris-johnson-labour-leavers

xxp