How will you vote in the Labour Leadership election?

"long seen *by the party's right* as one of their biggest brains" doesn't create a contradiction i don't think

If it's Wes Streeting he's quoting he should at least include scare astericks and someone being hailed as brainy and putting their weight such a hopeless candidate suggests a contradiction of sorts to me. Mr bloody sub editor!

Mr blobby sub editor

Sensible Rachel Reeves who enthused about Nancy Astor and who had a conference speech compared to Enoch Powell’s.

a: they're all v dim so their judgment is poor
b: she is their big brain = nevertheless still dim

weasely but logic is maintained

There's the manifesto title

A bunch of people whose political judgement I respect have quit, as has my wife, and I can understand why.

tbr, the ‘Labour left’ within the PLP is about twelve people and half of them voted for intervention in Libya and / or sent their kids to private schools. RLB commanding the vote of about 15% of eligible members doesn’t suggest they’re as unreflective as we’ve spent time telling ourselves over the last four years. It’s not a socialist party and hasn’t been since, at best, the early eighties. There is no good reason to stay a member unless you think the party can do good things at the local level and that the voice of the left, and the strength of left-wing ideas, can win over enough of the soft/centre-left members to meaningfully push the Overton window on policy in a better direction. At present, I lean towards thinking that those two things are probably at least partially true.

as a blobby sub i'm enjoying SV's first sentence there :)

Alas, she did not.

I suppose amongst the right, "brainy" is really just proxy for "one of us" and I'm not crediting Bush with being hip to this. Blobby sub edit accepted!

Xp Loooool

It is often the unintentional barbs that cut the deepest!

losing it trying to make sense of this whole “thank god we finally have a real opposition that’s willing to work uncritically with the tories” new party line, is there even a pretence of coherence here or is it just melt for fuck you

Look coherence is the old politics

anyway Labour has always been an incorrigibly racist capitalist piece of shit in spite of every effort from a minority of members if anything good does come from the remains of Corbynism now it will have to be outside the party

I hate these people so much pic.twitter.com/TJ7oDCu87m

— Sam ✌️ (@samisam147) April 5, 2020

Starmer just has to make the most pathetically mild + ambiguously milquetoast criticism of the Tories and melts are gushing "this is what an opposition looks like, finally!". I'm finished with parliamentary democracy, it's completely hopeless with a cunt like him being leader of the opposition.

Any money says those guys haven't been paying the slightest bit of attention, it's literally a Pavlovian response to a suit.

EU loon jon worth at it too, salivating over how various shadow front benchers are going to dominate the Tories. I'd be surprised if we even hear from them once. Be interesting for someone to expand on what this opposition is going to look like or what it involves.

annaliese dodds shadow chancellor

James Radio and co, how are they going to reference the Labour's retreat from public life? There's not going to be anything to even talk about other than "can you imagine if Corbyn was still in how bad this would be?", there's maybe a couple of years worth of material in that but has to be diminishing returns

What worries me is that despite whatever he said during the leadership election I don't think Starmer will be interested in scrapping UC. He strikes me as someone who would be more interested in reforming it and just making slight adjustments to make it slightly less horrible. I know events have changed everything now, but Corbyn and McD were attacking them on UC every day nearly, even though events might bring radical reforms to UC from the Tories now as too many people have been exposed to it and the clash of UC and the middle class was not something planned for. But if there is any radical changes it won't be down to pressure from the opposition any more that much is for sure.

post more please, Left

https://i.imgur.com/sDGUglK.jpg

A lot of this to look forward to:

Our ⁦@Adamstoon1⁩ ⁦@EveningStandard⁩ as Starmer forms his Shadow Cabinet pic.twitter.com/NgLP5Usqfg

— George Osborne (@George_Osborne) April 7, 2020

Pretty sure antisemitism is over now.

now there’s nothing standing between keir starmer and a colossal landslide victory in the next general election

Pretty sure antisemitism is over now.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, April 7, 2020 4:05 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

:D

It astounds me more than it amuses me that, no matter what current global news or crisis takes up the biggest headline at the Graun site, a bit smaller to the right of it is, and forever and always, will be: Labour antisemitism.

BREAKING: 'WORLD DESTROYED BY METEOR, RIP'
Also in the news: 'Labour promises to tackle antisemitism in party'

A lot of this to look forward to:

🐦[Our ⁦@Adamstoon1🕸⁩ ⁦@EveningStandard🕸⁩ as Starmer forms his Shadow Cabinet pic.twitter.com/NgLP5Usqfg🕸
— George Osborne (@George_Osborne) April 7, 2020🕸]🐦

I was talking more about the Standard's ability to flip from castigating Labour antisemitism to proudly publishing an antisemitic caricature of the most prominent Jewish man in the Labour Party without even blinking.

(xpost)

Yeah I was responding to the original link because it’s depressing how obvious and shameless it is.

Ofc Ayesha Hazarika won’t be disgusted enough by this to stop working there

You are both correct obv.

🤔🤔🤔

Interesting tweet you liked, @MikeGapes ??? pic.twitter.com/JAA0B70W3p

— jewdⒶs // ייִדהודה (@jewdas) April 7, 2020

https://i.postimg.cc/d197YT52/12-D8-AE91-016-A-47-BA-B9-A1-2-C17-D73-ED14-B.jpg

RLB 100/1 now apparently

I’m putting a fiver on Tom Tugendhat.

Rab Butler not running this time? Still dead and a Tory?

I don't think Burnham is going to happen despite the bookies fav status, it's like when you get the same usual suspects placeholder fav football mangers popping in all the next manager betting, despite the clubs involved not even interviewing them for the job.

In some ways Kieth was right to bring in the NEC voting threshold reforms that shifts the power back to the PLP away from the membership. Just in the sense after voting for him in such great numbers they can't be fucking trusted ever again!

I don't think Burnham is going to happen despite the bookies fav status

Is it even feasible? He wouldn't be a very effective LOTO if he wasn't an MP and it's not as if he could be parachuted in in the next month or two.

If he wasn't such an uncompromising street-fighting rebel rouser then ..maybe lol! But now the the PLP can effectively choose the leader, I don't think there is a big enough soft-left voting bloc there to Make Burnham Happen.

In the 70's tv drama Bill Brand there is good ep about all the shenanigans during a Labour leadership election. Spoiler: the character who is possibly based on Michael Foot goes close, but loses and accepts a place in the cabinet.