It’s only been a week but it’s shaping up to be a lively leadership and deputy contest so far. Some early discussion on lost voters, did Labour spend too much, was there much wrong with Labour’s manifesto if anything and even which type of unsuspecting supermarket shopper should the party pouncing on in the car parks in five years time.
Comments
and didn't she say Labour didn't spend too much. Off to a great start!
It's in here! Ed-stone made for No 10 tracked down to bleak London warehouse and boss of stonemasons who carved it reveals he's a 'true-blue' Tory
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3083863/It-s-Ed-stone-No-10-tracked-bleak-London-warehouse-boss-stonemasons-carved-reveals-s-true-blue-Tory.html#ixzz3aH4xGdjS
* shudders *
Mrs Madasafish - rather unpolitical - thinks she has all the appeal of a wet fish (as opposed to a mad one).
Seriously Labour, is anyone listening? If the choice was Kendall or Jarvis the government would be worried, as it is they're probably looking forward to the next 5 years of Labour infighting.
Can you not see that, Labour? (Hoping they can't...)
Although the Scottish slang would be the Peely-Wally Waif, which has a musical charm to it....
ToriesForBurnham™ could live with this result
Both are closely associated with the failures of not only the Brown era but also the Miliband era, surely one of the weakest and most ineffective oppositions in modern times. Neither stood out in those eras in terms of pushing ideas, forcing change or even particularly being special with their brief.
If I was a Labour voter, which I am not of course, I would be looking for someone outside that tent. Liz Kendall seems to offer a better choice of direction but has a lot of work to do to get known.
Cheers HenryG, for an interesting take, on the leadership runners and riders; best summed up as a very short list, of rather unremarkable candidates.
Two wimmin is ok, two men is unacceptable, but I am not sure that Hattie's rule actually made it into the books
RED RAG
GOING FOR THE COALITIONS JUGULAR 24 HOURS A DAY. THE TRUTH WILL OUT!
Maybe they decided a capillary was as much as they could manage?
...again
" The heaviest suicide note in history...."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3083887/Portrait-man-taken-cleaners-voters-Ed-Balls-pictured-carrying-dirty-suits-laundrette.html
I rather like Yvette, who has a rather elfin charm, but I am not sure how effective a campaigner she is. She was Shadow Home Secretary but fairly invisible over the last few months. It may be that, like Ed Balls, she was out of the loop. She did substantially better than her husband though, by increasing her majority.
Andy Burnham always seems popular with the grass roots, and I think rightly favourite, as they are the electorate. He put the effort in during the campaign.
Mary Creagh is interesting, but not yet a distinctive voice. Tristam Hunt will not get even close. Kier Starmer needs to put some time in at the coalface before considering a run next time.
Which leaves Liz Kendall. Clearly intelligent and ambitious, but at risk of telling a few too many home truths. Are Labour hungry enough for power yet or are they going to retreat to the comfort zone?
Significant F1 rule changes ahead with refuelling and all tyres available in the next couple of years. I hope we also see the return of the F1 Mole. In 2009, the Mole basically told us what cars had what fuel in qualifying, which also meant predicting race results at better odds seemed easier.
On-topic: hard for me to call this. I think what might be critical is how those who vote view Labour's campaign/platform under Miliband. Activists seem to blame the horrid electorate for letting the party down. If that's the case, the leftier candidate would seem to have a better shot.
Yvette Cooper on the other hand is arrogant, rude, patronising, not blessed with great intelligence and a millionaire's daughter who has had to have doors opened for her by her family wealth and connections at every step of the way to compensate for her grave personal defects.
Labour's problem is basically that it is the party of an arrogant and wealthy metropolitan elite who are grossly unselfaware and have confused their personal social views - a radical form of liberalism - with left-wing politics, which often has quite xenophobic, even racist, and sexist undertones, coupled to a contempt for those who cannot make it on their own. Yvette Cooper would typify this problem to an even greater extent than Miliband. If they elect her, they run the real risk of forfeiting every seat they hold outside a handful of urban areas (Manchester, Bristol, Brighton, Birmingham, Cardiff, Newcastle) that basically ape London's demography and ideals.
No party can hope to win power on such a narrow basis. Labour needs (and I hate to use a cliché, but this one is right) to 'reconnect' with the voters who don't buy into the leadership's ideas of an ideal society, and start speaking up for them again, if it is to have any hope of surviving in the medium term.
Nothing at all about my tenner at 150's , nothing at all...
I would like to think, @foxinsoxuk that Labour - indeed, anybody - would have the sense to see that really, the problem is that they lost votes because people don't like them. But remember Hague/IDS, Foot/Kinnock. The first reaction to disaster is denial, and Labour simply won't want to admit the hard truth that what they are offering is something that ordinary, decent people would not only not vote for but would run a hundred miles from. After all, we all like to think of our own brilliance and charm.
I'm guessing it could take another election defeat to really force this issue to Labour's attention, as it did in 1987 and 2005. In the meanwhile, Burnham looks the likely winner - and he came fourth last time, in last place of the serious candidates...
It is time to move on from the Blair/Brown feuding, and the Brownite plotting. The election is five years away, and needs a new face.
She's the most overrated Labour potential leader since either Miliband.
http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2015/05/15/labours-fruitcakes-are-turning-us-into-the-nasty-party/
There is only one thing I disagree with - Labour turned into the nasty party a long time ago (certainly by the 1980s). My vote was decided by the highly personal and extremely dishonest abuse on an internet message board of a candidate in the South of England whom I knew and respected by a Labour hack, who later turned out to be actually from HQ going around trolling the opposition.
Yvette Cooper, unfortunately, exemplifies this part of the party (just listen to her constantly interrupting and talking over anyone who dares to point out that she is wrong when she is interviewed). Like I say, she would be an existential threat to Labour.
That said, I do agree with you that denial will be the order of the day.
If so I would go Khan/Burnham/Creasy. Khan got a big swing for Labour in London. Burnham has friends in the North and Unions, Creasy is just a class act with huge majority.
However differently she appears, I think we can agree that for various reasons she is not likely to be the answer to Labour's problems?
It is only a month to the nominations, after that another couple of months to the actual ballot. I think that the majority of Labour supporters will have moved beyond anger, denial and despair by then.
She shows such little humour or human warmth that she appears constantly disappointed with everything around her, and grimly towing the Party line out of duty.
After all this time on the front line, I'd have expected her to unbend a bit - but no. I tend to turn over when she's on the TV or I deliberately do something else to avoid feeling like I ought to have done better in my O Levels 30yrs ago.
It's a most peculiar effect. No one else manages it!
Not hugely popular either, arguably half way to being a marmite candidate.
To be honest, I'd rather have her than Burnham. At least she doesn't appear to be struggling to keep the tears inside.
Also, you can't be 'halfway' marmite.
Mr. Root, me neither, largely because Cameron's going to resign partway through the Parliament
Plenty of those about Henry..!
Kendall was editor of a thinktank essay compilation last year and chose Creasy for the opening one:
http://www.policy-network.net/publications/4746/Laying-the-Foundations-for-a-Labour-Century
All in all - a most unremarkable track record for anyone seeking to be a future PM.
It doesn't really matter who Labour put up in 2020 against the Tories, what actually matters is the events in this parliament, devolution/FFA and the Europe vote
Andy's lip-quivering and moist eyes are very peculiar. I thought Philip Collins assessment in The Times was much the same as most of us on here. That his *emoting* is therapy, not analysis - akin to someone telling you to have a good cry and you'll feel better.
Arguably it just happened.
Hmm. I agree. Johnson's very likeably but he's not sharp enough (utterly buggered up the GP contracts). If he had the right people in the right jobs then that, coupled with his common touch, would've delivered Labour many more seats.
Miliband being leader coinciding with the SNP tsunami in Scotland was an unfortunate circumstance for Labour.
http://www.kraxon.com/zodiac-eclipse-the-tigers-eye/
5 years is a long time in politics, and the political landscape will be quite different in 2020. Whoever wins that election would be expecting to be PM to 2025 at least. That person is not likely to be a retread like Burnham or Cooper.
It is worth reading the policy review paper that I linked to below, that is what the new generation are thinking. It is beyond Brownism vs Blairism. Kendall's essay is particularly thoughtful. For example:
"We also need to tackle a form of dependency that stifles people’s aspiration. Welfare dependency is not, as the Tories claim, the effect of an over-generous benefits system. Anyone working with people on benefits knows how much they struggle to make ends meet and put food on the table. Problems arise when public services take over decision-making about too many key aspects of people’s lives, without properly involving them, slowly sapping their self-reliance and aspiration. The more vulnerable you are, and the more public services you need to to deal with the complex challenges you face, the more pronounced this effect becomes."
Quite a revolutionary. Power to the People!
Mind you I do have a fiver at 190/1!
Let's just say Labour need to pick a leader who might actually be popular, or at least isn't an issue in his or her own right in the campaign. Radical thought I know.
It was a huge opportunity cost to Labour to have to spend the whole campaign having to argue that "Look! He isn't as bad as you think!" rather than focusing on voters and the policies that make their lives better.
"Well we had more than that - but you don’t talk about it.”
Interesting point that which we saw a little of on here with the premature boasting of Nick Palmer in the weeks before the election.
IMHO, Cameron will need to propose a licenced form of hunting rather than full repeal to the status quo ante bellum. Otherwise, opposition may be far more fierce and the risk is that Labour would just ban it again once they, eventually, regain office.
Step 1. Tim, sit down and SHUT UP!
Step 2. Repeat Step 1
So onto the new intake. I like Mary Creagh a lot - down to earth, passionate, personable. She needs to set out her stall as she is an unknown quantity. Liz Kendall is continuity New Labour. No thank you. Chuka withdrawing is a disappointment as I thought he would do a good job.
Who does that leave? Keir Starmer is an interesting suggestion but I had to check he was even an MP when I first read his name. Frankly we need more time. Leaders shouldn't just resign when defeated. Ed could have announced he would step down once a contest had been held and then sit tight. Media circus stays with him, gives space for the party to do a postmortem, identify issues and then decide who best to lead.
There will be plenty of others (the vast majority) who recognise it was a vindicative and mendacious piece of legislation, pushed through to appease the backbenchers of the Labour Party at the time.
He wants to be the power behind the throne.
The election results have finally made Henry G Manson go off his rocker.
See http://tinyurl.com/okcwth8
I suspect repeal would lead to acts of vandalism by the antis - who will lose public support as a result.
(Yes I keep bees and post under the same name)
Have the Tories learned nothing?
Virtually every other Home Secretary has been pummeled to a bloody heap before the inevitable resignation. The last Labour Govt. often got through a couple of Home Secretaries before lunch. Or so it seemed.
And it's not that May just toughed it out. It's just that Yvette never discovered where the jugular was...
There is almost nothing that Labour did in office that irritated me more than the hunting ban, an attack on the countryside and its traditional way of life.
I (and many others) will be watching Tory MPs very carefully on this over the coming months and years. There will be a reckoning for those that go wobbly.
And - PS
EV4EL is not about fox hunting and we should not make the mistake of conflating the two.
(and BTW - foxes are becoming an urban menace these days.)
Ed's "say nothing" strategy meant no new stars have, or even could have, emerged in the wasted five years of opposition. Aside from Burnham and Cooper who'd been in government before 2010, what have any of the contenders actually done? Stella Creasy prompted the government to act on payday loans, and so far as I can see, she is the only contender (for deputy in her case) to have added to her cv in this time. This is why people are casting around for fringe contenders like Dan Jarvis or Keir Starmer who has been an MP for about five minutes.
Incidentally, it is interesting that the Conservatives seek to define Labour's choices. Apparently, the next leader must have had a proper job, unlike, say, David Cameron or George Osborne.
Lynton also lambastes the pollsters and say's that they are having too much influence.
His remedy is to ban polling for the final three week's of the campaign... Personally, I think that's OTT and the simpler solution is just to have a serious reduction in the number of polls being conducted - The ridiculous number of polls in the last Parliament became far, far too much.
It's encouraging, there-fore, that since polling day we've only had one published poll and News International appear to have binned that bloody YouGov tracker...
The media and pollsters should be aiming for half the polls in the last Parliament, IMO.
All of that silly "day of poll polling" needs to go as well... Not sure how that's creeped in but no way should pollsters be influencing what's happening on polling day itself...
I sincerely hope this Govt. can see it has higher priorities than fox-hunting, even if the legislation left behind by Labour was a hideous mess.
Let Hunts apply for lottery money for drag hunting. Leave reducing the number of foxes to motorists. For more efficient at delivering instant death.
I hope my MP either votes against or abstains. I'd be very disappointed if he voted for repeal.
I'm aware it's a free vote. I'd expect up to 20 Tories to vote against, and possibly a further 30 to abstain. The rest should (and rightly so) vote for repeal.