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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Ladbrokes saying that LAB leadership now a 2 horse race between Burnham & Kendall
I’m very mindful when considering the LAB leadership battle of the comments in the recent post from Henry G Manson who has built up a good reputation for his reading of Labour.
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If Labour are sensible they'll go for Kendall. Fortunately for the Conservatives, they'll probably be silly and go for Burnham, a man who has bucketloads of genuinely negative backstory.
Labour never really changed, but every generation has to learn for itself about Labour, which is that it fosters race and class division, taxes people it hates and envies, and then wrecks the economy. That's it; that's what they do. Blair was an interlude they tolerated, because he got them back in, but a lot of Labourites couldn't really see the point of being in power on Blair's terms. If they couldn't foster race and class division, tax people they hate and envy, and then wreck the economy, what's the point of being in power, exactly?
Labour now is actually back in 1995. It is often misremembered that the Tories lost their reputation for economic competence in September 1992, but IIRC the polls didn't go anywhere much when that happened; nothing that was inconsistent with the usual mid-term blues. What changed was when Blair came along, stopped peddling envy, and started lying about sleaze. In a way he was right about Tory sleaze being disgraceful - it wasn't even trying to be the kind of top-down sleaze he had in mind.
Unlike 1995, Labour doesn't have the Blair option any more. They have fewer MPs - wasn't Major already a minority when Blair became leader? - and the MPs they do have are poorer, being largely selected on racist and sexist lines rather than on merit. To the extent they do, most of Labour still hates Blair. So what we'll get is another John Smith.
I really don't know where Labour goes from here because leftism loses them elections, but they bitterly hate the centre. Polly still thinks their policies were popular FGS...
Bang on cue, Isabel Hardman has written this about Yvette Cooper's campaign:
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/05/yvette-coopers-policy-interventions-should-spice-up-the-labour-leadership-contest/
As well as being Mr. Bumble the Beadle, he's also Wackford Squeers, the teacher who hates boys, and there's quite a lot of Uriah Heep in him too.
Regarding Burnham, I've already lost track of the nick-names people are using. If we're now picking from the complete works of Dickens I give up.
It would just be the Dickens villains, really. Mr Burnham the Beadle has a certain something, and mocks his belief that carers are by definition above reproach, however grasping, self-regarding and brutal they are. Wackford Squeers is a bit recherché, but when he announces what he wants to tax, he can usefully be compared with Fagin, I would think: "You've got to pick a pocket or two".
The main thing though is that Burnham and / or his predecessors should all really be on corporate manslaughter charges. If a train company let 1,200 people die we would rightly never hear the end of it but because it's the public sector it's all fat payoffs and pleas for secrecy to spare the producers.
In any case, the core vote wasn't as angry and willing to desert Labour back in the 1990s.
Some factors which make me think Kendall hasn't a snowball-in-hell's chance:
1) The unions still maintain influence over their members: they despise Kendall
2) Labour party members are, self-selectively, on the left of the party. Look at the comment threads in any forum with a high proportion of party members: they despise Kendall
3) Turkey's don't vote for Christmas. Who in the public sector would vote for Kendall?
LKWNBLL
ACLB
Exactly, this is half of why they're screwed - they hate the guy who won for them. The other half is that the pool to pick replacements is smaller absolutely than then, and stuffed with nodding dogs chosen for their plumbing or their skin colour (this is after the party of "get the Sikh vote out for Labour"), so in effect smaller still.
A party that honestly thinks there's such a thing as a Sikh vote is simply obsolete. What next, Spitfires for the RAF?
But of course Tories have a preference for Stafford, they want him to be more crap than Ed. if Labour have any sense they will poll Tory members as to who they'd like as Lab leader, then go for the complete opposite!
They should also ask those who voted Lab in 2001 and 2005 but Tory in 2010 and 2015 who they'd prefer, because that will be who wins them the next election.
Diana Johnson
Peter Kyle
Heidi Alexander
Frank Field
Susan Élan Jones
Paul Flynn
Stephen Timms
Kerry McCarthy
I suppose Angela Smith backs Kendall for Leader given she tweeted how delight she's Umunna, Twigg and Reynolds are backing her.
Gareth Thomas to nominate Creasy for Deputy
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/historical-polls/voting-intention-1987-1992
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/historical-polls/voting-intention-1992-1997
There is nothing much in there so very different between the two periods. Kinnock achieved mid term leads over Thatcher similar to those achieved by Smith and even by that wet lettuce Miliband.
What changed was that the public didn't come to its senses after 1995 because the Labour lie machine was working flat out.
Also the idea of building a broad coalition surely means that you need to keep the bulk of the vote you already have. With Labour already being 6% behind, Kendall has the potential to switch a large number of 2015 Labour voters off and a Farron led Lib Dems could be in a good position to pick them up.
In normal circumstances, it's the getting into range that's the hard part. Your Typhoon would clobber the Spitfires beyond the latter's visual range. Did they eventually fit it with a gun?
People forget that for every plane and pilot, you need a massive amount of support equipment and personnel. I've seen figures somewhere, and its not inconsiderable.
Although I concede that's probably nit-picking your point. ;-)
Admittedly Blair was a pussycat with the super-rich and big businesses, but that was because he could afford that luxury since the bumper tax revenues from the City meant there was the money available for socialism even without tackling the super-rich. Obviously those tax revenues ain't coming back anytime soon, so being much tougher on the super-rich is a prerequisite for Labour now if they want to achieve the end results that Blair did, as far as I see.
Tbh if Labour isn't for helping poor people and good public services then I don't know what on earth the point of it is. That Chuka Umunna article is a good case in point of how little these people actually have to offer in the absence of traditional Labour policies: all that waffle about "devolution". I really can't see that impressing anyone outside the Westminster bubble.
I grant that he was also a liar.
Took us into the EC and took Middlesbrough out of Yorkshire.
Thatcher was a close second for signing the Single European Act, though Dave might top them both were he to win the referendum to keep us in the EU.
The Tories, the only true Pro European Party.
Blair was a real extremist on Europe, he fought a by-election and a general election campaigning on us to withdraw from the EC.
Where they would win is in radar, speed and maneuverability: the modern planes could stay out of range of the Spitfires, see them on radar, and dash in and use the Mauser cannons, then dash out of range. In visual range combat (i.e. up close), a modern jet's ability to climb fast would probably be key (IANAE).
Although if they were all in the air at once there'd probably be more losses to mid-air collisions than combat. ;-)
Yes, the Pro European Tory Party has 330 times more MPs than the out of touch, on the fringes UKIP
I like the idea that the modern planes would win with sonic booms, wake turbulence and pilot induced collisions!
Sadly, that was about all he could tell me.
It's fun going around the IWM Duxford with him. He looks at all the air-to-air refuelling probes, missiles and other sundry items and gives me chapter and verse on them. He also treated the experimental Typhoon there as if it was an old friend. ;-)
Had to answer FPTP, I'd be fine with STV but any closed list PR with no constituency element is verbotten.
I put it down to not being coy about running, she's the first one I can recall doing so and was blunt in answering a question about it, which I appreciated. That goodwill naturally made me pay more attention to her thereafter.
Daily Mail Europe article phrase check
in tatters ✓
left humiliated ✓
crisis-stricken euro ✓
secret plan ✓
huge blow to Mr Cameron ✓
overshadowed Mr Cameron ✓
Britain had saved Europe from the Nazis ✓
uphill battle ✓
Labour and the SNP ... 'hijack' ✓
BAE systems made a bit thing about hitiles a few years back - some sort of expanding ring of jointed rods, I think - but the vast majority of global inventory is of the 'close enough' variety.
[i think i might have screwed up the quoting above]
Brexit starts to worry German Industry.
The UK is the second largest recipient of German investment at 121 bn Euros ( USA No 1 ) and substantially ahead of France.
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/wirtschaftspolitik/britisches-eu-referendum-unternehmen-warnen-vor-austritt-13611099-p2.html
Still not having Blair Witch Project
The jointed rods you mention are quite an old technology now, and quite clever. I think in particular you're referring to the continuous-rod warhead that has been about since the 1950s, I think. I don't know how common it is now when compared to fragmentation types, although I think the AIM-120 uses rods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous-rod_warhead
http://www.okieboat.com/Warhead history.html
April 12 with ICM, Miliband had a lead of 8%, so in the same time frame, John Smith and Ed Miliband were not that far off.
Remember, John Smith probably cost Labour the 1992 general election with his Shadow Budget
How we deal with the single market is very much our issue.
One minute we are Germany's biggest bud, the next they are in league with the French to stitch us up.
One minute Greece is on the verge of a deal with creditors, next minute Grexit is imminent.
Does anybody know what the f8ck is going on in Europe?
I think. IANAE. http://aux.ciar.org/ttk/mbt/papers/isb2007/paper.x.isb2007.WM05.the_evolution_of_air_target_warheads.waggener.2007.pdf
No, I don't know what the point of Labour is, either. Making people poor, perhaps?
http://blogs.ft.com/brusselsblog/2015/05/26/the-big-eurozone-overhaul-may-not-be-so-big/
"If documents sent around to national capitals in recent days ahead of Tuesday’s Brussels meeting of EU “sherpas” – the top EU advisers to all 28 prime ministers – are any indication, the report being pulled together may propose little more than a bit of euro housekeeping in the near term. Although more ambitious plans could be included, the leaked documents show they will be relegated to the medium and long term – a tried and true EU tradition that is normally a recipe for bureaucratic burial."
It doesn't seem to have occurred to either the Guardian or the Daily Mail that the Eurozone reform plans may actually have been about the Eurozone rather than about Britain. If much-needed reforms are being postponed to outmanoeuvre Britain, the Eurozone is in deeper trouble than I thought.
Re - polls in April/May 1994 - ICM on 7th May just five days before Smith's death gave Labour a 15% lead. For several months Mori had been recording Labour leads of over 20% whilst Gallup and NOP came up with leads of circa 25%. There is no doubt that Labour was storming ahead long before Blair became leader.