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Nominations for the successor to Cameron close and reports suggest that Angela Eagle will announce that she’s seeking the 51 required nominations to contest the Labour leadership.
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Good luck ladies.
So it's expected to be womens day? Lets hope it's pettycoats and not petty fogging and help, no transexuals.
The PLP don't get it if they think that choosing a dyke as leader will endear them to older socially conservative WWC voters in the North of England and Midlands, whose views led to the Leave result last week. She also has very limited appeal to the Labour selectorate, who placed her 4th in the last deputy leadership contest. She is the wrong candidate to challenge JC.
If the Labour party aren't careful, UKIP could win swathes of seats in former Labour heartlands, like the SNP have done in the West of Scotland, at the next GE. I would personally prefer Farage as LOTO, to hold the new Con government's feet to the fire and deliver on the key arguments for Brexit, namely sovereignty and effective control and restriction of immigration. He made an excellent speech in the EU "parliament" the other day.
Re other elections in the next year or so, Trump has a very good chance of becoming POTUS, as Clinton is an appalling candidate. I wouldn't bet against M_LP in France either.
Eagle can't win a general election, but she can deliver a credible opposition. Corbyn can do neither. Labour members, though, have no interest in that. Corbyn is going nowhere.
Angela Eagle is rather a battleaxe, a bit Norah Batty, and fits the moment rather well. Good luck to her.
Her sexuality is irrelevant in the modern political era and rightly so. I don't think the WWC are as bigotted as you seem to think.
Did see if I could find an equivalent word, but there doesn’t appear to be one!
I noticed that last night the Holborn & St Pancras CLP voted against a motion in support of Corbyn. No £3ers involved, of course. It'll be different for the leadership election - and that's the problem.
It says something though that Angela Eagle is the vehicle for such a moment.
No, I DON”T think the WWC are; Poorly informed, perhaps.
Firstly, Boris seems to have a decent lead in MPs, though he may poll like Portillo in 2001, scoring well to start with then failing to advance, or like David Davis who actually went backwards in 2005. But either way, May isn't going to look like a shoo-in so Labour members would be taking a bit of a flier voting on that basis. Also, most Labour votes (like most Con votes) are likely to be cast early, so there'll be less opportunity to respond to events.
And secondly, and more importantly, Labour's contest is a battle for the soul of the party. Issues such as 'our first female leader' come a very long way down the list. How many potential Cobyn voters will be swayed by that notion? How many would otherwise have voted for him - and for the likely split in the Labour party that would in all probability result from a Corbyn win - but will switch just because his opponent is a woman (and not a particularly big-hitting woman)?
E.g. the banker bonus cap has resulted in higher fixed costs and more volatility in profitability hence less systemic stability. Better to have a significant portion paid in stock, vesting over an extended period and cancelled for bad behaviour
Four out of six party leaders are in same-sex relationships FWIW.
Seconded. Shrill.
But Eagle does understand that Labour ought to aspire to being a party of government rather than a movement of protest, which would be a step in the right direction.
The danger of an Eagle leadership is that is proves ineffective and gives the Corbynites the charge that their leader was betrayed for nothing (which wouldn't be true because the counterfactual would undoubtedly have been worse but they wouldn't know that and no amount of speculation will persuade them of it). Consequently, it would risk the possibility of another left-wing takeover after a general election, when the PLP may have enough left-wing MPs to provide a nominating block.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business/market_data/stockmarket/3/three_month.stm
I just despair of Labour putting up a half-decent opposition any time soon.
Unlike Corbyn she will have the support of the most competent (again a strictly relevant term) MPs currently sitting in exile so she will have a stronger team too. If the party is to survive they really need to all get behind her vocally and unequivocally from the off.
A Bandersnatch meanwhile is "swift moving creature with snapping jaws, capable of extending its neck"
One minor point though - I assume the 3quidders from last time do not have a vote this time unless they pay up again. I wonder how many of them will be aware of that and be surprised when the ballot paper doesn't drop through the letterbox?
In two and a half years I've worked here, LabourList readership has been - roughly speaking - a decent guide to the average Labour activist.
Conor Pope @Conorpope 10h10 hours ago
When I saw traffic for the list of MPs who had abstained on the Welfare Bill last year it became clear how much Corbyn was going to win by.
Conor Pope @Conorpope 10h10 hours ago
Judging by the most popular stories this week, if there was a leadership contest tomorrow he would walk it at a stroll.
The passport is needed by the financial services sector but it is not the only thing which matters. Germany has one of the weakest regulators in the world, the BaFin, and it is currently concerned with Deutsche Bank, a bank described to me as "virtually unregulatable" and in a whole heap of trouble right now. Germany neither understands nor likes investment banking and will struggle to recreate the environment which London had. Its data protection laws are Kafkaesque.
France similarly does not understand markets. Indeed it is hostile to what it sees as an Anglo-Saxon market view. Its employment laws make life difficult for employers and recent judicial decisions such as the one awarding Kerviel (who defrauded SocGen of 5 billion euros) compensation for being unfairly dismissed are not likely to encourage banks to have any more than the bare minimum needed to access the passport. Its tax system is not hugely encouraging either.
Dublin has some advantages but is simply not large enough to support a sector like London (remember all the trouble the Irish banks caused) and the same applies to Scotland.
Clearly the passport matters to London but the strength which London has built up is made of many factors. Sure other countries would like to have the nice stuff ie the tax revenues but the laws they pass often seem designed to cut down or eliminate the very activities giving rise to those revenues.
One other word of caution. All banks are now busy offshoring, onshoring and reducing their costs because of the challenging market and regulatory conditions and this has been happening for a while. Don't assume that all of this is linked to Brexit. Much of it would be happening anyway.
http://www.labour.org.uk/w/labour-party-supporters
Those who constantly whinge and moan about how the decision was reached, whether it was the right decision and feel the need to scream I told you so every time the FTSE dips for a few hours (yes ScottP, I am thinking of you) will not.
Ergo, anyone who thought it was a good idea to back the Remain campaign (i.e. most of the Labour MPs who now think they are qualified to dish out lectures on how to be electable) clearly does not have a good sense of how the public think themselves.
Secondly, it seems probable that a majority of Labour voters did back Remain, though the Labour vote must also have been deeply split because in many heartland areas, the Leave vote was huge.
Thirdly, the result was extremely close, so tactical Leavers didn't 'read' the country's mood all that much better than Remainers: there was only 4% in it.
And fourthly, none of the Labour campaigners really set the world on fire, either Leave or Remain. If a mistake was made on either Labour side, it was the reluctance to get involved in what looked like a Tory internal spat.
But it's not just about one vote or one issue; leading Labour - or any party - successfully takes a whole lot of skills. Does Eagle have them? I'm not sure and frankly doubt it. But she could be enough to save Labour from going over the cliff. Even that isn't assured though and will depend on how the left-wing activists respond.
On that note though, a comment from a friend of a on Facebook: "Might join labour now. He's OUR choice of leader! Listen to the people! x", which I think says it all.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/the-anger-is-so-great-we-must-have-a-new-vote-wx6s953z7
Within the next 48 hours, he had been made acting leader following Heath's defeat and then sacked altogether by that same junior minister.
Underestimate junior ministers at your peril. In particular, Fox standing is a real blow to Johnson's hopes.
We were told that same-sex marriage would drive millions of Tories into the arms of UKIP. In reality, I heard one person mention it on the doorsteps last year - and it still wasn't changing their vote.
People are far more "meh" about sexuality today. Thankfully.
I know you are using short hand constantly , but at least Angela Eagle is trying and it is heart felt.
Shame a few others could not step up to the plate.
Please do not follow the type of poster who derides her for sexuality , that is a new low for this site.
Even London, that bastion of Remain belief and fervour voted 40% for Leave.
"I hid. That was because Brexit doesn't interest me much one-way-or the other".
"So why should you lead our exit negotiations?"
"I work hard, and I don't drink."
The tory activists may be impressed. For Leavers, not so much...
Mrs Thatcher, as I recall represented a particular faction within the party. I'm not aware that that is true for Dr Fox, or Mr Crabb.
Liam Fox and Stephen Crabb are declared runners. Boris Johnson and Theresa May are certain to enter the race today. Will there be any others? Andrea Leadsom and Nicky Morgan have flirted with the idea but are they actually going to stand? Any others?
Well, the people have had their say - thanks Mr Cameron - and they've spoken, so deal with it.
Aren't most of the Scottish party leaders gay? Doesn't seem to do them harm, and while Scotland lines to think it's really different, it's social attitudes are not that different from the rest of us, thank goodness.
And even if we accept the premise it might prove a problem, I for one had no idea of Eagles orientation, and who woukd use it against her in a campaign even obliquely?
Andrea probably gets a more sympathetic "I'd love to, but..." Maybe some people will vote for others but on the proviso that Andrea is given a top finance job. She deserves that.
You say none of the Labour campaigners set the world on fire I disagree, Gisela was superb.
Don’t think Labour are ready for the ‘dramatic feminisation’ of the party quite yet, as demonstrated by their last leadership, deputy leadership and mayoral elections. Besides, Labour is facing an existential crisis, the coming leadership contest will be a battle between two opposing ideologies and possibly, for the very survival of the party, the gender of the candidates is not a factor imho, nor will it play a part in the final outcome.
*innocent face*
F1: nice piece by McNish on the driver market. If anyone sees that up on Ladbrokes/Betfair, do let me know.
On-topic: not really. It's just that Labour screwed up and the only person seemingly willing to put herself forward happens to be a woman. It's not really feminisation of politics anymore than a return to chaps in charge would be masculinisation.
I wonder whether we might see one or two more unanticipated names come forward. Jeremy Hunt was musing on his own position. Has Phillip Hammond yet said what he is doing?