politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Just a reminder how LAB leadership favourite Andy Burnham d
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Just a reminder how LAB leadership favourite Andy Burnham did last time out
How Andy Burnham did in the 2010 LAB leadership contest. pic.twitter.com/onH9egk8Vw
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£3 to vote is not a bad deal.
So it never had to answer the hard questions: do we need to do this? If we do, should the state do it? If the state does it, what is the objective? What are the potential negative/unintended consequences? How do we know when we've reached the objective? How does the state do it most cost-effectively?
Blair was good at getting into power. He had no idea what to do with it when he got there or, if he did, he lacked the courage to do it.
About the only thing he stuck his neck out over was Iraq and he utterly poisoned the well with his dishonesty about that.
That was a catastrophic error as well as a moral failing. Not just for the usual reasons but because at a time when all Western countries are grappling with whether and in what circumstances we should deal with terrorism and the effects of civil war and upheaval in distant lands we in the UK have been so burnt not just by what he did but by how he did it that we are largely disengaging at a time when, just possibly, it is dangerous of us to do so.
Does Burnham - or any of the others for that matter - have the answers to those questions?
Labour should stop looking back. They need to look forward. The world will be different in 2020. They need someone with ideas for the 2020-2025 period not the person who gets the prize because there's no-one else to take it.
They did have some of the strongest kipper results of the night.
The fact that Ed was unelectable, took the Labour party on a lefty, self destruct trajectory, continued to be leader as his poll ratings were abysmal, finished the political career of his brother to boot, and enabled the Tories to win their first majority for nearly a quarter of a century. Enough said.
Worst of all, Ed wants to play a senior role with Labour. Really Ed. Really. I mean really. Do you not think you have caused enough damage to centre left politics? At some stage I would like to see a proper Mea Culpa from Ed- not that pathetic one he gave on the 8th May.
The leader doesn't need all the ideas, they need to create the environment for them to grow.
Kinnock was at least as useless as Ed: lost 2 elections, had an even leftier manifesto than Ed in some respects, and enabled the Tories to have one of their longest periods in office. He didn't upset his brother, I grant you, but I've never thought that anything to criticise EdM for, frankly.
I agree with most of what you say, and certainly both the Blair and Brown legacies are pretty dire. It is why Labour needs to move to a post Blairite / post Brownite discussion. There is no future in refighting old feuds. I think Kendall is the only one who can move the whole thing on.
Antifrank was right about Labours prospects, the tories are the main opponents. Everyone else is a sideshow:
http://newstonoone.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/2020-labours-challenge.html?m=1
Burnham probably is the best of a particularly bad bunch. But depressing. Liz Kendell is awful. Yvette Cooper- just too much baggage and uninspiring. Hunt- rhymes with... And Creagh reminds me of my dear Auntie Mabel, good at baking cakes, but I wouldn't want her to run the country.
And to create the environment for them to grow, they've got to be willing to debate and be challenged and hone their ideas and arguments. Whereas Burnham and others seem to be wanting to stitch up the debate within the PLP before it's even started, which is not likely to lead to the sort of environment you want.
Really, with Len Dickhead McCluskey, and Ed the tit, the three of them. Argghhhhhhhhhhh
I can see Burnham connecting much better with the electorate. He was notably more willing to campaign than most of the shadow cabinet. Balls and Cooper were invisible. Only Harriets pink bus was prominent otherwise.
As a protest I'm sticking with Graham Allen.
Labour was hollowed out by Blair and Brown. The Tories were hollowed out by Thatcher.
The Tories took a long time to recover and arguably are only now really moving on. They still - stupidly to my mind - still talk about whether someone is or is not Thatcherite or like a Thatcher. The next good Tory leader will be the person who doesn't define themself or the country by a long-dead/long out of office leader.
Labour are now at the stage of realising that they need to recover from Blair/Brown. The fact that they're still talking about candidates as Blairite or not shows that they are still like mice afraid to come out of the cat's shadow. They're allowing someone else - who isn't even there - to define them. That's like someone who's broken up, says that they are over it and then spends all their time talking to the new boyfriend about the old one.
In 2020 there will be voters who were in nursery when Blair left office. That's how far the world will have moved on. The Tories will probably seem tired. There is an opportunity there for a party which isn't constantly looking in the rear view mirror.
Hmm, with the top three candidates now gone, doesn't that leave Burnham top of the field?
But make no mistake, Labour do not have a leader a la Blair, or Cameron who is a game changer. The only posible one was shafted by his brother and is out of politics.
Cooper would have been the favourite if it wasn't for Balls.
It was meant to be Labour's USP, its secret weapon, the single most important thing anyone in the country cared about.
Burnham may be the best of the bunch - but there again in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.
Ed completely underestimated the problems in Scotland. He was the person who presided over catastrophe after catastrophe after catastrophe for Labour in Scotland. He carries the can. He is to blame.
In fact Miliband was more popular in scotland than scottish Labour.
And with that, goodnight.
He didn't - for whatever reason - seize the moment. Ed did. Politics is brutal. Ruthlessness is essential for a leader. What game did David M think he was playing?
Liz is 43. If not now, then when?
Just completed my general election results spreadsheet. I know others are already available but since I'd already started doing this one I decided to finish the job. Includes result for all 3,971 candidates:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0At91c3wX1Wu5dEU5dHJHUE9hWHZzS2ZaR0V0a080T0E&usp=sheets_web#gid=0
We should take bets on the date by when a terraced house in Kilburn is worth a gazillion. Can't be that long now......
Goodnight all.
The last time Labour elected someone we ended up with the hapless Ed Miliband and before that the bonkers and really nasty Gordon Brown who did more damage to the up and coming in the Labour party than is generally realised.
Good night all.
However, while DM was clearly superior in leadership ability and electability in Middle England, Labour's Scotterdamerung would still have happened and the hollowing out of Labour would have been worse. The unions may have been at war with DM. While he would have trodden a different path, there's no guarantee it would have been a more successful one.
There's a reason that parties who lose office rarely come back at the first time of asking, particularly if they've been in power for a long time before losing office. It's that they're not ready to confront the reasons they lost. That goes a long way to explain why Ed won in the first place but even if he'd lost - and he nearly did - DM would have been leading his party against its instincts which is always a recipe for trouble. Siren voices would have been pointing to Greens, SNP and even UKIP and asking why he was aping the Tories and letting the core go.
Put simply, Ed was the symptom not the cause.
It should be possible, based on 2010 data, to be able to tabulate things like biggest LAB improvements (all on Merseyside and adjacent constituencies, I would guess), biggest Lab to Con swings, most disastrous Lib De performances, etc. There is some 2010 data here (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AonYZs4MzlZbdGRMdXRfZ08wcW9fQzBKZXZJeG5aMmc#gid=1 - not sure why the Guardian didn't do a 2015 equivalent) - not in the same format unfortunately, but shouldn't be beyond the wit of spreadsheets and access to wrestle into a usable format. I intend to have a go when I get a moment...
, I couldn't imagine ED or David Miliband as LOTO, both were seriously flawed. David because Mandleson had to rescue him after the foreign visit fiasco, and Ed because he was even more of a dork than his brother
Mascara man.. naaah. Yvette was anonymous for 5 yrs who should anyone thing she was suddenly the answer.. Kendal looks pleasant and is probably the best candidate, but wont be chosen
Labour have to be careful who thewy pick as they are too cowardly to knife their own leaders, Tories have no such qualms.,
Blair is the only Labour leader I could see as PM,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/
Suddenly an aide runs up and says excitedly "Mr President, we've lost a Brazilian!"
Dubya looks at him and says "Gee whizz, how much is that?"
One of those parties is doing rather better, and one rather worse than Labour right now though...
To be fair, though, we shouldn't get distracted by the continual games of ministerial musical chairs under Blair. His governments were uniquely dysfunctional in terms of the short half-life of ministers. Many Home Secs prior to Blair lasted at least three or four years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Secretary#Home_Secretaries.2C_2001.E2.80.93present
He won more seats for Labour than Foot did in 1983, or Kinnock did in 1987!
The fact that there aren't 35 Labour MPs prepared to go for Kendall is perhaps worrying in itself; but Unite have made that bed and now the PLP must lie in it.
The point is that GEs are decided on the basis of seats, not votes.
Look at the last 5 GEs - Blair and Cameron both annoyed their cores an awful lot - and lost a lot of core voters - but they maximised their potential seats by doing so.
Neither of them lost any "core seats" at all (OK - Cameron lost one - Clacton) but their positioning was optimal as far as maximising seats was concerned - because they attracted the key swing voters in marginal seats.
Which is why David M would have done much better than Ed.
And it is also why Burnham is not the man to maximise Lab seats. Forget whatever policies he proposes - they won't matter at all - he will be perceived as coming from Labour's core and this will be reinforced by him being favoured by the Unions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2015_(Scotland)
I make the total votes cast in Scotland a week last Thursday 2,911,465 rather than the 2,910,465 quoted in the Wiki article, which gives an SNP vote percentage of 1,454,436 / 2,911465 = 49.955% - on my calculations they would have needed 1,297 of the votes cast for all other parties in their direction in order to have got over the 50% - I rather thought that was the case given that nobody had made anything of the SNP gaining an absolute majority over all other parties in terms of votes cast.
It would have been great fun (and a great disappointment as well) if the referendum result had been that tight back last September!
The answer to these questions might be yes, I don't know. But politics is a tough and very difficult game, and saying some sensible things may be a necessary, but is not a sufficient, qualification. Maybe her fellow MPs are unconvinced? She is, after all, not very experienced.
https://twitter.com/tobyperkinsmp/status/600311821556383744
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/159YuDClzywqEGU1wAmBQrlq-YSngarQNNrMWdZVyyLk/edit#gid=0