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LOLbour party.

Yet Mori on voting intention has Labour on 35%, 5% more than Miliband and better than Foot and Brown and Kinnock. OK, so the Tories are up to 39%, 2% more than they won in May too, but on voting intention at least it seems Corbyn is doing well in rallying the left and the Labour core, even if many swing voters and Tories hate him

Other polls have Labour on 30-32% so Mori may be a little high, but nonetheless Labour have clearly at least held the 30% Miliband won and maybe added to it a little

GeoffM said:

First!

FPT Thanks for the reply.
I wouldn't trust Corbyn further than I could spit a rat tbh.

HYUFD said:

Yet Mori on voting intention has Labour on 35%, 5% more than Miliband and better than Foot and Brown and Kinnock. OK, so the Tories are up to 39%, 2% more than they won in May too, but on voting intention at least it seems Corbyn is doing well in rallying the left and the Labour core, even if many swing voters and Tories hate him

Other polls have Labour on 30-32% so Mori may be a little high, but nonetheless Labour have clearly at least held the 30% Miliband won and maybe added to it a little

In the last Parliament, the secondary numbers indicated that Labour was in a worse position than the headline figures. The secondary numbers were correct.

Horrible ratings.

HYUFD said:

Yet Mori on voting intention has Labour on 35%, 5% more than Miliband and better than Foot and Brown and Kinnock. OK, so the Tories are up to 39%, 2% more than they won in May too, but on voting intention at least it seems Corbyn is doing well in rallying the left and the Labour core, even if many swing voters and Tories hate him

Other polls have Labour on 30-32% so Mori may be a little high, but nonetheless Labour have clearly at least held the 30% Miliband won and maybe added to it a little

As we learned in May, the leadership ratings matter a lot, much more than headline ratings at this stage.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Pulpstar said:

Hey, at least they dodged the bullet that is Andy Burnham !

There's going to be a story breaking tonight that Kendall tried to get Cooper to pull out to give Burnham a chance to beat Corbyn.

Would that have made any difference as the election was under our favourite system of the beloved AV?

Hertsmere_Pubgoer said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Pulpstar said:

Hey, at least they dodged the bullet that is Andy Burnham !

There's going to be a story breaking tonight that Kendall tried to get Cooper to pull out to give Burnham a chance to beat Corbyn.

Would that have made any difference as the election was under our favourite system of the beloved AV?

Technically no, but I think it could have been a 'narrative changer'

I would also not be surprised if Cameron stayed on as leader through the 2020 election if Labour stick with Corbyn to ensure he is defeated

Pulpstar said:

Hey, at least they dodged the bullet that is Andy Burnham !

Burnham was the most popular candidate with the public in every poll that asked, it was the Tories who dodged a bullet

TheScreamingEagles said:

Pulpstar said:

Hey, at least they dodged the bullet that is Andy Burnham !

There's going to be a story breaking tonight that Kendall tried to get Cooper to pull out to give Burnham a chance to beat Corbyn.

Breaking is putting it a little strong, the Telegraph reported that in August

MaxPB said:

HYUFD said:

Yet Mori on voting intention has Labour on 35%, 5% more than Miliband and better than Foot and Brown and Kinnock. OK, so the Tories are up to 39%, 2% more than they won in May too, but on voting intention at least it seems Corbyn is doing well in rallying the left and the Labour core, even if many swing voters and Tories hate him

Other polls have Labour on 30-32% so Mori may be a little high, but nonetheless Labour have clearly at least held the 30% Miliband won and maybe added to it a little

As we learned in May, the leadership ratings matter a lot, much more than headline ratings at this stage.

Yes, but Corbyn has clearly still kept Labour's core, even if he has not won over swing voters

TheScreamingEagles said:

Oh and Burnham thinks he would have won if he had resigned from the Shadow Cabinet because of the welfare vote

:-O

JosiasJessop said:

HYUFD said:

Yet Mori on voting intention has Labour on 35%, 5% more than Miliband and better than Foot and Brown and Kinnock. OK, so the Tories are up to 39%, 2% more than they won in May too, but on voting intention at least it seems Corbyn is doing well in rallying the left and the Labour core, even if many swing voters and Tories hate him

Other polls have Labour on 30-32% so Mori may be a little high, but nonetheless Labour have clearly at least held the 30% Miliband won and maybe added to it a little

As the GE showed, VI can be a rather poor indicator of behaviour. Frankly (and apologies to the good people who work in polling) I don't trust VI polling one bit. I'm sceptical about the questions as posed above, but they're probably more likely to be nearer the truth than VI.

The Tories are ahead on VI, but Labour is clearly not falling to Foot levels is the story, and there is no SDP in prospect either

Casino_Royale said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Oh and Burnham thinks he would have won if he had resigned from the Shadow Cabinet because of the welfare vote

:-O

But probably true. I'm a little surprised he didn't consider going for it - he must have known at the time that it would have given him a massive advantage over Cooper in the eyes of the membership (and possibly nullified Corbyn).

Front bench would have hated him for it, but by that stage in the contest how many votes did they have?

Casino_Royale said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Oh and Burnham thinks he would have won if he had resigned from the Shadow Cabinet because of the welfare vote

:-O

More proof that Andy Burnham is deluded half wit.

He's worse than Portillo in 2001

HYUFD said:

MaxPB said:

HYUFD said:

Yet Mori on voting intention has Labour on 35%, 5% more than Miliband and better than Foot and Brown and Kinnock. OK, so the Tories are up to 39%, 2% more than they won in May too, but on voting intention at least it seems Corbyn is doing well in rallying the left and the Labour core, even if many swing voters and Tories hate him

Other polls have Labour on 30-32% so Mori may be a little high, but nonetheless Labour have clearly at least held the 30% Miliband won and maybe added to it a little

As we learned in May, the leadership ratings matter a lot, much more than headline ratings at this stage.

Yes, but Corbyn has clearly still kept Labour's core, even if he has not won over swing voters

I don't think so, we have to wait for more polls, but I think Labour will be down on 2010 with Corbyn if he is still leader in 2020.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Also Mandy is going on the record to say Labour shouldn't depose Corbyn yet, only when he's doing badly in the polls/in actual elections.

Except they won't. Labour only overthrows winners xD

MTimT said:

HYUFD said:

Sean_F said:

HYUFD said:

Yet Mori on voting intention has Labour on 35%, 5% more than Miliband and better than Foot and Brown and Kinnock. OK, so the Tories are up to 39%, 2% more than they won in May too, but on voting intention at least it seems Corbyn is doing well in rallying the left and the Labour core, even if many swing voters and Tories hate him

Other polls have Labour on 30-32% so Mori may be a little high, but nonetheless Labour have clearly at least held the 30% Miliband won and maybe added to it a little

In the last Parliament, the secondary numbers indicated that Labour was in a worse position than the headline figures. The secondary numbers were correct.

No one was an enthusiastic Milibandite, there are many who are enthusiastic Corbynites

'Many' has to be put in context. I would reckon most enthusiastic Corbynites voted in the Labour leadership election. 251,417 is close to 60% of those who voted in that election. It is close to bugger all in relation to the numbers who vote in a GE.

Yes, but they voted because they believed Corbyn offered something more than Miliband did, ie real conviction. Swing voters may not like Corbyn, but he is clearly rallying the left

Pope done an Ed M during his speech.
Guardian news ‏@guardiannews 5m5 minutes ago

Pope skipped 'slave to finance' section from Congress speech unintentionally http://d.gu.com/CFssGH

TheScreamingEagles said:

Casino_Royale said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Oh and Burnham thinks he would have won if he had resigned from the Shadow Cabinet because of the welfare vote

:-O

More proof that Andy Burnham is deluded half wit.

He's worse than Portillo in 2001

Does that mean in ten years time he'll be presenting "Great Hospital Journeys" on the BBC?

Perhaps with a permanent stop at Stafford?

TheScreamingEagles said:

Oh and Burnham thinks he would have won if he had resigned from the Shadow Cabinet because of the welfare vote

All the Labour MPs should have rejected the Labour whip, and voted against the Government on the welfare issue. As it is, they have left the field open to the Lib Dems, who can now claim - and quite rightly - to be the only national party to oppose the Tories on this issue.

What is the current Labour position on this question? Does anybody know?

Casino_Royale said:

MyBurningEars said:

Casino_Royale said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Oh and Burnham thinks he would have won if he had resigned from the Shadow Cabinet because of the welfare vote

:-O

But probably true. I'm a little surprised he didn't consider going for it - he must have known at the time that it would have given him a massive advantage over Cooper in the eyes of the membership (and possibly nullified Corbyn).

Front bench would have hated him for it, but by that stage in the contest how many votes did they have?

I don't think there's any initiative Andy Burnham could have taken during the campaign to beat Corbyn, other than being a completely different candidate and personality.

Well it was Burnham's "fault" that Corbyn was there anyway.

I phrased it very badly, what I intended to say was that Burnham would have expected to win if he had gone for broke on the welfare bill.

Never easy to do the counterfactuals, but it might even be possible that he could have nipped the Corbynmania in the bud - there were even twittotumbling baby lefties doing a Burnhamania thing in the early days of the campaign, had he chosen to "speak truth to power" by stabbing all his front-bench mates in the back he might just have been the one to claim the hopenchange mantle. He can at least be more charismatic than Corbyn, when he's in full-on "social justice" mode there is a subset of Corbynites that he would have appealed to.

MaxPB said:

HYUFD said:

MaxPB said:

HYUFD said:

Yet Mori on voting intention has Labour on 35%, 5% more than Miliband and better than Foot and Brown and Kinnock. OK, so the Tories are up to 39%, 2% more than they won in May too, but on voting intention at least it seems Corbyn is doing well in rallying the left and the Labour core, even if many swing voters and Tories hate him

Other polls have Labour on 30-32% so Mori may be a little high, but nonetheless Labour have clearly at least held the 30% Miliband won and maybe added to it a little

As we learned in May, the leadership ratings matter a lot, much more than headline ratings at this stage.

Yes, but Corbyn has clearly still kept Labour's core, even if he has not won over swing voters

I don't think so, we have to wait for more polls, but I think Labour will be down on 2010 with Corbyn if he is still leader in 2020.

The evidence suggests otherwise, and even IDS was polling better than Hague when he was ousted. After 2 election defeats parties almost always at least make modest progress, eg as Kinnock did in 1987, Howard in 2005. Corbyn will not lose many Miliband voters, but he will gain some Green and TUSC and LD voters and the odd SNP voter too

Richard_Nabavi said:

Things can change quickly in politics but Labour should be under no illusions – things are serious and Labour needs to do something about it fast.

Well, quite.

The trouble is, there is absolutely no chance of 'Labour' doing something about this fast. What is Labour? It's a party led by Corbyn and McDonnell, bankrolled by McCluskey, with a backroom team comprising Ken Livingstone staffers, and whose members - even without the affiliates and three-quidders - has just given a massive mandate to its new leadership. Far from doing anything to trash their own mandate, those who now control the party will be doing the exact, diametric opposite: moving to increase their control over the party.

For the dwindling band of sane Labour activists, MPs and staffers, there is no comfort. All they can do - assuming they don't just give up and go and do something more constructive with their lives - is hang on in there, limiting the damage if they can, in the hope that, eventually, something might turn up to change things. They're probably in for a long wait.

For the Tories it was two years.

Oh, and Lord Mandelson is right. That's no surprise, he's one of the two most talented political operatives the UK has seen in the last quarter-century.

Jonathan said:

For the Tories it was two years.

You're kidding yourself if you think Labour is in a position comparable to start of the IDS period. IDS was just not up to the job - like Ed Miliband, or like Andy Burnham would have been. Labour's disaster is in a completely different league.

JosiasJessop said:

HYUFD said:

Yet Mori on voting intention has Labour on 35%, 5% more than Miliband and better than Foot and Brown and Kinnock. OK, so the Tories are up to 39%, 2% more than they won in May too, but on voting intention at least it seems Corbyn is doing well in rallying the left and the Labour core, even if many swing voters and Tories hate him

Other polls have Labour on 30-32% so Mori may be a little high, but nonetheless Labour have clearly at least held the 30% Miliband won and maybe added to it a little

As the GE showed, VI can be a rather poor indicator of behaviour. Frankly (and apologies to the good people who work in polling) I don't trust VI polling one bit. I'm sceptical about the questions as posed above, but they're probably more likely to be nearer the truth than VI.

You probably won't like this, Mr. Jessop, but I agree.

Furthermore I think you understate the caution with which polling data should be treated, at least until someone has credibly explained how, before the last GE, polling companies managed to detect two mutually exclusive trends were happening at the same time and one company didn't publish a poll because, "It didn't feel right" , though it just happened to be accurate..

HYUFD said:

MaxPB said:

HYUFD said:

MaxPB said:

HYUFD said:

Yet Mori on voting intention has Labour on 35%, 5% more than Miliband and better than Foot and Brown and Kinnock. OK, so the Tories are up to 39%, 2% more than they won in May too, but on voting intention at least it seems Corbyn is doing well in rallying the left and the Labour core, even if many swing voters and Tories hate him

Other polls have Labour on 30-32% so Mori may be a little high, but nonetheless Labour have clearly at least held the 30% Miliband won and maybe added to it a little

As we learned in May, the leadership ratings matter a lot, much more than headline ratings at this stage.

Yes, but Corbyn has clearly still kept Labour's core, even if he has not won over swing voters

I don't think so, we have to wait for more polls, but I think Labour will be down on 2010 with Corbyn if he is still leader in 2020.

The evidence suggests otherwise, and even IDS was polling better than Hague when he was ousted. Corbyn will not lose many Miliband voters, but he will gain some Green and TUSC and LD voters and the odd SNP voter too

He will lose many, many 2015 voters. You seem to pluck these statements from thin air. Corbyn has horrible leader ratings, the evidence is right in front of us, you refuse to see it, instead concentrating on the headline VI which has no fucking relevance this early or after the fall out of May 2015.

Richard_Nabavi said:

Jonathan said:

For the Tories it was two years.

You're kidding yourself if you think Labour is in a position comparable to start of the IDS period. IDS was just not up to the job - like Ed Miliband, or like Andy Burnham would have been. Labour's disaster is in a completely different league.

You forget how bad IDS was. Or perhaps from a Tory perspective he didn't look that bad. Telling that you immediately spotted the reference.


FWiW EdM is Hague.

Richard_Nabavi said:

Oh, and Lord Mandelson is right. That's no surprise, he's one of the two most talented political operatives the UK has seen in the last quarter-century.

Fortunately the Labour Party membership hate Mandelson so they won't pay any attention to his words of wisdom.

What a damp squib

https://twitter.com/suttonnick/status/647158614889754624

I think that the problem Corbyn has got is that the vast majority of the population are really not paying any attention at all at the moment. We have not long had an election; we now have a tory government; it is pretty indistinguishable from the last government and they are doing ok. Politics is boring and they don't care. Lightly held loyalties are more than enough in that scenario.

In light of this much of the broadside against Corbyn was wasted. Some people marginally picked up that quite a lot of this broadside was coming from Labour party sources, fellow travellers etc which has given the impression that Labour is more disunited than they were before and probably one or two of the old quotes have hit home but that is it.

What happens next may well be different. The chances of getting through this Conference without some fairly senior resignations from the Shadow Cabinet are slight indeed. Again most people will never have heard of those resigning and will not really care what they are saying but the picture of disunity will be enhanced.

Much more serious would be the risk that a significant part of the PLP start to make it even clearer that they will not support Corbyn or vote for his policies. I think the chances of this being overt are smaller but they are not insignificant. This would make the disunity theme pretty much permanent.

The next stage of seriousness would be defections/ a new party. I think this is much, much less likely but if it happens it may well be the end of the Labour party as a party of government.

Whilst I do think these options are in decreasing levels of probability there has to be a real chance that until Corbyn goes this is as good as it gets for Labour. It is also much more likely that someone stuck in their ways, not used to this level of scrutiny and frankly a bit dim is going to screw up than not.

Jonathan said:

You forget how bad IDS was. Or perhaps from a Tory perspective he didn't look that bad. Telling that you immediately spotted the reference.


FWiW EdM is Hague.

I honestly don't think the Tories have been lead in living memory by a leader as bad as Corbyn. Your party is being led by the equivalent of a Bill Cash or Norman Tebbit.

As we say in Yorkshire, the Ashcroft book is all fart and no follow through

HYUFD said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Jonathan said:

For the Tories it was two years.

You're kidding yourself if you think Labour is in a position comparable to start of the IDS period. IDS was just not up to the job - like Ed Miliband, or like Andy Burnham would have been. Labour's disaster is in a completely different league.

The first 4 polls for the Tories under IDS had them on 29%, 27%, 29% and 25%. When IDS was ousted as leader the previous 4 polls had the Tories on 33%, 34%, 38% and 31%. The first 4 polls under Corbyn have Labour on 30%, 31%, 32% and 34%. There seems little difference to me!
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/historical-polls/voting-intention-2001-2005

You do realise why IDS' first polls should be ignored?

Quite. The list is as long as both my arms - I'd be hard pushed to come up with more horrific baggage than Labour has right now.

And Labourites handwaving it away or comparing it to IDS isn't convincing anyone. Bar The Morning Star, Gerry Adams and the Argentine/Russian Embassies - who's saying nice thing about Corbyn's Labour right now?

It's just so appallingly bad whichever way you look at it.

Richard_Nabavi said:

Jonathan said:

For the Tories it was two years.

You're kidding yourself if you think Labour is in a position comparable to start of the IDS period. IDS was just not up to the job - like Ed Miliband, or like Andy Burnham would have been. Labour's disaster is in a completely different league.

TheScreamingEagles said:

What a damp squib

https://twitter.com/suttonnick/status/647158614889754624

The Mail's big splash is - that it is the last day of serialisation? Point and laugh!

I wonder if the Mail are thinking "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......"

TheScreamingEagles said:

HYUFD said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Jonathan said:

For the Tories it was two years.

You're kidding yourself if you think Labour is in a position comparable to start of the IDS period. IDS was just not up to the job - like Ed Miliband, or like Andy Burnham would have been. Labour's disaster is in a completely different league.

The first 4 polls for the Tories under IDS had them on 29%, 27%, 29% and 25%. When IDS was ousted as leader the previous 4 polls had the Tories on 33%, 34%, 38% and 31%. The first 4 polls under Corbyn have Labour on 30%, 31%, 32% and 34%. There seems little difference to me!
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/historical-polls/voting-intention-2001-2005

You do realise why IDS' first polls should be ignored?

Which was why I included the polls when he was ousted too. But the Tories rating pre and post 9/11 was little different. 2 August 2001 polls had the Tories on 25% and 30%

MarqueeMark said:

Jonathan said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Things can change quickly in politics but Labour should be under no illusions – things are serious and Labour needs to do something about it fast.

Well, quite.

The trouble is, there is absolutely no chance of 'Labour' doing something about this fast. What is Labour? It's a party led by Corbyn and McDonnell, bankrolled by McCluskey, with a backroom team comprising Ken Livingstone staffers, and whose members - even without the affiliates and three-quidders - has just given a massive mandate to its new leadership. Far from doing anything to trash their own mandate, those who now control the party will be doing the exact, diametric opposite: moving to increase their control over the party.

For the dwindling band of sane Labour activists, MPs and staffers, there is no comfort. All they can do - assuming they don't just give up and go and do something more constructive with their lives - is hang on in there, limiting the damage if they can, in the hope that, eventually, something might turn up to change things. They're probably in for a long wait.

For the Tories it was two years.

Labour is currently an order of magnitude more bat-shit crazy than the IDS Tory party.

Nah. IDS was an official bastard. Widdecombe was in the shadow cabinet and considered a serious politician. Now that's bat shit crazy. Or was it just plain "nasty"?

TheScreamingEagles said:

PClipp said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

PClipp said:

Hertsmere_Pubgoer said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

There's going to be a story breaking tonight that Kendall tried to get Cooper to pull out to give Burnham a chance to beat Corbyn.

Would that have made any difference as the election was under our favourite system of the beloved AV?

None whatsoever. And yet the Alternative Vote was inthe Labour Party manifesto in 2010. It seems very strange that the people who understand it least are Labour Party people. I really do think that we need a thread on AV in order to educate them.. Public service and all that, Mr Eagles.

Hey I did my bit back in June. How the Alternative Vote system could stop Burnham becoming Labour leader. http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2015/07/01/how-the-alternative-vote-system-could-stop-burnham-becoming-labour-leader/

Fair comment, Mr Eagles. But June was a very long time ago, and I really do think we need another thread about AV. You see, some of the Labour Party people are only just beginning to realise what is means and how it works (ie not as they thought).

There are a lot of Labour MPs sitting on the Opposition Benches, and we really do need to educate them.

Next time, they might even campaign for AV - even if it means going along with their manifesto pledge.

I'm so spent from this last stint as guest editor, I can't imagine writing another thread for a while not even an AV thread featuring the greatest hits of Stock, Aitken and Waterman could inspire me at the moment

May I say, Mr Eagles, that we are very appreciative of all that you have done in recent weeks. I think I can claim - for once - to speak on behalf of the whole community.

All OGH´s fault for going off on holiday of course. Inevitable that it would mean a lot of extra work for you.

JosiasJessop said:

HurstLlama said:

JosiasJessop said:

HYUFD said:

Yet Mori on voting intention has Labour on 35%, 5% more than Miliband and better than Foot and Brown and Kinnock. OK, so the Tories are up to 39%, 2% more than they won in May too, but on voting intention at least it seems Corbyn is doing well in rallying the left and the Labour core, even if many swing voters and Tories hate him

Other polls have Labour on 30-32% so Mori may be a little high, but nonetheless Labour have clearly at least held the 30% Miliband won and maybe added to it a little

As the GE showed, VI can be a rather poor indicator of behaviour. Frankly (and apologies to the good people who work in polling) I don't trust VI polling one bit. I'm sceptical about the questions as posed above, but they're probably more likely to be nearer the truth than VI.

You probably won't like this, Mr. Jessop, but I agree.

Furthermore I think you understate the caution with which polling data should be treated, at least until someone has credibly explained how, before the last GE, polling companies managed to detect two mutually exclusive trends were happening at the same time and one company didn't publish a poll because, "It didn't feel right" , though it just happened to be accurate..

Look Mr Llama, we have to be very careful with all this agreeing nonsense. As you know I'm a techie, and I can tell you that PB's servers can only take so much agreement between posters every day, and we're veering dangerously near the limit.

If only three more people agree tonight, then the PB threshold will be breached. The effects of this are currently undetermined, but might involve JackW reverting to a 3-year old, OGH starring in a haircare advert, and SeanT becoming a shy and retiring nun.

That's a good point. I agree.

TOPPING said:

HYUFD said:

MaxPB said:

HYUFD said:

Yet Mori on voting intention has Labour on 35%, 5% more than Miliband and better than Foot and Brown and Kinnock. OK, so the Tories are up to 39%, 2% more than they won in May too, but on voting intention at least it seems Corbyn is doing well in rallying the left and the Labour core, even if many swing voters and Tories hate him

Other polls have Labour on 30-32% so Mori may be a little high, but nonetheless Labour have clearly at least held the 30% Miliband won and maybe added to it a little

As we learned in May, the leadership ratings matter a lot, much more than headline ratings at this stage.

Yes, but Corbyn has clearly still kept Labour's core, even if he has not won over swing voters

I find it extraordinary that anyone should take voting intention polls seriously.

Not only because of the neckandneckasm but because seriously, if someone called you up four years from an election and asked you anything about that election you wouldn't even bother to mute X Factor or Strictly while you had a laugh with them.

Apart from the polls that say Jezza is worse than useless. Those are 100% dead-eyed bolted on accurate.

None of these polls have the Tories and Labour neck and neck, the Tories are clearly ahead, but Labour has not fallen to Foot levels either

TheScreamingEagles said:

What a damp squib

https://twitter.com/suttonnick/status/647158614889754624

James Middleton dumps Donna Air?

Anyway, both for betting and for political reasons I'm delighted that, with a few honourable exceptions such as Southam, so many heads are being so deeply thrust into the sand.

MarqueeMark said:

Jonathan said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Things can change quickly in politics but Labour should be under no illusions – things are serious and Labour needs to do something about it fast.

Well, quite.

The trouble is, there is absolutely no chance of 'Labour' doing something about this fast. What is Labour? It's a party led by Corbyn and McDonnell, bankrolled by McCluskey, with a backroom team comprising Ken Livingstone staffers, and whose members - even without the affiliates and three-quidders - has just given a massive mandate to its new leadership. Far from doing anything to trash their own mandate, those who now control the party will be doing the exact, diametric opposite: moving to increase their control over the party.

For the dwindling band of sane Labour activists, MPs and staffers, there is no comfort. All they can do - assuming they don't just give up and go and do something more constructive with their lives - is hang on in there, limiting the damage if they can, in the hope that, eventually, something might turn up to change things. They're probably in for a long wait.

For the Tories it was two years.

Labour is currently an order of magnitude more bat-shit crazy than the IDS Tory party.

To be honest I am not sure. I for one would not have voted for an IDS led Tory party. It isn't just the credibility of the leader, its the credibility of a party that chooses such a leader.

The Tory party that chose IDS was old, intolerant, obsessed with Europe, rigid in its thinking and much more interested in itself than it was in the country as a whole. A Corbyn led Labour party seems out of touch on many important issues but over the generality I would say they are in the same ballpark.

TheScreamingEagles said:

HYUFD said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

HYUFD said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Jonathan said:

For the Tories it was two years.

You're kidding yourself if you think Labour is in a position comparable to start of the IDS period. IDS was just not up to the job - like Ed Miliband, or like Andy Burnham would have been. Labour's disaster is in a completely different league.

The first 4 polls for the Tories under IDS had them on 29%, 27%, 29% and 25%. When IDS was ousted as leader the previous 4 polls had the Tories on 33%, 34%, 38% and 31%. The first 4 polls under Corbyn have Labour on 30%, 31%, 32% and 34%. There seems little difference to me!
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/historical-polls/voting-intention-2001-2005

You do realise why IDS' first polls should be ignored?

Which was why I included the polls when he was ousted too. But the Tories rating pre and post 9/11 was little different. 2 August 2001 polls had the Tories on 25% and 30%

What does the Ipsos Mori say about your predictions of Corbyn being Malleus Natorum?

The Tories have a clear lead on every poll taken since Corbyn was elected, including Mori, Corbyn has simply rallied the core

JosiasJessop said:

HurstLlama said:

JosiasJessop said:

HYUFD said:

Yet Mori on voting intention has Labour on 35%, 5% more than Miliband and better than Foot and Brown and Kinnock. OK, so the Tories are up to 39%, 2% more than they won in May too, but on voting intention at least it seems Corbyn is doing well in rallying the left and the Labour core, even if many swing voters and Tories hate him

Other polls have Labour on 30-32% so Mori may be a little high, but nonetheless Labour have clearly at least held the 30% Miliband won and maybe added to it a little

As the GE showed, VI can be a rather poor indicator of behaviour. Frankly (and apologies to the good people who work in polling) I don't trust VI polling one bit. I'm sceptical about the questions as posed above, but they're probably more likely to be nearer the truth than VI.

You probably won't like this, Mr. Jessop, but I agree.

Furthermore I think you understate the caution with which polling data should be treated, at least until someone has credibly explained how, before the last GE, polling companies managed to detect two mutually exclusive trends were happening at the same time and one company didn't publish a poll because, "It didn't feel right" , though it just happened to be accurate..

Look Mr Llama, we have to be very careful with all this agreeing nonsense. As you know I'm a techie, and I can tell you that PB's servers can only take so much agreement between posters every day, and we're veering dangerously near the limit.

If only three more people agree tonight, then the PB threshold will be breached. The effects of this are currently undetermined, but might involve JackW reverting to a 3-year old, OGH starring in a haircare advert, and SeanT becoming a shy and retiring nun.

(I don't know how to do the laughing like a drain smiley that Sunil uses)

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