Pedantica wrote: Sat Jan 04, 2020 11:49 pm
Jess Phillips or Lisa Nandy are I think probably the best options at the moment. I think Stephen Kinnock is very good too but he's on the record saying he thinks the next Labour leader should be a woman so I don't think he's running.
I think Labour is in a bad place. Probably worse than it was in 1983 when it was still 14 years away from power. But with the same central problem.
A) The new leader needs to take back control from the hard left clique who control the party.
B) The new leader needs to convince the majority of the membership that Labour can only win by appealing to people who voted for other parties in 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019.
C) The new leader needs to show some visible evidence that they are improving Labours electoral performance quickly enough to keep the momentum to do A and B.
Kier Starmer has 3 problems I think:
1) He was the most visible face of Labour's Brexit strategy. That was one reason for Labour's poor performance in the election. I actually think it's only the 3rd most important after (i) the leadership (general lack of and Corbyn specifically) and (ii) Labour's overreach in its economic policies.
2) He never really stood up to Corbyn and that worries me for his capacity to do A and B above.
3) I expect the EHRC report will be damning. As a member of the shadow cabinet during Corbyn's leadership Starmer will face difficult questions about why he didn't do more to stand up to the party leadership.
Of course 2 means he's much more likely to be elected than Jess Phillips for example. But potentially much less suited to the immediate task ahead.
A. Definitely agree, mostly. Labour is certainly in a much worse place than 1983. Then, Militant weren't really a problem outside Liverpool. Momentum are embedded like a virus at every level. I read that the membership are kinda soft left overall, but Momentum control all of the party machinery, from CLPs to the NEC. But Momentum aren't a homogenous lump either, and there will be a spread of opinion there. It's encouraging that the trigger ballots turned out to be a damp squib, although most of the probable
dreaded centrist victims had already walked. Time will tell just how much control Lansman et al can retain in the post-Jez era.
B. Definitely true. The membership will buy this, as a whole, but see (A), above. We are likely to have a position where many CLPs and the NEC act against the wishes of the membership as a whole. We saw this clearly in the tortured evolution of the EU so-called policy.
C. Certainly. Or at least enough to give a start to the next leader.
I don't really buy some of the second part of this. Now then. Starmer.
1. 17 million voted for parties advocating a second referendum, 15 million for parties denying one. Labour's overwhelming problem was Corbyn, not Brexit, and we've read that the campaign was an uncoordinated clusterf.ck, riddled with personal enmities, so largely agree here. remember when Labour went all Brexity for the Euro elections and the LDs kicked their arses into 3rd place? And then their 2nd ref stance (plus Swinson's incompetence) squeezed much of the life out of the LDs.
2. Hattersley recently eviscerated the entire non-Corbynista PLP by pointing out that, whereas in 1983 he and his colleagues stayed and fought, the current bunch stayed and did not fight. This applies to pretty much anybody outside the Leader's Bunker (Phillips does get some points here). I f.cking despise the so-called bigger names for sitting on their hands for Corbyn's second leadership win, while some self-regarding f.cking nobody was the only one with the spine to put up a challenge, with predictable results. Later on, at least Starmer was visible, and clearly trying to achieve stuff that the members wanted, in opposition to the leadership. Who else can say any of that, maybe apart from Creasy, who isn't standing? I guess Starmer is safe from deselection from his local PLP, which is a start.
3. A damning ECHR report is a gift to any new leader, Starmer included, who isn't tarnished with being a central figure in the old regime (yes, you, BLT). Starmer has
already said "...the party should show it was ready to 'throw open the books [to the ECHR] and say you have got access to anything'." It's not Starmer who has spent decades being ...uncomfortably close... to holocaust deniers and the like, while never engaging Israel. Starmer, AFAIK, has never "liked" vividly antisemitic images. It wasn't Starmer's clique who the
whistleblower said was interfering in the disciplinary process to get their mates off. Starmer's free of all this baggage, and the Jewish community will engage with him, but he must fix it, and quickly. I expect he will accept all of the ECHR's points unreservedly, but he'll still have to fight those who maintain that the whole thing was a manufactured slur by neoliberals, centrists, MSM, triangulators.....
For me, a big test of the new leader will be whether they f.ck off the 4 Ms. On day one. That very likely rules out Long Bailey, who is already Unite sponsored and Corbyn's prophet on Earth. And I don't think it has to be an angry northerner. I suspect that Labour, in chasing the rest of those, is going to forget about all the people who
did vote for them.
We should remember, the next one isn't going to win an election. The new leader's job will be to hand over in a better shape, like Smith did to Kinnock, like Kinnock did to Blair. Long road ahead. Starmer could at least get Labour to "not a joke".
