[Politics] Next leader of the Labour party

[Publius Ovidius]

Yvette Cooper or Jess Phillips.

If not, they should both be on the next strictly!

 

[dejavuatbtn]

They should beg David Milliband to get back into politics (if they don’t fancy Peter Kyle).

 

[Publius Ovidius]

David Miliband, although he should have been the last-but-two leader and Labour wouldn't then be in this mess.

He is making gazillions in the US isn’t he!

 

[Ernest]

They should beg David Milliband to get back into politics (if they don’t fancy Peter Kyle).

Might as well get Blair back if you think Milliband is the answer

 

[Couldn't Be Hyypia]

Just watched Wes Streeting MP for Illford North on the BBC

Very impressed, just the kind of centre left, eloquent, anti Corbynism leader the Labour party need.

FFS lets get someone like him in charge before the loonies convince themselves that they need to move further left when all the evidence and logic says they need to move to the centre.

If Boris stays for the full 5 years, it will be almost 50 years since anyone but Tony Blair won an election for Labour. He was the most successful leader ever and he was a centre left politician that drove the hard left out, Labour needs to begin that battle again or stay in opposition for ever. Wes could be a good start.

If Scotland get independence, there may never be a Labour PM again.

 

[Weststander]

For me, the next leader needs to come from outside the London metropolitan elite. Starmer, Thornberry, Lammy represent a remain based culture in the Labour party that the Labour heartlands have rejected even if the cosmopolitan vote has stayed strong. Long-Bailey as a Salford born to a dockyard worker rising up to become a solicitor in law and into the party would resonate with the communities that Labour have just lost. There will be other candidates too.

Between the surprise popularity of the 2017 campaign and this one, Labour appear to have lost the essential basic message of a fairer society. Instead a garbled message of free things with no real detail of why or what that means and how it would work. Free broadband may well be a brilliant policy for a dynamic productive engaged workforce, however without context, or detail, it mostly felt like a giveaway. People don't want giveaways, they want to be housed, fairly paid for hard work, their children educated and their families health needs taken care of.

Labour cannot win without the proud hard working communities around the country, and those communities I feel will continue to feel patronised by London-centric politicians who they little understand and who they feel little understand them.

This is going to be less about policies, more about identity. Can Labour be outward looking not inward, can they compromise, innovate into a progressive looking offering that looks forward beyond reflections of a tainted past.

Milliband had a retail campaign like a shopping list of desires. 2017 'for the many' got the tone almost right in creating a fairer society, but that success got blown out of proportion for a 2019 black friday giveaway to mask the elephant in the room. Perhaps a return to basics. What can you talk about to an ordinary person on the doorstep that they will relate to and doesn't sound pie in the sky, and strikes them as a fairer way of doing things.

The soul of the party is on the line. Hoping this damaging defeat is a wake up call to members that a previous winning mantra of 'education education education' might need to be 'compromise compromise compromise'.

Long-Bailey is cast in the same Momentum mould as Corbyn and Lansman, an identical agenda. Unpalatable to 2/3 of the electorate.

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

Corbyn should remain as leader and launch a struggle within the party to remove the Blairites who remain in control of the LP bureaucracy.

Labour lost this election because Corbyn attempted to accommodate the Blairites by caving in on his previous Leave position (coupled with the fact that he refused to take action against LP councilllors who imposed Tory cuts on local services).

The Blairites have been sabotaging Corbyn's leadership since he was elected - and the time has come now to make the public representatives of the LP more representative of the vast majority of the membership.

 

[Hastings gull]

Ah yes, the Shadow Business Secretary who thought that companies were taxed on turnover, not profits.

Frightening. Thank goodness, they are nowhere near the dosh.

 

[Mackenzie]

Hilary Benn.

 

[Gwylan]

Might as well get Blair back if you think Milliband is the answer

Miliband has a) zero chance of winning over members and b) zero chance of winning a general election

The one I think will get it is someone no-one's mentioned yet: Angela Rayner.

She ticks a lot of boxes: she's a woman, she's of the left but no hard core Corbynista; she's from the north; she's a good media performer and best of all, she's a got a background that's the opposite to Johnson. Someone's who left school when she got pregnant and worked her way up to the shadow cabinet is someone who's done it the hard way.

I read today that she's the leader that the Tories fear the most and, just for that, she'd get my vote

 

[Wardy's twin]

Corbyn should remain as leader and launch a struggle within the party to remove the Blairites who remain in control of the LP bureaucracy.

Labour lost this election because Corbyn attempted to accommodate the Blairites by caving in on his previous Leave position (coupled with the fact that he refused to take action against LP councilllors who imposed Tory cuts on local services).

The Blairites have been sabotaging Corbyn's leadership since he was elected - and the time has come now to make the public representatives of the LP more representative of the vast majority of the membership.

say good bye to at least 50% of the votes then and a future of being a marginal party. We are moving towards a single party state with Brexit and LDs also disintegrating and Scotland & NI going their own way.

 

[drew]

Corbyn should remain as leader and launch a struggle within the party to remove the Blairites who remain in control of the LP bureaucracy.

Labour lost this election because Corbyn attempted to accommodate the Blairites by caving in on his previous Leave position (coupled with the fact that he refused to take action against LP councilllors who imposed Tory cuts on local services).

The Blairites have been sabotaging Corbyn's leadership since he was elected - and the time has come now to make the public representatives of the LP more representative of the vast majority of the membership.

What a welcome relief after the result yesterday. Political satire is well and truly alive!!

 

[Gwylan]

I see Starmer is odds-on favourite. I'm surprised at that: I think he'd be an excellent leader but I can't believe that much of the membership thinks that way

 

[Nathan]

The problem they have is that if momentum pick the leader they will not win anything. I would guess that the party will split over the next 6 months, one half with momentum and one half as a 'new labour'. Work with other independents and some lib dems to form a proper opposition party.

 

[Hampster Gull]

Corbyn should remain as leader and launch a struggle within the party to remove the Blairites who remain in control of the LP bureaucracy.

Labour lost this election because Corbyn attempted to accommodate the Blairites by caving in on his previous Leave position (coupled with the fact that he refused to take action against LP councilllors who imposed Tory cuts on local services).

The Blairites have been sabotaging Corbyn's leadership since he was elected - and the time has come now to make the public representatives of the LP more representative of the vast majority of the membership.

 

[Bold Seagull]

Long-Bailey is cast in the same Momentum mould as Corbyn and Lansman, an identical agenda. Unpalatable to 2/3 of the electorate.

Momentum is massively overplayed. They represent less than 10% of the Labour membership. She's simply been a loyal MP since her election in 2015, and we don't actually know how policy direction anymore than we know what Starmer or others will be.

If your assertion that the centre ground is what the electorate want, then that ignores a) the vote share of 2017, and b) how poorly the Lib Dems have done on a centrist manifesto that the IFS basically said was the best out of the main parties. An endorsement that has returned nothing.

It also simplifies the policy argument that Labour can only win with a centrist policy book when Labour had Scotland through those years, the SNP vote has changed all that, and Brexit has hardened the Scottish vote. The SNP can neither be called a party of the center.

It's a very confused picture with Brexit, Corbyn and McDonnell's baggage. The actual policies in 2017 went down well, only they overcompensated in this election because Labour was the party most effected by huge numbers of Leave voters in the North and Wales, but huge numbers of remain in the cities.

Not as straightforward as you're making out.

 

[Hastings gull]

Corbyn should remain as leader and launch a struggle within the party to remove the Blairites who remain in control of the LP bureaucracy.

Labour lost this election because Corbyn attempted to accommodate the Blairites by caving in on his previous Leave position (coupled with the fact that he refused to take action against LP councilllors who imposed Tory cuts on local services).

The Blairites have been sabotaging Corbyn's leadership since he was elected - and the time has come now to make the public representatives of the LP more representative of the vast majority of the membership.

Coupled with your post of a couple of days ago, when you said that de-selection would ensure the "right" candidate ie a momentum stooge is put forward, you now lament the refusal to "take action" against those who dare to take another line; Sounds frighteningly like East Germany to me, and serves only to give ammunition to those who are deeply sceptical of the hard left's democratic credentials.
And then to prove that you haven't learnt a thing from last night, you insist on having a "suitable" candidate who represents the membership, quite forgetting or ignoring the fact that said membership is a small section of Labour support in general. When virtually everyone in the last 12 hours has pleaded that the Labour Party now listens to the public at large, instead of a hard left minority, you still want to choose that same disastrous route that led to the shambles. I don't vote labour so part of me thinks -yes, great and they will never gain power, but I also feel for the hard-working moderate folk, who must despair at what is happening.

 

[dejavuatbtn]

I don’t really see Labour sorting itself out in the next decade as it would take that long for them to get the Momentum disease out of their system. It will result in a split to create two parties, one extreme and the other to sit nearer the middle ground that could sweep up much of a now disillusioned Liberal party voters, and, perhaps, the Greens, whose votes outside of Brighton are wasted.

 

[Weststander]

Momentum is massively overplayed. They represent less than 10% of the Labour membership. She's simply been a loyal MP since her election in 2015, and we don't actually know how policy direction anymore than we know what Starmer or others will be.

If your assertion that the centre ground is what the electorate want, then that ignores a) the vote share of 2017, and b) how poorly the Lib Dems have done on a centrist manifesto that the IFS basically said was the best out of the main parties. An endorsement that has returned nothing.

It also simplifies the policy argument that Labour can only win with a centrist policy book when Labour had Scotland through those years, the SNP vote has changed all that, and Brexit has hardened the Scottish vote. The SNP can neither be called a party of the center.

It's a very confused picture with Brexit, Corbyn and McDonnell's baggage. The actual policies in 2017 went down well, only they overcompensated in this election because Labour was the party most effected by huge numbers of Leave voters in the North and Wales, but huge numbers of remain in the cities.

Not as straightforward as you're making out.

Lansman openly boasted about and defended Momentum’s agenda, and the ensuing Manifesto. The losing Manifesto. He smugly bathed in their influence, on a gutting night for the likes of Alan Johnson who had tears in eyes.

This was analysed in great detail today on radio and TV. The 2017 Manifesto was far less extensive, ‘socialist’, with far fewer attacks on sections of society and business.

The New Statesman said this about Long-Bailey last week:

“In private, there is already live debate among Momentum activists over whether Corbyn’s successor should be a “true believer” such as shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey”.

 

[Machiavelli]

Labour needs a competent public performer who will put the right noses out of joint (on both sides), capable of laying into Johnson as and when he cocks up (as he inevitably will) and is prepared to "tell it like it is". A proper dose of salts.

For me, there's only one candidate for this. Jess Phillips.

For me too, with the added benefit that, given that she's proud of her roots, the Red Wall (which was repainted comprehensively Blue yesterday) are more likely to be receptive to what she says