As has been repeated to exhaustion, I couldn't give less of a damn about tuition fees as I do about a party which screamed piety for a generation about no broken promises going back on its most totemic promise. And even before we get into the tiresome justifications about manifestos, the NUS pledge to always vote against any rises and for tuition fees to be abolished - with photographs of candidates posing with it proudly displayed on most election materials - is a pretty cast-iron promise. It goes over and above a typical broken promise. It's the equivalent of a priest having 'thou shalt not steal' as his signature sermon then robbing the church coffers the second he's promoted to bishop.

 

And yes, I'd be just as judgemental of it had Labour made a promise as much a centrepiece of its campaign and done literally the opposite once elected - which, no, before you repeat it, Labour committing to no top-up fees in 2001 was nowhere near at a similar level of prominence for. It also didn't come from a party that had attempted total piety over the grubby realities of politics prior to that point.

 

-x-

 

But yes, as the closest the Lib Dems come to a penance candidate, Farron probably is the best choice. Particularly for giving them a base for scooping up the handwringers that are currently with Labour (who'd likely be most iffy if Andy were elected) or any particularly pro-EU Labour voters should Corbyn get elected.

 

Ugh, I've just realised that if we get the (still very likely) result of Cameron-Andy-Tim as the three leaders all three have notably dodgy past LGBT rights records.

 

Love how Burnham's gay rights record is described as "dodgy" because of one relatively minor transgression from the party line, yet Kendall is defeded as a socialist even though she has far bigger departures from the party line on the economy than Burnham does on gay rights.

Also, Corbyn has now drawn level with Burnham on nominations from local branches. It couldn't happen....could it?

Love how Burnham's gay rights record is described as "dodgy" because of one relatively minor transgression from the party line, yet Kendall is defeded as a socialist even though she has far bigger departures from the party line on the economy than Burnham does on gay rights.

My point specifically was that they all have on-the-line views which have iffy transgressions in the past which have similarly not quite entirely convincing explanations.

 

And I doubt you'd find anybody straight-facedly claiming Liz Kendall to be a socialist. But then there's no shame in it - the Labour Party is not a socialist party*, and never has been. (Neither are the SNP before anyone starts. The Greens come closest to the theory until they collapse the claim with steady-state economy nonsense.)

 

 

*Though it's always had a fair amount of socialists in the true sense in it. Currently a growing number.

Also, Corbyn has now drawn level with Burnham on nominations from local branches. It couldn't happen....could it?

I'm fairly certain Corbyn will overtake Burnham in the next couple of days, if not tomorrow.

 

Having (literally with my own vote) prevented one of the nominations this evening going to him, I'm still pretty sure the nominations aren't necessarily representative (take out one family that turned up tonight on a whim and the various vagaries of transfers would have been starkly different), but the sheer momentum and energy his campaign will get from going first on nominations definitely will have a real effect on the campaign and his chances. Primarily, it'll seriously boost the already intensive registered supporter sign-up efforts amongst the organised radical left and from the Corbyn campaign if there's a solid sign that he's capable of winning, which is what the CLP nominations will be taken as.

 

Kendall's campaign is only just realising now how to play the 'get elected as moderate' strategy, but it's far too late I think. Firm fourth.

I'm fairly certain Corbyn will overtake Burnham in the next couple of days, if not tomorrow.

 

I wonder if that Harriet Harman interview will be seen as the turning point of the contest: 14 of 19 nominations since Sunday have gone to Corbyn.

As a side-note, I think we'll also reach terminal velocity if/when he pulls ahead in nominations - i.e. the point at which the post-result consequences will lead to a mass member (and eventually support) defection whatever the result is.

 

To the left if it's a narrow loss for Corbyn - similar to the independence referendum - had it stayed at a 35-40% result and it looked like independence never had a chance, passions probably wouldn't have been so high. Ditto here given the hugely heightened and polarised rhetoric from many Corbyn supporters that Labour is dead if Corbyn doesn't win - that genie won't be easy to rebottle if they come so close but miss out from near universal transfers to whoever wins over Corbyn.

 

To the right if he wins - I'd hope most have the sense to realise just how hypocritical that would be after making the argument on how to defeat the Tories, but there'll almost certainly be at least a few idiots who can't restrain themselves and decide to make a song and dance of leaving 'on principle'.

 

So that'll be fun.

I wonder if that Harriet Harman interview will be seen as the turning point of the contest: 14 of 19 nominations since Sunday have gone to Corbyn.

Yep. People are furious.

 

I honestly think there were far better ways for her to try and dodge the trap Osborne's set than recreating the Nicola Murray 'we'll agree with ONE government policy' episode. It's now been Chinese whispered by Corbyn supporters to Harman (and by extension Kendall) supporting the entire Welfare Bill.

I should admit at this stage that I'm starting to be slightly tempted by the idea of voting for Jeremy Corbyn for Accelerationist reasons. If the radical left are right (they're not) and Corbyn's 'literally the same speech he probably wrote for Benn in 1981' prospectus is what Britain's been crying out for all this time, huzzah, a Labour government.

 

If they're wrong (they are) then I struggle to think of a quicker way to make it clear to them that they're wrong than the appalling polling collapse that will follow (soon enough at least - I imagine the novelty of having a literally no-holds-barred honest leader would be a refreshing novelty for voters, before wearing off as soon as most realised that yes, the Labour leader is someone who still believes in a command economy and thinks Labour lost in its most notorious radical left-wing loss of all-time because it wasn't left wing enough).

 

That said, knowing my luck, we'd probably enter a grim halfway house of Ed Miliband style polling (super-fun slowly fading mid-term default oppositional lead the second the Tories start fumbling obviously again!), or - even worse - we enter a world where all consistently dreadful polling is handwaved away with 'YOU CAN'T TRUST THE POLLS, REMEMBER LAST TIME' until the council losses become too much to bear.

 

That said *also*, my war gaming for eventual (and still most likely) non-Corbyn results and scenarios isn't looking much prettier either right now. We're at the stage where even a miraculous Kendall recovery would still have a very ugly Q4 of 2015.

Corbyn would only be leader until and through the next election campaign though and they may ditch him in 2018 or 2019 if the polls were bleak. No way would he become PM in 2020.

I should admit at this stage that I'm starting to be slightly tempted by the idea of voting for Jeremy Corbyn for Accelerationist reasons. If the radical left are right (they're not) and Corbyn's 'literally the same speech he probably wrote for Benn in 1981' prospectus is what Britain's been crying out for all this time, huzzah, a Labour government.

 

If they're wrong (they are) then I struggle to think of a quicker way to make it clear to them that they're wrong than the appalling polling collapse that will follow (soon enough at least - I imagine the novelty of having a literally no-holds-barred honest leader would be a refreshing novelty for voters, before wearing off as soon as most realised that yes, the Labour leader is someone who still believes in a command economy and thinks Labour lost in its most notorious radical left-wing loss of all-time because it wasn't left wing enough).

 

That said, knowing my luck, we'd probably enter a grim halfway house of Ed Miliband style polling (super-fun slowly fading mid-term default oppositional lead the second the Tories start fumbling obviously again!), or - even worse - we enter a world where all consistently dreadful polling is handwaved away with 'YOU CAN'T TRUST THE POLLS, REMEMBER LAST TIME' until the council losses become too much to bear.

 

That said *also*, my war gaming for eventual (and still most likely) non-Corbyn results and scenarios isn't looking much prettier either right now. We're at the stage where even a miraculous Kendall recovery would still have a very ugly Q4 of 2015.

Wouldn't the Accelerationist approach just be admitting that we're doomed in 2020? Because there's no way in hell that we could win if we'd had to ditch a radical left leader halfway through the parliament.

Wouldn't the Accelerationist approach just be admitting that we're doomed in 2020? Because there's no way in hell that we could win if we'd had to ditch a radical left leader halfway through the parliament.

Depends who takes over. But at this stage I can't see either of two established candidates winning in 2020 either, and it's clear a hell of a lot of lessons need relearning in Labour. It won't go away if we get another milquetoast continuity Miliband leader, and if we have to put up with this crap I'm starting to be tempted by the idea that it should be settled once and for all.

 

Or maybe I'll just carry on with 1 Liz, 2 Andy and hope for the best. Yvette is making me glad in retrospect that AV didn't win.

Depends who takes over. But at this stage I can't see either of two established candidates winning in 2020 either, and it's clear a hell of a lot of lessons need relearning in Labour. It won't go away if we get another milquetoast continuity Miliband leader, and if we have to put up with this crap I'm starting to be tempted by the idea that it should be settled once and for all.

 

Or maybe I'll just carry on with 1 Liz, 2 Andy and hope for the best. Yvette is making me glad in retrospect that AV didn't win.

How so?

 

People baulk at "Continuity Miliband" as if this were a disaster on the scale of 1983 or (in a different way) 1992. I'm absolutely certain that the party has serious structural and organisational issues which need dealing with but the reality is that we got closer to returning to government after one term than anyone has since Thatcher with a leader who no one liked after completely misjudging the majority of big political events during the course of the parliament. The manifesto itself wasn't the problem (this time, at least. Like I said, we've got major issues which is why I'm more pro-Creasy than I am with any of the leadership candidates) - it was delivered badly by the wrong person.

We didn't get closer at all! Even ignoring that we're a hundred seats behind, the Tory majority went up sharply in two thirds of the seats we were trying to take off them. I for really consider a few supermajorities in London and Merseyside getting an extra 8,000 added on as much of a sign of success at anything other than being really good at talking to ourselves.

 

I'd say it's definitely a bigger disaster than 1992 if anything. We did at least still have Scotland at that stage, and we were a mere 40 or so seats off a majority. We either need to be winning back scores of SNP seats with majorities of over 10k, or winning over seats which have never even considered Labour on anything other than an explicitly centrist platform (and a couple that didn't even consider Labour then!).

 

Do I think Yvette's capable of winning over some people in that bracket? Sure, some. But I doubt the media would ignore it if we went into 2020 with for all intents and purposes the same platform we went into 2015 with, and I doubt after running a campaign explicitly designed to hoover up 2nd preferences by pissing nobody off that Yvette would have much wriggle room to bridge the gap between what persuades your average Labour activist and what persuades your average apolitical undecided family. Particularly when the current rhetoric in the party has reached Tea Party levels of screaming 'TORY!!!' reflexively in response to any perceived heresies. Let's face it, mistake or not, it takes some gall to consider Harriet Harman - the author of the Equality Act! - a bloody Tory, and at this stage it's going to take quite something to flush that hyperpartisan virus out of the party.

 

(Incidentally, Tom Watson's disgraceful failure to call out people labelling all three mainstream candidates for the leadership as Tories when asked questions saying as much goes down as another reason why he'd be a total disaster as Deputy. As Deputy your job is campaigning, loyalty, and real talk to activists to ensure party unity. Tom seems capable of one at best and would almost certainly spread his delightful West Midlands region fixer tendencies nationwide.)

We didn't get closer at all! Even ignoring that we're a hundred seats behind, the Tory majority went up sharply in two thirds of the seats we were trying to take off them. I for really consider a few supermajorities in London and Merseyside getting an extra 8,000 added on as much of a sign of success at anything other than being really good at talking to ourselves.

 

It speaks volumes about how interested you really are in winning over Tory voters when you dismiss Merseyside, one of the few areas of the country where Tory seats have majorly moved over to the Labour column. And it certainly wasn't done with the "Blairite" formula.

 

Anyway, you're kidding yourself if you think a Blairite is EVER getting elected leader again. If they had any sense, they'd now be trying to meet the activists halfway by uniting behind the soft left and dropping their ideological bollocks about "balancing the books", "reforming public services", "pro-business", etc.

We didn't get closer at all! Even ignoring that we're a hundred seats behind, the Tory majority went up sharply in two thirds of the seats we were trying to take off them. I for really consider a few supermajorities in London and Merseyside getting an extra 8,000 added on as much of a sign of success at anything other than being really good at talking to ourselves.

 

I'd say it's definitely a bigger disaster than 1992 if anything. We did at least still have Scotland at that stage, and we were a mere 40 or so seats off a majority. We either need to be winning back scores of SNP seats with majorities of over 10k, or winning over seats which have never even considered Labour on anything other than an explicitly centrist platform (and a couple that didn't even consider Labour then!).

 

Do I think Yvette's capable of winning over some people in that bracket? Sure, some. But I doubt the media would ignore it if we went into 2020 with for all intents and purposes the same platform we went into 2015 with, and I doubt after running a campaign explicitly designed to hoover up 2nd preferences by pissing nobody off that Yvette would have much wriggle room to bridge the gap between what persuades your average Labour activist and what persuades your average apolitical undecided family. Particularly when the current rhetoric in the party has reached Tea Party levels of screaming 'TORY!!!' reflexively in response to any perceived heresies. Let's face it, mistake or not, it takes some gall to consider Harriet Harman - the author of the Equality Act! - a bloody Tory, and at this stage it's going to take quite something to flush that hyperpartisan virus out of the party.

 

(Incidentally, Tom Watson's disgraceful failure to call out people labelling all three mainstream candidates for the leadership as Tories when asked questions saying as much goes down as another reason why he'd be a total disaster as Deputy. As Deputy your job is campaigning, loyalty, and real talk to activists to ensure party unity. Tom seems capable of one at best and would almost certainly spread his delightful West Midlands region fixer tendencies nationwide.)

Do you really think Yvette will be defined in 2020 by the leadership campaign she runs now? The Tories were parroting on about "Red Ed" for five years and it didn't do them as much good as the SNP scare did in five weeks. Who would have predicted that?

 

My issue with Kendall isn't that she's a centrist - it's that she's not a very good one. Short of convincing Boris to defect I would do literally anything for us to win in 2020 but I don't see how she can inspire confidence unless Osborne does it for her by tanking the economy with another recession. Both the "continuity" candidates have set their stall out in manner very different to Ed with a pitch which will help win over people we need to win (Burnham with his whole community schtick for the UKIP-floppers, Cooper with her talk about jobs for the future and garden cities for the Nuneaton crowd) and I'm not sure Kendall has the capacity to do that.

 

Incidentally, the name-calling is really getting on my tits as well. It remains the rank irony of the worst bits of the Labour left that they're willing to ignore a lifetime of hard work on social equality because of a couple of misjudgements on economic issues. Then again, bits of the moderate wing are prone to doing the opposite.

It speaks volumes about how interested you really are in winning over Tory voters when you dismiss Merseyside, one of the few areas of the country where Tory seats have majorly moved over to the Labour column. And it certainly wasn't done with the "Blairite" formula.

 

Anyway, you're kidding yourself if you think a Blairite is EVER getting elected leader again. If they had any sense, they'd now be trying to meet the activists halfway by uniting behind the soft left and dropping their ideological bollocks about "balancing the books", "reforming public services", "pro-business", etc.

Tory seats being, uh, Wirral West (or is it South?) with a majority of 400 votes over one of the most reviled Tory ministers in possibly the most culturally Labour area in the country? I'm really reluctant to extrapolate an entire national strategy from one seat where we won narrowly. Anyone who wanted to be that granular - and I don't - would have just as much case for choosing Hove or Ilford North (and bagging in increased majorities in places like Walthamstow with the latter).

 

As it goes I (half) agree with you. The lessons of selections for moderates are the same as the lessons of elections - you win by reassuring and appealing to the median of any given selectorate, in addition to the bulk of one wing of that selectorate (which is incidentally where your favoured Lib Dem analogy falls down for elections - they never had a wing with them in addition to their dubious centre credentials). You don't scare the horses. Thatcher didn't get elected in 1975 or 1979 pledging to privatise half the state. Blair didn't get elected in 1994 spelling out everything he would do ten years later. You set out a clear, general direction of travel and at much the same time you reassure the centre as to why that won't be a betrayal of it's values if you're going for a moderate platform - Cameron was particularly good at that in his selection.

 

Kendall hasn't been. Or at least, it's too little too late.

Do you really think Yvette will be defined in 2020 by the leadership campaign she runs now? The Tories were parroting on about "Red Ed" for five years and it didn't do them as much good as the SNP scare did in five weeks. Who would have predicted that?

 

My issue with Kendall isn't that she's a centrist - it's that she's not a very good one. Short of convincing Boris to defect I would do literally anything for us to win in 2020 but I don't see how she can inspire confidence unless Osborne does it for her by tanking the economy with another recession. Both the "continuity" candidates have set their stall out in manner very different to Ed with a pitch which will help win over people we need to win (Burnham with his whole community schtick for the UKIP-floppers, Cooper with her talk about jobs for the future and garden cities for the Nuneaton crowd) and I'm not sure Kendall has the capacity to do that.

 

My issue isn't so much that Yvette'll be defined by the leadership race externally by the media et al, more that if she wins on this platform she'll have basically no internal mandate to do anything that pisses anybody off, which would cripple her leadership from the start. Apparently she isn't especially decisive either, which is the worst trait to couple with a scenario like that (and which I'm also not keen on given it was one of Ed's biggest weaknesses by far as a leader).

 

Incidentally, the name-calling is really getting on my tits as well. It remains the rank irony of the worst bits of the Labour left that they're willing to ignore a lifetime of hard work on social equality because of a couple of misjudgements on economic issues. Then again, bits of the moderate wing are prone to doing the opposite.

My favourite part is that those who are prone to wearing 'I Am the 76%' twibbons are also those most prone to dismissing other members of it as Tories.

 

Incidentally, Accelerationists4Corbyn DEAD - http://rs21.org.uk/2015/07/13/understandin...ith-max-shanly/

Tory seats being, uh, Wirral West (or is it South?) with a majority of 400 votes over one of the most reviled Tory ministers in possibly the most culturally Labour area in the country? I'm really reluctant to extrapolate an entire national strategy from one seat where we won narrowly. Anyone who wanted to be that granular - and I don't - would have just as much case for choosing Hove or Ilford North (and bagging in increased majorities in places like Walthamstow with the latter).

 

As it goes I (half) agree with you. The lessons of selections for moderates are the same as the lessons of elections - you win by reassuring and appealing to the median of any given selectorate, in addition to the bulk of one wing of that selectorate (which is incidentally where your favoured Lib Dem analogy falls down for elections - they never had a wing with them in addition to their dubious centre credentials). You don't scare the horses. Thatcher didn't get elected in 1975 or 1979 pledging to privatise half the state. Blair didn't get elected in 1994 spelling out everything he would do ten years later. You set out a clear, general direction of travel and at much the same time you reassure the centre as to why that won't be a betrayal of it's values if you're going for a moderate platform - Cameron was particularly good at that in his selection.

 

Kendall hasn't been. Or at least, it's too little too late.

 

Wirral West, Wirral South, Sefton Central (formerly Crosby), Wallasey (to some extent Ellesmere Port and perhaps Chester). All were Tory until either 1992 or 1997, but have swung away massively - a couple even have higher Labour votes now than in 1997.

 

And the difference is that the other seats you mention have had major demographic change (different racial mix in London, influx of young people in Brighton). The middle-class Merseyside seats are still overwhelmingly white and older than average, but have swung because the right-wing arguments have all been confronted and defeated through argument.

Edited July 16, 201510 yr by Danny

Incidentally, Accelerationists4Corbyn DEAD - http://rs21.org.uk/2015/07/13/understandin...ith-max-shanly/

He seems himself as the Corbyn to Corbyn's Benn.

Wirral West, Wirral South, Sefton Central (formerly Crosby), Wallasey (to some extent Ellesmere Port and perhaps Chester). All were Tory until either 1992 or 1997, but have swung away massively - a couple even have higher Labour votes now than in 1997.

 

And the difference is that the other seats you mention have had major demographic change (different racial mix in London, influx of young people in Brighton). The middle-class Merseyside seats are still overwhelmingly white and older than average, but have swung because the right-wing arguments have all been confronted and defeated through argument.

If we're going by the token of judging by seats that were Tory until 92/97 then that's shifting the goalposts massively - and again, it's a matter of total cherrypicking. You've got Ben Bradshaw running a deputy leadership campaign based around it, for one. Those seats certainly aren't alone in being (non-demographic) ones that have come to Labour and stayed with us since 1997.