Iain Murray just resigned live on air.

 

Meanwhile Tom Watson is still at Glastonbury...

I think they have learned their lesson from the last time. No idea how they do it mind.

Corbyn only got on the ballot paper because some MPs nominated him even though they had no intention of voting for him. If they refuse of nominate another left-wing candidate, that potential candidate will have to find nominations from elsewhere. He only reached the number required at the last minute, so it would only take one or two to refuse for a would-be successor to fall short.

Rumour has it Tom Watson is currently trying to talk Jeremy Corbyn into resigning. (While heading back from Glastonbury.)

 

From Twitter.

Corbyn has been nothing but a disappointment, I wanted to like him because he reflected lots of my own views and the process by which he got in felt like a change but he's continually been ineffectual and unsuited to leading a party.

 

The next Labour leader will need to put up some effective opposition and be able unite not just whatever branch of the party they come from but the whole thing.

Shadow cabinet falling like flies now. Obviously drip-feeding to cause mass effect to Corbyn.

 

Can't see a way he survives this.

This could be the end of the Labour party as we know it! :o

The best thing for Labour right now would be to join forces with the Lib Dems and form a new party. Both party brands are too tainted that they might be beyond repair and unelectable in the future. We need a new party with a strong vision and strong leadership in order to squash the UKIP threat! I sincerely hope the key people in Labour and Lib Dems seize this chance for change!

 

The Corbynistas may as well split and start their own party too. Perhaps they could even push further to the left and join forces with the Greens (in particular Caroline Lucas). This way would we have a clear right, centre and left wing party again.

Christ. I am actually seeing suggestions on Twitter from self-styled "centrists" that Labour should forget about all Leave voters and just try to build a coalition of support on Remain voters. They genuinely seem to think Labour should be targetting ultra-wealthy true blue Tories in Oxfordshire and Surrey (the best results for Remain outside of London) and writing off three-quarters of their current seats.

 

And they say the Corbynites don't understand politics.

30% of Labour voters went Leave. Somehow doubt 30% of our voters account for three quarters of our seats. But who does it make more sense to change our position to chase - 30% of our voters (who, lest we forget, were part of a 100% which wasn't enough to win last year), or 40% of Tory voters?

 

Not all of that 40% are what you'd call 'ultra-wealthy true blue Tories'. Plenty who voted Remain are ordinary white-collar swing voters. It was a 52/48 result to Leave, not a 60/40 one - plenty of swing voters opted for Remain. Why not go for the SNP angle of mobilising that 48% behind us? A large chunk of that Leave vote is with Ukip forever now. It will be far easier to get more of the Remain vote behind one party than it will be to go running off the other way and abandon 70% of our voters for a Leave vote that will be far more diffuse.

The best thing for Labour right now would be to join forces with the Lib Dems and form a new party. Both party brands are too tainted that they might be beyond repair and unelectable in the future. We need a new party with a strong vision and strong leadership in order to squash the UKIP threat! I sincerely hope the key people in Labour and Lib Dems seize this chance for change!

 

The Corbynistas may as well split and start their own party too. Perhaps they could even push further to the left and join forces with the Greens (in particular Caroline Lucas). This way would we have a clear right, centre and left wing party again.

 

I like the logic, though if both were equally popular that would condemn us to Tories forever more. One of them (the Lefties) would have to become a minor protest vote party, but the centrists would absolutely need to win back the low-paid working vote to win power, without alienating the middle ground.

 

There may be trouble ahead...but while there's moonlight, and stars and romance,

 

let's face the music and dance....

 

as the old song goes

 

 

Just as it's been announced that Chris Bryant is the 12th Shadow Cabinet member to resign, I've managed to get this exclusive footage of Jeremy Corbyn inside party headquarters -

 

Now up to 12! :o And yet he is STILL clinging on? Surely the support of unions and the grassroots isn't enough? The majority of the Labour MPs don't support him and neither do the public. What good is their support if he can't win an election and can't command control of the opposition.

 

I wonder if the Eagle sisters will be next? Perhaps Maria given their differing of opinions in the past.

The best thing for Labour right now would be to join forces with the Lib Dems and form a new party. Both party brands are too tainted that they might be beyond repair and unelectable in the future. We need a new party with a strong vision and strong leadership in order to squash the UKIP threat! I sincerely hope the key people in Labour and Lib Dems seize this chance for change!

 

The Corbynistas may as well split and start their own party too. Perhaps they could even push further to the left and join forces with the Greens (in particular Caroline Lucas). This way would we have a clear right, centre and left wing party again.

I completely agree, I voted Labour in the last election but I'm finding myself drawn to Lib Dems because Labour under Corbyn is a bit too left for my views and I'm finding myself disillusioned by the party. A good middle between Corbyn Labour and Lib Dem would be great, something that can fit as many remain voters as possible and help them regain some ground. Labour and Lib Dems have both suffered setbacks in recent years so I agree theyre a bit tainted but something new to fit the rapidly changing landscape is definitely welcome!

30% of Labour voters went Leave. Somehow doubt 30% of our voters account for three quarters of our seats. But who does it make more sense to change our position to chase - 30% of our voters (who, lest we forget, were part of a 100% which wasn't enough to win last year), or 40% of Tory voters?

 

Not all of that 40% are what you'd call 'ultra-wealthy true blue Tories'. Plenty who voted Remain are ordinary white-collar swing voters. It was a 52/48 result to Leave, not a 60/40 one - plenty of swing voters opted for Remain. Why not go for the SNP angle of mobilising that 48% behind us? A large chunk of that Leave vote is with Ukip forever now. It will be far easier to get more of the Remain vote behind one party than it will be to go running off the other way and abandon 70% of our voters for a Leave vote that will be far more diffuse.

 

Sorry, but have you looked at the map of which areas voted Remain and Leave? With a handful of exceptions, the Remain areas were the most Corbynista boroughs (people who were culturally liberal, and who are the more "core" Labour voters of all right now) and the most historically Tory boroughs in the southern stockbroker belt (people who are not culturally liberal AT ALL, who didn't even vote Labour in 1997, and probably dislike immigration and "our rules being made by Brussels" as much as Leave voters, but who were just spooked by the talk of economic turmoil hitting their own huge incomes). They are two diametrically-opposed and diffuse groups, who voted Remain for completely different and incompatible reasons, and NO party is ever going to be able to come up with a platform that unites them both, since their values on everything are so completely different.

 

By contrast, the more vulnerable part of Labour's current vote (the white working-class) AND the more reachable part of the Tory vote who swing elections all voted Leave. Look at the map - Nuneaton, Basildon, Cannock Chase, Derby, Ipswich - all Leave landslides. Those are the Tory voters that are in play for Labour, not the true-blue Tories in Surrey and Oxfordshire who will always vote with their pocketbooks and for whom Blair wasn't even centrist enough. It's utter madness to base a political strategy on appealing to the most in-the-bag voters for a party AND the most off-reach voters for a party at the complete other end of the spectrum, while writing off the voters in the huge swathe of the middle.

 

With respect, you (and others on your wing of the party) are doing exactly what you accuse Corbyn of: you want Labour to be a party which is just purity on the issues you care about most, even though it's patently obvious it would lead to electoral annihilation.

Edited June 27, 20169 yr by Danny

Also, talking about uniting "the 48%" like the SNP completely ignores how grudging most Remain voters were, compared to how fervent "Yes" voters in Scotland were. **Anecdote alert**, but at my work even quite a few people who half-heartedly voted Remain are getting caught up in the excitement of "getting our country back" and the feeling that "maybe things might finally change for the better". It might be similar to a honeymoon after a newly-elected government, where even people who backed the losing side want to believe things are going to change.

 

Unless there really is complete armageddon, most Remain voters are going to stop caring about the EU within months, since they weren't especially bothered about it in the first place. It's only the London group-thinkers who will still be in mourning (but then they were convinced that it was inconceivable the country would vote to Leave in the first place, which shows how good their political judgement is).

Everyone will care very much when it hits their wallets and jobs. It will take a few years to build up to that level, but even the dumbest of the dumb it will eventually sink in and this time there is no-one else left to blame except the people that took us out: The Tories and UKIP.

 

 

Everyone will care very much when it hits their wallets and jobs. It will take a few years to build up to that level, but even the dumbest of the dumb it will eventually sink in and this time there is no-one else left to blame except the people that took us out: The Tories and UKIP.

 

I implicitly conceded if it turns out to be a complete disaster then it would be different, but that is incredibly unlikely.

 

In the far more likely scenario of there being some short-term turbulence but little really affected in the long run, the vast majority of Remain voters who were only very half-hearted will stop caring, and will have the EU WAY down their list of priorities when deciding which party to vote for in elections. To compare pro-Europeanism to nationalism (whether Scottish nationalism or otherwise) as a political force is laughable -- nationalism quite obviously has a bigger and more lasting emotional force on voters than the kind of pragmatic "it's the lesser of two evils" that most Remain voters had last week.

Edited June 27, 20169 yr by Danny

Also, I'm loving how Labour MPs say Corbyn is unable to connect with the public, and their solution to that is to elect......Angela Eagle or Tom Watson.

The Labour party is fast running out of credibility - a split is IMO imminent.

There's nothing new about it. But I think it's now too polarised for the party to ride two horses at once and keep its metropolitan London voters and its socially conservative voters. I think the party has to choose between pro-immigration and anti-immigration. Any halfway house on this one (like Ed's last year) just leaves both sides dissatisfied - the pros think Labour is being racist and dog-whistling and the antis think Labour can't be trusted on the promise.

I think we definitely need to choose between being for or against free movement. Beyond that, there's wiggle room regarding things like an immigration dividend and beefing up exit checks which are an easy sell to both sides.

 

Sorry, but have you looked at the map of which areas voted Remain and Leave? With a handful of exceptions, the Remain areas were the most Corbynista boroughs (people who were culturally liberal, and who are the more "core" Labour voters of all right now) and the most historically Tory boroughs in the southern stockbroker belt (people who are not culturally liberal AT ALL, who didn't even vote Labour in 1997, and probably dislike immigration and "our rules being made by Brussels" as much as Leave voters, but who were just spooked by the talk of economic turmoil hitting their own huge incomes). They are two diametrically-opposed and diffuse groups, who voted Remain for completely different and incompatible reasons, and NO party is ever going to be able to come up with a platform that unites them both, since their values on everything are so completely different.

 

By contrast, the more vulnerable part of Labour's current vote (the white working-class) AND the more reachable part of the Tory vote who swing elections all voted Leave. Look at the map - Nuneaton, Basildon, Cannock Chase, Derby, Ipswich - all Leave landslides. Those are the Tory voters that are in play for Labour, not the true-blue Tories in Surrey and Oxfordshire who will always vote with their pocketbooks and for whom Blair wasn't even centrist enough. It's utter madness to base a political strategy on appealing to the most in-the-bag voters for a party AND the most off-reach voters for a party at the complete other end of the spectrum, while writing off the voters in the huge swathe of the middle.

 

With respect, you (and others on your wing of the party) are doing exactly what you accuse Corbyn of: you want Labour to be a party which is just purity on the issues you care about most, even though it's patently obvious it would lead to electoral annihilation.

Did it occur to you that not every voter in a council area fits with your stereotype of their area? There's far more nuance than that and there are gains to be made all over the place.

 

Regarding Corbyn, it seems to me that the right of the party was always going to jump at the chance to stick the knife in. What's telling is that the 'soft left; contingent of the Shad Cab has abandoned ship as well. They must know that if there's a leadership election and Corbyn makes the ballot he'll be almost impossible to beat, and (unlike the right) would baulk at the idea of deliberately keeping him off it. That suggests that they reckon he won't have the energy to stand again, clearing the way either for Watson to come in or for a soft left candidate to win the leadership contest on a unity ticket.

The Labour party is fast running out of credibility - a split is IMO imminent.

But where from? The right of the party surely knows that there's so much political upheaval at the moment that a new centrist party could sink without trace. The left is more likely to split, but that would require Corbyn to go.