Danny

And it goes beyond just them - even some of those of us who didn't vote for him want him to be given a good proper run at it (two years atleast). And how well did Miliband's approach of caving into the right-wing press time after time work for him?

I still think Corbs is only going to be in it for a few years, set Labour back on the right path policy-wise, then stand aside for another lefty (presumably Clive Lewis) before 2020. I think even Jez has the self-awareness to know he won't win an election.

I also bottled it after flip-flopping more times than Andy Burnhham on the Welfare Bill.

In my experience, very few of these people exist. Hardly anyone in the party actually likes the Blair formula with their hearts, there were just pragmatists who were willing to tolerate the Blair formula while it was a) winning elections, and b ) atleast had some sense of rock-solid principles which they would never betray no matter how unpopular they were. Since the Blairites now have lost two general elections in a row, and they now support the kind of austerity that the real Blair never did, that number of pragmatists is obviously smaller than ever.

Oh please, it's hardly controversial to say that Bin Laden should've been put on trial instead of killed on the spot. Much more worthy of criticism is when he seemed to suggest his death was faked (one of the worst things about the ultra-left is when they try to make everything into a conspiracy theory cooked up by the US). So the focus group's view on Corbyn should be taken as gospel, but not their view on Kendall? :P

She is the one in charge of the running of the contest, and the one who (in theory) has the most informed interpretation of the party constitution....yet what she says is irrelevant?

I wonder how much better the Blairites would've fared if they'd fielded Caroline Flint as their candidate: koEFHyxfKb4 She's a much better politician than Kendall IMO - I don't agree with most of what she says (especially the rubbish about "paying down the debt"), but she atleast gives fluent and coherent answers. Unlike Kendall and her limited collection of contrived slogans which she parrots while clearly not having understood or thought deeply about the issues at all.

I voted Green in last year's European election, do you think I should be banned? I'm completely mystified by this view that the #1 goal of general elections is to win over switchers, yet switchers should be barred from the selection of the leader. For better or for worse, a lot of ordinary people ARE going to decide whether they support a particular party conditional on whether a certain individual politician is the leader, so why shouldn't that reality be reflected in the leadership elections?

I'm sorry, but watching the speech, it's pretty clear it wasn't just sloppy wording - she meant that she wanted non-Labour voters to vote. The comment comes in the middle of a big passage about how they needed to be thinking about the people they need to win in 2020 and that it can't just be diehard Labour members talking to themselves, and she literally puts the stress on "Anyone, provided they're on the electoral register, can become a registered supporter" (10:33): G57XZri7mOU She and the rest of them are just moving the goalposts now because, in a sign of how poor their political antennae is, they completely misread the public appetite for a "centrist" message.

Mark Thompson ‏@MarkReckons 3h3 hours ago "Anyone can become a registered supporter, pay £3 to and vote to decide our next leader." - Harman in May this year. Mark that word. Anyone. Mark Thompson ‏@MarkReckons 2h2 hours ago The only other criteria mentioned was that they need to be on the electoral register. Nothing about purging ppl who voted for other parties. Funny how the Labour Establishment only decided they demanded diehard, lifelong purity from any voters in the leadership contest after it became clear more members of the public were enthused by the left-wing message than the centrist one.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the careerists like Chuka and Tristram Hunt jumped ship to the Tories if they were offered cushy Cabinet jobs, but otherwise yes I agree there won't be a split.

Trump is pushing Hillary close in the latest polls though :P

Also, I put £50 on Clive Lewis to be Labour leader at the 2020 election earlier (on the assumption Jezza steps down before then). He's left-wing, but crucially is younger, more telegenic and once served in the Army Reserves so would be impossible to paint as a "traitor to Britain".

I think there's some truth in that - one of my best friends is not "left-wing" at all, or even THAT political (she almost voted Tory this year before deciding Labour at the last minute), and she's signed up to vote for Corbyn just because generally she thinks he's a breath of fresh air and would speak up for the young more than most politicians, rather than because she's super-ideological about his specific policies. Incidentally, that's also why I think he could do much better with the public than the commentariat think - people are so desperate for some kind of hope that, basically whenever any politician comes along and says "things are going to change drastically", people allow themselves to believe that whatever their own personal hopes are will come about through that one politician promising change. The SNP being the best example of that.

Say all you want about "credibility", but no opposition party has EVER won without atleast some enthusiasm. That the "centrist" message has completely failed to create any in this contest is damning. For all the Blairites might be gnashing their teeth at the paper tiger of "Trotskyists", the fact of the matter is Corbyn's argument is the only one which has chimed any kind of chord with any of the non-politically-obsessed public.

I'm just loving the irony that the wing of the party which is constantly going on about how Labour needs to appeal to non-Labour voters, is now having a heart attack at the thought that people who aren't diehard Labour voters want to take part in the contest. If a "centrist" message has so completely failed to engage normal members of the public enough to sign up like the left-wing message has, does that not say something about the appeal of a "centrist" message and how it would fare in a general election?

I agree with that actually, I don't really care that much about renationalising things, but the problem is the current Labour regime seem unwilling to even fight for the basic things like welfare and the health/social care stuff you talk about, because they've so internalised the Tory "economic credibility" garbage. That's what's pushing even mainstream members, who would usually baulk at someone like Corbyn, towards him.

Does this mean you now think Labour going into elections with a message of "the Tories are right, don't vote for them" is similarly doomed? :P It was the facile "spending billions we haven't got" line that made me raise my eyebrows the most. But anywho, I might be going to see her in Connah's Quay tomorrow (because my Friday nights are just that wild) so will be asking her if she's going to carry on with this "balance the books" nonsense.

Completely tone-deaf from her. The vast majority of Labour members, including people who are not even voting Corbyn, agree with him on principle even if they have doubts about whether it could win a general election. But her saying that being anti-Austerity is wrong in principle will just confirm that the current leadership just don't "get it". Plus, there's sttill no indication of what she's going to do over the next 5years to stop Tory cuts from Opposition. Burnham's comments were much better-judged.

To be pedantic, I didn't say Syria was a small concession, I said it was part of the small (as in short) list of concessions :P

He did, to an extent - nobody cared about the deficit when the financial crisis first broke, when the public initially overwhelmingly approved of stimulus as a response to the crash. It was precisely because of the Tories constantly arguing that the deficit mattered that opinions changed by the time of the 2010 election, helped by Labour (especially Alistair Darling) already starting to concede the intellectual ground on the argument back then.

Every Opposition leader in history can boast a small list of concessions which showed their "impact": Cameron could claim that in opposition he got government climbdowns on the 10p tax rate, the Gurkhas, an Iraq war inquiry, calling off the 2007 election with his conference speech, etcetc. That doesn't change the fact that on the big issue of the day, Miliband never even attempted to challenge the central premise of the Tories' argument: that cuts were necessary and that the deficit needed to be reduced no matter what the costs to society.

LOL, I thought the election had killed off this meme. He didn't remotely challenge the Austerity narrative / the idea that the deficit was the top priority / that most welfare claimants were undeserving scroungers, and he only made the argument that the rich and big businesses weren't pulling their weight very intermittently and very timidly. That he once made the government get some figleaf concessions on energy prices once doesn't remotely mean he was an effective Opposition leader. And the problem is that Labour tried the approach of being a "government-in-waiting" for the past 5 years, and the end result was they didn't win the election anyway AND they allowed the Tories to shift the terms of debate infinitely to the Right, allowing them to present very right-wing ideas as normal in a way they wouldn't have gotten away with if Labour had put up more intellectual resistance over the past few years.

But they don't - we've already seen Tory MPs come out of the woodwork to complain about tax credits, and the Spectator has been saying Tory MPs are coming under pressure from their local councils to oppose further council cuts. Plus, UKIP have shown how you can affect policy by shifting public opinion / the terms of debate.

The interesting thing in that poll is that even among Labour members, Burnham is rated as the most likely to win in 2020 (Cooper is second on that measure, followed by Jezza with amusingly Kendall in a distant last place even on what is supposed to be her USP). The question is whether when it comes to the crunch, members decide to go with the person they think is the most likely winner, or if they decide that the most important thing is a guarantee of proper opposition now and attempts to stop Tory policies now.