Danny

The candidate who can "make Labour win again" still in 3rd place with the public: Andy Burnham 18% Yvette Cooper 9% Liz Kendall 7%

Indeed.

I think they somehow need to find a leader who both seems competent just because of their "natural" qualities, and who has the communication skills to talk over the scaremongering nonsense from the Tories that is ALWAYS going to be there no matter how far to the right Labour move. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a candidate who has both those things. Yvette Cooper is the only one who has "gravitas" and seems like someone who you'd instinctively trust to stay on top of things and keep her head in a crisis, but I'm not sure she has the charisma to get people to listen to her in the first place. Andy Burnham has the communication skills but not the gravitas. Liz Kendall and Mary Cregh have neither, just as Miliband didn't.

http://www.gqrr.com/uk-post-election-2 People say their top doubt about voting Labour was they didn't think they could be trusted with the economy and would spend too much. Yet when asked specifically about policy, 39% said they thought Labour should cut spending "slower than they plan" (while 34% said quicker).* So if people already thought Labour was going to cut spending significantly, too much even, then I fail to see how talking about cuts even more would've improved their economic competence even without talking about the additional problems it would create. * God knows how people square that contradiction in their minds, maybe they think Labour are so fundamentally incompetent that they think it doesn't matter how much they plan to cut spending, they'll still mess things up by selling "the gold" or its equivalent at the bottom of the market and wasting money anyway even while cutting public services.

But it was a pattern repeated in countless middle-class city/suburb seats everywhere. You might be right that the economic competence thing kills them in a lot of the marginals we're talking about, but how is Liz Kendall going to solve that problem? That exit poll last week showed that while people overwhelmingly said they didn't trust Labour with the economy, they also at the same time said they thought Labour was planning to cut spending/the deficit too quickly -- so talking about cuts not only alienates core voters, it doesn't even do anything to address the economic competence issue.

You think? I think it's very conceivable that UKIP will succeed in turning the referendum into a vote on immigration and "patriotism", and Labour being on the "wrong side" of that could be absolutely fatal in their tradiitional heartlands (outside of the big cities) and maybe even moreso in the working-class towns in the Midlands and South where we keep hearing Labour need to win. But they won loads of seats which are wealthier than Corby or Lincoln, as long as they were in big cities or just outside of them. If Labour can win Wirral West, it's obviously not the case that there was something fundamentally offputting about their message to middle-class people.

Good article illustrating how this argument that Labour lost because it didn't convince middle-class voters (or "aspirational" voters!) is a load of bollocks and how the real split in Labour's results is between the big cities and everybody else, irrespective of wealth: http://newstonoone.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/...t-campaign.html Though Labour already seem ready to double down on their alienation to everyone who isn't "metropolitan" by planning to spend the next couple of years talking endlessly about the EU (including unfortunately much even of "the left") and not talking about spending cuts or wealth inequality.

Do you think that's the kind of idea that's going to get swing voters to pay attention to Labour?

Chuka Umunna has endorsed Blair Witch Project, and in the process has inadvertently highlighted what a carcrash her leadership would be with this unreadable guff about "devolution" and "creative and strategic relationships between state and business": http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/...bour-leadership

I think she is the only one who possibly could get the public to believe she could into a negotiating room with Putin and not dissolve into a wreck. Not sure whether it makes up for her other deficiencies, though.

I'm still struggling to understand what question on earth Mary Creagh thought she'd be the answer to.

:lol: Have to admit though I'm slightly worried by that Labourlist poll last week which showed the "Blair Witch Project" close-ish to Burnham.

Loved Sweden and Russia the most, but expected them to do well anyway so voted for Belgium.

Is there always an 8% Liberal core? A good % or two of their vote this time must surely have been made up of people voting for their local LibDem MP as a person rather than anything to do with the party.

Will the new boundaries necessarily favour the Tories this time? One of the main reasons Labour's vote was so "inefficient" this time was because they piled up countless wasted votes in rapidly-growing city seats (London especially), which should surely be ironed out a bit by the changes.

The Lib Dems could soon be down to 7 MPs. Alistair Carmichael is in hot water for leaking that alleged Nicola Sturgeon memo, and the SNP are demanding a by-election.

This poll is weighted to the real results of the election.

It's arguably in Labour's interests too though, since it could deprive the Tories of seats.

"Labour were too left-wing!!!!11" contradicted by a re-contact poll after the election: Labour should cut public spending QUICKER than they plan: 34% Labour should cut public spending SLOWER than they plan: 39% Labour is too TOUGH on big business and banks: 22% Labour is too SOFT on big business and banks: 42% Labour should be more left-wing: 19% Labour should be more right-wing: 21% Labour should increase taxes on the rich: 46% Labour is too tough on investors and wealthy people: 35% http://www.gqrr.com/uk-post-election-2

Vince Cable has called for a Labour/LibDem pact at the next election.

I actually agree that Len McCluskey should butt out. Who "the unions" back does not really have anything to do with which candidate is left-wing anyway, it's more about who has spent the last few years stroking the union barons' egos. Also I hope Kendall does get through, purely because I want her to be smashed by the membership (who know full well that huge cuts and sucking up to fat cats is the last thing that's going to get the attention of people who've stopped listening to Labour) so that the Blairites can't get away with the illusion that the election was "stolen" from them.

David Miliband was not running on a hard-right platform of Labour signing up to massive spending cuts, opposing tax rises for the rich and "wrapping their arms round" greedy big businesses. Plus his main USP was that he looked like a "ready-made prime minister" leaving aside his political views (which I'm not even sure the most charitable person could say about Liz bloody Kendall).

Shouldn't she? Most of the Blairites have left Parliament now to go make millions. Almost all of those whining are ex-MPs (not that you'd know it from the amount of airtime the BBC gives them).

Suggestions from some in Labour that whoever wins should be forced to submit themselves for re-election in 2018. I actually quite like that idea. It doesn't really make sense to select your prime minister candidate years and years before. Meanwhile, the "Blairites" are still going apeshit at Liz Kendall possibly not managing to scrape together enough MP nominations to get through to the next round. I don't know why they care so much, because if she's struggling with the MPs she sure as hell isn't going to get anywhere with the more left-wing membership.

Dunno, I feel like John McDonnell would be the type who would translate anything as "nationalise the railways".