Danny

I think the SNP may have made a rare misstep by tying themselves so much to being pro-EU these last few months. According to the latest polls, although some 'No' voters from 2014 have switched over to a 'Yes' vote after the EU referendum, it's been cancelled out by a roughly equal number of 'Yes' voters going in the opposite direction. Rightly or wrongly, the perception that "Brussels" controls so much of what EU countries can do might well be undercutting one of the main arguments for Scottish independence (Scottish people making their own decisions about what to do with their country). Polls usually show SNP voters are surprisingly anti-immigration, too.

Sorry, wasn't it you who (implicitly) brought Labour into this thread?:

How would the average woman benefit simply by Yvette Cooper being Labour leader, with all else being equal? How did the average woman benefit from Thatcher being PM? Atleast Harriet Harman (who after all did manage to win an election with the supposedly "sexist" Labour electorate, even despite Alan Johnson having all the institutional advantages) campaigned for concrete things that affect the woman on the street (childcare, pay gap, etc.). Whether one agrees with her or not, atleast her political ethos was something more substantial and mature (and less self-centred) than "a woman should be in a leadership position" as an argument in itself.

This goes back to the point I made in our arguments about the EU. The "moderates" still try to claim purity and morality should trump pragmatism on the issues THEY personally care about, while at the same time preaching how "getting into power" is the only thing that matters when it's issues they don't personally care about. It's the height of hypocrisy. As far as I'm concerned, Labour not fighting cuts to incomes of the poorest people in the country, and generally not fighting against an economic system that entrenches inequality, is a much bigger "moral failing" than not giving an already privileged and middle-class woman a good position for herself.

I find it ironic that so many people who constantly claim Labour should be "in touch with the public's concerns", then go on and on about how it's essential to get a female party leader, even though that's approximately #578 on the public's list of reasons not to vote Labour.

Yeah -- there's a good article on this on Fivethirtyeight. Amid all the talk about how America is becoming ever more ethnically diverse, it's often forgotten that the white working-class are still above the national average in a lot of the key swing states, and Obama tended to get a surprisingly strong performance with that demographic in a lot of those states (especially Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa) in 2012. The article estimates that, as a result of that, Trump could lose the popular vote by up to 2% but still win the Electoral College.

I really doubt that yesterday's incident in itself is going to shift (m)any votes, but there's surely a big danger that she'll be indirectly damaged -- pneumonia can often hang around for weeks on end for older people. If she has to significantly cut down her schedule in the next few weeks, she'll essentially be leaving the field clear to Trump to control the whole "narrative" of the election, and leaves him to win voters over without any meaningful counter from the other side (and, irrational hysteria about her "health" aside, there remains a hell of a lot of potential traction for Trump's fundamental message). And in Clinton's absence, it's not like that Tim Kaine guy, the dictionary-definition of "low-energy", is going to be much good at filling the void.

No, but the rest of her story isn't anything out of the ordinary for politics. There's been tons of those types of mistakes in reshuffles -- Blair sacking Angela Eagle by mistake after "forgetting she existed", Thatcher appointing John Patten to a job once because she got him mixed up with Chris Patten, Cameron misreading Chloe Smith's CV and appointing her to an economics job because he thought she used to be an accountant. Cock-ups like that are inevitable when the expectation (rightly or wrongly) is that you put together a team of about 80 people within a few days - especially when, in the particular Corbyn case, one of the people in question was off work ill and so couldn't be easily contacted to confirm her recruitment (which isn't her fault, but nonetheless would still make things more complicated even for the most competent party leader). Chi Onwurah might be right that, in a "normal job", Corbyn would be in trouble for constructive dismissal, but in a normal job he would've been given weeks/months to decide on all the appointments, so the mistake would've never arisen in the first place. The only aspect of the story which would've made this more than "standard cock-up in the usual rushed reshuffle" was the bogus claims of racial discrimination - which Chi Onwurah probably knew, given, again, it fits into the pattern of Labour MPs lying about Corbyn and "Corbynistas" all summer.

Again, all you're doing here is showing racism is a more pressing problem than ageism -- but just because one problem is more serious, that doesn't mean the burden of proof on the accuser is any less. I come back to that if Onwurah's and Debonnaire's race in itself is the only thing to suggest Corbyn is guilty of racial discrimination, then the very same logic would mean that Corbyn's and McDonnell's age is enough to suggest Labour MPs are guilty of age discrimination. But this is pretty pointless, because Chi Onwurah herself quite obviously doesn't believe she was sacked on the basis of being black -- all the lies that Labour MPs have been telling all summer are not a coincidence.

The point still stands: she makes no arguments to support her case that she was mistreated on the basis of race. To amend the previous analogy, it's no different to saying Labour MPs are treating both Corbyn and McDonnell badly, two men of pensionable age, in a "coincidentally identical manner", and drawing an automatic conclusion that they are treating them badly because of ageism.

Not really? I'm not comparing them in the sense of saying racism and ageism are the same or are equally big problems, I'm just making the point that there's no more evidence that Corbyn discriminated against Chi Onwurah on the basis of her race, than there is that Labour MPs are discriminating against Corbyn on the basis of his age.

Sorry, but I really don't believe any tribunal would seriously consider claims of "racial discrimination" purely on the basis that one person who was black was shoddily treated. There would need to be atleast some kind of argument made that the employer was motivated by racism in their treatment of the person, or that the employer had a history of not appointing black people to top positions - neither of which remotely applies to Corbyn. Far from providing any concrete evidence, Chi Onwurah doesn't even allege any specific incidents or aspects that would back up that Corbyn was motivated by racial discrimination -- her whole case is "I'm black and I was treated this way", which is quite obviously not good enough, any more than it would be OK for Corbyn to claim that Labour MPs are against him because of ageism without providing any supporting arguments.

On racism, there's the example of Chi Onwurah absurdly claiming that she was racially discriminated against because she was supposedly mistreated by Corbyn, without providing any kind of supporting argument/evidence, beyond "I happen to be black and I was treated this way". There's been similar claims from female Labour MPs that they've been discriminated against because of their gender. It's quite obviously nonsense, and not just to Corbynistas -- if you asked the general public, my guess is that even the many people who think Corbyn is useless and would hate for him to be PM, would still say he obviously wasn't a racist or a sexist (if anything, you'd probably get more complaints that he was too "politically correct" on those issues). And Labour members certainly haven't fallen for it; hilariously, in the light of the nonsense MPs have been spinning, the YouGov poll last week showed Corbyn doing considerably better with women members than with men. On death threats, the best example of these MPs constantly crying wolf is when Thangam Debbonaire claimed that someone telling her to "get in the sea" was a "threat to kill" (even when any vaguely regular Twitter user, which she is, would know that it's a meme): https://g1rm.wordpress.com/2016/08/13/brist...threat-to-kill/ I forgot to mention the lies from MPs that various Labour election losses are due to "Corbynites", when they were actually nothing of the sort, and of course the most egregious example, the claims of John McDonnell breaking into someone's office, on which even John Bercow told the MP in question to stop being so ridiculous.

Another thing where Labour MPs have been flat-out lying (Corbyn never said he wanted to ban after-works drinks), to go with their lies about racism/sexism/break-ins/death threats/etc.

Anyway, as somebody who didn't even vote for Corbyn last year (or even gave him my 2nd preference), I've now cast my vote for him this time. Not because he's remotely surpassed my expectations, but because the MPs have proven even more politically inept, and generally much worse human-beings, than I would've guessed a year ago. The outright lies from some of them about "death threats" and "John McDonnell broke into my office" and "Corbyn fired me because I'm black" were the last straw.

They got a higher share of the vote in 2015 than in the European elections EVERYWHERE (except Scotland) - 24% across the UK in the 2014 Euros, compared to 30% in the general election. Their performance in London relative to the rest of the UK was pretty much the same both years (they did 12% better in London than in the rest of the UK in 2014, and 13% better in London in 2015). I really don't think Labour's performance in London in 2015 was particularly exceptional, over and above the long-term trend to Labour in London which was shown in both 2010 (where they held onto more marginal seats than they did elsewhere) and in the 2014 elections. Thus, since 2015 wasn't exceptional, it's pretty damning Sadiq Khan failed to perform any better than that 2015 baseline, whereas Corbyn atleast managed to make some modest (albeit unspectacular) progress on the 2015 baseline in the elections he was responsible for, in generally much more unfriendly territory than London.

Also, why do you say that Labour's results in 2015 in London were better than in 2014?

But the thing is that Prime Ministers who take over in mid-term, without a general election, seem to have a particular advantage at first. They get the best of both worlds, because they get all the authority that being PM and going to summits with Angela Merkel provides, but, because they haven't (yet) been seen grubbing for votes in general elections, they're also viewed as not being "typical politicians" who are saying things to protect their position - essentially they get seen as like benevolent and un-corrupt monarchs. But that will change when a general election is coming, because, whatever her other strengths, the very fact she'll be competing in a campaign will drag her much more into the "typical politician" sphere than she is right now (even if she doesn't implode as spectacularly as Brown, there's also the example of John Major, whose honeymoon polling got close to 50% - well above the actual result in the '92 election).

I'm not sure I understand your point here? London was one of Labour's successful areas in 2015, because it's trending long-term towards Labour, just like big cities are trending to left-wing parties right around the world. That doesn't change that Corbyn managed to add more votes to Labour's 2015 "baseline support" in most English local councils, than Khan managed to add to their baseline support in london.

To be pedantic, you still seem to be using the early BBC estimate which was made before all the results were in - the final Rallings & Thrasher figures for the national voteshares were Labour 33%, Conservatives 32%. Not that it really matters, since on either set of figures, Labour had a 1% lead, and the only thing that matters in elections is how you do relative to the competition, especially in a first-past-the-post system. It's also not true at all that governments typically do much better in a general election than they do in their honeymoon first-year local elections. The Tories in 2015 actually did slightly worse than they did in 2011, and even in Thatcher's first term (the textbook example of a government recovery), they only did 3% better in the general election than in the 1980 locals. If history's any guide, 32% will be quite close to what the Tories get at the next election if the parliament runs to full term (I'm assuming we don't think Theresa May's current honeymoon polling is any more predictive of the next election than Brown's double-digit leads in the summer of 2007).

The idea that AV affected things isn't very convincing, especially since the combined Labour+Tory share of first preferences in the mayoral election was actually slightly more than in the 2015 election. In any case, if we're talking a direct comparison with 2015, then since that election didn't use AV, surely first preferences is the only reliable way to do it - and on that score, Khan showed no progress or perhaps with postal votes included even slipped backwards from the 2015 performance in Croydon Central. Labour lost council seats in Milton Keynes compared to 2012, which is again not a like-for-like comparison since that was the mid-term of a parliament compared to Year One of a parliament where the government always has a honeymoon effect lingering. The ideal comparison for this year's local elections is with 2011 - but since there were no London elections in 2011, the best that can be managed to see who did better between Corbyn and Khan is a comparison with 2015 - and on that score, I really can't see how it's in question that Corbyn winning well over half of Labour's top 100 target seats (including seats right near the bottom of the top 100 like Elmet & Rothwell, Milton Keynes South and Redditch with swings of 8-9% from 2015) is empirically better than Khan losing in every London target seat bar a wafer-thin win in Battersea, with most targets showing zero or a negative swing from 2015. You're right that actually picking potential winners of general elections from Labour right now is like trawling through a desert, but it's about who can get the least-bad result - and May's results show Corbyn has a better idea than Khan does, and certainly a MUCH better idea than Dugdale does.

People on Politicalbetting and UK Polling Report did have that time on their hands, which is what I'm basing my comments on :P The ward data excludes postal votes, which is fair to say would skew heavily to the Tories - yet, even without postal votes, Khan still narrowly lost Croydon Central, which is #3 on Labour's target list. Compare that to Corbyn notionally "winning" constituencies as far down as Milton Keynes (#83 on the target list) on the same day. The only (semi-)marginal Khan showed significant improvement on 2015 was in Battersea, but again it's unclear how much of that was influenced by it being next door to Khan's own seat.

I didn't actually say Corbyn was a help to Khan, as such. I said that Corbyn performed better in the contests he was responsible for (the English council elections) than Khan did in the contest he was responsible for, if improvement on 2015 is the metric. And I think the EU Referendum showed that London really is completely different politically to the rest of the country. Though for what it's worth, Khan didn't do well in the remaining swing boroughs in London either, except for Wandsworth (where he might have had a "hometown" bonus) -- he got beaten heavily by Goldsmith in Croydon, Harrow and Barnet, which all have top marginal seats.

Khan actually did worse (in terms of improvement on the 2015 performance) in May than Corbyn did in the local elections. Khan had a lead of 9% over Goldsmith, which is pretty much identical to the lead Labour had in London in 2015; Corbyn led the Tories by 1% in the locals, which is a 4% swing to Labour compared to 2015. Admittedly racism probably was a bit of a drag on Khan's performance, but even so, only matching Ed Miliband in London is hardly evidence that Khan is some electoral wizard who knows how to appeal to northern "traditional" Labour seats and to non-metropolitan swing voters - especially since one of the reasons he gave was that Corbyn wasn't enough of a cheerleader for the Remain campaign.

It's really hilarious how SHE of all people thinks she can give out lectures on how to win elections.