Danny

I know very little about him. Watching some videos this morning, although he's not exactly overburdened with charisma, he does atleast seem an OK speaker I suppose (unlike Angela Eagle, who I genuinely think is more of a presentational disaster than Corbyn). Maybe there's a few shreds which say he could do OK in a general election, if you squint hard. But I'd need to see a lot more from him to be reassured that, even if he compromised on some things, he would still have some basic red lines (such as protecting the poorest from welfare cuts) which he would always fight for, no matter how much the Tories try to bully him out of it.

We all would ideally want a candidate like that, but the thing is that, if such an alternative candidate existed who could vaguely inspire the membership at the same time as being a plausible election-winner, Corbyn would never have got elected in the first place. Most Labour members are not Trots who think Corbyn is the new messiah. The average Labour activist was well aware of Corbyn's many flaws when they voted for him a year ago, but they just saw him as a lesser evil when compared to a bunch of "career politicians" who didn't even have the spine to stand up to the Tories on something as basic as protecting vulnerable benefit-claimants, and who didn't possess anything like the charisma or gravitas to have a hope of winning a general election. It's hard to see how anything's changed on that front in the past year, especially when the PLP just gave us another look at their dire political judgement by enthusiastically backing the doomed Remain campaign.

Rou ReynoldsVerified account ‏@RouReynolds 4h4 hours ago I’m no blinkered Corbynite but how on earth can anyone believe Angela Eagle offers the charisma & leadership panache that Corbyn lacks?!

When did Cameron or Osborne EVER say that big businesses were acting irresponsibly? All they did was some token talk about how "inequality is bad", before then pushing forward policies that would make inequality worse.

No, obviously she doesn't fear Corbyn is going to win the election, but the point is that he has shifted the WHOLE of the political debate to the left. It is now not considered reasonable for mainstream Tories like May to NOT say that the super-rich are out of control, and that big businesses need to start thinking about the country rather than just their own pockets. That's a far cry from before 2015, when Miliband & Balls were endlessly chasing the Tories to the right, thereby making the Tories' ever more extreme spending cuts and fatcat-toadying seem more legitimate by comparison ("we're only a little bit more right-wing than Labour's positions, so we can't be that right-wing can we?") Eh? Genuinely, when did Ed Miliband ever promise to bring down pay for the top private-sector bosses? Instead all we got from him were idiotic comments like "I'm not only relaxed about people getting filthy rich, I applaud it".

Incidentally, the latest bit of evidence that Corbyn has had more of an impact than the "moderates" did when they controlled Labour in the last Parliament: now even THERESA MAY is saying that the big business fat cats need to be brought down a peg or two. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/j...ul-exit-from-eu

Incidentally, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Wallasey Labur Party formally deselects Eagle in the next few weeks. Would that effectively invalidate her candidacy in the leadership election? After all, Labour could hardly put forward as their PM candidate someone who won't even be an MP after the next election.

But, at the end of the day, an election is an election, and the truly talented politicians manage to win over any electorate. Blair and Cameron had no problems winning over their party electorates, after all, despite party members' disagreements with them. If a politician doesn't have the skillset to even make arguments that are convincing to their own party, they sure as hell won't be able to convince the general public. Plus, I come back to the point that the failure of the Remain Campaign showed us how much appeal the Labour "moderates"' platform has with the public -- i.e. less appeal than Corbyn had in the May local elections.

LOL, the fact the Labour "moderates" are now trying to fix the election by keeping Corbyn off the ballot says it all. How the hell is Angela Eagle going to win a general election, if she evidently thinks she can't even beat Corbyn in a proper election?

That's because it seems to finally be dawning on Labour MPs that "Corbyn isn't doing as well as he should" is not at all the same thing as "there is someone else available who would do better than Corbyn". What the MPs did last week is the equivalent of someone who's not happy with their flat, suddenly waking up in a strop and just deciding to move out, before they've got any alternative accommodation lined up. Completely amateurish - and yet we're supposed to believe these people have the competence to lead the party effectively and to win a general election?

Quite - so Qassandra, after reading that article, are these really the people you trust to know how to win an election, any more than Corbyn knows how to?? I'm genuinely struggling to see who would vote for the party outlined in that article in the current political climate, apart from a handful of socially liberal City workers.

And here is a Times article talking about how Labour "moderates" want to create a breakaway party which is "pro-business, socially liberal party in favour of the EU" -- a platform which was just utterly smashed in the referendum despite having all the institutional advantages in the world behind it: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ffe485e2...5d-8299bb50a973

From all the "moderate" MPs who said that they considered the EU referendum to be the biggest issue of a generation, saying Labour should be much more vocal about it, that they should put more focus on it than any other issue. All the 3 "mainstream" candidates in last year's leadership election were horrified at Corbyn being nuanced on the EU, spouting stuff about how "if Labour isn't internationalist then it isn't anything", and Liz Kendall saying Labour should be "pro-Europe first, last and always". If it's not fair to say that that all represents a desire for the EU to be their headline policy and their main defining cause, then what would represent it? And in fact it's still going on now, even after the referendum -- Polly Toynbee is saying today that Corbyn should've been at that EU rally in London this weekend and that they should fight the next election with their headline commitment being "talks to either stay in or have as close a relationship as possible", and you don't have to go very far into the Labour Twittersphere to find people saying Labour should pitch themselves as "the party of the 48%".

I think it would be. If Labour were to make their HEADLINE POLICY that they were pro-EU, that is hardly likely to endear them to the vast chunks of current Labour voters and majority of target voters who take the opposite view on that issue. Yet that is exactly what the Labour "moderates" wanted to do these last few months with their demands that Labour spend all their time banging on about it, saying that being pro-EU was their main raison d'etre. That's not to say that they should've taken an anti-EU position ahead of the referendum, but it's surely a statement of the obvious that you don't put it front and centre as your defining cause when it's a stance that is so opposed by so many of the voters Labour needs - you make your main defining cause something which has broad appeal among most of the voters you need, even if you have more contentious policies further down the "pecking order".

This all may or may not be true, but it doesn't really address the argument we were having. You are simply stating that you personally think the EU is more important and has more long-term effects than welfare cuts do, and that Labour should therefore die on the altar of defending the EU. That's a perfectly legitimate opinion, but you (and the "moderate" MPs who have similar opinions) can't then turn around and dish out lectures on "the importance of winning elections" when you're advocating that Labour write off two-thirds of their current seats and the vast majority of target seats in order to keep full "purity" on the EU and freedom of movement. You prioritise ideology over electability just as much as the hard left, you just have a different ideology (and in my view, an ideology which happens to be less electable than an economic left-wing message, based on recent evidence).

And confirmation that this translates into utter annihilation under first-past-the-post: only 82 current Labour constituencies voted Remain (half of them in London), with 150 Labour seats voting to Leave. A real election-winning strategy that is.... https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisapplegate/why...MPOW#.qp4GPg4v9 By way of comparison, almost as many Tory seats (72) went for Remain as Labour seats. SNP seats also provided a substantial chunk of the Remain bloc.

It was much more than 24% of Labour voters -- the Ashcroft on-the-day poll put it at around 35-40% of Labour voters, and frankly, looking at the breakdown of how the votes stacked up in the Labour heartlands, I suspect even that is an underestimate. When you compare Labour's results in many of their northern seats in the May local elections (unspectacular, but still comfortable first places well ahead of UKIP), to the utter Leave landslides that there were in those same places last week, the idea that Labour wouldn't have had much to lose in those places doesn't bear much scrutiny. And even that doesn't take into account that the current Labour vote is not enough on its own to win a general election, and that the swing seats that decide elections overwhelmingly went Leave too.

Because most Labour members feel strongly about welfare cuts and austerity in general, yet the "moderate" Labour MPs have been spending the last 6 years telling us it's "self-indulgent" for the party to take strong stands on those issues, and that "electability" matters more than principles. Yet suddenly that logic goes out the window when it comes to one of their priorities, such as the EU.

The problem with this argument is it's completely contradictory of the "moderates"' criticism of Corbyn on non-EU matters. If Corbyn had been more outspoken in favour of the EU, might the "Remain" campaign have won? Possibly yes, it might well have scraped a win. However, it would've undoubtedly meant Labour would've been hugely damaged -- hardened Leave voters would've concluded that if Labour's main raison d'etre was being pro-EU, then Labour couldn't possibly be the party for them, as happened in Scotland when pro-unionism became seen as Scottish Labour's main raison d'etre (whereas Corbyn's "we don't really care about the EU" stance has, judging by the polls this week, has meant there have been mercifully few Labour->UKIP defections). The point is that the Labour "moderates" can't be outraged when left-wingers want Labour to stand firm against welfare cuts and nuclear weapons even at the expense of electoral success, yet at the same time demand Corbyn go on a kamikaze mission to advocate the EU even when it's patently obvious that such a stance would've hugely damaged the party's electoral chances. Either "electability" matters more than purity all the time, or vice versa - but moderates seem to think that purity should matter more on the issues they feel particularly strongly about (the EU), and that it shouldn't matter on the things that actually affect the people they're supposed to represent.

2011 isn't comparable to 2016 in any meaningful way, except it's the exact same point in the electoral cycle, and voteshare projections for the first year of the electoral cycle have a very high predictive value of the following general elections. Comparing 2012 to 2016 (two years in, compared to one year in) is just as absurd as if you were to compare a football team's points in the Premier League in October of one year, to the December of the previous year. October 2016: "Leicester have only got 20-something points now, compared to the 40 points they had in December 2015 - that shows they're doing worse now". Well, yes, technically they would have a worse performance, but only because they're comparing completely different stages of the season -- to state the obvious, you can only meaningfully gauge whether they're doing better if you're comparing the equivalent stages of the season. (Yes, reading this back, I probably should've picked a sport I wasn't as unknowledgeable about as football for this analogy.)

Lost seats compared to 2012, which is not the equivalent point of the last electoral cycle (second year into a term, compared to one year in). Compared to 2011, Corbyn's Labour beat the Tories by 1% in 2016, whereas Miliband's Labour LOST by 1%. And of course, Corbyn's Labour did much better than the "Remain" campaign which was based on the Labour "moderates"' playbook. Having said all this, Twitter is saying that MPs might nominate Clive Lewis for the leadership contest in exchange for standing down. I would be OK with that -- a more competent and charismatic version of Corbyn policies is the only acceptable way forward, for me.

What is the thought process whereby a floating voter who doesn't want Corbyn to be PM, WOULD want Tom Watson to be PM? He's no more charismatic, has just as many image problems (shallow as it may be, I feel his weight would be just as big a problem as Corbyn's "scruffiness") and doesn't even seem like a nice and down-to-earth guy in the way Corbyn does.

A few people from the London commentariat have told her that they think she would be a good leader. That literally seems to be about it. You would've thought that the EU Referendum would've told the London commentariat that they don't understand how normal people think about politics, at all, but it would seem they still haven't got the message.

Quite. Once again, these people still don't seem to have learned that "Corbyn isn't doing as well as he should" is not the same as "there is someone else available who would do better than Corbyn". Corbyn's results in the May local elections were unspectacular, but were better than the equivalent set the last time the Labour "moderates" were in charge in the last parliament, and were better than the "Remain" campaign last week which was based on the main priniciples of the Labour "moderates". Until they've got a convincing reason for why they would know how to win elections better than Corbyn does, they really need to shut up.

A new SDP style party would struggle to get above 5% in an election, IMO. As the EU Referendum has just shown, the Blairites' mix of economic conservatism and cultural liberalism has never been more unpopular with the country, and it's not like they would have any leaders in the mould of David Owen or Shirley Williams who could win votes on personality alone.