Qassändra

It's kind of different if your party membership is leagues apart from the general public on the majority of issues. Blair and Cameron had party electorates that were happy to make compromises to win. The Labour Party membership - quite avowedly - is not. Which, okay, fair enough. But let's not pretend an inability to persuade that electorate is any sign of innate unelectability. Particularly when we're talking someone like Angela Eagle who has far bigger things you could point to to show that.

An oligarch of the banks...who was nominated by John McDonnell for Deputy? She's a crap choice of unity candidate for many reasons, but yeah, that really isn't one of them. (and no, he doesn't have the 'largest leader mandate in party history'. That would be Blair, who got well over a million votes in 1994)

Why would they leave a party on the basis of a crap ineffectual leader to join another party with a crap ineffectual leader?

By that token everyone who ever won a leadership election was de facto the most electable candidate with the public. Obviously nonsense. However, you're right for the wrong reason. It's highly unlikely Angela Eagle would've won a general election even had she beaten Corbyn in a fair fight (as may well still happen - a fair fight, that is). The party is going to be obliterated for quite some time by the split if Corbyn is kept off the ballot. Short of an obvious environmental disaster, I can't think of any one thing that would do more to make the Greens a significant force.

The word is that the NEC is going to make Corbyn need to get nominations. This is going to end badly.

The transcript has been published. It seems she's taking objection to her frankly worthless 'I'M NOT TRYING TO MAKE A POINT ABOUT HOW HAVING KIDS MAKES YOU A BETTER PRIME MINISTER...*does so*' preamble not being reported verbatim. God, imagine someone this clueless and inept at making a subtextual point being in charge of EU negotiations.

:D!

You think David Cameron planned to have his career go up in flames to aid a wing of his party that has given him nothing but pain the last six years?

I can't imagine the Conservative Party has much of a membership presence in Barking.

One of the main takeaways of the report was that there wasn't anything committed that you could describe as a war crime. The report is damning enough on so many levels without people feeling the need to devalue what the term 'war crime' means by making up what constitutes one. He should, however, face trial for gross negligence.

Of course you do.

Accepting the Conservative offer to let them vote against tuition fees probably wouldn't have saved the Lib Dems from losing popularity, but it probably would have saved them from where they are now.

I really want Gove in over that UTTER HORROR Leadsom. I'd rather not spend two months waking up in cold sweats over the tiniest possibility that she might win.

In fairness, I think the main reason nobody's made the challenge yet is because to begin with they were hoping it would lead to Corbyn stepping down rather than a direct contest, and since then because Watson's been negotiating to see if an open contest without Corbyn is at all possible (otherwise one of the two would've just stood anyway by now). A contest vs Corbyn would pretty much be the worst outcome as it would guarantee a split, come what may.

Labour had barely anything to say about the Lib Dems last year. Are we really suggesting that the Lib Dem wipeout in Devon last year came because people were keeping in mind jokes Ed Miliband was making in 2011?

I don't imagine anyone responsible for election strategy would have the sense to brief that to The Times at this stage. That said, Ed Mliband did literally brief his stuff on the NHS as 'weaponising' it as an issue, so I'm possibly being too hopeful. Nonetheless, yes - but only very slightly more. We're talking absolute basement when it comes to Corbyn for election strategy.

Aside from that fairly well known institutional advantage of having the media on-side for 25 years, which the Outers did. Not that I think being the Lib Dems on steroids would necessarily work. A lot depends on how it'd be sold really. Tacking on immigration and law and order as an afterthought to 'sate the plebs' like it seems to have been in that article would go down appallingly.

Uh...a fair few in Labour had something to say about it!

No, my point was that there's more argument for going all out for something that causes you short to medium term damage that is also a *permanent* decision. If there were a referendum on whether welfare cuts were to be permanent forever and never above whatever amount, I'd say that would require a more all-out opposition causing us damage rather than in the lead-up to a general election.

Britain will take the cold hearted dominatrix.

He can't force them to, which is why he needs to get creative - that's leadership.

The main problem they've got is that Tim Farron's too useless to get them any reliable coverage. Like a crap local vicar.

The difference is that there's rarely ever a referendum deciding the nation's permanent position on welfare. A little different here. You can take one position in opposition and work to shift public opinion once in government for a given policy area. It's going to be infinitely more difficult to do that when rejoining the EU requires the agreement of 27 nations who could well think 'do we want to risk the hassle again if this reconversion isn't total?'

Liam Fox would be the first Prime Minister to accede to the role after losing a Cabinet job for gross misconduct.

I suppose I could live with Clive Lewis on the basis that if we're going to lose, we might as well do it in a way that can move on from after the election, rather than get bogged down in "we lost because Corbyn wasn't that charismatic"/"we lost because the MPs weren't loyal to Corbyn"/insert other excuse here. Better to move through the cycle quicker rather than have Clive Lewis in 2020.