Sensible discussion on Labour Leadership hopefuls

Grandad

We agree to many things because when it is ' staring us in the face' there is only the avenue left of being honest.

To be fair to Rebecca Long Bailey the ' Iron fist' comment was spoken I believe before she won her constituency and became an MP. Happy to be told otherwise.

However she has most certainly rose up the ranks extremely quickly alongside Laura Pidcock and Angela Raynor but Raynor will stand as Deputy Leader in a pact probably and Laura Pidcock lost her seat.

All 3 women never deviated from the Momentum/Corbyn/McDonnell mantra and I honestly think the only candidate the Unions would put up alongside Rebecca Long Bailey would be Richard Burgon MP, Burgon is a robot who keeps to the script and will suit/serve the left/Far Left Unions very well.

trisher

'Oh POGS it has been tried. Have you forgotten Chuka etc? They were going to form a new party weren't they ?'
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You are totally ignoring the scale of what ' could' happen if it is the Unions who are the ones to make the decision to ' Split' the party by no longer financing some Parliamentary Labour Party Members they deem as right/Center Right ' Blairite' faction. I am sure even Grandad accepts ' Blairite' has become a term to denote in a mild derogatory form those who are against the now preferred left/Far Left Corbyn/Momentum Labour Party .

Time will tell if it happens but this will be an acrimonious time for Labour and if the Corbyn/Momentum/Unionists who hold the nuts and bolts of Labour decide that is their chosen path, that is what will happen. The question is since Corbyn/Momentum took over in 2015 can the clock be turned back as it did when Neil Kinnock booted out MILITENT, is there an appetite for the fight which will probably see more intimidation and harrasment directed at elected MP's.

I am not ignoring anything POGS but as has already been shown trying to establishing a new party is not as easy as you seem to think. I would imagine many MPs, who felt themselves not left wing enough for the Labour movement now, looked with interest at the attempt to form a new party, and have learned their lesson. So given a choice between being deselected (and there is a process for doing that you know Momentum can't just demand it), becoming more left wing or splitting the party , they will choose to fall in line. Interesting isn't it Labour MPs are intimidated and harassed, Tory MPs are just brought in line and made to follow the party whip.

trisher I honestly think that the Labour Party needs to take a long look at itself. Its priority must be to get voted into government and to forget ideological purity. The party needs to understand why people don't see it as the answer to their problems. I believe Blair did understand that, which is why he won three elections. At the moment, the Labour Party isn't doing any favours to the people it claims to help.

If you don't follow them already, it's worth looking at John Harris' videos on the state of the country:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2019/dec/13/anywhere-but-westminster-how-labour-lost-and-the-hope-that-endures-video

These are real people, who all have a vote and feel nobody is listening to them.

growstuff the problem with the `Blair years is that they effectively sowed the seeds for a real disinterest in politics and a fall in the numbers of people voting. The perception being that there was very little difference between the parties so why bother. Add to that the real distrust Blair generated because of his actions, his self interest and his warmongering and so many people were put off politics by him. He may have won three elections but his legacy is horrendous.
I'm afraid that the future however the LP develops will be very dark.

Which is why the Labour Party needs to take a good look at itself and think about who it actually wants to represent.

growstuff Quote [trisher I honestly think that the Labour Party needs to take a long look at itself. Its priority must be to get voted into government and to forget ideological purity. ] End Quote.

growstuff, The Tony Blair administration concentrated on "getting voted into power" which involved cosying up to the bankers, very wealthy non-doms and even the likes of Rupert Murdoch.

The above was to bring about when he did accomplish government the flourishing of Zero Hour Employment Contracts and Gig Economy Terms of Employment along with the British end of the banking crisis and the Iraq war.

It was average salary/wage earners who paid for that banking crisis with their jobs and their homes together with all the family breakups and stress that went together with all the above. However, not one person from the Banking Industry has ever faced justice for all they brought about by way of their greed and total ineptitude, and all that while Blair and his cronies look on.

It was all of the above which turned many in the Labour movement to resolve that such a government will never again reside in Downing Street under the banner of the Labour movement.

It should never be the ambition of any political party to just achieve power at any cost. However, it must be in the ambition of every political party to achieve power while retaining its core principals, and that must be especially prevalent in the Labour Party and its broader movement.

There was much more in the Blair administration that the Labour movement has resolved should never happen again, but the above will do for now.

Going back to 1935 ?

Which would you prefer Grandad? A Blair or Johnson government?

Growstuff, I would not prefer not to see either of the above in government in Britain. I wish to see a government who protects the most vulnerable in our society and in that protects workers in low skills industries from exploration and the race to the bottom in terms of wages and conditions.

The above poor conditions, when allowed to happen, has brought about the detriment to reasonable employers who wish to engage in good conditions and wage terms with their employees.

I expect a Tory government not to wish to see an end to such conditions, but when Blair's so-called Labour administration allowed such employment terms to flourish that was nothing short of totally disgusting.

Apologies that should be "prefer not to see" in the first paragraph of my above post.

Hear, hear Grandad1943. EXACTLY.

Grandad - your post up thread suggests that posters who criticise Long Bailey's 'iron fist' rule, somehow approve of Johnson banning his MP's from appearing on the Today programme, as this could be seen as ruling with an iron fist.

Nope -I disapprove strongly of Johnson taking the line he has with the BBC. I disapprove even more strongly of his politics.

I could give a list a page long of the differences blair made to peoples lives. There would be no list for corbyn because he has never achieved power. But then again I am not sure power is actually that important to the current labour party.

The only Labour leader who will not be villified and ridiculed by the mainstream media will be one that is prepared to dance to the tune of the powerful. Blair is the evidence of that - de-regulation of the financial market, easing of restrictions on gambling, increasing pub hours, introducing PFI arrangements for schools and hospital, dragging us into the Iraq war. Yes, he did some very good things but, sadly, most of those good things are but a distant memory and many of the bad things have had calamitous consequences in this country and throughout the world.

I liked Corbyn and I think he was monstrously treated by the mainstream media. I will, however, continue to support the Labour Party even if the leader that is chosen is not one I would choose. I voted for Blair despite my disillusionment with him, particularly with regard to Iraq, because I felt that his actions did not nullify the contributions of the numbers of decent and competent Labour MPs. I still wonder whether I did the right thing.

At the moment, I quite like Rebecca Long Bailey, Lisa Nandy and Caroline Flint. I realise that in some respects they represent very different strands of Labour but on balance their voting records seem to me to broadly represent much of what many Labour supporters would expect of the party. I am not at all keen on Jess Phillips, and her voting record in several areas yields the response "there is not enough information ....". which makes her views on those areas unfathomable.

Anyone who wins without yielding to the wishes of the rich and powerful will have to be a pretty astute and tough cookie to hold it all together under the inevitable barrage of innuendo, sneering and false claims that will inevitably stalk them via almost every media outlet.

So why bother to support a party of the left, I wonder. Maybe it's the triumph of hope over experience.

Caroline Flint lost her seat ,

Blair won 3 consecutive elections so he got something right.

Corbyn lost 2 consecutive elections, so he got something wrong.

I became aware of Tony Blair when he was Shadow Home Secretary. I remember watching a tv debate with him and 3 other politicians. I've long forgotten the subject but remember being impressed with him. I thought that he was a breath of fresh air. Under him the Labour government enacted some good legislation.

I think that he became too powerful and got his own way especially over the Iraq War. The final straw for me was when he talked about praying with George Bush before making the final decision to go to war.

I disliked Thatcher because (apart from being a Tory) she was too powerful. Her speech in which she said "we are a grandmother" made me so angry that it started a chain reaction and I ended up in hospital with a bad asthma attack.

Johnson is going the same way - too powerful for anybody to stop him. The more powerful the government, the more extreme the policies.

Eloethan your post is the thoughtful antidote to those who attack the personality and believe they are the voice coming down from Mount Senai with tablets of stone saying what the LP must stand for rather than it being the voice of its membership.

I shall watch out for the person and party who stand up for those who live on what they earn and do not have the fall back that the wealthy do. It's workers without wealth that need support but that is not, as you say, the person, whoever they are, that the older media will support. That, and almost more important at this point, greening the economy. They may, of course, not be Labour.

I disliked Thatcher but I think ‘we are a grandmother’ was simply an error when she was very emotional.

She wasn't emotional when she made that speech.

Fancy we are a grandmother making you so angry that you ended up in hospital Dinahmo
I can't see anything in the answers to the series of daft questions asked by the reporter to warrant such an extreme reaction.
We just assumed she was excited (as anyone would be) and meant 'we are grandparents'.

It was a source of amusement though.

Dan Jarvis is considering standing for the leadership

Yes, I heard him interviewed on radio 4 today. He's an interesting addition to the leadership race. Good.

Many wanted him to stand in 2015 but he wanted to give his children his time.