New Labour LEADER

Callaghan lost an election because of the many, many strikes.

Thatcher curbed the union power and won 3 elections,

Blair didn’t restore full union power and win 3 elections

Galaxy, Kier Starmer's job it to carry out the will of the Labour movement membership and most importantly at this time the will of the huge affiliate membership.

That will is laid out by the Annual Delegate Conference and then enacted by the National Executive Committee.

The above is the overall Labour Movement structure. Labour is now the only Political Party in Britain that actually sets out and creates policies at its annual conference.

And that's the way it should be.

Well done to Keir and Angela - and thank all the gods it's those two who won!

So GLAD it wasn’t RLB. The Corbyn continuity candidate.

By far the best candidates for leader and deputy. I'm really looking forward to Angela adding a bit of fire to Keir's more forensic approach. Brilliant combination as Opposition.

Will keep Boris on his toes. No bad thing to be held to account and have to up your game.

Are you saying the will of the labour party membership is not to make the party electable.

Galaxy his problem will be that he will still face the very real opposition of grass roots activists who will regard him as the heir to Blair and will not want to see the party dragged down the path away from socialism once again. There is also the question of his background, university educated, southern, establishment lawyer, how is he to throw off the centrist-Westminster bubble image and appeal to the Northern seats Labour lost?

Galaxy the will of the affiliate membership, that being those who have paid all the bills of the Parliamentary Labour Party for well over one hundred years is quite simple.

All they have requested in the last forty years would be that the anti-trade union legislation that has so damaged the conditions of so many workers over the years be abolished.

If that makes the Labour Party unelectable I believe those affiliate members think, so be it.

For that stance will not change.

So a possible future PM's job is to appease the Unions and not to form policies which will be for the good of the whole country.

Of course keeping the Unions happy and onside is a good idea because they are capable of bringing misery to the majority, as those of us who have lived through it know all full.

Keir Starmer is the only sensible choice as leader of LP.
JC was IMO outdated & a scary choice to the less dedicated voter.

There should be a ? after my first paragraph.
It is question, not a statement.

Why does autocorrect change things, it thinks it knows best!

who have lived through it know full well

It is absolutely brilliant news that Corbyn back candidates also lost the NEC vote, which means Starmer can really start to rebuild the party

I know trisher imagine having an educated man as leader of the party, the horror

Yes it looks like the balance is changing urmstongran, although it was very close.

Callistemon, if Kier Starmer wishes to see different policies to those which are held by the core Labour movement at present brought forward, then it is for him to convince that broader Labour movement of the benefits of such change as he and his shadow cabinet view it.

That is simple democracy in action, and that's the way it should be.

I thought that the NPF made sure that direction of policy reflects the broad consensus of the whole Party?

And ultimately, the best for the whole of the country?

Starmers job is to win an election and help the country get back onto an even keel. Only a tiny minority of people in the country belong to a union. Starmer must appeal to a far wider audience.

There is absolutely no evidence that Starmer is “heir to Blair” and being so blinkered as to consider his back ground as university educated, southern etc - well it didn’t prevent Johnson being elected did it? He couldn’t have donee it without the working class vote.

Starmer came from an entirely working class background with a disabled mother. So in my view he stands as an aspirational roll model that proves someone from the working class can make it and then use their education and position for good in the world.

X post Grandad

(Slow typist alert)

For Nandy to come as close to Long-Bailey as she did, with only a fraction of the resources backing her is quite notable.

Momentum support was likely to be the kiss of death for any candidate, but Long-Bailey was really the wrong horse to back. Nothing going for her other than devotion to her faction.

And also demonstrates an interesting view of the North, those of us in the North are capable of voting for a university educated man. As a northerner it is Starmers career experience that appeals to me.

trisher Corbyn was the very opposite to your summing up
of Stammer, Corbyn lost the votes in the north

Callistemon, it is the Labour party/movement Annual Delegate Conference that sets out and endorses policy each time it meets. It is then for the National Executive Committee to oversee the enactment of those policies on a day to day basis between conferences.

The Annual Delegate Conference is the supreme policy-making body within the Labour movement and its decisions cannot be overruled.

It's not only people south of that mythical line from the Bristol Channel to The Wash who go to university trisher!
I even know some of them.

But it does not entirely consist of Union leaders, it should represent everyone Grandad, including those voted in to represent all those who do not belong to a Union.

Starmer is wasting no time.

He has been talking to the Chief Medical Officer and Simon Stevens CEO of the NHS

About the covid crises.

I think people will sit up and take notice of what he has to say, whereas they may have dozed off previously.