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Labour Leader: Keir Starmer IV

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Burnham would be my choice. I was impressed how it dealt with the pandemic funding for Manchester. It was a risk but his guile and confidence paid off.Lewis is interesting but I don’t think he has the potential of Burnham. I did meet him once. Seemed a decent guy.
 
droodzilla said:
In the words of Jim Bowen, look at what we could have won:

https://twitter.com/AaronBastani/status/1391852308531658757

Clive Lewis seems to be frozen out by the people in charge now but I hope his time will come.
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‘The centre ground is not a fixed position, it’s where the ruling dominant Tories are’...

Lewis nails the problem with the centre ground. The centre ground necessarily orientates itself from the Tories and will never be transformative. It will always be more or less Tory
 
Laughable revisionism here. Burnham now the main man yet no one voted for him when they had the opportunity.

Rayner making mischief in the DL role when it wasn’t quite so popular when Tom was doing the same.

I like Burnham but not sure he is the answer. Blunkett has made some good points in the ‘I’ today; yes I know you all hate him but I feel he is right on this one, LP does patronise the WC by wallowing in nostalgia.

I would like Lammy to be given a go, not now as there is too much mess to sort out.
 
Woodface said:
I would like Lammy to be given a go
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yes me too - i met him briefly in 2009 or thereabouts when he was briefly Minister for HE - seemed nice enough, has he got a cutting edge?

Woodface said:
Burnham now the main man yet no one voted for him
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hmmm - yes, i have always thought he was too smarmy, too arrogant - comes across too slick..... - maybe that is what we need.
 
gintonic said:
yes me too - i met him briefly in 2009 or thereabouts when he was briefly Minister for HE - seemed nice enough, has he got a cutting edge?


hmmm - yes, i have always thought he was too smarmy, too arrogant - comes across too slick..... - maybe that is what we need.
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If Burnham became leader the left would just throw his association with the Blair government back at him.

Ultimately I am not sure the Labour members know what they want.
 
Woodface said:
Laughable revisionism here. Burnham now the main man yet no one voted for him when they had the opportunity.
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Unlike every other recent Labour leader Burnham at least seems to have grown and matured in the time he has had a high-profile position. As a leadership candidate he came across with all the charisma and dynamism of a poorly aligned fencepost, but he has shifted in the opposite direction to say Corbyn and Starmer who both looked good initially but ended up being beyond useless. He is not a terrible mayor, and in modern UK politics that counts as quite an achievement.

Regardless I don’t think he, or anyone else, could save Labour. The party seems beyond that point now as its problems are just too fundamental, immobile and ingrained into every tired archaic fibre of its establishment structure. It is already dead, already long obsolete, and just needs removing or marginalising to minor party status to give the Greens and other real progressives a chance to bring forward a truly modern democratic and accountable politics.
 
Tony L said:
Regardless I don’t think he, or anyone else, could save Labour. The party seems beyond that point now as its problems are just too fundamental, immobile and ingrained into every tired archaic fibre of its establishment structure. It is already dead, already long obsolete, and just needs removing or marginalising to minor party status to give the Greens and other real progressives a chance to bring forward a truly modern democratic and accountable politics.
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Yes, I agree Tony. reading some of the linked articles posted above makes me despair. Labour is a total basket case and needs to be consigned to the dustbin of history. Let another progressive party have a chance.
 
Woodface said:
Laughable revisionism here. Burnham now the main man yet no one voted for him when they had the opportunity.

Rayner making mischief in the DL role when it wasn’t quite so popular when Tom was doing the same.

I like Burnham but not sure he is the answer. Blunkett has made some good points in the ‘I’ today; yes I know you all hate him but I feel he is right on this one, LP does patronise the WC by wallowing in nostalgia.

I would like Lammy to be given a go, not now as there is too much mess to sort out.
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Rayner was sacked. She wasn’t ‘making mischief’? Laughable revisionism indeed
 
Tony L said:
Unlike every other recent Labour leader Burnham at least seems to have grown and matured in the time he has had a high-profile position. As a leadership candidate he came across with all the charisma and dynamism of a poorly aligned fencepost, but he has shifted in the opposite direction to say Corbyn and Starmer who both looked good initially but ended up being beyond useless. He is not a terrible mayor, and in modern UK politics that counts as quite an achievement.

Regardless I don’t think he, or anyone else, could save Labour. The party seems beyond that point now as its problems are just too fundamental, immobile and ingrained into every tired archaic fibre of its establishment structure. It is already dead, already long obsolete, and just needs removing or marginalising to minor party status to give the Greens and other real progressives a chance to bring forward a truly modern democratic and accountable politics.
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There is a massive difference between a regional Mayor & a national leadership role. Look at the mess Livingstone got himself into even though he was seen as good Mayor.

I think Lammy is different enough but some would just see him as another Barrister.
 
Woodface said:
If Burnham became leader the left would just throw his association with the Blair government back at him.

Ultimately I am not sure the Labour members know what they want.
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The Labour members know what they want and have voted for it and spoken up for it consistently. It is the ruling right wing within the party that has shut down debate in CLP’s to deny members expressing what they want.
 
Woodface said:
Laughable revisionism here. Burnham now the main man yet no one voted for him when they had the opportunity.

Rayner making mischief in the DL role when it wasn’t quite so popular when Tom was doing the same.

I like Burnham but not sure he is the answer. Blunkett has made some good points in the ‘I’ today; yes I know you all hate him but I feel he is right on this one, LP does patronise the WC by wallowing in nostalgia.

I would like Lammy to be given a go, not now as there is too much mess to sort out.
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Revisionism from whom? I've no enthusiasm for Burnham, although on a personal level he's easier to warm to than most. A lot of your posts suggest that you think of PFM as one person, who has it in for you.

"You're patronising the working class!" is just another tired Blairite cliche: it's code for "Stop banging on about workers' rights. The plebs like flags! Give them some flags!"
 
mandryka said:
How interesting is Ainsley’s book, Sean?
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I've only read second hand accounts. It looks...not interesting enough to actually read (fair bit of re-heated Blue Labour guff; static and instrumentalist approach to values) but more interesting than the strategy that's supposed to be based on it. For instance the book deals with young people, low wages, precarity - it's not all about pensioners and patriotism.
 
Woodface said:
Blunkett has made some good points in the ‘I’ today; yes I know you all hate him but I feel he is right on this one,
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Dunno.. Haven't seen them.. but my experience of Blunkett is that he was among the most authoritarian of his contemporaries and imposed policies around education and associated issues such as Career Guidance, Youth Services in general.. which were clearly based entirely on the deep prejudices he developed around his disability. Those policies led to a very unbalanced, ineffective system..and ultimately a Tory backlash involving the destruction/dispersal/abandonement of some World Beating public services. A very dangerous man indeed.
 
droodzilla said:
In the words of Jim Bowen, look at what we could have won:

https://twitter.com/AaronBastani/status/1391852308531658757

Clive Lewis seems to be frozen out by the people in charge now but I hope his time will come.
Click to expand...

He's clearly wrong though - he doesn't spend enough time on PFM ;)

The Channel 4 poll on Friday evening was interesting when asked the main reason why they didn’t vote Labour - 4 percent said Labour was too left wing and 2 percent that it was “too woke”. “Bad on immigration” was 0 percent. Starmer was the main reason.
 
Woodface said:
I think Lammy is different enough but some would just see him as another Barrister.
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I like David Lammy. He seems largely uncorrupted by the party focus-group enforced ambiguity etc and is still prepared to use his own moral compass regardless of any backlash, e.g. calling the Tories exactly what they were over Grenfell, Windrush etc. He still has a spine, but as stated I don’t think the issue here is leadership, it is more about what those who really control the party do once a candidate is made leader. Lammy would face exactly the same forces that impaled Corbyn on the moral ambiguity fence of focus group paralysis and has shrouded Starmer in flags and authoritarianism. The problem is the party is a dysfunctional archaic wing of the undemocratic conservative establishment and a handful of decent people in the ranks will never change that. Just kill it!
 
There's always a tension between what the Party members want, who MPs will support and what the electorate will vote for. (For Labour there's the added factor of what the unions will put up with).

All this talk of Burnham, Lammy, Lewis, Rayner et al is pointless unless and until Labour has sorted out what it's for, rather than just what it's against (though it would be helpful if Labour could state unequivocally that it is against tax breaks for the rich). It would be better to keep Starmer in place for now, and get the policies right, rather than hoping that a different front man/woman will solve everything.
 
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