Labour leadership race 2020

Who gets the poisoned chalice?

  • Clive Lewis

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Rebecca Long-Bailey

    Votes: 2 7.7%

  • Lisa Nandy

    Votes: 8 30.8%

  • Jess Phillips

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Keir Starmer

    Votes: 13 50.0%

  • Emily Thornberry

    Votes: 3 11.5%

  • Barry Gardiner

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    26
  • Poll closed .
The person who gets the job should be the best person for the job, regardless of whether it’s a man or a woman. I don’t think any of the front running female candidates are actually up to scratch.
 
I think in an ideal world it would be a woman but EVERY one of those suggestions is going to be difficult... Jess Phillips is just too outspoken - as a woman she'd get called 'emotional' all the time in the press. Which is why the only women to be PMs in this country have been robots. As mentioned: Rayner too working class, Thornberry too posh. Dawn Foster hasn't got a hope in hell - most of the electorate just assume she's Diane Abbott Mk II for obvious reasons.

I like the idea of Clive Lewis personally too.

This Lisa what's her face that I know little to nothing about seems to be picking up some traction too..
 
I don't like to ISSUE CORRECTIONS but DAWN FOSTER is a JOURNALIST. I presume we are talking about DAWN BUTLER
 
cwej said:
They're literally NOT the party of equality. They're the party for the working class.

The Lib Dems are the party of equality.
Click to expand...

The party of equality, as led by loudly homophobic (even when literally nobody was asking) Tim Farron, and Jo Swinson, who priced people out of contesting unfair dismissal for being LGBT+ or female lol
 
VoR said:
Not that I think she's the one, but the number of people calling Jess Phillips a Tory, a Blairite, claiming they'd leave the party if she won etc is depressing me.

Nothing has been learned.
Click to expand...

I just think after turning the Jewish population off Labour, we should avoid putting black people off too.
 
Kalabaliken said:
The person who gets the job should be the best person for the job, regardless of whether it’s a man or a woman. I don’t think any of the front running female candidates are actually up to scratch.
Click to expand...

Surely, if there is no credible female candidate then it has got to be seen as a major failing of the party?
 
Interestingly, Keir has gone from bookie's favourite to 3rd in the last couple of days. RLB is now favourite with the Nandinator second.

I think I'd be okay with a Nandy victory. She needs to become a bit more inspiring in her interviews though.
 
Shirley said:
I don't like to ISSUE CORRECTIONS but DAWN FOSTER is a JOURNALIST. I presume we are talking about DAWN BUTLER
Click to expand...


Ha! When I read Dawn Foster which someone else posted I felt something was up... but I couldn't put my finger on it! :D
 
Jark said:
what absolute bollocks is this
Click to expand...

You can call it bollocks as much as you like but it's a party that has recently failed to deal with institutional racism, voted more against gay marriage than the Lib Dems did in 2013 as it did throughout the years, has never had a female leader despite being in existence for 100 years. Their politics are more progressive in terms of everything except for poor people than labour. Jo Swinson despite everything you might hate about her is the only one who has called a spade a spade and said that the two main parties both have a problem with institutional racism, which is ultimately true.
 
It's not right to see equality as something that can be separated from economics.

The biggest barrier to human dignity in this country is money. Poor people are the ones at the bottom of the tree, regardless of what colour they are. The Lib Dems' key economic policy at the election was committing to a permanent budget surplus, effectively freezing public expenditure given the UK's very limited growth.

Jo Swinson was brave to stand up for transgender rights in the way that she did (and people I know in the party told me this was a highly controversial stance among the membership), but her calling Labour racist won't put food on anyone's table or improve public services used most by the poor.
 
I really do think an Alliance where the parties all specifically represent particular strands of the progressive politics spectrum would be just the ticket.
 
cwej said:
You can call it bollocks as much as you like but it's a party that has recently failed to deal with institutional racism, voted more against gay marriage than the Lib Dems did in 2013 as it did throughout the years, has never had a female leader despite being in existence for 100 years. Their politics are more progressive in terms of everything except for poor people than labour. Jo Swinson despite everything you might hate about her is the only one who has called a spade a spade and said that the two main parties both have a problem with institutional racism, which is ultimately true.
Click to expand...

Gay marriage act 2013 - 8% of LDs voted against. 9% of Labour MPs voted against. That's hardly a resounding victory. Looking at the list I don't think many of them are still MPs on either side.

Institutional racism - no doubt has been more of an issue in the bigger parties. But it's always likely to be simply because of scale. I'm not buying that as a great call.

Female leader - Lib dems have literally just had their first and is a sign of (positive) changing times. Let's not forget that liberal Democrats have had 8 leaders since 1995 and Labour have had 3. Much easier when you've had a merry-go-round of leaders in the 21st century. It's quite likely the next labour leader will be female and the next lib dem is most likely to be Male.
 
All sexual attraction aside, I genuinely think Keir is the best person to lead the Labour Party. It would be disingenuous to not consider him based on his sex, especially when the next choice of leader is so crucial.

And yes part of this is based on the fact that I think the media would be a lot less forgiving of a female leading the Labour Party, and as much as that’s not right unfortunately I think the Labour Party does need to be more willing to play the game.
 
They really are fucked if Rebecca Long-Bailey gets it.
 
Ag said:
I really think everyone on the progressive side of politics needs to join up and vote for their fave.
Click to expand...

Is The Labour Party really the only option for those on the progressive side of politics?
 
wurst said:
Angela Rayner apparently stepping aside and going for deputy instead to give Long-Bailey a better shot...
Click to expand...

This is a shame as I think Rayner is considerably more charismatic than Long-Bailey.
 
Jess Phillips does not understand INTERSECTIONALITY. She has a dodgy tendency to erase ethnic minorities from her discourse. Not in an Enoch Powell way but in a 'you're not included' kind of way. She is always banging on about the working classes in her discourse but that never means black people from Lewisham. My feeling is she's just A BIT THICK to realise it, but it looks bad and when she has been called out on it, she doesn't reflect on it whatsoever or worse, doubles down. It's white working class women first, then the rest.

She also told Dianne Abbott to fuck off (when Dianne ALLEGEDLY told her: "you're not the only feminist in the Labour party you know" :disco: ) and that to me is a good LITMUS TEST of where you stand AS A HUMAN BEING.
 
Jess Phillips, Lena Dunham and White Feminism <- lots of really good points here.

Also, if you read her article over the weekend in the Guardian, she pretty much is saying the Labour party needs to bring the working classes back to the party. Zero mention of how the vast majority of BAME working class people all over the country voted for the Labour party. What she is saying is 'we need to appeal to the old racists who used to vote Labour if we want to get in' - I think you can WORK OUT how to bring these people back :side-eye:
 
I wish Diane Abbott was better but she's simply terrible. She's a horrific communicator. Dawn Butler is much better as a strong black female representative of the party. Great that Diane did it first and all that, but Dawn comes across so much better and far more articulate.
 
Late-night, unedited rambling:

I agree with the charge that Jess Phillips is an irritating, rent-a-quote media luvvie, even if she very bravely kept her regional accent, but I don't think it's fair to characterise her Guardian article as some sort of dogwhistle. Labour does need to win back white working class votes, many of which are distributed across the Midlands and North. Her constituency is 70% white and voted Leave. We shouldn't go down the Democrat route of abandoning these places to the right.

The worst thing about her article is that it offered no solutions beyond "having a conversation", the same thing Labour have been doing on these sort of issues for years. It was a controls on immigration mug in article form, just meaningless buzzwords about "the debate".

That said, I'm pretty sceptical about intersectionality in its current state. I suspect there's a reason that the corporate world, media and professional classes are now obsessed with talking about gender and race, often to the point where their attitudes are more progressive than minorities' own opinions. If your doctrine has been taken up by massive, exploitative corporations, then it's not a threat to them in the way proper class solidarity is. It won't create material change.

I think Corbyn had the right idea to fight the Tories with a class-based message. The problem was that it wasn't primarily a working class message, more one for the downwardly mobile middle class, and its scale was too wide to be credible for people who have lost faith. Labour should have prioritised cheaper childcare and retraining, not free university, for example. Most people round here just want easier lives, without having to struggle through the meritocratic lottery.
 
Starmer interview here where he basically sets out his leadership manifesto.

I think a lot of what he says makes good sense, although to be honest I think dropping the word 'Radical' for something that sounds a bit less scary might be a good start in terms of how Labour sells its vision to the electorate. It's too easily weaponised by the right.
 
I like Kier, he's polished, comes across well, has the right ideas and the right background in my opinion, which probably means all the BLITHERING IDIOTS in Nowheresville, Burnley find him an instant turn-off. He's a human rights lawyer, I bet he used his time in the bar to acquit A LOT OF BROWN TERRORISTS :eyes:

I'm sorry to come down all LONDON METROPOLITAN on these towns - I haven't personally been to Burnley but I do spend an awful lot of time in several towns in the North West of England and I've had it with the thinly-veiled racism, the odd looks when they cannot place your accent, the "it's not you, it's the other immigrants", their scare-mongering because A MUSLIM FAMILY MOVED DOWN THE ROAD :o, the "You're from Europe" (like YOU AREN'T), the "London liberal elite" bullshit (yeah I lead a GLAMOROUS life in FUCKING LEWISHAM) and their patronising "you don't understand because you live in London" (who is taking who for a thicko now?). Be better or just die the fuck away.
 
Indie said:
That's what I'd do.
Click to expand...

869edb2930702e371c76e3c1d7d72b46.jpg
 
Really need to learn more about them. Long-Bailey seems familiar, has she been on Have I Got News perhaps?

Much as I like Corbyn and lefty-Labour, I guess what they have to decide in terms of whether to pick a "female Corbyn" is whether they want to be a great opposition, or goodish alternative future government. We've learned the hard way that the country really doesn't want any 'obvious' level of socialism (though obviously there were other factors like Brexit and the antisemitism stuff, but from people I've spoken to in the real world they're just not far enough left economically) so they have to move to the centre if they want to win an election which would mean picking closer to a centrist leader. This would probably be a good idea in the long run as we shouldn't have the Tories for the rest of eternity. But the other side is that IMHO a lefty Corbyn type would make a great opposition to hold the Tories to account and discourage them from going too far right.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)
Back
Top Bottom