Labour's meaningless election

As the only Labour leadership candidate with a spark of personality and emotional verve has pulled out, I’m inclined to switch off until another tiresome Labour leadership contest is over. Jess Phillips last week exited a race that ever since Blair was chosen as party leader in 1994 has been marketed by the Party as about putting power in the hands of the members. Yet Phillips departed not because she had failed to convince Labour Party members, or the wider public, but because she knew she couldn’t be confident of the support of enough Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) (or the support of two big trade unions) to ensure that she’d get through to the next round. It is only when these hurdles are jumped by candidates that the much vaunted ‘one member, one vote’ process will actually kick in and the real leadership election will start as ordinary members get to decide for themselves who to vote for.

Well, them and registered party ‘supporters’, a cheapo membership scheme introduced, in his perverse wisdom, by Ed Miliband for those people who (understandably) can’t endure going to members’ meetings. And among these ‘Labour supporters’ who in April will be determining who the next Labour Prime Minister might be, will be those who bought themselves a vote by registering as supporters as recently as mid-January. All’s fair then.

The absurdities of Labour’s leadership electoral system are a reflection of its spatchcock compromise between Labour’s historical roots as a parliamentary-orientated party paid for by organised labour, and the bizarre contemporary influence of US primaries. This has produced a corrupt charade where all party members are potential voters but some voters aren’t party members (and some of these have simply paid £25 to vote). Success in the election depends on garnering the backing of enough MPs and then the approval of enough CLP meetings or, proving that in the Labour Party the past is always present, a couple of trade union barons.

The actual leadership election this April was always going to include the candidate who wrote Labour’s least successful manifesto since George Lansbury’s poor performance paved the way for the takeover of the party in 1935 by that masterfully bland public school boy, Mr Clement Attlee. Rebecca Long Bailey’s skilled authorship of Labour’s most recent ‘longest suicide note in its history’ was facilitated by the man who had already blessed her prospective leadership. In December Mr Corbyn’s reverse Midas touch meant that party volunteers like me had to knock on doors with an unsellable message from an unconscionable leader. Long Bailey is likely to be among the final two thanks to the imprimatur of the man who led Labour to a defeat markedly worse in seat terms than Michael Foot’s in 1983.

Like the other, current, front runner, Sir Keir Starmer, Rebecca has been in parliament for all of five years. If I am not mistaken, this is the same depth of parliamentary experience enjoyed by Lisa Nandy too. Emily Thornberry though has been traipsing round the Westminster corridors for an incredible decade. Gosh. Better perhaps than Corbyn who’s been there since 1983 but who not only lacks ministerial experience – like every single Labour leadership candidate this time round – but hasn’t even previously shadowed the government minister for office stationery.

Sir Keir Starmer was anointed at birth with the name of Labour’s second most popular leader, and is eager to emphasise that he too has a (relatively) proletarian background in order to offset the knighthood he secured for an indifferent performance as the head of Public Prosecutions.

Thornberry’s disadvantaged Oxford graduate and high-paid lawyer routine probably won’t impress. Lisa Nandy genuinely understands that Labour’s disconnect with its onetime (white) working-class base is almost terminal, but this message is too difficult for the party’s liberal middle class chauvinists to process. Therefore it’ll be down to either Starmer or Long Bailey to bore the electorate over the next five years.

Long Bailey’s seismically dull campaign launch - head down, droning on from a tiresome text - suggests that she will only inspire those for whom having a politically ‘correct’ (i.e. leftist) message is what matters. Not the fact that it’s delivered, like the current leadership incumbent, with all the charisma, style and authority of a deputy borough council leader. 

She told the Party that being a working-class woman means that she’s doubly-disadvantaged. This cynical little routine comes from yet another former lawyer, but one who thinks that the way to reach the working-class is affecting to sound like them. 

So we’ll presumably end up with Keir Starmer. A onetime student Trotskyist with little hope of reaching those parts of the country that began being lost by Labour more than 40 years ago and which now vote Johnson. Still, the brave knight will be good at the dispatch box cut and thrust. And that’s what will convince on the door step, isn't it? 

Labour will never get out of this mess until it restores the election of the leadership of the Parliamentary Labour Party solely to Labour politicians elected to Parliament. Historically this method didn't always produce the most plausible leaders to contest a national election. However it usually had the virtue of producing someone who not only understood what contesting a national election entailed, but who could authoritatively articulate an inclusive message to the whole of the nation. 

Labour leadership ballot: A victory for common sense

I have just mailed my Labour Leadership ballot. It was a tough decision to bring myself to vote for “none of the two sad saps whose old hard left and neo-right wing cabals, respectively, have done so much damage to the Party since the 2015 leadership election”. But it had to be done. It is only sad that a spoilt virtual ballot isn’t possible too, given that the greater majority of members have and will vote online.

I don’t like being an abstainer, but Militant-reborn (Momentum) versus Mr Smith’s cynical little “retail offer” of left-sounding bargains for the undiscerning shopper in the Labour leader market place is absolutely no choice at all. The UK isn’t a presidential system. The morons at Labour HQ who invited me to vote for “Labour’s candidate to be the next Prime Minister” should consider improving their knowledge of our hard-won democratic political system rather than taking courses in law, computer studies or perpetual revolution. Our last wholly inadequate Labour leader didn’t understand our political system either, and bequeathed us Labour (would-be) prime minister primaries. Consequently, votes to determine Labour’s parliamentary leader have been bought by a ragtag bunch of leftist discontents who’ve rarely sullied their hands with campaign material in a general or local election, let alone knocked on doors outside of red rosette donkey territory and tried to persuade a member of the working class of the joys of socialism and unrestricted immigration.

Four of the only six Labour prime ministers in British history - MacDonald, Attlee, Wilson and Callaghan - were elected by the votes of Labour MPs only. The other two were for the most part supported by the Parliamentary Party but either defined themselves against Labour (Blair) or were wholly incapable of talking to the country (Brown).


Once Jeremy has taken us to our worst general election defeat since 1918 and, please God, resigns, can we take the parliamentary leadership vote away from party members, registered supporters and affiliated members, and place it where it belongs? I mean with those who are Labour parliamentary representatives, and who know what it’s like to talk to voters and do not see parliament as merely a platform for mobilising the masses toward some imagined socialist nirvana. Then perhaps plausible Labour parliamentary leaders (and thus plausible British prime ministers) can throw their hat into the ring, such as Hilary Benn and …eh…..eh…Yvette Cooper…eh…

Corbyn threatens to unleash activists on elected Labour MPs

If I was remotely waivering about NOT voting for Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader, the latest pronouncement of the man has clinched it for me. Corbyn is threatening to discipline elected representatives of the people (i.e. MPs) with the pressure of un-elected activists if Labour MPs don't back him as leader. 

If this sounds familiar it is partly what the neo-Blairites thought they could achieve by setting up the registered supporters scheme a couple of years ago. It is absolutely what Benn unleashed in the 1970s and '80s. 

Remember "extra-parliamentary action"? Benn used it, and the force of his acolytes and Troskiyite fellow-travellers in the Party, to try and force his way into the leadership of the party against the wishes of many elected Labour MPs and of the then party leader Jim Callaghan and then Michael Foot (both far greater men than JC could ever dream of being). 

It was Foot who, as leader, told the Party Conference in 1981 that "Labour Party democracy" has to be a marriage of what the members want and what the Parliamentary Labour Party wants. Foot knew his history - Labour history and British democratic history. The semi-Burkean in him didn't believe that MPs were elected by the public to be told what to do by party activists accountable to no one but themselves.

Labour is doomed if Corbyn really is the answer

After last night's LBC Radio leadership debate I am starting to think that the UK Labour Party is doomed. Perhaps the best hope is the proposed party reform to trigger a new leadership election with a small amount of MPs' support (and possibly some members' backing too)....but only if the party thinks about the need to build a national (UK) coalition to win a general election and about who has the personality and intellect (gravitas even) to do it. This possibly means persuading/begging a few people to leave the back-benches/semi-retirement including Alan Johnson and David Blunkett. It certainly means thinking seriously about people like Hilary Benn. 

Corbyn "won" last night's radio debate because even a bearded prig from the old People's Republic of Islington (who like the other 3 hasn't had a real job in his life despite what they all claimed last night) can "do human". The other 3 forfeited their claims on this test, and confirmed that after the public revulsion at spin and expenses they still don't "get it", when they wouldn't answer whether they'd give Ed Miliband a job in the shadow cabinet that one of them will have to put together in 2 months time. 

I screamed at the radio at this point and almost voted for Jeremy on the spot. God help us (and I mean that).

There is a wider revolt going on and it's affecting the leadership election. The most democratic one ever (and perhaps that needs to be changed in the future too). Many of the new and old party members, quite a few of those who have bought their vote at £3 a pop in the appalling "registered supporters" scheme brought in by right-wing Labour lovers of US primary style elections, and no doubt a large number of the 50,000 plus trade union members (whose unions contribute to the Party) who are registering to vote individually, are in revolt. They are UK Syriza/Podemos/English SNP, and they aren't going to take it any more. And the three "serious" candidates still don't get it......

Labour leadership contest - a battle of the nice, the bland and the mostly unqualified

Yvette Cooper, who is seeking the Labour leadership, has ministerial experience and been an MP since 1997. Tom Watson, candidate for deputy Labour leader, has been in parliament since 2001 and has ministerial and top flight select committee experience. They're both absurdly overqualified and should withdraw now. Obviously people who've only been an MP for 5 years and only held junior shadow ministerial jobs are the ones to be taken seriously.

In the end though it will be Burnham or Cooper who come out on top, with the seriously unqualified Liz Kendall coming in a strong third. Caroline Flint might get the deputy leader job. Her campaign email emphasises her apparently impeccable proletarian credentials, always popular among the comrades, and then belatedly goes on to talk about the Party's need to connect with people of all backgrounds. Oh yeah Caroline. Any ideas on how to do that? Andy gives us "aspiration"; the buzzword everyone echoed as soon as Labour lost.

The only member of the Labour front bench with gravitas, passion, and the intellectual heft to face up to the dire state of the party after one of its worst performances for 80 years, is Hilary Benn. And he's backing Andy Burnham.

Benn obviously assumes he wouldn't win. A calculation perhaps based on him unsuccessfully challenging dear Harriet's assumption as deputy leader in 2007, and popular dislike of political dynasties. Or maybe, like another very able "might have been", Alan Johnson, he doesn't really hunger for it.