I see the PM is showing his credentials for being classed as the man of the people who understands the troubles they face by having his Christmas Dinner delivered by Harrods and spending New Years Eve on the island of Mustique. This is the home of the rich and famous. I remember Blair was often criticised for his holidays by the right wing press but currently no mention of the double standards.
The Sun appears more interested in trying to rubbish anyone who is considering standing as the new leader rather than commenting on the homeless crisis for example. I wonder why start so early because it is five years before it is put back to the public unless they believe Labour supporters will take any notice of their selection.

He never was and never will be a man of the people but, on the back of Brexit and "taking back control" many of the people in the North of England seem to have been taken in.
Labour needs to start getting it's act together and be ready for 5 years time - assuming that the Tories make it to the end of a fixed term period - for the first time.
Boris is a very privileged man and will never have any true empathy for many of those who have just voted for him - mind you, that's not Boris's fault.
Labour MUST find a centre left leader and forget the hard left Corbyn/ Foot style, it will NEVER be popular enough among the masses - NEVER.

It does amuse me when various Labour figureheads are popping up now saying "we need to come out of our metropolitan bubble and start really listening to the communities that we lost" and then in the next breath say "the next Labour leader has to be a woman and has to be someone whose constituency is outside London".

Have they come to this conclusion from people on the doorstep in northern/midland constituencies saying "I can't vote for Boris, I want a woman who is located out of London" or has it just come from talking to people in the Labour metropolitan bubble.

Yep you're right, the PM should be in a massive queue at Aldi frantically chucking his budget turkey, spuds and booze in an array of old plastic bags, before legging it to Bargain Booze half an hour before closing in a panic because 48 cans of Carling, 4 bottles of £2 Prosecco, 8 bottles of £4 wine, 8 litres of White Lightning and 4 bottles of a generic "London" gin might not be enough for the next 2 days because the in-laws are coming over and we all know they take the p[ss.

You're just displaying envy, which is not an attractive trait, but very common on the left. He has money, let him spend it and his time as he sees fit. Who made you arbiter of acceptable destinations or food providers? I understand perfectly well how someone can have money troubles, I certainly did when I started out - that doesn't mean I'm going to live like that in solidarity. No, I'm going to enjoy the fact I can spend a bit on the decent things in life.

IIRC, Blair was criticised for not declaring a conflict of interest for at least one holiday, and for staying with Berlusconi on a couple of occasions(?) - at a property that was later seized in a corruption enquiry? Something like that anyway. I may have some of that wrong but there were certainly questions surrounding his hosts.

Anyway have you SEEN the Labour possibles? If any of them get in you've got a decade of Boris in power - and if he does a good job you can kiss Labour goodbye for a generation. I don't read the Sun but I imagine they - like the rest of us - are killing themselves laughing at the calibre of the candidates, as well as the excuses, apologies and almost blanket lack of understanding coming from Labour leadership.

Never mind, I'm sure Stormzy can turn the tide.

While I can envisage a decade of Tory rule, I don't think it will be a decade of Johnson rule. If he even makes it through this first 5 years, I'll bare my backside in Harrods window.

You better start hitch-hiking now, do you even know where Harrods is?

I like to go there to see if I can see my hero, Tim Martin, spending his millions.

Johnson is more secure [iat this point[/i because there isn't an obvious alternate leader around.

When Cameron was there, the obvious contenders for the succession were Osborne and Johnson. Theresa May benefited from Osborne's departure and the sabotage of Johnson's campaign by Gove, but from then on there was always a brooding Johnson waiting for his moment.

When you have that kind of contender with future ambitions, they aren't a threat to the existing PM as long as their ambitions have a timescale that doesn't clash with the existing PM and they feel the existing PM is giving them sufficient promotion and opportunity to build their power base (eg Osborne for Cameron, or Brown in the early days with Blair). Once the wannabe leader feels their time is due, they cluster allies around them who start briefing against the PM and causing mischief (Brown later on; Johnson).

At the moment I think Johnson is in the fortunate position that his coronation has seen off the rivals of his own generation. The old guard like Fox, Gove, Davis, Hunt are not going to be leader now. It's likely that the next leader of the Tory party will be from the next generation, who at this point will be looking to put in their loyal service for a few years. Someone like Rishi Sunak might be a favourite pet of Johnson, willing to do the work, turn up for the tough interviews that Johnson doesn't fancy doing, but who won't be a short-term threat.

But there will be trouble down the road. William Hague has a quote like: "the Tory party is always loyal to its leader....until its not". It has a record of discipline much better than Labour's, until there's a sniff of weakness in the leader and the vultures circle. Even Thatcher became insecure once the Tories started to lose by elections in safe heartlands and with an election 18 months away many Tory MPs started to look nervously at their own seats and be susceptible to the argument 'if only we had a new leader, we might get away with our jobs'. That example might show the potential end for Johnson - the impacts of Brexit are likely to hit the north/midlands industrial base (what's left of it) disproportionately harder than the services-based south. There are a lot of Tory MPs in those areas now with smallish majorities and if the economy goes bad they will be nervous.

Johnson is an enthusiast for history and so he will have seen the way rulers of the past have met various sticky ends. I think he may be different from Thatcher and Blair in that I don't know if he has the drive in him to go on and on past his sell by date as leader. Those two were driven by having a vision of how the country should be and wanted to remake it in that way, which made them cling to power. Being PM probably just appeals to Johnson's vanity in the way being President appeals to Trump. It's something he has always wanted to 'do' but I think he will get tired of the pressure and complexity of office sooner than Thatcher and Blair did. I also think Johnson likes the idea of being an important/popular figure in public life more than just squatting in Downing Street. He might look at Churchill and MacMillan and how they became seen as national treasures in their later life, and look at Blair now trying to have his say on various issues and being treated with scorn, and think he'd rather be a Churchill or MacMillan.

Silly me, this being a rugby forum, I thought it was about Anthony Gelling

Looking at the names banded as possible leaders of the Labour party moving forward Labour will do well to not fall even deeper into the mire never mind overturning the tories majority in 5 years time.

I agree
Of all the names mentioned so far, there is only Starmer and Cooper who should be anywhere near the position of leader.
Thornbury is just awful and although Long Baily and Angela Raynor may well be political heavyweights of the future, they are nowhere near ready yet and will be seen as being too close to Corbyn's politics to make any significant change to the direction of the party and change is something that Labour must do.

I dont see them getting anywhere near No 10 at the next election and they probably need to be looking at the following election.

The very small silver lining to the cloud of another 5/10 years of Tory rule is that they wont be able to dodge responsibility for the state of the country and the ecconomy and the fall out from Brexit. Although, I suppose that they will most likely blame the EU, if we dont get a free trade deal, something that I dont think the EU can actually afford to give, as it would massively weaken the future of the Union.

He claimed that he had negotiated a new and much improved withdrawal agreement with the EU when in fact all he did was relocate the border from land to the sea. It did not change the fact that a border would be in place but as per usual it was portrayed as a great new deal that only he could have negotiated. He and his friends in the press continued to push this line despite it being disproved as per usual.
I expect that whatever he agrees with the E.U. on trade if he does it will be handled the same but this time he does not have an existing agreement to work on.
They won the election therefore it is our responsibility to point out when they do not live up to the few promises he made, no more hiding in fridges but I expect a lot of dodging of interviews other than through the right wing press just like Trump and Fox.

Yvette Cooper has no chance - a bully when she was in Brown's inner-sanctum now she is out of the chosen few. She was an arch remainer who tried to overthrow the democratic vote on Brexit. She also has a slender majority - she would have gone had it not been for the Brexit party

You may be right but, she is someone who at least isn't seen as being part of the Corbyn shadow cabinet who, let's face it, didn't come out of the election with too much credibility and Labour has to change direction or they could be done, for a very, very long time.

Regardless of the fact that they have picked up seats "up North", without any serious opposition, the Tories will cause some real harm to certain parts of the electorate.
Despite his flying visit to Lancashire and the North East, Boris is true blue and doesn't give a tinkers toss about those outside his inner circle and at some point you would expect a gaffe that will prove terminal to his political ambitions.

I agree with wrencat that the best two would be Starmer or Cooper, based on capability to actually do good governance. Long Bailey will not be PM and the people supporting her know that, her candidacy is about the hard left holding on to control of the party institutions. Karie Murphy, Seamus Milne will stay involved at the top, RLB knows that her position owes a lot to them because she's been chosen and promoted by them and so will be easy to control.

I think the strategy of the hard left is basically hold control of the party for long enough and eventually they will obtain power by default. The Conservatives cannot win forever. Economic crashes have a way of sweeping governments out of power in a way that the long slog of austerity hasn't - look at how New Labour - who were sitting pretty after the 'Brown bounce' in 2007, melted away over the next two years. When people lose their jobs and houses they turn on the government. I think privately a number in the left feared a situation where Corbyn became PM, inherited this Brexit mess, had to keep together a coalition of Lib Dems and SNP, and the country fell into recession straight after Brexit, it would have been the ultimate validation both for Tories to say - "see, when Labour come in power you get an economic crisis" and for Blairites to say, "see, the left ruin the economy". So the RLB strategy is about keeping control of the party and waiting. If a crisis did happen and the Tories lost, then Seamus Milne would be in No10 running things, like Dominic Cummings is really running things not Boris.

But that won't happen if Starmer or Cooper are there. Although the Tories would scoff at either of those being chosen - "remainer elite", they would fear either of them much more than Long Bailey or the others. They would fear that if the economy tanks after Brexit, the disaffected remainers would have a rallying point, and that could see a coalescence of 'middle England' and the business community around a centre-left Labour, which is the position that checkmated them during the Blair era. They would remove Labour's association with the hard left, antisemites etc, in a way that I don't think the other leaders would.

I do think both Starmer and Cooper face a difficult task in winning the leadership though. Probably only one of them at best can get through the MPs ballot. If they get through to the members though, it will be interesting. Starmer in particular would pick up a lot of the youth vote that rallied behind Corbyn last time.

RLB has been quiet recently. Her team is probably keeping her out of the media using the strategy that Boris did - when you are the favourite, say as little as possible to avoid gaffes, and just get through till the vote. But if the polls of members started to suggest the race was close or she slipped behind Starmer, then she'd have to come out and show what she was about, and I'm not sure she will come across very well. Her big ticket will be 'Green New Deal' but she isn't a charismatic figure like AOC in the USA. When I have seen her she has seemed more suited to just loyally repeating party lines. Starmer is more of an independent thinker and although he's a quiet and understated character, he will beat her for clarity of argument and intellect.

The challenge for Starmer down the track is he lacks charisma in terms of big speeches, and he isn't a Blair who can give good pithy sound bites. He is more like the classical lawyer, who will make a lengthy and well researched argument, but that doesn't always work well in modern political comms. Still, he'd be much better than RLB.

Cooper...I think she's good, but I think she will find a struggle given that she's been around a long time. She'd face similar problems that Hilary did in the US. The press would give her a hard time as a woman, and also she has been on the scene too long to be a credible 'change' candidate.