Best thing Labour could do is encourage Gove to cross the floor assuming his Tory leadership bid fails. Given his desire for social mobility and justice, he could give Labour some purpose. Not only that he is a good operator and would destroy May in the Commons.

And then you go and spoil it.
Sad!

How anyone can like or believe a word that odious little sh/t says or even find a speck of likability in his horrifically patronising demeanour is beyond me.

Gove makes Theresa May seem likeable and Tony Blair seem trustworthy.

Quote ="Him"How anyone can like or believe a word that odious little sh/t says or even find a speck of likability in his horrifically patronising demeanour is beyond me. Gove makes Theresa May seem likeable and Tony Blair seem trustworthy.'" As for Andrea Leadsom, this, from her own blog, is priceless (via metro.co.uk/2016/07/07/here-are- ... s-5993147/).

Quote ="Him"How anyone can like or believe a word that odious little sh/t says or even find a speck of likability in his horrifically patronising demeanour is beyond me. Gove makes Theresa May seem likeable and Tony Blair seem trustworthy.'" As for Andrea Leadsom, this, from her own blog, is priceless (via metro.co.uk/2016/07/07/here-are- ... s-5993147/).

Quote ="Mintball"As for Andrea Leadsom, this, from her own blog, is priceless (via metro.co.uk/2016/07/07/here-are- ... s-5993147/). '" Holy Moley. That's just...I mean...what world is she...oh dear.

Quote ="Mintball"As for Andrea Leadsom, this, from her own blog, is priceless (via metro.co.uk/2016/07/07/here-are- ... s-5993147/). '" Holy Moley. That's just...I mean...what world is she...oh dear.

Christ on a bike - it doesn't get more twee than that; from the ever so humble (former hedge fund exec) 'Tory Mum.'

I note that she doesn't add any gay ingredients to her delightful recipe - she's not at all keen on them.

The cakes will be sold at pride, it's a multi coloured cake too, it may end up resembling a rainbow

Maybe so - but they won't be wedding cakes; marriage is only for god-fearing opposite sex couples.

[url=https://medium.com/@ruthie_dee/no-longer-welcome-in-my-own-home-4672dc7a08a5#.630wevnv7“we are a political party, not a fan club.”[/url

That's an interesting read.

I've seen my union have the same issues in the past. It used to frustrate me when extremists who see everything in black and white take over. It ends up turning people off and those that are doing the shouting end up doing far more harm than good.

I also read it. I'll be honest, I'm now deeply suspect when I read accounts of people being abused, MPs receiving threats and intimidation. There have been too many cases where the reports are demonstrably untrue, going as far back as the leadership campaign itself. It's a very easy thing to set up an anonymous social media account and start sending abusive messages to your own "side" purporting to be from supporters of your enemy. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that there are feisty meetings up and down the land in the Labour Party at present. Yet it's also true - as any policeman will tell you - that no two people's accounts of the same events are ever the same. A similar account written by one of those red-T-shirted Momentum types would probably read that they saw people in the meeting denouncing them and their work, and being hostile and abusive to them, making them feel unwelcome in their own Party. It's a bit of a conundrum, and I'm not sure there's a solution.

For me, the problem the right of the party have is that they have a good riff on why holding power is important, but they are offering almost nothing on what they would do with power. On the very rare occasions when someone from Progress offers a policy opinion, it is either frighteningly Thatcherite (more cutting of benefits, more "crackdowns" on this that or the other), or it's warm and apolitical "identity politics" of the sort which has a cross-spectrum acceptance from Cameroonian Tories through LibDems.

The Right of the party (which is some 80% of the PLP, in truth) would do better to start to lay out some hard policies which they can compare with both the Tories' and Corbyn's. Instead, all I've heard now for 9 months is that Corbyn is unelectable, and should go. Fine. But who would replace him, and - more importantly - what would they stand for? Not vacuous warm words about helping the working class, but actual concrete policies that I can think about and weigh up. Corbyn's got loads - nationalising railways and power, increased Keynesian public spending, higher taxes on rich individuals and institutions etc. He also has some foreign policy obsessions and ideas which I don't always share, but I'm mature enough to know I'm never going to find a political party which subscribes to all my personal views! So what do Progress/Blairites/PLP have to offer, other than a clear and transparent desire for "electability"? What would they actually do?

Until they start to answer that question, they won't shift many Corbyn supporters.

This.

Surely the policy's of the party are led by the leader ?

The Chair of Momentum: https://twitter.com/jonlansman/status/7 ... 2766027777 "Democracy gives power to people, “Winning” is the small bit that matters to political elites who want to keep power themselves" That's one of the most depressing things I've ever read. It's all my fears in one statement - the broader party ceases to believe in power as the only viable instrument of change. It's a fantasy world.

The Chair of Momentum: https://twitter.com/jonlansman/status/7 ... 2766027777 "Democracy gives power to people, “Winning” is the small bit that matters to political elites who want to keep power themselves" That's one of the most depressing things I've ever read. It's all my fears in one statement - the broader party ceases to believe in power as the only viable instrument of change. It's a fantasy world.

Quote ="vbfg"The Chair of Momentum: https://twitter.com/jonlansman/status/7 ... 2766027777 "Democracy gives power to people, “Winning” is the small bit that matters to political elites who want to keep power themselves" That's one of the most depressing things I've ever read. It's all my fears in one statement - the broader party ceases to believe in power as the only viable instrument of change. It's a fantasy world.'" If you don't understand the nature of power and the state - or refuse to - you risk ending up like Syria: voluntarist romanticism without power or the ability to make any changes (even if you do get into government). Unfortunately, Syriza are a model for much of the 'new' left around Momentum - despite their failure to actually achieve anything in Greece.

Quote ="vbfg"The Chair of Momentum: https://twitter.com/jonlansman/status/7 ... 2766027777 "Democracy gives power to people, “Winning” is the small bit that matters to political elites who want to keep power themselves" That's one of the most depressing things I've ever read. It's all my fears in one statement - the broader party ceases to believe in power as the only viable instrument of change. It's a fantasy world.'" If you don't understand the nature of power and the state - or refuse to - you risk ending up like Syria: voluntarist romanticism without power or the ability to make any changes (even if you do get into government). Unfortunately, Syriza are a model for much of the 'new' left around Momentum - despite their failure to actually achieve anything in Greece.

Quote ="vbfg"The Chair of Momentum: https://twitter.com/jonlansman/status/7 ... 2766027777 "Democracy gives power to people, “Winning” is the small bit that matters to political elites who want to keep power themselves" That's one of the most depressing things I've ever read. It's all my fears in one statement - the broader party ceases to believe in power as the only viable instrument of change. It's a fantasy world.'" I have no idea what Lansman is talking about there. It's the dribblings of a student who isn't as clever as he thinks he is. But then, on the other hand, I remember waiting with decent anticipation for the outcome of the Cruddas Policy Review. Then it emerged and I searched and searched for anything concrete beyond meaningless touchstone words : "diversity", "devolution", "partnership", and all the rest of that cock. Hardly a policy to be seen. So we essentially now have one side who have policies but apparently don't feel the need to win power in order to implement them, while the other side very much wants to win power, but hasn't a bloody clue what it will do if it does. Pretty depressing, overall. And I STILL can't believe they chose Eagle as the opposition. Is she the only Labour MP who comes across worse on telly?

Quote ="vbfg"The Chair of Momentum: https://twitter.com/jonlansman/status/7 ... 2766027777 "Democracy gives power to people, “Winning” is the small bit that matters to political elites who want to keep power themselves" That's one of the most depressing things I've ever read. It's all my fears in one statement - the broader party ceases to believe in power as the only viable instrument of change. It's a fantasy world.'" I have no idea what Lansman is talking about there. It's the dribblings of a student who isn't as clever as he thinks he is. But then, on the other hand, I remember waiting with decent anticipation for the outcome of the Cruddas Policy Review. Then it emerged and I searched and searched for anything concrete beyond meaningless touchstone words : "diversity", "devolution", "partnership", and all the rest of that cock. Hardly a policy to be seen. So we essentially now have one side who have policies but apparently don't feel the need to win power in order to implement them, while the other side very much wants to win power, but hasn't a bloody clue what it will do if it does. Pretty depressing, overall. And I STILL can't believe they chose Eagle as the opposition. Is she the only Labour MP who comes across worse on telly?

Eagle sure as hell isn't getting my vote. Neither is Corbyn.

I'm not going to help fund its slow death and accelerating irrelevance either.

That tweet is the future and I'm done.

The only thing I have left is watching Mark Blyth videos on Youtube and wishing he was my dad.

That sort of sums up where I am.

Like Roy Haggerty I don't mind a lot of the Corbyn-ist policies. I'm not sure what if anything the PLP have against those (except maybe the Trident replacement but that's going to a free vote anyway so no issues there).

My issue is that Labour need a leader that can unite members and the PLP who has broader appeal outside meetings of Labour members. Otherwise you can forget about ever enacting any of those policies and get ready for perpetual Tory government.

Get ready?

We've had perpetual Tory government since 1979 at the very least.

Where have you been?

Apropos of nothing, the words and phrases currently heading my "if they use these I can ignore them" list.

Corbynista
Blairite
SJW
Zionist
"virtue signalling"

SJW??

Social Justice Warrior. Basically, if you speak up against rape threats in a more public part of a place like Reddit someone at some point will call you that. There was a brief period where you would be a 'cuck', i.e a cuckold, but more recently that has become more a bit of "virtue signalling" by supporters of The Donald.

And now I have to kill myself.

This is a visualisation of ideological positions from amongst different categories supporters of the two main parties. [url=http://www.britishelectionstudy.com/data-object/british-election-study-2015-face-to-face-post-election-survey/Here's the source data[/url - it's from the 2015 post-election survey. Remember then that this is about the Ed Milliband flavour of Labour and the membership of that time. The membership has moved left since then.



To the left is, naturally, more left wing. To the right more right wing. The vertical dotted line is the mean position of all those associated with the party.

Here are the main takeaways from this plot:

1) Members are more ideologically "pure" for both parties than any other grouping

2) Members are ideologically most distant from the voters who get that party in to power, as is again true for both parties.

3) The Tory MPs are further away from their base and more aligned with their voters than Labour is.

4) Labour MPs are still ideologically closer to the people who will elect them to power than any other grouping associated with the party.

This is why I voted for Corbyn. The distance between him and a pre-disposed Labour electorate is huge. I knew this when I voted for him, and voted for him anyway [url=http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/04/what-overton-windowbecause his presence could drag those voters leftward on that plot[/url.

That time is passed. It is past passed. Get elected, effect change. That's the shape of the world now.

(If anybody knows any PolSci people btw, tell them you know someone who wants them to die. Releasing data in proprietary formats that allow Social Scientists to play at statistics? FFS. Get it in a CSV file and let people choose their own damn tools)

edit: Forgot to include the [url=https://constitution-unit.com/2016/07/05/rules-matter-why-the-current-labour-crisis-is-not-only-about-ideology/link[/url. I didn't do this plot. (But it was done in R and ggplot2, like how what proper people use, and not the nonsense PolSci people think you ought to spend money on)

My vote was up for grabs. If the PLP had put up a decent candidate who espoused anti-Thatcher views, I'd have voted for them.

Not now.

Today's appalling corruption has shocked even me, and I thought I was too cynical to be shocked. Leave aside the stupid briefings demanding Corbyn "control" random nutters in Wallasey, and the dreadful procedural attempts designed only to prevent the members from voting for the man most of them want, the final straw for me was the decision - according to Peston, taken without being tabled on the agenda, and only after several pro-Corbyn voices had left the meeting - to disenfranchise more than 100,000 members. Those are people who joined up, of their own accord, and were told when joining that they were welcome in the party and could vote in leadership elections. To then disenfranchise them retrospectively, while opening a brief window for new joiners paying a premium to vote instead, is absolute banana-republic corruption. It's the sort of thing we'd laugh at in 1970s Third World dictatorships. It's disgusting.

I voted Corbyn last year because I wanted, like you, to shift that Overton window. But also because I felt too many of the Labour professional class of MPs and staffers had lost touch with the reason why they were in Labour, rather than the Tories. What has transpired today suggests that it is worse than that. They've lost touch with decency, fairness, even any sense of what democracy actually is. And they are so self-absorbed in their little bubble that they don't seem to realise what this actually looks like outside it.

I think they're mad, undemocratic and completely immoral. I'll fight for Corbyn to win again, and then I'll fight to deselect those who don't quite of their own volition.