Rebecca Long Bailey: why she must step out of Corbyn's shadow
Most people were always going to view Rebecca Long-Bailey’s bid for Labour’s top job through the lens of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. That meant some members would never get behind his chosen successor, while others were destined to vote for Long-Bailey come what may.
The contest to replace a leader as polarising as Corbyn was always going to have that effect. On some occasions, Long-Bailey has struggled to break out of the straitjacket of being seen as the continuity candidate. On others, she has actively leaned into it, as when she was recently interviewed by Corbyn for a campaign video.
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Lisa Nandy: a Leadership candidate who thinks for herself
If you ask people in the Labour Party for one word that defines Lisa Nandy, many of them would respond with “Towns”. She set up the Centre for Towns and has long advocated an economic rebalancing to support places like her constituency of Wigan, which she has represented since 2010. If this campaign were going to be won on the meme game alone, Nandy would triumph hands down, thanks to her presence across Twitter and Facebook.
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Richard Burgeon is right - we need more political education
Political education has long been a feature of the broad left. In part, this is because they — rightly — feel that most sources of information tend to have a rightward bias. What’s more, the further left you are, the more you feel this to be true.
The truth is that the press has its political leanings and on the whole, it tends to the right. While I don’t buy the line that the BBC is also biased — either to right or left — they do take some of their hierarchy of content from what is reported in the papers, which only enhances the problem.
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Labour isn't electing the next PM - it's electing the next Neil Kinnock
Recently, much of the discussion in the Labour leadership contest has focused on the need to abandon factionalism — the current front-runner, Keir Starmer, is the latest to make that point. But despite the warm words from all the candidates, it is not certain whether this is possible or desirable, and, if it is, who will make it happen.
There is a sense from many Labour members and supporters that they are not electing the next Prime Minister, but someone to reprise the role of Neil Kinnock. The next Labour leader won’t necessarily be the one to get the party over the line and into Number 10, but the person who will do the hard work of making the party functional again. The next election will not be “one more heave” — the party isn’t in a shape to do that at present. Unfortunately, for members and MPs alike, at almost every level Labour isn’t working.
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The next Labour leader must resist the temptation to scrap or keep Corbynism completely
Two phrases are dominating the left of the Labour leadership contest: “continuity Corbyn” and “Corbynism without Corbyn”.
The former is straightforward and aimed particularly at Rebecca Long Bailey; the idea being that her pitch so far has been to offer nothing different from Corbyn politically or stylistically. This has been bolstered by her hiring Momentum chief Jon Lansman to direct her campaign, as well as her awarding Corbyn 10/10 for his leadership skills (a rating I’m not sure he’d even have given himself). While her team do not use the phrase, it’s certainly the quite loud subtext of their pitch.
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The one phrase Labour's new leader should ban if they want to win votes
At the end of last year, the voters returned a pretty damning judgement on Jeremy Corbyn and the wider Labour Party. But often, what was heard on doorsteps was that voters felt judged by Labour: on social issues, on Brexit, on the kind of lives they were living and providing for their families.
Labour leadership candidate Lisa Nandy has described Labour’s approach at the recent general election as ‘too paternalistic’ and she’s not wrong. But it wasn’t just the endless, unbelievable giveaways promised that left the electorate feeling disempowered. It was the sense of fatherly disapproval that voters felt from Labour. It’s a particular type of paternalism—the kind that always makes you think of the phrase “You’re not going out dressed like that!”
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What Labour loves most - a big internal fight
Well it’s a new year. Time for a new start for the Labour Party? Sort of. Next week the ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) will set out the rules for the leadership contest that is set to take place over the next three months.
At the moment it’s all about the horse race. Who’s up? Who’s down? Who’s running? Those either declared or discussed include Keir Starmer, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Lisa Nandy, Clive Lewis, Ian Lavery and Jess Phillips. These represent the whole of the party from the moderate to Corbynite wings and everything in between.
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Who speaks for Labour?
Last week, one of the major Corbyn cheerleading sites — Sqwarkbox — lost a libel suit against (now former) Labour MP Anna Turley. That Turley had to be embroiled in this during the election is bad enough. The Unite union has said it is going to fund an appeal on behalf of Sqwarkbox.
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Stepping back from my tribe means I can be honest about this election
Elections make people more partisan than they are normally. They’re a time of heightened politics where the country is talking about and thinking about taking sides. We are forced to make a choice and then defend it — if only to ourselves.
For the vast majority of people this time around that seems like a hard decision. None of the main parties are particularly appealing to ordinary voters. All seem to be running a core vote strategy that appeals to their hyper-dedicated activists but is leaving everyone else uninspired.
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UCU 'fighting fund' hits £100,000 as university strikes end
The University and Colleges Union (UCU) has raised over £100,000 fighting fund as their current round of strikes comes to an end.
The fund supports those in hardship due to lost wages during strike action.
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9,300 Met police staff cut under the Tories say GMB union
Since 2010 more than 9,300 jobs have been shed at the Metropolitan Police says the GMB union.
This is based on analysis of Home Office headcount data. The numbers are separate from cuts in the number of police officers. These staff roles include custody officers, 999 call handlers, scene of crime investigators, and technical and administrative support jobs.
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Admit it - none of the parties are offering you what you want at this election
It was something of a contest as to who had the worse time last week, the Labour Party or the BBC. The correct answer is probably the Lib Dems.
Jeremy Corbyn had a “car crash” interview with Andrew Neil, and shortly after that it was revealed that Boris Johnson didn’t want to face the same forensic grilling. He turned up on the Andrew Marr show instead, where the interviewer did his best, but it was nothing like the Neil interview.
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It’s not too late for Labour to close the gap by riding a wave of hope
Labour’s campaign was hoping for a big boost last week. It didn’t quite happen. As the party launched its manifesto and Jeremy Corbyn achieved a draw in the TV debate with Boris Johnson, supporters hoped that the kind of radical turnaround seen (but not believed) at about this point during the 2017 campaign would happen again.
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Labour has the right principles on welfare, now we need the detail
At the last election, Labour were criticised for having very little to say on welfare. The sharpest end of Tory austerity has always been felt by those who rely on the state to live a decent life. And, increasingly, more and more people who do so are living in the most awful circumstances. In-work poverty has risen from 13 per cent to 18 per cent. An estimated 500,000 more people are in poverty due to the benefits cap and two-child policy (where families that have two or more children, including one born after 6 April 2017, see the child element in Universal Credit and tax credits limited to the first two children). People with disabilities represent 48 per cent of all people who live in poverty. The use of food banks has increased dramatically.
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Canterbury: fighting to keep the anti-Tory vote together as the election approaches
In 1997 I voted for the first time, in the constituency of Canterbury. Even in the landslide of Tony Blair's first win, it wasn't a seat that was going to go Labour. But 20 years later, in 2017, it did. By fewer than 200 votes, Rosie Duffield won the seat for the first time in history, ousting the 30 year incumbent Julian Brazier.
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