Seems the Labour Party is imploding

Jeremy Corbyn will be automatically included on the ballot in Labour's leadership contest following a vote by the ruling National Executive Committee.

Unions said party rules were clear the incumbent who is challenged must be allowed to stand, but his opponents said he needed the support of 51 MPs or MEPs.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36778135

To be fair miles, regardless of what you think of him not having him on the ballot would have been wrong. He won a huge mandate last time round, the members have to be allowed their say.

The problem is that Corbyn is likely to win the vote given the nature of the current Labour party voting system. We are then left with Corbyn "leading" a parliamentary party where over 80% of the MPs think he is useless. Just how effective is that going to be? He can't even form a shadow cabinet because so few people are willing to work with him. He is a liability.

Shrewd move from Burnham to quietly slide out of the way and pursue being the mayor of Manchester.

He'll walk that and provided he doesn't completely fuck it up, he'll be ready to take over the PLP in a few years.

Smart cookie that one.

I would prefer Sadiq Khan.

One theory I have seen is that David Miliband is biding his time. Although I don't think it is likely to be correct as he has effectively distanced himself from the Labour party.

xmiles wrote:The problem is that Corbyn is likely to win the vote given the nature of the current Labour party voting system. We are then left with Corbyn "leading" a parliamentary party where over 80% of the MPs think he is useless. Just how effective is that going to be? He can't even form a shadow cabinet because so few people are willing to work with him. He is a liability.  

Agreed, I'm a fan of Corbyn's policies on the whole but if the party refuses to get behind him there's no way to carry on. 

But my point is you can't ignore the membership and actually the MPs who have ran this coup against him would serve us better by getting behind him. The party is anonymous at the moment. 

When the alternative is Angela Eagle I'm sure Corbyn will indeed walk it.

On Burnham - I thought he was appalling in the Labour leadership contest last year, came across awfully IMO just said whatever he thought would win a few votes. Smart move as you say though Bread, he'll go for it again when the time's right.

On Burnham - I thought he was appalling in the Labour leadership contest last year, came across awfully IMO just said whatever he thought would win a few votes. Smart move as you say though Bread, he'll go for it again when the time's right.




This...

Burnham is lining himself up for Mayor of Manc.
Corbyn should be making more use of his bus pass that dreaming of his past teenage political ideals.

Seems to me that a vocal part of the labour party membership are looking to hijack the mandate given to the labour party by a broad spectrum of the electorate and are in danger therefore of losing that support. It's great that people are getting more involved in politics, however the current climate seems to be polarising opinions which give the ordinary man in the street very extreme points of view to choose from.

Labour MP's have more than a duty to 500k party members, they have a duty to the wider electorate to be a viable alternative government, they can't be ignored, however they should not be blinkered in thinking they are leading some sort of social revolution otherwise we will end up a single party nation.

It's a backlash isn't it, Labour was a broadchurch that worked well with the centrists at the front of the party and its socialist roots pushed to the back. Now the tables have turned the centrists aren't content with sitting back.

I don't really see how the party can come back from this in its current form, I think a split is increasingly likely and may be for the best. There's a gap and support for a truly left wing party in this country, someone needs to fill it.

Fabians Right Peg wrote:Seems to me that a vocal part of the labour party membership are looking to hijack the mandate given to the labour party by a broad spectrum of the electorate and are in danger therefore of losing that support. It's great that people are getting more involved in politics, however the current climate seems to be polarising opinions which give the ordinary man in the street very extreme points of view to choose from.

Labour MP's have more than a duty to 500k party members, they have a duty to the wider electorate to be a viable alternative government, they can't be ignored, however they should not be blinkered in thinking they are leading some sort of social revolution otherwise we will end up a single party nation.

Nailed it for me Fabian. I couldn't have put it any better.

Well done to the NEC.
The unnecessary outcome from their meeting is that we'll need to go through the tedious formality of ensuring that Teresa May will be elected as PM in 2020.
They've just made certain that Labour will spend at least the next 10 years as an utterly ineffective opposition when what the country needs now as it always does is an effective opposition.
We needed a strong Labour party to hold the Tories up to scrutiny in the coming Brexit negotiations, to put a brake on what they'll do with some of the legislation on employment laws which the Tories will probsbly allow to lapse. We'll hear more from that predictable opportunist who leads SNP.
Last night Labour had a chance to serve the country and not just their 1960s student politics view of the world.

 But they blew it.

rammywhite wrote:Well done to the NEC.
The unnecessary outcome from their meeting is that we'll need to go through the tedious formality of ensuring that Teresa May will be elected as PM in 2020.
They've just made certain that Labour will spend at least the next 10 years as an utterly ineffective opposition when what the country needs now as it always does is an effective opposition.
We needed a strong Labour party to hold the Tories up to scrutiny in the coming Brexit negotiations, to put a brake on what they'll do with some of the legislation on employment laws which the Tories will probsbly allow to lapse. We'll hear more from that predictable opportunist who leads SNP.
Last night Labour had a chance to serve the country and not just their 1960s student politics view of the world.

 But they blew it.

spot on Rammy 

Norpig wrote:

rammywhite wrote:Well done to the NEC.
The unnecessary outcome from their meeting is that we'll need to go through the tedious formality of ensuring that Teresa May will be elected as PM in 2020.
They've just made certain that Labour will spend at least the next 10 years as an utterly ineffective opposition when what the country needs now as it always does is an effective opposition.
We needed a strong Labour party to hold the Tories up to scrutiny in the coming Brexit negotiations, to put a brake on what they'll do with some of the legislation on employment laws which the Tories will probsbly allow to lapse. We'll hear more from that predictable opportunist who leads SNP.
Last night Labour had a chance to serve the country and not just their 1960s student politics view of the world.

 But they blew it.

spot on Rammy 

Agreed, but the blame lies with Corbyn himself. If he wasn't so far up his own arse he would realise that he can't lead a parliamentary party where 80% of its members have no confidence in him. He really is a fool and if he didn't have such a long career I would start to suspect that he was really a Tory plant designed to discredit the Labour party.

And now this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36780715

Owen who?

xmiles wrote:And now this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36780715

Owen who?

I'd prefer Smith to Corbyn and Eagle.

Reebok Trotter wrote:

xmiles wrote:And now this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36780715

Owen who?

I'd prefer Smith to Corbyn and Eagle.

Maybe but it just splits the anti Corbyn vote and guarantees a Corbyn victory.

Reebok Trotter wrote:

xmiles wrote:And now this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36780715

Owen who?

I'd prefer Smith to Corbyn and Eagle.

There are far more competent Labour politicians in the background. People like Dan Jarvis,Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham and Ed Balls would all make a better job than any of the three lightweights who'll be on the ballot paper. The idea of Corbyn coming out on top again is just sickening.
No matter what your political colour the country deserves better than this.

the trouble with the Labour party at the moment is there are no credible options for leader in my opinion, no one stands out for me.

In the past i would have said Burnham but he didn't do too well in the last leadership campaign and as mentioned elsewhere he is running for Mayor of Greater Manchester

If there is one thing more breathtaking than Corbyn’s election as leader of the Labour party, it has been the inability of his detractors to engage with the meaning of that victory. His win was so emphatic that they could not deny it. And so they decided not to understand its root causes but to undo its effect.

Corbyn campaigned against austerity, war and nuclear weapons in particular, and for a reorientation back towards Labour’s socialist roots in general. He spoke in plain English of big principle rather than the evasive vacuities of managerial electoralism. His critics, unable to imagine a world in which it was possible that a person with his politics or style could be the overwhelming choice of Labour party members, concluded the problem was not their imagination but reality. The voters had simply made the wrong decision. Corbyn had to go.


The Parliamentary Labour party has obsessed about nothing else for the best part of a year. In all that time it has not produced a plausible strategy, programme or policy designed to win back those who voted for Corbyn. Until this morning, the best it could come up with as a response to the groundswell of frustration over its rightward drift and ideological void was Angela Eagle. Then came the news that former shadow department of work and pensions secretary Owen Smith would run.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/13/corbyn-critics-destroying-labour-party-members