Burgon reminds me of Ben Swain from The Thick of It.

I have a theory on what Labour need to do. The Tories lead in Parliament means Labour can do fuck all in there. So they should focus on the Mayoralties that they have, and the Welsh Assembly. London and Greater Manchester I believe have the most powers, but they should all push for more, in concert with the Tory Mayors. The Liverpool/Manchester/Sheffield areas cover a huge, largely continuous block of the north. This could be sold to the Tories as implementing the "Northern Powerhouse", if any of them remember that.

I doubt even Keir Starmer is excited about Keir Starmer.

Electable.

"harder for the tabloids to smear", maybe? I guess time will tell. Maybe they'll feel less need to, too.

He looks like that Richard Spencer nazi cunt that got punched.

He is a southern remainer. He will get som lib d m votes back, that's all.

I like Starmer but he is the wrong man for the job currently. Could be a good deputy as he tends to not be too aligned with either side of the party.

I read Long Bailey's bit in the Guardian when that was published. Waste of time, may as well stick with Corbyn.

Clive Lewis wont get anywhere near the job, I suspect he knows this and has put himself forward so that he can better get across what he does want in a leader.

I didnt think it spoke to lost Labour voters in the slightest, so what is the point?

Funkstain wrote:

LivDiv wrote:

I didnt think it spoke to lost Labour voters in the slightest, so what is the point?

For whom did these lost Labour voters actually vote?

The brexit unicorn?

No, sorry, I meant it as a genuine question, not rhetorical. Or rather, it is loaded but only because I think it's an interesting avenue to explore.

Labour lost 2.6M votes between 2017 and 2019, on a turnout which was almost identical (52M total votes cast). Where did they go? Tories got a boost of about 0.3M, LibDems got almost 1M of them (almost all in metro areas where Remain was strong, obviously), and even Brexit party got a few. Did the rest go Green?

I'm interested also because even if Labour got those 2.6M back, they still wouldn't gain anything like a majority. Let's see how that would work:

- they can go down the centrist route. They may wrest back some of the LibDem swingers. How many moderate Tories do they gain though? Wouldn't that be relying too much on Johnson and co fucking things up, rather than positively pursuing their own agenda? And how many of those who DID vote for a more leftist, progressive Labour will feel let down and vote elsewhere or not at all?

- they can go down the Corbyn-continiuty route. They keep the progressives, but at what cost? LibDems may continue to make inroads, Tories moderate or otherwise certainly don't want to touch that, perhaps the only chance here is increasing turnout by energising non-voters? Every time a Labour government has been formed following Tories, turnout has been over 70%. Perhaps new / non voters are the key, rather than the perhaps mythical floating swingers?

So that's why my question. How do you recover and/or gain the actual votes you need when both main avenues look like dead ends?

You can expect an automatic swing back to an extent once Brexit isn't an issue. But otherwise the ideal is someone who's willing to try and maintain the left revival and turn much of the manifesto into a long term plan, without sounding too radical or old school socialist in a way that alienates the centrists.

Someone who isn't a white man might also be a good idea, especially if there's only one white man in the field of candidates. Everyone else has tried it.

I wouldn't know who that is though.

Funkstain wrote:

JonB wrote:

You can expect an automatic swing back to an extent once Brexit isn't an issue. But otherwise the ideal is someone who's willing to try and maintain the left revival and turn much of the manifesto into a long term plan, without sounding too radical or old school socialist in a way that alienates the centrists. Someone who isn't a white man might also be a good idea, especially if there's only one white man in the field of candidates. Everyone else has tried it. I wouldn't know who that is though.

Yeah this is pretty much exactly where I'm at - that person doesn't seem to exist in the current candidates list party

Generally I would say I am in the same position as Jon and Funk.
The two old ways (Blairite vs Corbynist) aren't the way to go because one bastardises the other. There really needs to be an offering somewhere down the middle of the two that can effectively deliver social democracy but in a way that actually results in a Labour gov.

Why yes there is I read about it just this morning it's a sort of terrorist supporting antisemitic version of 1970s communism, corbynistas are the new dangerous snowflake attackers of our democracy and british way of life, which I loosely define as going to 'spoons and eating fish and chips

The word is in the public lexicon like it or not.
If your retort is that it doesn't exist you have closed down the conversation and it becomes Funk's post.

Congratulations, you helped nobody.