Who will be the next Labour leader?

[Gramsci]

The Labour party grassroots members who joined/ rejoined the Labour party when Corbyn became leader I know are still in shock. So I haven't heard anyone deciding who they want as leader. Its been demoralising. I feel sorry for them. Straight after defeat they hear Alan Johnson calling them to be kicked out of the party. One told me she has been avoiding reading mainstream media since the defeat. These are decent people and its been really upsetting for them. Some are young and want an alternative to the so called "centre" politics they grew up with.

I'm in Lambeth / London.

My New Labour Councll Leader has already gone for Keir Starmer on his Twitter.

As my local Council is run by the Progress wing of the party looks like Keir for them. Previously it had been Yvette Cooper then Owen Smith. Definitely not Corbyn.

The shock of the new membership was a bit much for them to handle. The Progress wing of the party have a strong hold on the local party apparatus. I think would be happy if all the people. who recently joined or rejoined just left.

Except in Streatham (Chuka old seat) where left has taken key posts off New Labour and Corbyn supporting candidate got selected for MP.

But on local Council level Progress run the party.

Inner London was rock solid Labour.

 

[Shechemite]

Polling (all caveats aside) suggests Starmer has strong lead

 

[Shechemite]

Could unite the party around Euro-Corbynism?

 

[toblerone3]

Boris Johnson's behaviour and tone over the next month could have a strong influence over who the next Labour leader is.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Sir Keir Starmer seems to be the clear favourite Poll of Labour members suggests Keir Starmer is first choice

Seems like a bad choice to me though, clearly middle class and he's a remainer. He also backed Owen Smith for the leadership.

Then again, the electorate seems to like voting for posh cunts.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Boris Johnson's behaviour and tone over the next month could have a strong influence over who the next Labour leader is.

Why is that? Could you please explain?

 

[Marty1]

Sir Keir Starmer seems to be the clear favourite Poll of Labour members suggests Keir Starmer is first choice

Seems like a bad choice to me though, clearly middle class and he's a remainer. He also backed Owen Smith for the leadership.

Interesting/delusional article.

Labour leader: The Jeremy Corbyn replacement Boris Johnson will be most TERRIFIED of

The Remainer is seen as the centrist candidate and is hotly tipped as both a good communicator with the British public and experienced negotiator, having been central to Labour’s talks with the EU over an alternative Brexit deal during 2019.

 

[William of Walworth]

delusional article.

Labour leader: The Jeremy Corbyn replacement Boris Johnson will be most TERRIFIED of

By definition -- it's the Daily Express FFS

 

[MickiQ]

I can't imagine that BoZo has the slightest fear of whoever gets the job.
He has always had massive confidence in his own superiority and no amount of actual setbacks ever seem to dent it.
Personally I favour Jess Phillips because she wouldn't hesitate to call him a prat to his face.

 

[ska invita]

Polling (all caveats aside) suggests Starmer has strong lead

.It is also important to remember that YouGov just polled Labour party members. In the leadership campaign two other categories of people get to vote: people affiliated to Labour through membership of a trade union or a socialist society, and people who pay a one-off fee to get a vote as a registered supporter. Although these two groups are broadly similar in outlook to Labour members, they don’t vote in exactly the same way. In 2015 and in 2016 the registered supporters were proportionately significantly more pro-Corbyn than members and affiliates.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

I can't imagine that BoZo has the slightest fear of whoever gets the job.
He has always had massive confidence in his own superiority and no amount of actual setbacks ever seem to dent it.
Personally I favour Jess Phillips because she wouldn't hesitate to call him a prat to his face.

Isn't Jess Philips friends with Rees Mogg? I know they've done quite a few TV segments together and they seem to be really pally with each other.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Sir Keir Starmer seems to be the clear favourite Poll of Labour members suggests Keir Starmer is first choice

Seems like a bad choice to me though, clearly middle class and he's a remainer.

Starmer in fact has a far more working class background than some we could mention, like Jess Phillips.

His position on Brexit is far far more problematic

 

[MickiQ]

Starmer in fact has a far more working class background than some we could mention, like Jess Phillips.

His position on Brexit is far far more problematic

Why? The Labour Party has no more input into the kind of Brexit we get than u75
Whatever Brexit turns out to be it will done and dusted before there is a Labour PM in no 10

 

[Proper Tidy]

Find it difficult to believe Starmer really the front runner but if true it's a sad reflection of how little impact the last four years has had on membership let alone general public and on how weak left/successor options are. Not arsed what he says before hand, if anybody expects anything that isn't basically somewhere between miliband and blair from posh lad then they are deluded

 

[littlebabyjesus]

fwiw, Starmer isn't a public school boy as some have suggested. He went to a direct-grant grammar school, which went private later when grammar schools were abolished.

He is of course a centrist and an ultra-establishment figure - he was Blair's director of public prosecutions after all, hence the 'Sir'.

 

[The39thStep]

Find it difficult to believe Starmer really the front runner but if true it's a sad reflection of how little impact the last four years has had on membership let alone general public and on how weak left/successor options are. Not arsed what he says before hand, if anybody expects anything that isn't basically somewhere between miliband and blair from posh lad then they are deluded

It'll just confirm Labour as a London based party again

 

[YouSir]

It'll just confirm Labour as a London based party again

Westminster based. Wish people would stop conflating London as a whole with a handful of middle class media workers and politicians.

 

[agricola]

Find it difficult to believe Starmer really the front runner but if true it's a sad reflection of how little impact the last four years has had on membership let alone general public and on how weak left/successor options are. Not arsed what he says before hand, if anybody expects anything that isn't basically somewhere between miliband and blair from posh lad then they are deluded

Better him than most of the other candidates, TBH. At least he hung around and tried to make it work, rather than going into that odd "this is nothing to do with me" exile that so many of the others did.

 

[Part-timah]

The mass media are pushing hard for Starmer. He’ll be awful. I don’t know much about Lavery but he looks up for a scrap. The Scum has started slating him so he must have something going for him.

 

[The39thStep]

Better him than most of the other candidates, TBH. At least he hung around and tried to make it work, rather than going into that odd "this is nothing to do with me" exile that so many of the others did.

Is this the same Starmer that 'hung around and tried to make it work ' by resigning from the Shadow Cabinet?

 

[butchersapron]

fwiw, Starmer isn't a public school boy as some have suggested. He went to a direct-grant grammar school, which went private later when grammar schools were abolished.

He is of course a centrist and an ultra-establishment figure - he was Blair's director of public prosecutions after all, hence the 'Sir'.

It went private when he was there, not after, and he attended for another 5 years after that. It's entirely accurate to say that he's private educated.

 

[The39thStep]

Westminster based. Wish people would stop conflating London as a whole with a handful of middle class media workers and politicians.

You'll have to do a tour of the North to get this across

 

[SpookyFrank]

Better him than most of the other candidates, TBH. At least he hung around and tried to make it work, rather than going into that odd "this is nothing to do with me" exile that so many of the others did.

He wasn't trying to make it work. He was trying to sabotage Corbyn and position himself to take over afterwards. I doubt even Johnson himself was as happy with the election result as Starmer was.

 

[skyscraper101]

Corbyn managed to sabotage himself without needing anybody else's help TBF.

 

[William of Walworth]

He wasn't trying to make it work. He was trying to sabotage Corbyn and position himself to take over afterwards. I doubt even Johnson himself was as happy with the election result as Starmer was.

Not saying you're wrong overall, but I sort of doubt (?) that last (bolded) bit. If Starmer is as crazily-Remain as generally thought, he's hardly going to be delighted about "Brexit being done" with zero real chance of it being frustrated.

 

[Shechemite]

Westminster based. Wish people would stop conflating London as a whole with a handful of middle class media workers and politicians.

Remind us which constituencies labour lost and which they retained?

 

[YouSir]

Remind us which constituencies labour lost and which they retained?

They held London, Liverpool, Newcastle, Middlesborough, Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham, Coventry etc. Basically they held cities. Which gets distilled down to them being a 'London party' (or a metropolitan, liberal or 'Islington' one) by people who like to dismiss the working class populations of those cities because it gets in the way of their 'Hipsters and middle class students are all Labour have' narrative. In London especially it allows both the media/political class and their critics to keep indulging their wank fantasies of politics beginning and ending in Westminster because everyone else in the city is really like them. Except for the millions of precarious and low waged workers they walk past every day, who don't exist.

 

[YouSir]

They held London, Liverpool, Newcastle, Middlesborough, Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham, Coventry etc. Basically they held cities. Which gets distilled down to them being a 'London party' (or a metropolitan, liberal or 'Islington' one) by people who like to dismiss the working class populations of those cities because it gets in the way of their 'Hipsters and middle class students are all Labour have' narrative. In London especially it allows both the media/political class and their critics to keep indulging their wank fantasies of politics beginning and ending in Westminster because everyone else in the city is really like them. Except for the millions of precarious and low waged workers they walk past every day, who don't exist.

And that's not a defence of Labour, it's annoyance at the lazy bullshit of dismissing urban voters as irrelevant or solely middle class city workers through a tired line of cliches. 'They drink coffee' being the perennial and bizarre favourite, as if any cunt left living hasn't seen a Costa.

 

[cantsin]

Why? The Labour Party has no more input into the kind of Brexit we get than u75
Whatever Brexit turns out to be it will done and dusted before there is a Labour PM in no 10

So we think voters and Tory politicos in new blue Northern / Mids constits are going to just forget Starmers' militant anti Brexit / pro 2nd Ref past come the time ( with the Brexit process still v much in motion ) ?

 

[kebabking]

So we think voters and Tory politicos in new blue Northern / Mids constits are going to just forget Starmers' militant anti Brexit / pro 2nd Ref past come the time ( with the Brexit process still v much in motion ) ?

Depends on how he went about it - if he embraces brexit reality and offers some form of lexity/hopeful brexit, then he'll be happily forgiven for being a remainer, if however he just carps on about how awful it all is, and allows a impression to develop that Labour would not-so-secretly like to brejoin, then Labour will be toast. (Again).

Labour are going to have to put a shift in to re-establish some form of trust on the brexit/referendum issue, but it could be done - but only by putting the work in and doing it relentlessly for the next 5 years, not a couple of Guardian articles, a manifesto 4 weeks before the election, and 4 years of Labour people tweeting #FBPE...