The New Leader of the Labour Party

[sir roger]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/04/labour-general-secretary-starmers-runners-and-riders

 

Reading this, I an attracted to the ' someone from outside ' argument. 

 

Quite baffled at what the GS from Scotland would bring positively , unless we are actually planning to lose as many votes as possible. , and my memory of Bryan Roy was him fizzling out after a promising start with Collymore at Forest.

[Anubis]

6 minutes ago, sir roger said:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/04/labour-general-secretary-starmers-runners-and-riders

 

Reading this, I an attracted to the ' someone from outside ' argument. 
 

 

 

Someone from the Board of Deputies....

[aRdja]

This doesn’t look good....

 

 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

10 minutes ago, aRdja said:

This doesn’t look good....

 

 

One of the highest death rates in the world, despite having an extra few weeks to prepare before the first cases started showing up here, and people still believe it when they are told this disastrously negligent shitbag is doing a good job.

[Captain Turdseye]

6 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

One of the highest death rates in the world, despite having an extra few weeks to prepare before the first cases started showing up here, and people still believe it when they are told this disastrously negligent shitbag is doing a good job.

[Megadrive Man]

1 hour ago, aRdja said:

This doesn’t look good....

 

 

It's a bit of a pointless poll though asking who would you want to lead us when it's already happened and there isn't going to be a change.

 

Most people like to think that we've got the right person in charge for peace of mind even if they don't really believe it.

[TheHowieLama]

1 hour ago, aRdja said:

This doesn’t look good....

 

 

 

1 hour ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

One of the highest death rates in the world, despite having an extra few weeks to prepare before the first cases started showing up here, and people still believe it when they are told this disastrously negligent shitbag is doing a good job.

People aren't believing though - 52% walks an election. We need a stronger candidate.

[Jairzinho]

5 hours ago, TheHowieLama said:

 

People aren't believing though - 52% walks an election. We need a stronger candidate.

I would imagine quite a lot of those "don't knows" answered that way because they don't know who Keir Starmer is.

[mattyq]

He's been the leader for a month. He'll probably need a bit longer than that.... burn him!!

[Rico1304]

Lefty of the week contender. 
 

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/labour-councillor-formal-warning-foodbank-tories/

[Neil G]

21 hours ago, Sugar Ape said:

I didn’t say Formby was to blame for the scale of the defeat so don’t put words into my mouth. Clearly she has some responsibility though.
 

She was the GS for the worst defeat in living memory. This is a fact. Did I say she was solely responsible? No. To my knowledge I’ve never said Corbyn was solely responsible either. If I was to blame the Corbyn leadership then it would be a collective failure. Corbyn obviously played the main role in my view, but blame can be attached to Formby, Milne, McCluskey, Murphy and other prominent people in charge of the election campaign to varying degrees. 
 

Obviously there were loads of other factors too, Brexit, media coverage, antisemitism claims etc...  I’m not an idiot who can’t see there is a bigger picture. But, in my opinion, enough polling showed that the Corbyn leadership was the biggest issue for Labour in the election.
 

And guess what? If Starmer and his GS and top team lead Labour to a defeat anything like the one Corbyn did then I’d want them all to go too. I’m not some ideologue wedded to one particular faction of the party. 
 

What I think will happen is Starmer will nominate someone miles away from a right wing dinosaur as Sir Roger put it, someone on the ‘soft left’ for want of a better term. Someone will then find a tweet from a couple of years ago that was critical of Corbyn or Abbot or someone else prominently associated with his leadership then there will be a big kerfuffle over Blairites and Tories taking over the Labour Party. I don’t think a person exists that every part of the Labour Party would be happy with so some people are going to be disappointed. 

I didn’t say you hold either of them solely responsible. I’ll expand on my post by reiterating what you said in your reply: you think that Corbyn was very clearly the most important factor in the scale of the defeat, which is backed up by polling (obviously I agree). This being the case, you’ve attached too much blame to Formby. You’ve gone further than just saying she has some responsibility for the scale of the defeat, you’ve implied that her contribution to it was important enough that Labour need to avoid appointing a replacement like her, whatever that means. 

 

If you’ve got evidence that she fucked up that badly then by all means present it, but I’m not aware of any, and if it had happened I would fully expect the right of the party to have laid it all out by now to discredit a GS they’ve clearly wanted rid of. The communication and the messaging for the campaign were terrible, but Milne and Murphy will bear much more responsibility for that than Formby. 

 

Formby will have been ultimately responsible for the deployment of staff resources during the campaign, and the management of this was poor in places - Section has referred to this - but this is as much the responsibility of regional organisers as it is of Labour HQ. I’ve heard anecdotally that some regional office staff seemed uninterested in supporting campaigns in certain constituencies, the way they were in 2017 when there was a clear wrecking effort being undertaken by the right. It seems highly plausible to me that there were some holdovers among party staff two years later who would still have been determined to stop Corbyn becoming PM, or at least not go all out to make it happen. Any assessment of Formby’s performance as GS in the campaign has to take account of this possibility.

 

You’re taking a baby and bathwater approach to the defeat. You’ve picked up a bunch of unrelated factors, implied that because the defeat was so terrible they must all be responsible for it in some way, and argued that they all need to be dispensed with. Using that logic you might as well say we should get rid of Starmer as leader, as he was the driver of the Brexit policy which was clearly a factor in the defeat and which will still be a live issue at the next election - the Tories will make sure it is and the Lib Dems will most likely make it one too. (I don’t think we should get rid of him, just using the example to illustrate the point).

[Sugar Ape]

9 minutes ago, Neil G said:

I didn’t say you hold either of them solely responsible. I’ll expand on my post by reiterating what you said in your reply: you think that Corbyn was very clearly the most important factor in the scale of the defeat, which is backed up by polling (obviously I agree). This being the case, you’ve attached too much blame to Formby. You’ve gone further than just saying she has some responsibility for the scale of the defeat, you’ve implied that her contribution to it was important enough that Labour need to avoid appointing a replacement like her, whatever that means. 

 

If you’ve got evidence that she fucked up that badly then by all means present it, but I’m not aware of any, and if it had happened I would fully expect the right of the party to have laid it all out by now to discredit a GS they’ve clearly wanted rid of. The communication and the messaging for the campaign were terrible, but Milne and Murphy will bear much more responsibility for that than Formby. 

 

Formby will have been ultimately responsible for the deployment of staff resources during the campaign, and the management of this was poor in places - Section has referred to this - but this is as much the responsibility of regional organisers as it is of Labour HQ. I’ve heard anecdotally that some regional office staff seemed uninterested in supporting campaigns in certain constituencies, the way they were in 2017 when there was a clear wrecking effort being undertaken by the right. It seems highly plausible to me that there were some holdovers among party staff two years later who would still have been determined to stop Corbyn becoming PM, or at least not go all out to make it happen. Any assessment of Formby’s performance as GS in the campaign has to take account of this possibility.

 

You’re taking a baby and bathwater approach to the defeat. You’ve picked up a bunch of unrelated factors, implied that because the defeat was so terrible they must all be responsible for it in some way, and argued that they all need to be dispensed with. Using that logic you might as well say we should get rid of Starmer as leader, as he was the driver of the Brexit policy which was clearly a factor in the defeat and which will still be a live issue at the next election - the Tories will make sure it is and the Lib Dems will most likely make it one too. (I don’t think we should get rid of him, just using the example to illustrate the point).

She had one of the most important roles in the party and she’s a close ally of Corbyn and McCluskey. Obviously more than a close ally to McCluskey actually. No one will know exactly how much of a role each individual played but I’m happy to place most of the blame on Corbyn as the buck stops with him and the rest on his close advisors and top party staff. Milne, Murray, Murphy et al. I also note you seem to have an issue with me placing too much blame on her without evidence, but you’re happy to use anecdotal evidence that some of the poor performance under her purview might not have been her fault. 
 

Aside from the GE I don’t think she handled the antisemitism claims well at all. I’m not getting into all that right now as it’ll just descend into pages of crying about Rachel Riley again, but we’ll see what the EHRC report says and not the one commissioned by her which concludes she did everything she could. There’s also a whiff of nepotism about her getting the job in the first place which is true of a lot of the top party staff of the Corbyn era such as Andrew and Laura Murray, which is something I’m keen to see done differently with any future appointments. Ultimately we seem to be getting into another one of these weird arguments drawn out over days on something which is mostly a matter of personal opinion in how much blame she holds. If you think she’s mostly blameless that’s fine; I don’t. 
 

And finally your last point on Starmer is well wide of the mark. I’m clearly talking about the need for Corbyn’s closest advisors and allies to go when he did, as they share varying degrees of responsibility for the election result as I’ve said above. No one associates Starmer closely with Corbyn, and he clearly wasn’t part of his inner circle deciding policy across the party so I don’t think you could describe him as part of Corbyn’s top team. Corbyn and his backers on the front bench and in the unions/Momentum all backed RLB. Even now a significant view on here seems to be he’s either a centrist (but said as if a centrist is a Tory) or a Blairite. In addition, I question how much responsibility Starmer has for the Brexit policy at the GE. He’s implied himself that he was sidelined during the election, he was nowhere to be seen and instead we had idiots like Burgon on the airwaves every day. 

[Bjornebye]

23 minutes ago, Sugar Ape said:

She had one of the most important roles in the party and she’s a close ally of Corbyn and McCluskey. Obviously more than a close ally to McCluskey actually. No one will know exactly how much of a role each individual played but I’m happy to place most of the blame on Corbyn as the buck stops with him and the rest on his close advisors and top party staff. Milne, Murray, Murphy et al. I also note you seem to have an issue with me placing too much blame on her without evidence, but you’re happy to use anecdotal evidence that some of the poor performance under her purview might not have been her fault. 
 

Aside from the GE I don’t think she handled the antisemitism claims well at all. I’m not getting into all that right now as it’ll just descend into pages of crying about Rachel Riley again, but we’ll see what the EHRC report says and not the one commissioned by her which concludes she did everything she could. There’s also a whiff of nepotism about her getting the job in the first place which is true of a lot of the top party staff of the Corbyn era such as Andrew and Laura Murray, which is something I’m keen to see done differently with any future appointments. Ultimately we seem to be getting into another one of these weird arguments drawn out over days on something which is mostly a matter of personal opinion in how much blame she holds. If you think she’s mostly blameless that’s fine; I don’t. 
 

And finally your last point on Starmer is well wide of the mark. I’m clearly talking about the need for Corbyn’s closest advisors and allies to go when he did, as they share varying degrees of responsibility for the election result as I’ve said above. No one associates Starmer closely with Corbyn, and he clearly wasn’t part of his inner circle deciding policy across the party so I don’t think you could describe him as part of Corbyn’s top team. Corbyn and his backers on the front bench and in the unions/Momentum all backed RLB. Even now a significant view on here seems to be he’s either a centrist (but said as if a centrist is a Tory) or a Blairite. In addition, I question how much responsibility Starmer has for the Brexit policy at the GE. He’s implied himself that he was sidelined during the election, he was nowhere to be seen and instead we had idiots like Burgon on the airwaves every day. 

I'd like you to take a more prominent role in the Labour party. 

[Sugar Ape]

Just now, Bjornebye said:

I'd like you to take a more prominent role in the Labour party. 

Is ‘Labour party’ a euphemism for your bum in that sentence?

[Bjornebye]

No. 

[Sugar Ape]

1 minute ago, Bjornebye said:

No. 

Gutted. 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

3 hours ago, Rico1304 said:

Lefty of the week contender. 
 

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/labour-councillor-formal-warning-foodbank-tories/

The real question is - why was a Tory pretending to help the people her party made destitute?

[Rico1304]

22 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

The real question is - why was a Tory pretending to help the people her party made destitute?

She’s been fired, we won’t speak her name again. 

[Sugar Ape]

 

[sir roger]

Getting it through quickly , along with the inquiry into the leaked document so it can all be sorted before the NEC elections in Autumn.

[Sugar Ape]

2 minutes ago, sir roger said:

Getting it through quickly , along with the inquiry into the leaked document so it can all be sorted before the NEC elections in Autumn.

Seems more or less in line with the last time it happened, no?

 

McNicol's intention to stand down as General Secretary of the Labour Party was announced on 23 February 2018. On 20 March 2018 he was succeeded by Jennie Formby.

[sir roger]

2 hours ago, Sugar Ape said:

Seems more or less in line with the last time it happened, no?

 

 

 

Almost identical , except that McNicol stuck around for two years after Corbyns election , had his team trawling labour members facebook and twitter desperately trying to throw any left leaning people out of the party , spent party funds on taking the democratically elected leader to court trying to keep him off the ballot for his own position , spent an election campaign sabotaging his own party and diverting funds to help his political allies , and shredded disciplinary documents to attempt to stop Corbyns team from sorting the situation. Yes almost identical.

[Sugar Ape]

1 minute ago, sir roger said:

Almost identical , except that McNicol stuck around for two years after Corbyns election , had his team trawling labour members facebook and twitter desperately trying to throw any left leaning people out of the party , spent party funds on taking the democratically elected leader to court trying to keep him off the ballot for his own position , spent an election campaign sabotaging his own party and diverting funds to help his political allies , and shredded disciplinary documents to attempt to stop Corbyns team from sorting the situation. Yes almost identical.

What the fuck has any of that got to do with what I said? The last election of a GS took about a month and this one looks to be about the same. 
 

There’s no reason to hold off appointing a new GS until Autumn, the timescale seems in line with last time.

[Neil G]

9 hours ago, Sugar Ape said:

She had one of the most important roles in the party and she’s a close ally of Corbyn and McCluskey. Obviously more than a close ally to McCluskey actually. No one will know exactly how much of a role each individual played but I’m happy to place most of the blame on Corbyn as the buck stops with him and the rest on his close advisors and top party staff. Milne, Murray, Murphy et al. I also note you seem to have an issue with me placing too much blame on her without evidence, but you’re happy to use anecdotal evidence that some of the poor performance under her purview might not have been her fault. 
 

Aside from the GE I don’t think she handled the antisemitism claims well at all. I’m not getting into all that right now as it’ll just descend into pages of crying about Rachel Riley again, but we’ll see what the EHRC report says and not the one commissioned by her which concludes she did everything she could. There’s also a whiff of nepotism about her getting the job in the first place which is true of a lot of the top party staff of the Corbyn era such as Andrew and Laura Murray, which is something I’m keen to see done differently with any future appointments. Ultimately we seem to be getting into another one of these weird arguments drawn out over days on something which is mostly a matter of personal opinion in how much blame she holds. If you think she’s mostly blameless that’s fine; I don’t. 
 

And finally your last point on Starmer is well wide of the mark. I’m clearly talking about the need for Corbyn’s closest advisors and allies to go when he did, as they share varying degrees of responsibility for the election result as I’ve said above. No one associates Starmer closely with Corbyn, and he clearly wasn’t part of his inner circle deciding policy across the party so I don’t think you could describe him as part of Corbyn’s top team. Corbyn and his backers on the front bench and in the unions/Momentum all backed RLB. Even now a significant view on here seems to be he’s either a centrist (but said as if a centrist is a Tory) or a Blairite. In addition, I question how much responsibility Starmer has for the Brexit policy at the GE. He’s implied himself that he was sidelined during the election, he was nowhere to be seen and instead we had idiots like Burgon on the airwaves every day. 

I was originally going to post that it seems to be anything associated with Corbyn that you want to throw out, but didn’t as I thought it would come across as snarky. You’ve said it yourself though. I think it’s an overreaction.

 

Formby may well have done a shit job in the campaign for all I know, I’m not saying she didn’t. I’m not presenting the anecdotes as evidence that she didn’t, I’m doing it to question your assertion that she must have done.

 

I’d be genuinely interested to hear why you think she did a bad job on antisemitism in light of the leaked report, as it has implications far beyond her own individual performance, but fair enough if you don’t want to as yes, it will probably turn into another boring shitfest. The investigation into the report will hopefully cast more light on who did and didn’t do what.

 

The reason I’ve been going in to bat for Formby is that she’s set up to be the next target for the right of the party in their campaign to purge the left. That’s not an overreaction, it’s what they’ve wanted to do for the last five years and lots of them are completely open about it.

[Sugar Ape]

6 minutes ago, Neil G said:

I was originally going to post that it seems to be anything associated with Corbyn that you want to throw out, but didn’t as I thought it would come across as snarky. You’ve said it yourself though. I think it’s an overreaction.

 

Formby may well have done a shit job in the campaign for all I know, I’m not saying she didn’t. I’m not presenting the anecdotes as evidence that she didn’t, I’m doing it to question your assertion that she must have done.

 

I’d be genuinely interested to hear why you think she did a bad job on antisemitism in light of the leaked report, as it has implications far beyond her own individual performance, but fair enough if you don’t want to as yes, it will probably turn into another boring shitfest. The investigation into the report will hopefully cast more light on who did and didn’t do what.

 

The reason I’ve been going in to bat for Formby is that she’s set up to be the next target for the right of the party in their campaign to purge the left. That’s not an overreaction, it’s what they’ve wanted to do for the last five years and lots of them are completely open about it.

Not anything associated with Corbyn, no. I’ve got no problem with RLB for example being on Starmers front bench the same as she was for Corbyn. If they are talented then utilise them. I’m not advocating wiping every Corbyn supporter out of the party or anything like that obviously, but the people most closely associated with him, if they are MPs such as McDonnell and Abbott should move to the back benches and any officials or policy advisors who are intimately linked with him and his leadership - we all know the names, Murray, Milne, Formby, Murphy - should stand down or be let go and Starmer should make his own choice who he wants there. I think they’re all gone now anyway with the exception of Murphy?
 

Like I said, I’d say the same for whoever takes over from Starmer and Corbyn should have been able to do the same straight away in 2015. Keeping Formby in the role would have only led to a similar situation to McNicol and Corbyn. And before Sir Roger has a meltdown I’m talking about them not working well together, not saying she would have pulled the same shenanigans he did. 
 

With regards to the antisemitism stuff I have my own views on how it’s been handled but I’m not getting into it now, it seems pretty pointless when we will shortly be getting a substantial report on it. I’ll wait for the EHRC report, and possibly the report on the leaks depending on what it covers exactly i.e. will it cover the period she was in charge for or mainly focus on the McNicol era, before I completely make my mind up about it.
 

Re your last paragraph, I’m sure what you describe as the right of the party such as Jess Phillips or Margaret Hodge or whoever did want her to go but I’m not sure they’re the reason she’s gone. At best they’re in marginal positions the same as the likes of Dan Carden and Russell-Moyle are. On the face of it, it seems like a curious time for her to step down even if Starmer did want her to go. If they are confident of winning more NEC seats at the next elections then I don’t know why she didn’t hold on until then which make

me think there is more to her departure than meets the eye. We shall see.