Labour Leader - Who's your preference?

[Bentley Bullet]

Right, which Labour member do people want to lead the opposition after the next general election?

[scawsby steve]

Screaming Lord Sutch. Oh sorry, he's dead. Pity, he'd have been better than the shower of sh*t on that list.

Yeah, I know he wasn't a Labour member, but there's not much difference nowadays between them and the Monster Raving Loony Party.

[Donnywolf]

The man who should have got the job long ago

David Milliband

[swifty50]

Jeremy Corbyn is a fine leader, the right wing media,and the BBC are doing their level best,to keep him out of power, that includes the Blairite MPs, don't believe all you read, look for yourselves, Anti semitism was never mentioned, before he became leader, he his a fine honest,principled person

[BillyStubbsTears]

Let me get this right.

Blairite MPs are doing their level best to keep him out of power?

Since there is no possibility of Corbyn being replaced as Labour leader, your logic means that Labour MPs are doing their level best to lose the next election. Which means that some of them must be doing their level best to lose their own seats.

Give me f**king strength.

Go and look at the opinion polls. Look at when Labour's vote has collapsed and who it's gone to and then think why that has happened.

It's got f**k all to do with anti-Semitism. It's got f**k all to do with Blairite MPs.

It's all about the only game in town. Brexit. And Corbyn's Brecit policy has cost Labour 4-6million supporters over the past 6 months. And they have nearly all gone to the LDs and Greens.

Stop doing the easy thing - blaming everyone else. Start doing the hard thinking if you really want a Labour Govt.

[selby]

 Billy, I think more have gone to the Brexit party mate than those two,or is it your wishful thinking.

[Glyn_Wigley]

Billy, I think more have gone to the Brexit party mate than those two,or is it your wishful thinking.

The growth in Brexit Party votes matches the votes the Tories have lost.

If, as you say, its lots of Labour supporters that have voted Brexit Party - where have the Tories gone to?

[BillyStubbsTears]

Selby.

No. It's not wishful thinking. It's carefully looking at the polling evidence.

What do you base your opinion on?

[selby]

 The number of people I know who have always voted Labour but are going to vote Brexit Party if there is an election.
   As Caroline Flint said on the Marr show 26 labour MP's in the Labour heartlands in the midlands and Yorkshire know they will lose to Farage if an election follows a failure to deliver Brexit, and that is just two areas.
   He will tear both the conservatives and the Labour vote apart, and he will  have had time to get organised, and parliament will give him all the ammunition he needs in the next few months by tearing itself apart, and he can stand back pointing the finger, while both main parties at the moment blame each other publicly rubbishing each other and doing half his job for him.
  If he does not get an outright majority he could still hold the balance of power and join in a coalition with the Tories, who will do anything to stay in power.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Selby.

That's all anecdotal. There's a wide world outside your circle of friends.

Polls are infallible but if a lot of them are saying broadly the same thing, they are likely to be broadly right.

So here's what the polls say.

In late December, in a YouGov Poll, the voting intention figures were.

Con 41
Lab 39
LD 7
SNP 4
UKIP 4
Green 3

In the most recent YG poll the figures are

Con 24
Lab 18
LD 20
SNP 4
UKIP 0
Green 9
Brexit 23

So. Lab are down 21. LD and Green combined are up 19

Con+UKIP are down 21. BP are up 23.

That's a compelling argument that most of Labour's vote has gone to LD/Green and most of the Con/UKIP vote has gone to BP.

But there's more compelling data.

In the late 2018 poll, the people who said they'd voted Labour in 2017 broke like this

Lab 66
Con 4
LD 4
Green 3
UKIP 2

In the most recent poll, the figures are

Lab 43
Con 3
LD 28
Green 15
BP 10
UKIP 0


See that?
43% of the people who voted Labour in 2017 now support LD or Green. Only 10% now support BP.

You may know a lot of people who did vote Labour and are now Farageists. But those are the exception, not the rule. For every 2 of them, there are 9 other people who have left Labour and gone to an avowedly Remain-supporting party.

[swifty50]

So Joan Ryan who is clearly seen and heard on tape accepting, money from the Israeli Embassy to undermine Corbyn and get others to do so, this BBC Hatchet job that's aired on Wednesday,is before Jennie Formby took over as General secretary, when I was helping in the Peterborough by election, most people where concerned about, schools, police, education and the NHS not BREXIT,

[drfchound]

So Joan Ryan who is clearly seen and heard on tape accepting, money from the Israeli Embassy to undermine Corbyn and get others to do so, this BBC Hatchet job that's aired on Wednesday,is before Jennie Formby took over as General secretary, when I was helping in the Peterborough by election, most people where concerned about, schools, police, education and the NHS not BREXIT,

Not really sure what is being said in that post.
A bit rambling.

[wing commander]

   Swift you are showing the signs that I see all the time with the majority of hard left supporters..No matter what happens,no matter how bad it's going,it's always somebody else's fault..They are incapable of any kind of acceptance that the problem lies within their own party..
    But the reality is this.Frankly at the best of times it's a tough ask to get the nation to elect Corbyn but with his brexit policy (and I say that loosely because 3 years on nobody still doesn't know what that is) Corbyn is a busted unelectable leader and Labours only chance in the next election is not coming up with a policy now,it's to late for trust to return, but to change him...

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

Exactly Wing Co.  And actually they should listen to people like us as we are they people they need to convince to win a general election.

I am fed up with the Tories but are Labour the alternative for me?  No, not at all.  If the Tories do sort theirselves out Labour will get trounced.

[BillyStubbsTears]

WingCo/BFYP.

This. In spades.

It was ever this with the hard Left. Always, ALWAYS everyone else to blame.

They hate Blair but they never stop to consider for a moment where Blair emerged from. He came out of the shattered pieces of the Labour party the last time the Hard Left made it utterly unelectable.

It is beyond belief that, faced with the biggest national crisis since WWII and the worst Govt since WWI, Labour are performing worse than they have done since George V was king. And that a leader who has the worst polling figures of any Leader of the Opposition EVER (worse than Foot: worse than IDS) is utterly untouchable.

Because it is always somebody else's fault.

[Glyn_Wigley]

Say what you like about the Tories, but they don't muck about wringing their hands if they've got a leader who's damaging their chances of winning an election.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Finally.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/amp/entry/corbyn-to-back-second-brexit-referendu_uk_5d2392b3e4b0cf2ac68b6eb5/

Now it gets interesting...

[wilts rover]

Big announcement expected on Wednesday - I wonder what that might concern?

https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1148286296844099584

[BillyStubbsTears]

Question now is: is it too late?

So many have switched allegiance to the LDs that the LDs are looking like a serious electoral force again. So it's not a given that all those will return. And, if Corbyn doesn't come out all guns blazing for this policy, but goes into that idiotic mode he took on in 2016, they might not believe him anyway.

[selby]

  Billy posted on TULO Labour.org.uk details on there, looks like a bit of sitting on the fence and a lot of If's to  me.
    TULO Brexit position 8th July2019 final text

[SouthStandFan]

Question now is: is it too late?

So many have switched allegiance to the LDs that the LDs are looking like a serious electoral force again. So it's not a given that all those will return. And, if Corbyn doesn't come out all guns blazing for this policy, but goes into that idiotic mode he took on in 2016, they might not believe him anyway.

Lib Dem's are only a "serious electoral force" so far as BREXIT is concerned. They are a one trick pony (like UKIP and now the BREXIT party). LD will do anything to grasp a bit of power (see Coalition govt and sacrificing their manifesto pledges).

Anecdotal or not, the remain argument have lost... divided themselves, failed to reach a consensus in their plan to subvert the largest democratic mandate ever seen.....and in a GE will be dominated by the BREXIT party.

[idler]

Question now is: is it too late?

So many have switched allegiance to the LDs that the LDs are looking like a serious electoral force again. So it's not a given that all those will return. And, if Corbyn doesn't come out all guns blazing for this policy, but goes into that idiotic mode he took on in 2016, they might not believe him anyway.

Lib Dem's are only a "serious electoral force" so far as BREXIT is concerned. They are a one trick pony (like UKIP and now the BREXIT party). LD will do anything to grasp a bit of power (see Coalition govt and sacrificing their manifesto pledges).

Anecdotal or not, the remain argument have lost... divided themselves, failed to reach a consensus in their plan to subvert the largest democratic mandate ever seen.....and in a GE will be dominated by the BREXIT party.

I think that you will find that the majority to remain in the EEC in the 70s was far greater than this referendum.

[SouthStandFan]

Question now is: is it too late?

So many have switched allegiance to the LDs that the LDs are looking like a serious electoral force again. So it's not a given that all those will return. And, if Corbyn doesn't come out all guns blazing for this policy, but goes into that idiotic mode he took on in 2016, they might not believe him anyway.

Lib Dem's are only a "serious electoral force" so far as BREXIT is concerned. They are a one trick pony (like UKIP and now the BREXIT party). LD will do anything to grasp a bit of power (see Coalition govt and sacrificing their manifesto pledges).

Anecdotal or not, the remain argument have lost... divided themselves, failed to reach a consensus in their plan to subvert the largest democratic mandate ever seen.....and in a GE will be dominated by the BREXIT party.

I think that you will find that the majority to remain in the EEC in the 70s was far greater than this referendum.

I stand corrected.

My statement should have read, the highest number of voters for a single referendum choice ever.  More people voted Leave than voted Yes to the EEC.

Although a Leave voter, I'm under little illusion of it actually happening.

[idler]

Sorry SouthStandFan you are right. I meant the far bigger percentage previously as opposed to narrow margin in the last referendum.
I too voted leave but in three years I haven't seen or heard anyone say or do anything to give confidence of achieving it in any acceptable shape or form.
That is why I would now vote remain. The EU isn't perfect by any means but leaving our politicians in sole control of trade deals seems like letting toddlers out near a busy road unsupervised.

[SouthStandFan]

On second reading I don't think I do stand corrected. I said mandate, not majority. In terms of mandate, that was bigger than the EEC vote. So I reckon I was right. I retract my previous back down!

And... I've just seen your reply... Looks like we're arguing in agreement lol. 

[Bentley Bullet]

The 17.4 million votes to leave the EU in 2016 was the largest mandate for anything in British political history.

[SydneyRover]

There is still a bit of fine tuning to do but with the unions and labour finally starting to see the light and the dangers of any form of brexit with or without blunderboris writ large I think will see the collapse of the little britain argument.

The total failure of the tories to get any form of brexit through the gate has given British industry, farmers and the general population the time to see what brexit will look like and it's fairly obvious that it's not good.

If I had a welding/fabricating business or similar and I had been reading and watching how many hundreds of larger businesses have or were planning to move across the channel then I would be very concerned about how I was going to fill my order book for the coming year.

Cue for the shrill argument we wuz robbed, except that anything that follows will be legitimate also.

[BillyStubbsTears]

But, as I'm getting tired of saying, interpreting a "win" of less than 4% (and I'm not even going to go into the manifest problems with that vote) as a "mandate" for anything but the very softest of Brexits was bound to lead to the divisions we now have.

May chose to interpret a wafer-thin majority as a mandate for a very hard Brexit. She did that entirely for party political reasons. She compounded that error by (after two years of talking up Hard Brexit) then agreeing a deal that was an utter dogs breakfast.

Had she been putting the country first, rather than playing party politics, she'd have realised that a 51.9-48.1 split demands that you find a gentle compromise. A deal which took us out of the political structures of the EU, but left us in the CU and SM would not have been the first choice of many, but it would have been an acceptable compromise to a majority. We saw that in a recent poll.

She could have done that. We could have moved on.

But she didn't. And now we are where we are. The chance of a grown up compromise has been pissed away.

So we are faced with extreme outcomes. And, to be frank, I don't care what people on the Leave side are now claiming about "democracy". There never was and there isn't now a majority wanting the sort of No Deal Brexit that we're now facing. So, if the choice is between that and No Brexit, it's an easy choice for me. And if the older generation go to their grave chuntering about democracy being subverted, frankly, who cares?

[bpoolrover]

what I find strange bst is you want what’s best for the U.k yet you want the party you will vote for to change there manifesto just to win a general election you want to win at all costs

[Donnywolf]

Question now is: is it too late?

So many have switched allegiance to the LDs that the LDs are looking like a serious electoral force again. So it's not a given that all those will return. And, if Corbyn doesn't come out all guns blazing for this policy, but goes into that idiotic mode he took on in 2016, they might not believe him anyway.

Lib Dem's are only a "serious electoral force" so far as BREXIT is concerned. They are a one trick pony (like UKIP and now the BREXIT party). LD will do anything to grasp a bit of power (see Coalition govt and sacrificing their manifesto pledges).

Anecdotal or not, the remain argument have lost... divided themselves, failed to reach a consensus in their plan to subvert the largest democratic mandate ever seen.....and in a GE will be dominated by the BREXIT party.

I think that you will find that the majority to remain in the EEC in the 70s was far greater than this referendum.

I stand corrected.

My statement should have read, the highest number of voters for a single referendum choice ever.  More people voted Leave than voted Yes to the EEC.

Although a Leave voter, I'm under little illusion of it actually happening.

Yes as I have said (perhaps the only thing I have ever said on here) quite a few times when we had the 1975 Referendum on continuing in the EEC (after a couple of trial years in it) we voted by 66% to 34% to "join" full time ... 17,378,581 voted Join

That was an overwhelming 32 % MAJORITY to join. Predictably I voted Leave so was on the wrong horse that time as well !
There was no great outcry from the losing side (I suppose 'cos it was such a hammering) and the only dissentors were people within the Tory Party (mainly) who without compunction have steadily and sometimes not subtely chipped away against that the desires of that "overwhelming" majority - which was THEN "the will of the people" with no great outcry or demand from the public that I could detect.
And yet THEY have the nerve to talk about the death of democracy if we now backtrack on the 2016 Result having subverted the 75 result behind the scenes

Yes once again I agree 1975 was a long time ago - true - but 32% was still roughly nearly 10 times the majority produced in the 2016 Referendum when I was predictably on the wrong Horse again

Note to self : If there is another Referendum (on any topic) think which way you want the Vote to go and vote for the opposite outcome