To think Keir Starmer will be Labour leader before the end of the year

How many years later? Can you answer that question yourself now?@@@@

Corbyn knows this that is why he has ditched the contrived I am so interested in real issues I just don't have the time to care for myself and now owears suit and has had a hair cut and beard trim

He always looks fine, just not another corporate clone.

The average criminal defendant is not very nice at all Karlos. I'm all in favour of prosecuting and punishing them as efficiently as possible without actually killing them. Aren't you?

I personally think that the fact that he's done such a huge job at the sharp end of implementing legislation is Starmer's major plus point. Politically though it's a risk because if you actually get out there and do things like that then you'll take the risk that one in your thousands of decisions will be wrong or just unpopular with the electorate. I'm sure the Daily Mail will dig out a picture of a particularly scary looking murderer from the Caribbean who Starmer prevented from being executed for example, and he appeared in some cases defending the human rights of terrorists which I'm sure the tabloids would have a field day with. On the left wing side his role in the Twitter joke trial is unpopular with many and clearly some MNers think he holds some responsibility for the failures in Rotherham though I don't know the facts there.

Oh the old Daily Mail insult

And while it shouldn't matter what a PM looks like how you present yourself does and Corbyn knows this that is why he has ditched the contrived I am so interested in real issues I just don't have the time to care for myself and now owears suit and has had a hair cut and beard trim

Urgh like listening to progress or reading the daily mail

And this of course.

Who looks more like a PM?

Yeah, because politics should be all about looks

The Tories will no doubt win 2020 election and agree TM is an assest to them but with a change of leader we can have a credible and strong opposition to the government and to Brexit proposals we haven't got it now and with Corbyn in charge with his utterly useless cronies around him Labour will lose many many seats

I was thinking in a Guardian reading type of way about his human rights/death penalty defences.

Snorting at the idea that starmer was on the side of the angels during his legal career. You met the average criminal defendant recently?

I like Stephen Kinnock (I have a weird soft spot for his dad too). I'd also love to see Ed Balls back. I like to think it wasn't just his more popular public image after Strictly, but I'd be kidding myself

Urgh like listening to progress or reading the daily mail.

Stephen Kinnock and Yvette Cooper are the ones I'm hoping take over. Don't like Starmer - think his actions (or inaction) regarding Rotherham show us who he is, and I don't like it.

Love the suggestion of a PP about Ed Balls. Think he'd make great leader and PM. Don't think it'll happen though.

I'm gald someone else hasn't forgotten Rotherham, Doncaster, Rochdale,calderdale Keighley and goodness knows where else? But it wasn't just that TwattyMcTwatface He was tied up by PC bullshit just like all the others that failed thopse poor kids, because the abusers were Muslims.

Not leader by the end of the year, but a new Labour leader will be in place by 2020.

Anyone other than the current useless waste of space in charge of the Labour Party would suit me!

I am not against the idea of Starmer but my ideal next leader would be Sadiq Kahn. He is doing such a good job as London Mayor and seems to have the gravitas Corbyn sadly lacks!

How has no one noticed Clive Lewis yet?

Jarvis went to a comp btw. Albeit one in a fairly naice area I believe. Undergraduate degree at Aberystwyth and post grad at KCL. Plus Sandhurst so he knows how to iron

No he hasn't had a non-privileged upbringing! Grammar school, Leeds and then Oxford is not lacking in privilege. Granted it isn't Elton but that's the best that can be said.

I like him. And he's had a perfectly normal non-privileged upbringing (apart from being a white male I mean). Undergraduate degree is from Leeds as a matter of fact.

However my gut instinct tells me that TM is a real asset to the Tories and will be tough to beat unless something major happens in the next three years (over and above the expected Brexit hassles which I suspect most voters now tune out).

I struggle to understand how people cant see they are being manipulated by the media, whether you like Corbyn or not makes no odds, the media are now touting starmer as the next leader and so many people are just buying into this because 'i read it in the guardian, telegraph think for yourselfs, same with brexit the media have taken us all down the same garden path urgh vent and then hide thread lol

He certainly wants to be. Why wouldn't I support him? Rotherham. He was behind the failure to support those young girls because they were "bad". And he doesn't have the excuse of being a Tory, either.

Jarvis will campaign hard to keep his seat. Like all the Yorkshire Labour MPs, he's very mindful of the threat of UKIP, in fact he wrote a report on that issue. If he wins convincingly, it gives him something else as a selling point to Labour as a whole - here is somebody who knows how to win. If he could run against a SNP candidate that would be handy too

I think it will be Dan Jarvis rather than Kier Starmer too.

Dan Jarvis is my MP and whilst I wouldn't vote Labour in council elections, as a floating voter I would seriously consider voting for Dan Jarvis in the GE, (not that he'd particularly need my vote. As the saying goes, you can pin a red rosette on a donkey and it would get elected around here.)

He seem like a decent bloke and he's a very visible presence around here, unlike our last MP who I couldn't pick out of a line up.