Lefties 9: This will succeed through its success

what about the lovely (equally kneejerk response) oona? is she too blairite? do i have that wrong?

diane abbot is a bloody nightmare (agree entirely with your kneejerk response onebat!), at this rate michael frigging portillo will stand!

Is Dianne Abbott really standing in the leadership election ? I am sorry but i cannot stand her and if she wins i certainly will not vote for them again. She was a total hypocrite by sending her child to a private school and i just find her very irritating probably the only labour mp i really dislike.

Hello lefties, sorry I haven't caught up with everything, it's been a while and so many posts.

I was just reading the libcon document thingy on the BBC saying what they're going to be doing. And wondering what you all make of it. And is it better/worse than what people were expecting.

A lot of it looks OK to me but I probably haven't noticed what's missing IYSWIM.

here and more detail here

Eleison v thoughtful comments on PR.

Interesting point re PR Eleison.

Good article here about Jon Snow's opinion of the media coverage of the election. He lays into the tabloids and says the fixation on the leadership debates was to the detriment of policy issues. He also says GB's major issue was that he is not TV friendly. I have to say I think I'm probably with him on this, such a shame it should matter but it does.

Ah sorry yes it was Animula that I was 'precisely'-ing at about Diane A!

And yes, re Thatcher's Children. In those days I would have had to HATE lucy Mangan for her Toryboy partnership. Is different now. A bit.

(I think it was someone else who commented on DA, onebat, not me. I'm ashamed to say that I ciouldn't muster any more intelligent argument against her than an unarticluated groan of disgust. Othwers here have given me a handy rationale for that.)

Eleison - "precisely" re Diane Abbott, and "interesting!" re PR

Prolesworth - "Quite so" re the release of intellectual and political tension now that
Labour is in opposition.

I think for we Thatcher's children, it felt as though Everything was at stake, so while I've been v critical amongst friends I have felt the necessity of a United Front elsewhere. Which is reasonable and realistic - and will probably happen again. We must make sure we seize this opportunity for an objective critical analysis while we have it.

(The inarticulate admiring gazing, that is. I imagine it to be like an C18 peasant in a shopping-centre. Not a good look. and a bit disturbing.)

Absolutely prole. I didn't vote labour largely bcs of that. And my support for PR is based on the hope that, whereas in the 70s, 80s it would have worked against the survival of a party system that more-or-less successfully aggreated a tribal vote into left and right policy resevoirs, these days we HAVE the centre-squatting system that I feared would result from PR in the past (and we also have less tribal voting).

These days, PR might have the opposite effect from its putative 70s, 80s effect, and free us from centre-ism - by undermining the influence of the tiny centrist swing vote that both parties fight for, and even by making a split within the coalition broad church labour party, resulting in a leftist party.

Yes, I feel a lot like that, Prolesworth.

Oddly enough, I found that thinking about her candidacy had the strange effect of making me very cross with New Labour. It's too boring to go into, but I found it bringing up all kinds of thoughts about centralised power in the party, and the exclusion of certain voices and positions. And more. All of which part of me feels v. ambivalent about. Yes, it brought power, but ... was it necessary on such a big scale?

Prolesworth If you joined, we had a chance of voting for you

Yes, Moleworth. If Diane Abott weren't ... D. A. really, I'd suspect she had altruistically decided to stand just to get a woman in the race.

• peasants and tenements.

Ewe - I think we know! It's just a very fortunate conjunction.

Onebat - Opportunistic and manipulative? Hmmm. I've been pondering that myself. Thoughts so far are 1. Is she very good at being opportunistic and manipulative? Maybe yes, maybe no. She's managed to achieve a very strong media profile, hasn't she? Balanced against any overt power/position within the party. 2. a sense of playing to core Labour sentiment whilst not delivering the goods in reality does cling to her - whether justly or not.

And the private school thing resonates with no. 2. I spat feathers over that. Not so much because she did it, rather because, as you say, she had been so vociferous before.

She's also lacking in the bright new ideas dept.

But agree with Molesworth that it may reign in the immigration "debate" - which I am not looking forward to.

I meant to say that, oddly, McDonnell standing against Brown in 2007 would have done Brown a huge favour.

I share some of your concerns onebatmother, though I don't agree with you about the voice - it seems to be common among black women to have several very different voices/registers depending on who they're speaking to.