Why the Labour Party will not elect a woman

They might come even moderately close to adequate leadership.

Massive shoot yourself in the foot having 4 females and 1 male. The "female" vote will be split 4 ways, the male vote won't be split at all.

I don't know how the leadership election works, but unless 3 of the woman either drop out or are voted out before a final "head to head" between a bloke and a woman, it will be the bloke!

But, none of the 4 women appeal to me anyway, so despite being a woman, I'll still probably be voting for Keir. I want the best "person" to win rather than the best "woman".

Emily Thornberry is a sneering ignoramus

This comment is both sneering and ignorant.

^...who has blotted her copy book with comments about flag waving van drivers and "stupid northern voters".

Entirely false on both counts. She is suing over the Northern voters comment. She made no comment about van drivers or anyone, but a van driver was paid several thousand pounds by the Sun to say he was outraged, on three sucessive days front page, by what she never said when she said nothing.

She is married to an aristocrat.

No she isn't. You are perhaps thinking of Harriet Harman's aunt, so beloved of the Tory front bench. She is 'Lady Nugess' for exactly the stame reason that Kier Starmer's wife is Lady Starmer.

However, he is fundamentally pro-EU and pro-mass-immigration.

I think these things will start to increase in appeal when Brexit bites.

I also like Starmer and Nandy best, but Starmer is more experienced and has more gravitas, but I really don't think that's because he's male. It's the same vibe Yvette Cooper has and I'd like her to stand. I'm annoyed the candidate that appeals most to me is the only man, but as a PP said, having a woman for the sake of it is stupid and counterproductive. The female PMs we have had didn't get where they were by tokenism, however much I hated them politically.

Or maybe he needs to employ some of that intellect towards inventing a "third way" of aspiration and hope that appeals to a majority. There's nothing intrinsically anti-eu or anti-immigration about the north. It's just that a combination of decades of economic decline has been -ironically - exploited by some of the very right wing politicians who helped to create that decline in the first place to serve their own agenda.

@RuffleCrow I agree he is the best of a bad bunch. However, he is fundamentally pro-EU and pro-mass-immigration. I can't see how he can realistically bring together patriotic, culturally conservative, working class voters from outside the major cities with the metropolitan Remain voting middle classes & BAME who are taught to see traditional Englanders as closet Nazis. Left wing intellectuals need to fundamentally transform their attitude to belonging/localism/patriotism for any kind of election winning demographic to materialise.

Keir Starmer is part of that brief generation of self-made working class intellectuals born between WW2 and the seventies, when social mobility was a real possibility if you were hard-working enough. However, it seems he's never forgotten his roots or his namesake's legacy. He's the perfect person to bring together the New Labour and socialist factions. He may stop short of convincing the real weirdos in Momentum but that may be a good thing.

@EmmaGrundyForPM I disagree with the premise of the original statement on this thread. The labour party is democratic. If people want to elect a woman then they will.

Presumably being elected to political office requires a combination of
a) networking skills.
b) charisma
c) strategic & tactical thinking
d) communicating a message that resonates.

With this in mind anybody with even a half arsed observance of real life understands that political talent is unlikely to be evenly distributed across all gender, racial, cultural, religious and other categories.

It is unrealistic to expect a completely representative sample of human beings across all sections of society.

You can't choose someone just because they are a woman. If they then fail because they weren't the best person at that time, it will get generalised across to all women.

If, as seems likely, it ends up being a choice between Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey then I would vote for Keir Starmer every time. The Labour Party needs time to heal.itself and a leader who can bring people together. I really don't think RBL is the person to do that.

@PersonaNonGarter Perhaps the reason old school Labour voters romanticise the old "manly" industry is because deep down they understand that an economy built on borrowing, shopping, property speculation & mass immigration is on the highway to socio-economic hell.

As for the candidates specifically it seems to me that

1. Jess Phillips unapologetic desire to re-enter the EU is politically unviable. Her resentful "wokeness" also grates against many people.
2. Emily Thornberry is a sneering ignoramus who has blotted her copy book with comments about flag waving van drivers and "stupid northern voters". She is married to an aristocrat. She literally wears EU earings.
3. Rebecca Long-Bailey is somewhat a repeat of the failed Corbyn project. She wrote much of 2019s failed manifesto.
4. Lisa Nandy is better than the above & has at least spoken about moving forward in a way that accepts the referendum (& now election) result. Though she opposed Brexit & is quite new labourish.
5. Keir Starmer has the most distinguished legal and political career. Like Nandy he has made the right noises about leaving the EU & even reducing immigration. However, he too is quite new labour.

Basically Starmer & Nandy are the only ones who have any hope of uniting the metropolitan middle class left with the average working class English voter. Which is what needs to happen for a Labour victory. I couldn't give a fig whether the PM has a fanny or not.

The leadership election has turned into Monty python's Four Yorkshireman sketch.

We end up with a man who is part of the southern metroplotan public school male elite.

Reigate is not the metropolis. It is an industrial town on the north downs, home to the original industrial labour force, as described by EP Thompson in The Making of the English Working Class.

Kier Starmer is the son of a Trade Unionist toolmaker and a nurse. He is named after Kier Hardie. He comes from a selective LEA where the only route to university was to pass the eleven-plus and attend the local (in his case voluntary aided) grammar school.

Now compare and contrast with Jeremy Corbyn who grew up in the Cotswolds then in a 17th century manor house. He went to prep school then became a day boy at a minor public school.

I'd sooner vote for a man who knows what a woman is than a woman who chooses to pretend she doesn't.

Women's work has always been seen as inferior to men's. The minute a profession is female dominated, it loses its status. Look at secretaries, for instance.

Have to say how impressed I was with Lisa Nandy during her interview with Andrew Neil on BBC2 last night. She actually had him on the back-foot. Calm, considered, confident, knowledgeable, articulate......I'd not seen her speak to this extent before. Real leadership material.

Even if Kier Starmer takes it this time, I sincerely hope she gets a senior shadow cabinet role - more experience and a further bid in the future? Kier Starmer is a bit boring and I'm not sure what he stands for - although he may well be a mediating and steadying influence on the party in the short term.

Just hope Dawn Butler fades away onto the back benches.

"The operation was a success, but..."

I saw on twitter someone say that there’s one person who would definitely win this leadership election hands down and that’s ... Jeremy Corbyn.

A depressing thought, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I saw some CLP motion proposed to congratulate JC on two great election results (in terms of percentage of votes) and for increasing the membership.

Getting back to the actual politics of choosing Labour's new leader.

I'd rather a new leader was good for women (actual women) than a woman themself.

The Labour membership will elect this leader. The membership/activist base that the electorate has just rejected in er... wholesale fashion. I don't dislike Kier Starmer at all, in fact I quite like him, but he's a technocratic Remainer. All very nice for the people who did vote Labour at the election but hopeless for those who didn't. Both aloof techocracy and ultra remain have been rejected by the very voters Labour must win back.

The sad truth is that I don't think there is a single person in the PLP - possibly Lisa Nandy, but she's not exactly dynamic - who could build bridges between the metropolitan liberals and the non-metropolitan post-liberals.

Probably what Labour members need to realise is that they've been working on the assumption that the non-metropolitan post-liberals had nowhere else to go. But the truth is that it's the metropolitan liberals who actually have nowhere else to go. Had they realised that sooner, we'd have a Labour government now.

Needmoresleep, I can't read the article linked to as I cant access the DM on my computer (I refuse to bypass my adblocker to allow access), bu I don't think the the idea to recruit a "quirkier", non-traditional type of person to the civil service is a bad thing. From what I know of what he wishes to do, he is seeking to attract people with strong science and math backgrounds instead of the more usual PPE sorts - not a bad thing. Also, having more people who are non-traditional will allow for a more flexible civil service and one better prepared for a a tech-driven future.

Of all Dominic Cummings faults, coming up with this goal is not one of the worst ones.

The TMI on your personal life might be a LibDem thing following on from Nick (no more than 30 lovers) Clegg, rather than a female thing.

I cringed at Layla Morans video about her pansexuality. I understand she wanted to be open about her personal life but explaining she got together with her gf after a few drinks was just TMI, can you imagine a male politician saying that?

The majority of the population won't know what pansexual is and will just see it as weird.

Kezia Dugdale and Ruth Davidson were both accepted as being lesbians during their leadership.

Out of interest I googled the leaders of Scottish Labour and three of the past eight have been women which is a huge improvement in the UK party as a whole.

As for Dominic Cumming, I think deliberately trying to attract the people who are not 'public school bluffers' goes in his favour.

Also I have a theory that Labour would have lost just as badly in 2017 as last month, except Theresa May was a woman, and I have a horrible feeling that lost the Tories some votes

I don't think so given the success of Margaret Thatcher. Theresa May just ran a very poor campaign. Also there were voters prepared to at least give Corbyn a chance as the horror of Corbynism hadn't been fully unleashed in 2017.