Natter for labour party members

[YeOldeTrout]

Who are you minded to vote for? How have you decided?

Leader & deputy leader.
I can't make up my mind. The commentators seem to say things about each candidate that are quite different from the impressions I get.

Tom Watson deputy with Angela Eagle second choice. I think Watson has been pretty solid on a lot of issues and brave on the phone hacking. Eagle is also admirable. I like Stella Creasy but think she's a bit young and inexperienced this time round, although she's done fantastic campaigns on stuff like payday loans.

As for the leader.....politically I'm closer to Corbyn, but will probably vote Cooper or Burnham as they can probably hold the party together and Corbyn can't command the respect of the PLP. I have been seriously underimpressed with Liz Kendall who I knew nothing about at the start of the campaign. Whoever gets it this time is going to be a caretaker I suspect.

But I really liked Ed Miliband so what do I know?

Ta 4 reply (I fell asleep counting tumbleweeds).
I was thinking Flint for Deputy, I like her feistiness. Maybe that's not what deputy should be like, though, not sure!

I like all the candidates for Deputy - I'd be happy with any of them.
It's the ruddy leader candidates I'm struggling with!

Ta 4 reply (I fell asleep counting tumbleweeds).
I was thinking Flint for Deputy, I like her feistiness

I met her a few times when she was a cabinet minister and tbh I wasn't impressed.

I'll be voting for Yvette Cooper for leader and Stella Creasy for Deputy. Like you BreakWindandFire, i like Corbyn but don't feel he's a realistic choice in the long term. And would LOVE a female leader. I think it would scare Cameron too.
As for Stella, i love her attitude, drive and grassroots approach.

Andy Burnham for leader with Yvette Cooper second. Deputy - Angela Eagle and Stella Creasy but not sure which order.

1. Liz Kendall 2) Cooper

I think it's unlikely Liz will win, sadly, but I also really like Cooper and if Liz gets eliminated I'd like Cooper to get in.

For Deputy: Stella as my first choice. Not sure about second.

I think Stella is a great organiser & effective campaigner.

Leader 1) Corbyn. I am unsure if I will use my other preference votes yet.

Deputy 1) Caroline 2) Stella

Jeremy Corbyn. Mainly because he's about as far away from the murderer Blair as it's possible to be.

Plus I'm entirely in agreement with his views on just about everything, as far as I can tell. As are the majority of people in the country.

In the AV system, if Burnham and Kendall withdraw how are their first and second preference votes re-distributed?
Does this turn into a straight run off between Corbyn and Cooper?

I understand that those with the lowest 1st preferences are eliminated, and their votes are then distributed according to their preferences (i.e. My first preference of Liz no longer counts, my vote now goes to Cooper), and the sum of these votes determines the standing for the final two.

I think Burnham will struggle on 2nd preferences.

I'd like to vote for women for both, which would be Yvette Cooper and Stella Creasy. Leader is a difficult one - like lots of PPs I feel politically closest to Corbyn but worry about electability. But then Yvette Cooper might be tainted by the Balls connection. Torn...

I don't see what gender's got to do with it? Whilst the press's onslaught on J Corbyn is predictable. It's also to be expected that they're all playing the gender card now to try and sell us Yvette Cooper, a staunch Blairite, right winger who supported the Iraq war. I wouldn't vote for her in a million years.

Yeah, vote for Liz Kendall - or otherwise just vote for the Tory scum. There's no difference.

The sex of the candidate is definitely an influential factor for me silk. We are half the population and half the party, but HH is the first female Leader, and only interim. We can pretend sex is immaterial when there have been as many female leaders as male.

So the fact that Yvette Cooper fully represents the elitist, corporate, warmongering agenda of the Blairites. And fully supports Tory policies of NHS privatisation, austerity budgets, tuition fees, Trident etc etc.

She's a Female and that's good enough for you?

I know this is difficult to understand, but the Labour party doesn't solely comprise of people who agree with Jeremy Corbyn's policies...

I happen to agree with Kendall & Yvette's policies more than Corbyn. I don't agree with everything the Blair govt. did but I think it was hugely successful in a number of areas and 10000000000% better than the current govt.

I also think have a female leader will be a good change of scene and emphasise our difference from the other parties in a very visible and obvious way.

Actually it's easy to understand ~ Alyosha, you and EElisavetaOfBelsornia are on the Blairite, right-wing of the Labour party and that's your prerogative.

That said: I don't think you should fall for this completely bogus form of gender politics which is being used as part of the attack that's being waged against Corbyn. A massively disproportionate number of poor women and their children are suffering due to this gov's social welfare crackdown. Yet what sign of passion or commitment do you see from Cooper about that or about the many, many other issues which might be expected to generate such a response from a supposedly 'Labour' politician? It's Jeremy Corbyn who's offering a compassionate alternative to austerity, and is the one standing up for women, not Cooper.

Perhaps though you think gender equality counts more than the bringing of misery and poverty for the majority in this country as well as war and destruction in other countries?

Our difference with the other parties DIFFERENCE?? Yvette Cooper supports Austerity, the Tory welfare reforms, the spending of a hundred billion on nukes and having the taxpayer subsidise private train operators, energy companies and landlords. Difference?

Its a very small, limited number of women whose interests would be advanced by the neo liberal, right-winger Yvette Cooper. But if you see yourself as one of them then I can see why you'd want her as the leader.

Gender is irrelevant. I want to see the right politicians (Male and/or Female) standing up for the right things, not some woman plonked in there to help secure the Ladies vote. Despite what they represent!

OK Silk, you & I are both allowed to have our views, the Labour party is a broad church and hopefully we both agree a Blairite govt. would be better than what we have now.

The no.1 reason I am a Blairite is because I think the Labour party has to get into power first before we can worry about anything else...we have to gain the trust of many conservative & lib dem voters in order to do that, so no matter my own personal principles, many of which agree with Corbyn (and many of which don't), I feel we have to put the future of the Labour party as an organisation that can deliver real change from a position of power first.

What a depressing prognosis you offer Alyosha! Is that the best we can hope for? Another right wing, neo liberal leader running the nation in the interests of big business under a "Labour" banner. That's what we need to be just to get elected? 'Getting elected' will mean more years of Labour following the Tories and keeping on drifting towards the right, resulting in an only slightly less worse political party. Is that desirable? Should that be what Labour should be for? Put aside blind loyalty for a second and give that some thought.

As i said it’s your prerogative to vote where you like, but remember HH took the stance that Labour shouldn't oppose the Tories' economically illiterate austerity agenda because they need to appeal to Tory voters. This has been proved to be completely crackers. Want to go into another election doing that again? Think the outcome will be any different?

Consider the fact that only 24% of the electorate voted for the Tories, while 34% were too apathetic or too disillusioned to vote at all. Sirely it makes way more sense for Labour to strongly differentiate themselves from the Tories in order to appeal to the massive number of people out there who have lost faith in politics because "they're all the same aren't they?" rather than making themselves ever more indistinguishable from the Tories? Which is what Harman and Cooper would do!

People, especially young people, will come out and vote now more and more. Because they believe that for once we might get some real change via Corbyn, just like happened in Scotland a few months ago. The electorate will come out when they believe it's actually worth doing so. Only Corbyn is capable of reaching out to this crucial and rapidly growing section of the electorate, most of whom didn't bother voting last time.

The real Dinosaurs wedded to a tired ideology is the Blairite, neo liberals who far from being pragmatists, actually pursue the policies they do out of a commitment to free-market principles even when, as with housing, energy, railways, and the economy in general: they obviously don't work. These lot are looking daily, more and more out of touch. Raise your expectations is my advice. .

Can you tell me the last time Labour won on a left wing, rather than centrist platform?

I think Blair's years in power did so much for the NHS, education, health - it's sad to see our record in government gainsaid by both the Tories and Labour activists!

I want the Labour Party to be a party of political power. Do you want that?

Winning means compromise. We will not win if we take the lesson from the election that we weren't left wing enough - Miliband was the most left wing leader for a long time but we lost votes where we needed to gain them and vice versa.

Let's not be like US republicans - and take the message from the defeat of a left wing policy platform in suburban seats to mean we must become more left wing.

Michael Foot déjà vu...

Also I hugely disagree with Corbyn on Russia & Trident.

I want the Labour Party to be a party of political power. Do you want that?

Not if it's the 'Labour Party' in name and the Tory Psychopath party in policy and ideology, no.

OK, do you think the previous Labour government was any better than the current conservative government?