Lefties 9: This will succeed through its success

[taffetacat]

Is everyone on Twitter now?

I think the private school thing is quite a big issue for electorate tbh. She is often controversial and doesn't toe party line, she failed to declare earnings from This Week, made a racist comment according to Wiki.

Just don't think she is likely to get much support but happy to be proved wrong.

I thought I heard something on the radio. I'm a bit concerned that she's claiming McDonnell has given up already though. I think it would be quite good to have a black woman as a candidate.

I'm sure we will get someone much more rightwing in a Blairite/Brownite tradition in the end, but I think we need a contest this time. I think McDonnell standing in 2007 would have done him a huge favour (or Meacher but I really don't like Michael Meacher).

It'll be the random double consonant bug that keeps me putting 2 Ls in Miliband, Proles.....

Diane Abbot. Hmmm. That's just a bit back-in-time really isn't it? T'is the WilliamHague syndrome all over again. In my ignorance I didn't even think she was that active anymore. I thought she just did telly.

I'm afraid that premature announcement about McDonnell is exactly what makes me dislike her - I think of her as being opportunist and manipulative.

It's a really knee-jerk response though, based partly on the private schools thing (she was vicious about all the others that did it, and it had been a core platform of hers)but mainly on her manner . I LOATHE her Thatcheresque faux-gentle, breathy voice as well.

I just don't think of her as stateswomanlike in the slightest, which is a bloody shame.

I would quite like to go to the pub with her for a glass of wine and general political chit chat but I don't want her running the country probably sums up my feelings on the situation.

It's those pesky trending topics on Twitter Proles, I often think surely I must be wrong, there can't be that many people spelling a word/name incorrectly so I change the way I spell it! My mock angry tweet wasn't aimed at you btw!

lol at "Twitter Proles." I thought it must be the Twitter ghetto for plebs like me with sub-20 followers, in contrast with the Twittocrats

Eleison - I'm definitely a Twitter Prole. (You're gifted in the "Neo-necessay words" department, aren't you?) Are people not yet on Twitter lumpen-Twitter-proles?

Have been running the Diane Abbot thing through my head this morning. Has she ever been in Cabinet? I can't see her heading a Cabinet meeting, let alone going down well with C2s and swingers. Is she aiming for a shadow cabinet position, do you think?

Oh no! That wasn't what I bloody meant...

I am trying to stop my toddler mixing play doh colours, I have no time for proofing!

I suppose they are peasants, not having yet come in from the wide fields into the back-to-back squalour of 140-character tenements.

Am trying to come up with possible woman candidates for the Labour Leadership contest whose names I know (always helps).

What do you think about Margaret Hodge? All I know is that she is filthy rich and had a wonderful result against the BNP. Sorry to be ignorant.

I suggested Diane Abbot to DH last night. He was not enthused.

Why isn't Yvette Cooper running?! Although I probably would not run against DH. Wouldn't want to humiliate him .

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.

• 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.

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.

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

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?

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.