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Jan 2020
4:54pm, 8 Jan 2020
9,921 posts
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larkim
Indeed. Just brushing up on the nomination rules, it is 22 MPs PLUS either 5% CLPs or 3 affiliates comprising > 5% membership (two of which must be Unions).
There is some wisdom which suggests getting 33 CLPs behind you might be quite a challenge, as Momentum could hoover up significantly > 50% of all CLPs behind one candidate, so the other candidates are fighting over a smaller pool.
Starmer now has Unison, so needs another union at least (there are 12 affiliated) plus another body. Only Unison, Unite, Usdaw, GMB and CWU have enough to clear the 5%, so expect RLB to get either the CLP backing or Unite plus some others.
The other candidates may really struggle to get sufficient nomination effort behind them from the CLPs or Unions.
And then wait to see what the NEC does in terms of setting the fee for the registered supporters. It was £3 in the Corbyn election, £25 last time there was a challenge to Corbyn. Wonder if the NEC will attempt a low fee to encourage lots of new voters in?
Not desparately democratic for a party which tries to take moral high ground often in these sorts of areas...
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Jan 2020
4:56pm, 8 Jan 2020
9,385 posts
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rf_fozzy
I think it's £25 larks and they have to be paid up by something like the 19th Jan.
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Jan 2020
5:03pm, 8 Jan 2020
9,922 posts
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larkim
OK, my bad research there! Yes, you're right - £25 (20th Jan). Still plenty of time to get votes bought in - even in 2016 there were something like 120k people prepared to pay the £25 to get a vote, fuelled by the "Oh Jeremy Corbyn" crowd.
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Jan 2020
5:59pm, 8 Jan 2020
3,448 posts
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mr d
Ask the average Yemeni if being starved or bombed by the Saudis with our bombs and logistical support terrorises them.
It was a choice between shit and shite. There is probably a poll that proves me wrong, but I'm guessing lots of people voted Con or Lab as least worst rather than best.
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Jan 2020
7:28am, 9 Jan 2020
656 posts
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Dave W
Stander, I didn't "slight" Boris. In my opinion, he doesn't deserve respect because of what he has done in the past. If he goes on to prove me wrong, then I will be surprised, but if he does what he says he will, then I'll happily eat my words. But I think I'm on pretty safe ground.
If you meant I was slighting the general public, then there might be something in that. People vote for who they vote for, and have myriad reasons for doing it. Only a proportion of those people will be idiots. I just find it rather strange for people to vote for someone with his proven track record of lying and incompetence.
And I'm not a great fan of Corbyn either, but rather would have had a Labour Govt with the likes of Starmer and Phillips in it than Raab, Hancock and Priti Patel.
But, we are where we are, so here's to another 5 years of Tory right wing lunacy and the poor and disadvantaged getting shafted some more.
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Jan 2020
11:26am, 9 Jan 2020
1,985 posts
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Canute
Most people are not stupid, but everyone is capable of behaving stupidly. Two of the major protections against stupid behaviour are reliable information about the causes and consequences of actions, and civilized debate that forces us to thoroughly evaluate the conclusions we draw from that information.
Democracy is only a viable form of government if we have reasonable reliable sources of information and the opportunity for healthy debate. For many years, in matters of public policy, the news media have been the main source of the relevant information and the forum for public debate. In the current century the internet is moving towards dominance of both of these roles.
But whether it is the internet of the news media that dominate, neither information nor debate can save democracy if it is accepted that honestly does no matter and information cannot be trusted. That is why Trump and BJ (and the parties that support them) are a growing threat to democracy. As I see it, democracy is in greater danger in the US than in the UK, but BJ is taking us in that direction at an alarming rate.
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Jan 2020
11:54am, 9 Jan 2020
15,724 posts
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Bazoaxe
Canute, I think you sum it up well. The response to any challenge just seems to be fake news/project fear and any apparently valid challenge or even question is just dismissed. Same happens in Scotland in relation to Independence and its actually not possible to have any kind of debate
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Jan 2020
12:01pm, 9 Jan 2020
9,934 posts
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larkim
That is the really damaging thing - once one side has called "Fake News", every bit of news is tainted with that same potential accusation, whether that's right or not.
You could have the Labour Party telling 100% verifiable truths all the time, and there'd still be plenty dismissing their output as somehow flawed.
It's like the assumption that all MPs are money grabbing, expense fildding, moat builders. All are tarred by that brush, though I actually expect very few are really.
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Jan 2020
12:37pm, 9 Jan 2020
6,079 posts
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jda
There's another issue that I've started to think about that seems basically unrelated but may be similarly damaging, which is the apparently spiteful and vindictive way that many voters believe that damaging the "opposition" is in itself a win. As if politics and life in general was a zero-sum game.
Witness the deliberate cancelling of the UK's participation in the ERASMUS program, for instance, which is universally liked and has benefited thousands of students over the past few decades (it started about the time I was a student). It's EU, so de facto needs to be killed, irrespective of the fact that it provides opportunities and benefits to our own younger generation in a very effective manner. Ask a brexiter and I can almost guarantee a sneer, some comment about foreigners and/or the EU coupled with "I didn't need it".
Of course EU students will still have 30 countries they can travel to within the program, it is only the UK that is cutting off the noses of our own students out of spite.
I've had similar responses when describing how I may be forced to move my company overseas. It will be inconvenient and cost me money, but more significantly it will mean that all corporation tax (basically 20% of receipts) will be paid abroad and therefore lost to the UK. And yet I've had nothing but "good riddance" from brexiters. Someone else is being harmed, therefore they think they've won.
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Jan 2020
12:56pm, 9 Jan 2020
3,451 posts
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mr d
On a much lighter note, unless he wins, Barry Gardiner is considering running for labour leadership.
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Fantasy General Election
Jul 2024
