What now for Labour? (Part 1)

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A post mortem

We lost. I feared the worst a few days ago when walking my dog. I met a left-wing man I’ve known for years who said that he was voting for the Peace Party. Someone of his persuasion was going to throw his vote down the drain instead of opting for the only party which could replace the Tories. That made me apprehensive about whether millions of anti-Tory voters would use their votes effectively. (The Peace Party came seventh in my constituency.) Worse was to follow when I logged in here. To read that a serious Tory hater couldn’t “become enthused by any party on offer” and chose not to vote for the only viable alternative to Cameron’s evil regime, was further evidence, albeit anecdotal, that the Labour campaign, despite having so many troops on the ground, was failing to motivate enough people to secure a victory.

About eleven million people in the UK (about 37% of those who voted) chose the Tories, and it resulted in them winning 331 of the 650 seats in Parliament, 12 more than all the other parties combined. In our so-called democracy, we have to respect their choice, even if it’s difficult to understand it. I’ve never come to terms with how anyone of modest means, or anyone with a social conscience, could ever vote Tory. I have a brief encounter with OCD whenever I go into a polling booth, checking what I’ve done on the ballot paper several times before I put it in the box.

What makes it even more difficult to understand now is that many people believed Cameron in 2010, he lied to them and has since broken a string of promises (which have been recorded elsewhere on this forum any number of times). He’s presided over the cruellest government in living memory, and yet so many people don’t seem to care. He’s stuffed the House of Lords with cronies, often after the Tories have received generous donations from them, and he's sold off state assets at knockdown prices, in the case of the Royal Mail enabling Osborne’s best man to make a fortune. He and his government have even been reprimanded several times for falsifying statistics.

The Tories often complain that the BBC is ‘left-wing’, which it isn’t, as a thread on this forum fully demonstrates; if anything it leans to the right these days, and it has always fawned over so-called ‘royalty’. But the Tories never complain about the rabid right-wing nature of most of the press, with even ‘The Independent’ giving them a tepid endorsement this week. That press, and programmes such as ‘HIGN4Y’ and ‘News Quiz’, have participated in the character assassination of Ed Miliband over a long period of time, gradually corroding his credibility, and dismissing him as “not being prime ministerial”. Whether he is we will never find out now, but does Cameron fit the bill? So often he’s shown himself to be an arrogant, bad-tempered, out-of-touch bully with a sense of entitlement. His behaviour on the day after the Scottish independence referendum incited the Scots and drove many of them from Labour into the arms of the SNP. In this campaign, he created fear of the SNP to scare many English voters towards the Tories. Had he been alive today, Machiavelli could have learned lessons from Cameron.

Ed Miliband sometimes looks awkward on television and isn’t very good at eating a bacon sandwich (who is?). But what does it say when the issue of choosing a potential prime minister is reduced to the level of a vote for ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ or ‘The X Factor’? Would Clement Attlee - in my opinion the greatest PM we’ve ever had - have won many votes for his celebrity status? Shouldn’t it be more important to choose between the bedroom tax and a mansion tax, and between democratically managed public services or private ones controlled by unaccountable corporations? Did those who voted Tory really want the ultimate destruction of the welfare state? Are they really so blasé about the possibility of becoming sick, unemployed or disabled one day? Instead of thinking about such issues, so many were distracted by the Tory charge that Miliband was ‘weak’, even though Cameron was too scared to debate head-to-head with him.

So it was rather like 1992 after all. No triumphalist Sheffield rally this time, just a silly stone monument, but the polls telling us that it was neck-and-neck and then the Tories winning easily. Three party leaders have resigned, but so should the pollsters. Electoral Calculus was claiming only yesterday that the chance of a Tory majority was just 4%. I don’t think I’ll ever bother to look at an opinion poll again; studying tea leaves is probably a more reliable guide to election outcomes.

Maybe the similarities with 1992 (which turned out to be a good election to lose) won’t end there. Five months after John Major lied his way back into office with scaremongering and promises of “tax cuts year on year”, Tory economic incompetence was there for all to see on ‘Black Wednesday’. His hapless government, riddled with sleaze and tearing itself apart over Europe, limped through five unhappy years, and we all know what happened next. So maybe 2020 will be like 1997, but five years is a long while to wait to find out, and sadly a lot of vulnerable people are going to suffer in the meantime.

Irrespective of the qualities of any Labour leader, the tide will eventually turn against the Tories - not least because they never know when to stop in their quest for absolute power and the sheer greed and spite which always accompanies it.

Like all bullies, they will pick on the wrong 'victim' at some stage and reap what they have sown. What is problematic for so many citizens is just how long that inevitable process will take. There are those who can sit back and wait for the pleasurable sight of yet another Tory fall from grace, but too many people will be consigned to misery alongside their luckier brethren.

It is those unfortunates who I imagine would be glad of whatever sort of Labour Party could rescue them from the jaws of helplessness and hopelessness...

QUOTE: ".... those unfortunates who I imagine would be glad of whatever sort of Labour Party ...."

No "whatever" Party has much chance of being elected to govern the UK. British voters follow the money, and will choose the Party that appears to offer them the better standard of living. High-minded fair-shares-for-all politics resonate mainly for those with nothing left to lose anyway.

The Labour Party leadership now have to form policies which appeal to the greedy majority whilst hopefully doing some actual good for the less advantaged. Rather like a Michelin-starred chef who tastes the dish every time before and after any ingredient is added, Miliband's successors have to correct the seasoning.

Redflag wrote:-
.....the reason he (Corbyn) is in the lead is because Tory voters have been paying their £3.00 so they can vote for him

There’s no evidence to support that contention. According to a very recent count, Labour has over 246,000 full party members. I know ‘The Daily Telegraph’ has encouraged Tories to join Labour and vote for Jeremy Corbyn, but I don’t believe that enough of them will do so to make any substantial difference. Would you give £3 to a party which you hated? I wouldn’t intentionally give the Tories five pence, though I’ve no idea how much I give them unintentionally by buying the products of firms which donate to them.

Labour had started weeding out Tories who had joined by the time that the article below was written on 23 June – and the party is keeping their money!

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/06/23/labour-is-pocketing-the-c_n_7646648.html

The article states: “Those joining now have to sign a statement that ‘I support the aims and values of the Labour Party, and I am not a supporter of any organisation opposed to it’. Under a verification process, electoral rolls, canvass returns, councillor lists and public statements are all used to idenfity those believed to be Conservatives.”

If the pollsters are right (should anyone believe them after the mess they made of the general election?), and Jeremy Corbyn is in the lead, it’s because he offers something different from the 'same old politics' and because most people actually agree with his policies:-

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-jeremy-corbyn-policies-that-most-people-actually-agree-with-10407148.html

Jeremy Corbyn "would have been Attlee's last choice". So says John Bew, in yet another attempt at a hatchet job. That's strange, I thought Corbyn wants to emulate Attlee and nationalise the utilities and railways.......

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/clement-attlee-detested-faddish-radicalism-you-couldn-t-say-jeremy-corbyn-his-heir

Ivan wrote:Jeremy Corbyn "would have been Attlee's last choice".

Well, under the current set-up truth is seen as Marxist terrorism or some such thing.

I do not know how the Pollsters can predict Corbyn winning the Labour leadership when they got the general election SO WRONG beside the labour voting members have not cast there votes yet infact the voting papers have not been sent out YET.

One thing worse than discredited pollsters telling us that they know how we’re going to vote is having the likes of Liz Kendall, Yvette Cooper and Chuka Umunna saying they wouldn't serve in a shadow cabinet led by Jeremy Corbyn. We are having a democratic election – with one person one vote and no union block votes (they were abolished in 1993, but many Tories conveniently forget that) - in which a quarter of a million people are entitled to take part. Yet those three MPs (and, if 'The Sunday Times' is correct, several others) will throw their toys out of the pram if they don’t get the result they want.

On the other hand, both Jeremy Corbyn and Andy Burnham have said they would work with people of differing views, a policy which helped to make Harold Wilson such a successful party leader in the 1960s and 1970s.

http://labourlist.org/2015/08/corbyn-promises-to-welcome-great-talents-from-all-parts-of-the-labour-party-into-his-shadow-cabinet/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/andy-burnham-id-serve-in-jeremy-corbyns-shadow-cabinet-if-he-becomes-labour-leader-10400498.html

I think Liz Kendall is awful. She has insulted other candidates, is far too right-wing and seems ineffective and lightweight. However, I won’t leave the party in the unlikely event that she wins the leadership. You make your case, fight your corner, vote, and then accept the result. Anyone who can’t do that has no place in a democratic party.

Our friends in the media seem to think that Mr Corbyn is a shoo-in as Leader of the Labour Party. The Murdoch press is already publishing hatchet-job articles.

After the fiasco of May's General Election result it isn't easy to be anything but lukewarm about the prospects of almost ANYONE who held office in the Miliband shadow cabinet, so perhaps a New Broom might well be the way to influence voter opinion.

This was a meeting in Birmingham yesterday to hear Jeremy Corbyn. How many other Westminster politicians could attract as much interest?  


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CLbDmiBWoAApRJS.jpg

Every club should be like Labour – you can’t join as a new member unless you’re already a member

From an article by Mark Steel:-

The only explanation for the madness that’s taken over the Labour Party, according to MP John Mann, is people from outside are joining Labour, so the leadership election should be cancelled. Presumably John Mann would change the rules, so no one was allowed to join the Labour Party unless they were already a member. That should stop these scheming non-members from trying to infiltrate the party through the trick of becoming members.

A section of the Labour Party has worked out the only way Jeremy Corbyn can have attracted the support he has is by groups such as Militant infiltrating the party, as they did in the 1980s. You might wonder why Militant left a 30-year gap between infiltrations, but maybe they’ve been infiltrating other groups apart from political parties, such as groups of gardeners. Now there’s an allotment society in Hemel Hempstead committed to placing their courgettes under a workers and peasants revolutionary collective.

One Labour MP, John Cryer, warned of the influence of the TUSC. This group achieved less than 0.1% of the vote at the general election, so the 400,000 people eligible to vote in Labour’s election could easily be swayed by this persuasive faction. Then the TUSC could use this influence to undermine other areas of the democratic process. Once they’ve taken over the Labour Party, they could swing the result of 'X Factor', so the winner is a trade union official at Darlington bus depot, singing ‘No to rearranged shift patterns on the 5A to Bishop Auckland’ to the tune of ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’.

For the rest of this article:-
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/every-club-should-be-like-labour--you-cant-join-as-a-new-member-unless-youre-already-a-member-10428421.html

" How many other Westminster politicians could attract as much interest? "

I can think of dozens.

But only at their public hangings...

PH Dennis Skinner for one could attract that amount of people and more, he does shows where he just talks to his audiences about his political life and his life before politics.

The difficulty is, I think, that the Murdocracy has forced us to accept the idea that one particular fuhrer or another, blue-eyed or brown, male or female, left or right is somehow going to make a serious difference. Clearly those who used to support Labour are interested in Mr Corbyn rather than the careerists who grovel to the richmen's press - but the careerists will still control the Parliamentary Party for the tories. Do people think we can get back Party democracy, because unless we can we might as well stay at home, I think, pleasing as it would be to elect a socialist.

Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters aren’t mad – they’re fleeing a bankrupt New Labour

Extracts from an article by Owen Jones:-

"How have the Labour left apparently ended up on the brink of taking the leadership on a wave of support? The battered remnants of the left in the 1990s – cowed by the global onward march of free-marketeers – often critiqued New Labour as being indistinguishable from Toryism. They were wrong. New Labour delivered large-scale public investment, in contrast to the underinvestment that characterised Thatcherism, and LGBT people would be emancipated from legal harassment and discrimination. New Labour may have accepted many of the underlying assumptions of Thatcherism, but it had a vision that was distinct from that of the Tories.

But then the struggle of LGBT people compelled even the Tory leadership to accept their equality before the law. Osborne has legislated to make the working poor poorer, but his pledge of a £9 minimum wage by 2020 outbid Ed Miliband’s paltry offer by a pound. The Labour leadership supported a scaling back of tax credits and a benefit cap that will increase child poverty. Austerity has been embraced, and Labour’s past spending record renounced. What is left for the New Labourites to call for that is distinctive?

The radical left has often been critiqued for offering little but slogans, yet Corbyn’s campaign has been unique in the Labour leadership campaign in actually offering coherent policies and a fleshed-out economic strategy. His campaign is making astounding headway – against the odds – because it offers a coherent, inspiring and, crucially, a hopeful vision. His rivals offer little of any substance. What’s left for them?"

For the whole article:-
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/03/jeremy-corbyn-new-labour-centre-left

It's interesting to speculate about the relative strengths of Left- and Right-wing parties now, if Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling had left the Banks to drown in their own sewage instead of bailing them out with public money in 2008.

Labour leadership contest: Hard-left caricatures of Jeremy Corbyn are not fair or right

From an article by Richard Burgon MP:-

There’s been a lot of scaremongering from the Westminster establishment about Jeremy Corbyn proposing to move away from the neoliberal economic consensus that has ruled the roost in British politics since 1979 – a consensus which has failed ordinary people in relation to housing, education, jobs, wages and the gap between the super-rich and the rest of us.

Jeremy’s straight talk on the economy has struck a chord with people who are sick and tired of the same old “business as usual” politics. There is nothing 'hard left' about Jeremy’s vision; he has consistently said that Labour should not run a deficit on the current budget. If there is still a shortfall in 2020, then it should be met by higher taxation on those with the broadest shoulders – not by cuts to services.

The horror with which the Westminster elite has reacted to Jeremy’s proposal of “quantitative easing for people instead of banks” is just plain silly. £375bn was created by the Bank of England to recapitalise the banks and inflation is around 0%. But the usual suspects attacking Jeremy Corbyn’s clear anti-austerity economic policies claim that a smaller level of “quantitative easing” in the real economy would inevitably lead to high inflation. There is simply no evidence for this.

Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. It’s time to consider who “lacks economic credibility”. Is it Jeremy Corbyn and those who want real change, or those in ‘the Westminster bubble’ determined to stick with a 40-year-old economic consensus that has failed the people of Britain?

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/labour-leadership-contest-hardleft-caricatures-of-jeremy-corbyn-are-not-fair-or-right-10436344.html

Penderyn wrote:The difficulty is, I think, that the Murdocracy has forced us  to accept the idea that one particular fuhrer or another, blue-eyed or brown, male or female, left or right is somehow going to make a serious difference.   Clearly those who used to support Labour are interested in Mr Corbyn rather than the careerists who grovel to the richmen's press - but the careerists will still control the Parliamentary Party for  the tories.    Do people think we can get back Party democracy, because unless we can we might as well stay at home, I think, pleasing as it would be to elect a socialist.

You seem to forget Penderyn it was the Murdocracy that won the Tories the G.E of 2015, by smearing & belittling Ed Miliband until the people thought the only way to vote was to vote Tory which the stupid buggars did with thanks to the right wing press.

The Tories would love to see Corbyn win so they get back into power in 2020, because they know it will make it easy for them to win in 2020, Ed Miliband took us to the left and look at Labours efeat in May 2015,

Redflag wrote:The Tories would love to see Corbyn win so they get back into power in 2020, because they know it will make it easy for them to win in 2020, Ed Miliband took us to the left and look at Labours efeat in May 2015,

They say so - in which case why are such papers as the Times getting into a state of hysteria?    I can't imagine many Labour voters read that filth.

Any general teaches his staff that "Know your enemy" is a useful principle. Being aware of right-wing propaganda is part of the game-plan.

Penderyn wrote:They say so - in which case why are such papers as the Times getting into a state of hysteria?    I can't imagine many Labour voters read that filth.

Sorry to say this Penderyn but quite a lot of Labour voters do read the right wing press "DRIVEL"    The Sun being the biggest load of crap printed, the only left wing paper printing the TRUTH is the Daily Mirror which is why its the only paper I buy & read.

The Tory press will smear whoever is the next Labour leader, so that shouldn’t be taken into consideration when we cast our votes. If Yvette Cooper wins, she will be portrayed as her husband’s puppet. If Andy Burnham wins, he will be attacked over Mid Staffs (outrageously, as the problems at that hospital occurred between 2003 and 2008 and he didn’t become health secretary until 2009). In the highly unlikely event that Liz Kendall wins, she will be castigated for not having children (that’s happened already) and for her turbulent private life (her relationship with actor and comedian Greg Davies ended a few months ago). As we are well aware, Jeremy is already described as the devil incarnate, and that’s before they get on to his three marriages and the story that he divorced one wife because she sent their son to a grammar school nine miles away instead of the local comprehensive. (No doubt he’d now be labelled a hypocrite if he'd agreed with her decision.) The only lesson to learn from all of this is: vote for whoever you think is the most effective candidate, not who is acceptable to Rupert Murdoch and Paul Dacre, you’d be wasting your time on that one.

When Thatcher became Tory leader in 1975, largely by default as the ‘anyone but Heath’ candidate, many people thought she wouldn’t survive in the job until the next election. Harold Wilson quipped about the Tories “switching from Selsdon Man to Piltdown Woman”. However, she had a clear and simple (if bogus) message and, helped by the press exaggerating the so-called ‘winter of discontent’, won the election in 1979, and we all remember the nightmare that followed. Tony Blair packaged his ideas as something ‘new’ – ‘the third way’ from New Labour, facilitated by the fresh-faced ‘Bambi’. Boris Johnson has been effective for a different reason, using comedy, unruly blonde hair and spontaneous bumbling speeches as cover for his odious right-wing views, laziness and incompetence. So maybe Labour needs somebody distinct, not “continuity Ed” as Liz Kendall so rudely described her rivals Yvette and Andy.

Frankly, when I look at all the leadership contenders, not one of them seems like a sure-fire winner. Liz would be a terrible choice, a defeatist acceptance that we have to follow the Tories and accept wherever the ‘centre ground’ will be after ten years of their corruption and dogma. Yvette has rightly said that the last Labour government didn’t spend too much (how Cameron and Osborne developed amnesia over their promise to match Labour’s spending plans!), but her statement that she wouldn’t serve in a shadow cabinet led by Jeremy was a big mistake. Andy would serve, but he says that Labour did spend too much – on hospitals, schools etc. All three of them lost credibility with party members by abstaining on the welfare bill, presumably to show the sort of loyalty to Harriet Harman which each of them would expect if they became the leader.

Jeremy does at least offer something different, and he generates more interest and enthusiasm than the other three put together. This was the overspill at a meeting he held in Croydon earlier this week:-


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CLli2InWEAAI6W7.jpg

If Jeremy wins the leadership, he will be accused of “wanting to take the country back to the 1970s”. That sounds good to me – when the country was, economically, at its most equal ever. When VAT was 8%, when a prescription item cost 20p, when houses to buy were affordable to people on average income, and when there was an adequate supply of council houses to rent. Where are the Tories taking us? At least back to the 1920s, as their guru Milton Friedman planned, or to the Edwardian days of ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’, coupled with the poverty and inequality of Dickensian England. I’ve given this much consideration over the past two months and have slowly come to the decision that when the ballot papers arrive within the next fortnight, Jeremy Corbyn will get my first preference vote and Andy Burnham the second. I'm still thinking about the candidates for deputy!

The caveats concern Kinnock's struggle with Militants when they tried to take over the Labour Party, and the "anti-business" perception fostered by the media.

A Corbyn-led party will need to have smart answers to both questions ready from Day One.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/27/newsid_2528000/2528725.stm

If only we can get shot of the careerists and get back to civilization!

Jeremy Corbyn for prime minister? Why not?

From an article by Brian Eno:-

The ‘realists’ in the Labour Party are frightened because they think Jeremy Corbyn is “unelectable”. They think that the right will be able to make hay with his “1980s views”, his “old-fashioned socialism”, and his sandals. And they certainly will: they’ve already started. But is that a reason for ruling him out?

It seems to me that by focusing so forcefully on electability at any cost, these ‘realists’ have turned Labour into a lightweight, vague entity whose only appeal is that it’s not the Tory Party. When I watched Labour politicians before the election, I saw them tongue-tied, terrified to say anything that could be bashed and recycled repeatedly by ‘The Daily Mail’ or ‘The Sun’. I can’t really blame them, given the power and prejudices of the press. But are we at the point now where we decide our agenda for the future on the basis of what ‘The Daily Mail’ and Rupert Murdoch find acceptable? For the past few years it has tended to look that way, with progressive politicians terrified to risk saying anything that sounds even faintly like socialism.

As for electability, it could be that there are many people who just didn’t bother voting in the last election who would be ready to come out for Corbyn. When my daughter saw him speak this week, she was electrified by his passion and conviction. I think he could draw support from a demographic that hasn’t yet fully formed – people who just haven’t figured in the game before because nobody interested them or was interested in them.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/06/jeremy-corbyn-prime-minister-labour-leadership

Given the current obvious and potentially-damaging rifts in the Labour Party, the point may have been reached where a Corbyn-style leadership and raft of policies needs to at least be tried and tested in the unforgiving public arena, so that the Party can be sure of what it is worth pursuing in 2020.

I guess if you never try, you'll never know...

If existing policies, and personnel, didn't win the General Elections of 2010 nor 2015 it must be time for a change of horses.

Why not apply a touch of socialism? The result cannot be worse than the current showing. Only the same - or better. And if indeed successful, how very much better it would be!

It's clear that we now live in what is effectively a one-party state, with the press under control and independent finance denied the Opposition. In such a situation, to vote for another gang of tories seems a trifle aimless, doesn't it?

If Corbyn wins there WILL be another leadership election in 2 years time OW, he might give the Labour MPs a hint on how to handle Davy boy andx his shower of braying DONKEYS

I feel sure Corbyn will insist on answers in PMQ's and will be proactive in pointing out the Tory party's sins - so we will once again have an opposition.

If he then has to step down and let a younger person take the role, I'm sure there's some good socialist talent newly elected - someone will be ready to step into the breach and continue the good work

BBC Radio 4 right now is broadcasting a Profile of Jeremy Corbin. We can probably guess who will be searching for that old cassette-recorder at this very minute.

I can't decide who gets my vote for deputy leader, but it certainly won't be Caroline Flint......

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/solomon-hughes-caroline-flint-labour-deputy-leadership-campaign-901

A naughty little voice in the back of my head keeps whispering 'Angela Eagle'

Me too. Angela Eagle doesn't mince her words and, assuming that Jeremy Corbyn wins the leadership, she would complement his gentle and polite if resolute manner.

John Prescott strongly advocates Stella Creasy, who he says is a good organiser, a quality that he claims is needed for the deputy leader.

I'm inclined to vote 1.Angela and 2.Stella. The ballot papers are being sent to members on Friday.

boatlady wrote:I feel sure Corbyn will insist on answers in PMQ's and will be proactive in pointing out the Tory party's sins - so we will once again  have an opposition.

If he then has to step down and let a younger person take the role, I'm sure there's some good socialist talent newly elected - someone will be ready to step into the breach and continue the good work

Great point boatlady maybe Dan Jarvis or Keir Starmer or Chukka could take over after 2 years, in the mean time Corbyn could show them all how to handle Davy boys smears & insults and how to point out Davy boys BLANT LIES.

Ivan wrote:I can't decide who gets my vote for deputy leader, but it certainly won't be Caroline Flint......  

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/solomon-hughes-caroline-flint-labour-deputy-leadership-campaign-901

Thank you Ivan for giving us that link I was going to vote for Caroline Flint for deputy, now I will have too rethink that one maybe Angela Eagle or Tom Watson.

There's just something about Tom Watson makes me pause - he does seem to seek personal publicity a bit more than I like

Concur.  Watson definitely over-egged the pudding when he (quite unnecessarily) grandstanded his Parliamentary Committee's report after the Leveson Enquiry.

Also, just think what a gift it would be for the satirists if the next Labour line-up could be described as a "Tom & Jerry show".

I know that he has been a doughty campaigner on several issues, but I’m no fan of Tom Watson. Some people reckon that he’s a bully, although the following article contains too many anonymous sources to be really convincing:-

The Parliamentary Labour Party is desperate for someone to stop Tom Watson

Although Watson is well-liked by members – “They see him as Mother Teresa”, sighs one MP – the Parliamentary Labour Party is less sold. “I’ve never been more opposed to any candidate in my life”, says one MP. Another senior MP says they will “chuck the whole thing in” if Watson becomes deputy leader. “He’s a bully and a liability”, says a third.

One senior official says glumly: “Tom is going to come straight back in here and start running the show again, bullying the staff and throwing his weight around”. “He always wants to seize more power, and he can’t resist abusing his power”, says another.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/whats-going-labour-deputy-leadership-race

Having ruled out Caroline Flint and Tom Watson, and because Ben Bradshaw is an insipid Blairite nobody, I think I shall be voting:-
Leader - 1. Jeremy Corbyn  2. Andy Burnham  3. Yvette Cooper
Deputy - 1. Angela Eagle  2. Stella Creasy

Even if Labour can't win in 2020, it is to be hoped that they end up with a leader - and leadership team -who can give Cameron . Osborne and Duncan Smith etc. a thoroughly comprehensive and painful kicking on a regular basis.

But not too crudely , which could play into the hands of the evil crew , who would be the first to cry 'foul' like the cowards they are. No, what is needed is an incessant focus on publicising at every possible opportunity the multitude of cruel and unfair effects of Tory policy, with the nature of the crimes being painted for the public in suitably lurid language to bring out its true horror.

But will they -once again - unforgivably and inexplicably spurn the chances which have so frequently lined up before them and allow Cameron and Co. to wriggle out of the noose which should snare them...?