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Who will be the next leader of the labour party ?


tonyh29

Who do you think will be the next leader of the Labour party  

82 members have voted

  1. 1. Who do you think will be the next leader of the Labour party

    • David Miliband
      39
    • Alan Johnson
      13
    • Jack Straw
      4
    • John Denham
      4
    • Ed Miliband
      0
    • Tony Blair
      9
    • Jacqui Smith
      5
    • Harriet Harman
      0
    • Ed Balls
      3
    • Other
      6


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Will there be a labour party to have a leader, you know they hopefully will have to disband through bankruptsy

Yep, let's all hope for a one party state, what could be better than decades of the Conservatives... :|

We've been ruled by the conservative parties for almost three decades now, what makes anyone think changing the particular conservative party is going to make any difference?

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.... is putting the boot into the slack jawed idiot now

good to see Jon showing the caring face of Conservatism trying to make fun from a guys physical characteristics

Oh the fun that right wing bring and their caring attitudes

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.... is putting the boot into the slack jawed idiot now

good to see Jon showing the caring face of Conservatism trying to make fun from a guys physical characteristics

Oh the fun that right wing bring and their caring attitudes

And Spitting Image was never amusing at all

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Ryan adds to Labour contest call

The Labour MP Joan Ryan has confirmed that she has also written to the party asking for a leadership election.

Ms Ryan, a Labour party vice chair, confirmed on BBC Radio 4's Today programme that she had asked for nomination papers.

It comes after junior whip Siobhain McDonagh was fired after saying she wanted the debate on Gordon Brown's leadership to be out in the open.

More Labour MPs are expected to join the calls for a leadership contest.

BBC correspondent Carole Walker says about a dozen MPs have asked for leadership nomination papers.

Meanwhile, six ex-Labour ministers have signed an article calling for a "new narrative" from Labour.

Our correspondent said Siobhain McDonagh was one of around a dozen Labour MPs who have written to the party requesting leadership nomination papers before Labour's annual conference.

No campaign

Several of these are expected to air their views in the next few days, our correspondent says.

There is no sign of a campaign behind any candidate yet, but there does appear to be a growing momentum behind the efforts to force a contest, she adds.

Seventy MPs would have to nominate a challenger to Gordon Brown to force a leadership contest.

The six former ministers who have called for a "convincing new narrative" from Labour include ex-health secretary Patricia Hewitt.

They are among 12 Labour MPs who signed the article in Progress magazine.

They wrote: "Labour needs to provide a convincing new narrative if left-of-centre politics are to remain the driving force in Britain.

"This has to be more than a series of policy initiatives. It has to set a new framework for post-credit crunch Britain."

They also said it was an urgent task for the party to "renew confidence in our economic competence", and described recent policies as being "defensive" when the party needed to be "bold".

They added: "Our most urgent task is to renew confidence in our economic competence so that people know that the country will come out of the current downturn with a resilient economy and a cohesive society".

Everyday issues

They said there was a "yawning chasm" that needed to be filled between the Scottish National Party's "failures" on the left of the political spectrum and Conservatives and Liberal Democrats on the right.

"Failure to do so would be a hammer blow, not only to the future of progressive politics, but also to our government," they added.

The article's signatories include former culture minister Janet Anderson, ex-Home Office minister George Howarth, former Transport ministers Stephen Ladyman and Karen Buck and Paddy Tipping, who was deputy leader of the Commons.

Also putting their name to the article are backbenchers Eric Joyce, Sally Keeble, Martin Linton, Shona McIsaac, Margaret Moran and Tom Levitt.

The MPs also called for clearer explanations of what the government had planned for "the things that affect people day to day: inflation and interest rates, household bills and mortgages".

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.... is putting the boot into the slack jawed idiot now

good to see Jon showing the caring face of Conservatism trying to make fun from a guys physical characteristics

Oh the fun that right wing bring and their caring attitudes

Call a spade a spade Ian and he is a slack jawed idiot. Good to see one his own - now former - party whips calling for a leadership election too, bet you're looking forward to the party conference!

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The obsession with Tories for sacking people is amazing

Vice chair sacked in Labour row (Saturday 13th Sept)

An MP has been sacked as Labour's vice chair after publicly joining calls for a leadership election.

Joan Ryan and four other Labour MPs - Fiona Mactaggart, Siobhain McDonagh, George Howarth and Janet Anderson - have asked for nomination forms.

And fellow MPs Graham Stringer, Gordon Prentice and John McDonnell have called for a leadership contest.

However, 71 MPs would have to nominate a challenger to Mr Brown to force a leadership contest.

Ms Ryan, MP for Enfield North and a former Home Office minister, has also been sacked as Mr Brown's Cyprus envoy - a position she was given when he entered Number 10 in June last year.

...more on link

Whip sacked for urging leadership contest (Friday 12th September)

Gordon Brown suffered another blow to his authority yesterday after being forced to sack a member of his government who broke ranks to call for a leadership election.

Assistant whip Siobhain McDonagh said she wanted to "clear the air" about the leadership issue by seeking a contest at the party's conference, which begins in just over a week. She is the first member of the government to openly challenge the prime minister's leadership.

No 10 moved swiftly to remove her. "As soon as we heard her comments we moved very quickly to find a replacement," a spokesman said. Dawn Butler was promoted to replace her.

...more on link

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Having read through the thread could I ask any pro-labour posters what their opinion of Gordon browns leadership to be

not good :winkold: :lol:

TBH, I was firmly a Blairite, and think Gordy has right Roayally fecked things up.

However, i do think in general Labour's time is up, whoever the leader.

And i would like a return to more familair labour ground. This government has IMO been anyhting but "left". There's little difference between this lot and what the Tories would be doing, IMHO.

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Couldn't not post in this thread

And i would like a return to more familair labour ground. This government has IMO been anyhting but "left". There's little difference between this lot and what the Tories would be doing, IMHO.

There's a good reason for that Jon. What people hanker after as the "traditional" Labour ground is unelectable and has been since the mid to late 70's. One thing I credit Blair with is at least recognising that

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Couldn't not post in this thread

And i would like a return to more familair labour ground. This government has IMO been anyhting but "left". There's little difference between this lot and what the Tories would be doing, IMHO.

There's a good reason for that Jon. What people hanker after as the "traditional" Labour ground is unelectable and has been since the mid to late 70's. One thing I credit Blair with is at least recognising that

howdy Trickie :D

i do totally agree.

I just feel that, whiklst they did make a necesary move toeqrds the centre, they haven't put the brakes on, and have gone careering past the centre circle and are have landed somewhere near the centre right.

I'd like them to reverse back to the centre left, or somewhere near where the Lib dems are parked.

The crazy far left days of the 70s/early 80s should not be revisited, obviously.

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However, i do think in general Labour's time is up, whoever the leader.

Some columnists fear that, too. Though I think this article goes a little bit further than most:

The Labour party could be on the verge of destruction

Gordon Brown has lost weight. He eats sparingly and his suits look almost too big. But his problem is that he still isn't lightweight enough. In private he brims with enthusiasm about child poverty, perinatal mortality in Sierra Leone, and the impact of rising food prices in China. His mind continues to race: about schemes to make it safer to walk home at night, or how to help low-income families. What happened to the old Gordon, the values-rooted chancellor who so impressed some of us? He's still there, definitely visible.

Most of the cabinet colleagues I've spoken to feel unhappy about speaking disloyally of him. They still admire his values and his courage. They don't want to be beastly. But they believe that his No 10 organisation, his people skills and his ability to communicate are too poor to allow him to stay on. Those trivial talents in the back-slapping, sound-biting, cheering-up stakes, which Blair had so richly, do matter. Brown is as good and serious a man as ever. But he is too mired in long-term thinking, too steeped in gloom to recover.

The scatter-gun attacks of ex-ministers and low-ranking MPs over the past few days stem from their deep frustration at the failure, as they see it, of cabinet ministers to tell Brown all this. Perhaps if they knew how many urgent conversations there have been at cabinet level they would feel reassured, though the prime minister would not be.

The private cabinet analysis runs like this. Yes, there has to be a renewed policy debate, for instance on windfall taxes. But that is not enough. The briefing and counter-briefing coming from No 10 continues to suggest a dysfunctional centre - as witnessed by the precipitate departure of the latest adviser, Paul Sinclair, who had barely been there long enough to turn his computer on. There is still a feeling that discipline can be recovered by bullying; in fact, that option has long passed.

The inner core of Gordon loyalists differ from the rest in one respect only. They cling to the hope that this is all really about the economy and that, if it improves quickly, so will his and Labour's ratings.

One minister says: "Gordon has to believe this, or he would be forced to confront his own failings in the job." Another disagrees, but only in emphasis: "Gordon knows he's struggling. He is very angry, but mainly at himself."

So what does this all mean? Is the plot far advanced? Will there be a coup? And if so, when? The current rash of public statements is not a carefully choreographed Blairite (or leftwing) operation. It sounds chaotic and half-cock because it is. Conference week is clearly going to be unstable and difficult. Anything could happen. But ministers don't expect a denouement then.

There are two possible crisis moments. Even the most pro-Brown government members suggest that if the economy has not picked up by the spring, he will have to resign - and believe he will not want to be the man to lead Labour to one of its worst ever defeats. But other ministers say things have to be resolved earlier. If Labour loses the coming Glenrothes byelection, key figures will go to him and say it's all over. If he tried to hang on, I'm told, there would be cabinet resignations. This may seem a lot to hang on one byelection; Brown would doubtless say that governments have always had mid-term losses and gone on to recover.

But somehow Glenrothes seems to be the place where a last stand will happen. It is grimly appropriate, for this is a constituency next to Brown's own; and Labour's candidate, Lindsay Roy, is the rector (head teacher) of his old school, Kirkcaldy High. On paper, with a strong candidate, Labour should hold the seat, though after its Glasgow performance, the seat is within range of a surging SNP. And if Glenrothes becomes, by common consent, a make-or-break moment for the prime minister, then the excitement will only help the challenger.

Of course, ministers have briefed before that they were about to do this or that, only to find their courage or recklessness failed them when the time came. But I think the mood is different now. One put it to me like this. All MPs, he said, have a bellwether local constituency activist who can be trusted to tell them what is really happening. His one had just told him that he was so embarrassed by the party's Westminster performance that he could not defend them on the doorstep. So something has to change. Similar messages are coming in from every part of the country. The pressure is building almost daily.

It isn't over yet. There is no clear candidate to replace Brown, far less one whose name could appear on the 71 nomination papers needed to trigger a contest. The man who could win strong support is probably Jon Cruddas - the cheerful, self-confident leftwinger who scares the wits out of Blairites. One told me a postelection, defeated Labour party might choose Cruddas - "and then that's the end of Labour". Others talk of a Miliband-Cruddas dream ticket.

Ah yes ... David Miliband. What's happened to him since that forthright blast from the trumpet just before the summer recess? He seems to have pulled back, perhaps disconcerted by the lukewarm reception among his colleagues, perhaps realising how deeply unpopular he is among the unions. But despite his blandly loyal protestations on television yesterday, his constant references to the need for "a new agenda" indicate that he's still up for it.

A fresh, self-critical but confident and rousing performance by Brown at the conference could still regain the initiative. It would have to be accompanied by a stream of vigorous policy speeches from other ministers who managed to sound both energetic and loyal. I can't quite see this, but you never know.

At the very least, the "speech of his life" would buy him time. If Glenrothes were held by Labour and if the economic news turned out to be better than everyone expects - what then? Outright election victory? I can't find a senior Labour figure who thinks that. A hung parliament? Perhaps. But the Lib Dems have now swung well to the right and seem to want to work with Cameron.

The one prize worth having is to keep the Labour party in business. It is facing not only an electoral smash, but a final falling out between modernisers and old Labour. This, combined with no money and another flight of talent, could mean the party's destruction as a major force in British politics. I wish I thought that was hyperbole.

Very worrying stuff, I'd say.

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