"Unelectable" Jeremy Corbyn Elected Yet Again

Now is surely the time to put this "unelectable" myth to bed.  Yesterday - despite the best efforts of certain members of the PLP, the media and other naysayers - Jeremy Corbyn was once again elected leader of the Labour Party.  Despite 150,000+ of his supporters being barred from voting, he was elected once again with an increased mandate (62% against 59% last time).  And once again, he won easily in every category (members, registered supporters and affiliated supporters, which surely puts paid to the constant cries from the media and PLP that he is "unelectable".

As it was, 506,438 votes were cast; 313,209 for Corbyn, 193,229 for Smith.  Had the party bigwigs not barred more recent converts to Labour (and expelled a further 10,000 or so), most of whom I assume would have voted Corbyn, the result would have been (rough calculation only) an even more emphatic victory, 71% against 29%.

The NEC of the Labour Party tried their best:

- First they tried to keep Corbyn off the ballot in the first place, which was obviously a no-goer;

- Then they purged 10,000 members or so for such behaviour as once saying that they had previously voted for an alternative party to Labour in previous elections (surely such people should be welcomed, rather than discarded?);

- Then they set an arbitrary cut-off date for members to have a vote; anyone joining since January 2016 was barred from voting (which was transparently dishonest, as it was never declared; rather, members joining the party since January were specifically promised a vote in future leadership elections);

- Then they made it difficult for some members eligible to vote, simply by not sending them a ballot and blaming it on "IT issues";

- Then - despite having barred more recent members from voting - they introduced a "sign up for £25 now to get a vote", which just seemed bizarre.  You could vote if you joined before January 2016, or as a £25 member who joined during/after August 2016, but not if you joined in between those dates;

- And not to forget that Corbyn was being constantly undermined by his own party, through mass resignations and votes of "no confidence".

In addition to all that, they had virtually all the mainstream media - the BBC, ITV, Sky (well, obviously) and all the major newspapers and online news sources vilifying Corbyn and bigging up Smith.  If ever a pro-Corbyn article appeared anywhere, it would be immediately dismissed by the rest of the media as either "Trotskyite propaganda" or "loony left propaganda".  Polls constantly appeared, apparently showing that the vote was going to be close.  I'm not sure who they asked, but if they prove so spectacularly inaccurate then they are surely worthless.  Either that, or the pollsters were deliberately skewing the results.

Despite all the above, they failed dismally.  Corbyn won easily against all those odds.

Of course, there is a counter-argument in that the current Labour membership/affiliates are not representative of the electorate as a whole, and there's undoubtedly some truth in that.  "The wider electorate will never vote for Labour under his leadership!" the media cry.  But it's a bit of a weak argument, given that Labour under Corbyn's leadership haven't actually lost any elections yet.  In the couple of by-elections their candidates have actually increased their majorities from the 2015 General Election.

Ah, but they lost (I think) six seats in the last round of local council elections, which is apparently bad for this stage of the electoral process.  That they would have needed something like 88% of all votes (rather than the 73% that they got) to gain any seats is rarely mentioned, oddly.

Jeremy Corbyn's position is now practically bulletproof and he will lead Labour into the next General Election, whenever that may be.  I would implore the rest of the PLP to get behind him now and get on with the serious business of taking the Conservatives to task, but they won't be reading this so my view will go unnoticed.  And in the main - going from their past behaviour - I don't think they will anyway; they will continue attempting to undermine him, no matter what he does or says.

Sorry for blathering on so long!  Rant over.

General Election 2015: General: (4) - Micro-Parties

Uh?

What are they?

Why are they there?

What do they think they're doing?

Why do they think that we want to listen to them?

Should we?

Let's see.

For the purposes of this post, micro-parties and independents can easily be defined - strip out the Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, UKIP, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru - i.e. the main defined political parties - and look at whatever remains.

Of the micro-parties, the left-wing Trade Union And Socialist Coalition (TUSC) fielded easily the most candidates; as sometimes they stood alongside Left Unity (LU) I've treated TUSC/LU as a single party, fielding 138 candidates and cumulatively receiving 36,945 votes (268 votes per candidate). Their top ten performing candidates (Dave Nellist's 3.91% in Coventry Northwest and Jenny Sutton's 3.11% in Tottenham were notable standouts, but 10th place on the list and support is down to 1.20%) all lost to Labour candidates.

From the right, the only party standing a semi-significant number of candidates were the English Democrats in 32 constituencies. They managed 6,531 votes (204 votes/candidate) and even their best-performing candidate only managed 1.30% of the vote.  Curiously, all their top candidates all lost to Labour too.

The usual suspects (Christian Party et al, Loonies and affiliates, regionalists) also stood, but as ever made no significant inroads.  Beyond that, the only others of significance were the National Health Action Party (12 candidates, 20,210 votes, but significantly down on the last election) and most intriguingly given current political manoeuvrings, CISTA.

CISTA campaign for the legalisation of cannabis and put up 28 candidates, accumulating 6,566 votes (235 votes/candidate). Whilst this might seem as feeble as the average independent or small party, for a brand new party without a history, this could well be significant. If there is no move by the government to change the classification of cannabis before the next election - and let's face it, politicians are so shit-scared of the issue that there will be no move - there would be enormous value for them to go all-out for the next one. Most people with a CISTA candidate standing in their constituency weren't aware until they saw the ballot paper; with prior name recognition, and another five years of Tory rule, this could be a party that could build a lot of popular support.

But for the first time for a while, no independents or representatives of small parties won any seats at all. Obviously this is an idiosyncracy of our broken voting system, but it's still a bit worrying.

Next...best performing independent candidates.

Things get complicated from herein...

General Election 2015: General: (2) - turnout

OK...

...I think I'm happy with my election results now (I know it's months since the election, but you know, stuff) having finally got all the figures for spoiled ballots, or at least as close as I think I can get. And I've not done Northern Ireland (where apparently 0.66% of votes cast were spoiled); this is just for the 632 English/Welsh/Scottish seats.

Anyway, just some quick general stats for now:

• Potential electorate:  45,116,156
• Total votes:  30,078,383 (66.67% of electorate)
• Valid votes:  29,978,905 (66.45% of electorate)
• Spoilt ballots:  99,478 (0.33% of votes cast)

Turnout and spoilt ballots by region:

Midlands - Valid turnout 65.17% (lower than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.38% (higher)

Eastern England - Valid turnout 67.56% (higher than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.37% (higher)

London - Valid turnout 65.39% (lower than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.33% (average)

NW - Valid turnout 64.32% (lower than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.39% (higher)

SE - Valid turnout 68.55% (higher than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.38% (higher)

SW - Valid turnout 69.51% (higher than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.31% (lower)

NE/Yorks - Valid turnout 62.78% (lower than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.35% (higher)

Scotland - Valid turnout 71.00% (higher than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.13% (lower)

Wales - Valid turnout 65.65% (lower than national average) - Spoiled ballots 0.21% (lower)


Very noticeable that Scotland had (as a region) both the highest % turnout and the lowest % of spoilt ballots, but nothing much else stands out until you really look at the details.

In terms of spoiled ballots, the real standout constituency is (of course) Buckingham, the Speaker's seat. This is always a mess...other main parties aren't supposed to stand as the Speaker is meant to be impartial, but they sometimes do (this time UKIP and the Greens stood candidates) and it all adds up to a lot of people in the constituency feeling as though they have no representation.

Notably high numbers of spoiled ballots:

Buckingham - 1,289 spoiled ballots
Leicester East - 533 spoiled ballots
Luton South - 431 spoiled ballots
Leicester South - 398 spoiled ballots
Tiverton and Honiton - 378 spoiled ballots
Blackburn - 325 spoiled ballots

For perspective, the average constituency had 157 spoiled ballots.

And, if they were to count, the total of 99,478 spoiled ballots would be equivalent to 2 seats under a system of proportional representation. That's not insignificant; if this many people are prepared to deliberately spoil their ballot paper rather than not voting at all (under the FPTP system these are the only two options available to people who feel they have no party to vote for), what if there was a "None of the Above" option on each ballot paper?

If there was the opportunity to vote NONE, it would give an extra option, so it should cut the number of spoiled ballots and stop so many people voting tactically. But most of all, it would ensure that these "protest" votes are counted and included in the totals (they are not at the moment) and so give a much more accurate reflection of the vote.

Well, something to think about.

So Simon, how's that going now?

From The Independent, 12th August 2015:

Simon Danczuk is a tit.

Labour Leadership Race, pt. 6 and aftermath

The polls have closed, the votes have been counted...

...and Jeremy Corbyn wins on the first ballot by a country mile (59.5% in a four-horse race is almost unheard-of). Straight up.

Naturally I wanted to have a full breakdown of the voting, because I am a total nerd, but I couldn't quite get everything I wanted. Nevertheless, enough for some interesting stats.

Estimates of votes cast were way off, of some 540,272 eligible voters, 422,664 valid votes were cast, so a much higher turnout (78.2% rather than yesterday's 61% estimate - I thought at the time it sounded very low) than was thought.

First preference votes:

 Andy Burnham:  80,462 votes, 19.04%

Yvette Cooper:  71,928 votes, 17.02%

Jeremy Corbyn:  251,417 votes, 59.48%

Liz Kendall:  18,857 votes, 4.46%

Makes my 54% prediction (which was my most optimistic) on the first ballot look a bit pathetic really. But that's because I was still somehow convinced that some party apparatchiks would do something, to somehow stop this happening. But they didn't.

Needless to say, I'm quite excited. Plus, Tom Watson easily won the Deputy Leadership and although Jeremy's had 32 years of parliamentary experience, it's all been from the back benches, whereas Tom has been involved with the "party machine" extensively, so they should complement one another: I think they'll make a good team. That I happened to put £20 on Tom Watson at 6/4 a few months ago is immaterial here (actually, it is specifically material, in that it is a £30 profit).

Anyway, back to the Leadership election; the best thing of all is that Jeremy Corbyn won easily in all categories (full party members, affiliated members e.g. through a trade union and the much derided £3 "registered supporters"). I think that means that he's going to have to allowed a bit of time, so clear is his mandate from the party membership. The only people who he didn't get a clear majority from were the actual parliamentary Labour MPs, only 20 of whom voted for JC as first preference. Any immediate attempt by a disgrunted group of MPs to get rid of him would be greeted with outrage from the normal membership.

Here's a full breakdown of how all three groups voted:

Andy Burnham: Party members 55,698 (22.7%) - Affiliated members 18,604 (26.0%) - Registered supporters 6,160 (5.8%);

Yvette Cooper: Party members 54,470 (22.2%) - Affiliated members 9,043 (12.6%) - Registered supporters 8.415 (8.0%);

Jeremy Corbyn: Party members 121,751 (49.6%) - Affiliated members 41,217 (57.6%) - Registered supporters 88,449 (83.8%);

Liz Kendall: Party members 13,601 (5.5%) - Affiliated members 2,682 (3.8%) - Registered supporters 2,574 (2.4%).

I think the thing I was afraid of was that the naysayers would all be crowing "oh, he'd never have won without the three quid lot" but as the above figures show, all parts of the Labour Party membership overwhelming want him, except the Labour MPs themselves. However there is no possible way to fiddle the figures to make it look as though Jeremy didn't win easily. Half the party membership have given him their vote and it's a one member, one vote system. So, as Labour MPs now only count as normal members, they can't even fiddle it by giving their votes more weight.

Assuming the 20 MPs that gave JC their first preference is an accurate figure, I'll assume the other 210 voted 70 each Kendall, Burnham and Cooper, just for convenience. Even if their votes were worth 1000 times as much as everyone else's, he'd still have won with 43% overall (to actually defeat him, party MPs would have to make their votes worth 3,425 times as much as a normal vote, and not even they think they are that important).

Even odder is that members of the Shadow Cabinet started resigning even as Jeremy was giving his victory speech. This just seems petty. They didn't get what they wanted and now they're throwing their toys out of the pram. But why? JC has specifically spoken about unity and bringing all wings of the party together, so why - before he's made any sort of Shadow Cabinet decision - are they just saying "oh, we don't like you, we won't work with you"? Why restrict your options when you've absolutely no idea what he's got in mind? I suspect some of them may regret it.

He's going to get it from all barrels, from all sides, non-stop and he's not going to have an easy job. I just hope the parliamentary party will hold off with their vitriol for a bit (it's a forlorn hope, they're slagging him off already) so that he can at least be allowed to get some stuff done. But, knowing this Labour Party, they'll probably just vote against him out of spite irrespective of what they really think.

That's quite an interesting angle actually; as one of the most rebellious recent MPs, how will the whip system work? Will there be one? He's said that he wants everyone to be free to vote according to their conscience, so it would be a bit hypocritical for him to implement a whip system (unless it's a whip of gossamer). Nah, he'll get rid of it and good riddance. I've always thought it was anti-democratic and admired the MPs who defy the whip as a matter of conscience. (Actually, come to think of it, much more policy ideas are going to come from the membership rather than top-down from the top table, so there shouldn't be such a need for a whip anyway).

Oh I could go on about this all day but I wouldn't thank me. I'll come back soon though, I'm sure.

I AM QUITE EXCITE

Labour Leadership Race, pt. 5

Voting has closed...

And counting has begun! Polls and other random people are suggesting all sorts of things: an estimated 330,000-340,000 votes cast, so roughly a 61% turnout if the 550,000 total eligible members figure is accurate, low turnout from union members (so presumably a high turnout from the £3 supporters), a general consensus that Jeremy Corbyn will get most first preference votes but few are sticking their neck out to say how many, or whether it will be enough.

I might be repeating myself (not for the first time, I can't be arsed to go back and check) but I originally thought once the four candidates were finalised, Jeremy Corbyn would win the majority of the popular vote but the Labour machine would find a way somehow to not allow him to win.

Using the Ladbrokes odds (betting's still open), they have Corbyn at 1/7 (with the odds still shortening), Cooper 7/1, Burnham 12/1 and Kendall 100/1. This seems to be the general consensus of the other bookies (some have Corbyn 1/8, Cooper ranging 13/2 to 8/1, Burnham either 12/1 or 14/1 and Kendall - well, anything from 100/1 to 250/1 (i.e. no chance).

So the bookies - who react to money and aren't often wrong - make it something like:

Corbyn 96.8% chance of winning

Cooper 2% chance of winning

Burnham 1.1% chance of winning

Kendall 0.1% chance of winning

So even now I'm quite optimistic that Jeremy C. could take the thing on first nominations alone, so certain seem the bookies of his overall chances. I just have a feeling that if they thought that there was even the remotest chance of a scenario involving second or third preference votes (which could get very unpredictable indeed), they'd be hedging a bit more.

I think the result will be somewhere between:

Scenario 1

First preference votes - Corbyn 54%, Cooper 24%, Burnham 17%, Kendall 5%; automatic win for Jeremy Corbyn.

Scenario 2

First preference votes - Corbyn 46%, Cooper 27%, Burnham 22%, Kendall 5%

Kendall is eliminated and those voting for Kendall as 1st preference have their 2nd, 3rd and 4th preferences transferred to the other candidates. I don't really know where those would go but my guess would leave the next stage at:

Corbyn 46%, Cooper 31%, Burnham 23%, Burnham eliminated and lower preference votes reallocated as before. So, what proportion of Burnham supporters would have Corbyn as a second preference? I reckon that although the majority will have Cooper as their second choice, there'll be enough for Corbyn to see him over the line.

We'll find out Saturday morning, I guess. Whatever happens, it's going to be fun fun fun!

Except for Liz:

 

Labour Leadership race pt.4

Still two weeks to go

...and the Labour party machine are getting a bit desperate now.

...and part 3

I forgot to mention...

...that Jeremy Corbyn, unlike the others, seems sincere and genuine and actually believes in what he's saying. I think some of the others just say what they think will get them the most votes, whether they believe it or not.

And he's refusing to slag off the other candidates. He wants to bring a mood of reconciliation to the debate and make it about ideas and policies rather than personalities and insults.

And I think the parliamentary Labour party may be quite shocked when they find out how much support Jeremy Corbyn has amongst the grassroots party membership. He'll not be popular with newer or more Blairite members, but if the party has managed to hold enough of its original, broadly "socialist" members, he might do a lot better than most people expect.

Finally, as a bizarre P.S., the papers are reporting that members of the Conservative Party are now joining the Labour Party in order to vote for Corbyn as a hilarious ruse! Presumably they, like much of the rest of the Labour side, think that electing Corbyn as leader would effectively end the Labour Party for good.

Fine, let them, the more the merrier. It proves that they are not afraid of a Corbyn leadership and I think that's a mistake. Granted, that's just my opinion, but from what I've seen, he wouldn't be afraid to denounce the PM and Chancellor's lies about the economy. And in general I think he'd make mincemeat of either of them on pretty much any subject.

Labour leadership race, pt. 2

Further to a few posts ago...

...and to be my surprise, Jerermy Corbyn succeeded in getting his 35 nominations (almost literally at the last minute), so will join Andy Burnham (odds 4/6), Liz Kendall (5/2) and Yvette Cooper (7/2) in the leadership race, albeit as rank outsider (20/1 on Ladbrokes when I checked last night). He's already acknowledged that he doesn't expect all his nominees to vote for him (he says some have already told him!) but wanted someone different in the race, which is some sort of positive sign.

It seems to be the prevalent view amongst both right and left that a Labour Party with Corbyn as leader would be electoral suicide. "No," they say, "you need someone who will blah blah blah" (much of which really means "you need someone more right-wing".

"Corbyn is hard left!" they cry. Really? He supports renationalising the railways and other previously sold-off areas of the public sector (very popular with the electorate), opposes the benefits cap (as it ignores the stupidly soaring rents in certain areas of the country and treats all cases as the same), opposes the renewal of Trident (as do the majority of the public), He resolutely refuses to pander to that small-minded sector of his party who were swayed away by UKIP at the last election, so opposes the draconian curbs on immigration that certain others (most Tories, some of Labour) are currently espousing. He (broadly) advocates rebalancing the economy through investment and GDP growth, rather than cutting state spending. He would like to see a redistribution of wealth from the very rich to the very poor. He voted against the Iraq war. I don't see any "hard left" policies there.

My point is that now that Corbyn is in the race, at least there can be some sort of meaningful debate prior to the leadership election itself. Without him, the other three would really just be arguing about nuance (except perhaps Liz Kendall, who comes across as a bit flightly to me and could be prone to wild swings of opinion).

Perhaps - as I've mused in earlier ramblings - it's me that's hopelessly out of touch. Maybe the politics of this country have shifted so far to the right that what I regard as sensible, fair, centre-left policies are now seen as rampaging Marxism. The perception by much of the media of Andy Burnham as left-wing speaks volumes I suppose. And in any case, he's still trying to wriggle his way out of his responsibility for the PFI deals set up when he was Health Secretary (I'm sure we'll hear more about that later). I don't see him as left-wing, Cooper and Kendall even less so.

I think there's been this collective buying-into the idea that government spending is bad, so cuts are inevitable, whereas I think there are other ways. At least now we'll get to hear the other side of that argument as well as the other three arguing amongst themselves about how big the spending cuts should be.

Probably the consensus is right, a Labour Party with Jeremy Corbyn as leader would be unelectable, but a lot can happen in five years. Also, since the rules of the leadership contest changed (no block vote for the unions) to one member one vote, the power of normal members is surely increased enormously? I only need to pay £3 to become a voting member for the Labour Party...I might just do that, as I would definitely vote for a Labour Party that had Jeremy Corbyn as leader, rather than fudging about with Lib Dems and Greens.

Labour Leadership Contest

After his General Election defeat, Ed Milliband ran off to Ibiza.

Why, here's some definitive and by no means Photoshopped proof:

Ed largin' it with the Ibiza massive. Also in background: Mick Hucknall, John Shuttleworth)

As you can see, Ed's loving it over there. Look at the contented look on his face! All those election worries drained away!

Always the trendsetter, Ed takes to the wheels of steel to spin tunez so hot they've not been recorded yet!

Well, can't say I blame him.

But it does mean that he's out of the way for the upcoming leadership contest!

So, who's up for it? One person who isn't is Chukka Umunna, who announced his candidacy and became the early favourite, only to withdraw three days later, "uncomfortable" with the "added scrutiny" that came with being a candidate (read "I didn't jump, I was pushed", I think), but I couldn't speculate as to the reason. Maybe he just realised that he was actually a Conservative at heart and being Labour leader wasn't actually his main chance.

Anyway, the race is shaping up to be excruciatingly dull. Labour currently have 232 MPs and to be in the race, you need endorsements from at least 35 of those MPs, so that restricts the potential field to 6 for a start. Only three - Andy Burnham (60), Yvette Cooper (43) and Liz Kendall (37) - have them so far and of the others, Jeremy Corbyn (16) and Mary Creagh (7) might not even make it, despite there being 69 MPs yet to endorse anyone. And they wouldn't stand a chance in the election anyway.

Personally I'd like Jeremy Corbyn, simply because he's the only one who isn't buying into the whole austerity thing and - from what he says - seems to at least have some grip on how government economics work, rather than all the other candidates, who are all pro-austerity to one degree or another. At least the absurd story that the profligacy of the last Labour administration caused the world financial crisis seems to have been thoroughly debunked now. I don't claim to be an economic expert but this was absurd from the outset. I really still can't believe that Labour didn't strenuously deny this obvious lie until they realised it's what they should have done. And even now, the main candidates seem to be pushing the line that "yeah, we spent too much which is why we were unprepared for the recession", which I personally don't believe is true either.

If you look at the graph of government expenditure as % of GDP since 1985 (luckily, I have this to hand as I think of little else):

There's the obvious spike in 2008 when the banks needed to be bailed out, but prior to that I would describe Labour's spending as - to use a favourite Gordon Brownism - "prudent". He (Gordon) could've spent quite a lot more from 1997 to 2002 - "make hay while the sun shines" - and made little difference to the public finances in the long term.

He did make mistakes. ("Light tough regulation" of the banks and other financial institutions was never going to work, was it? Bankers are notoriously greedy and were obviously going to see this as an invitation to get away with any chicanery, manipulation or absurd risks they wanted. It was all fair game to them). So having these toxic fuckers around tossing billions of pounds of bank money into extremely risky ventures at absolutely no risk to themselves personally probably didn't help. And towards the end, when he was PM, he definitely went a bit mad. But at least he seemed to understand economics.