Labour leadership result prediction thread.

[Ken Burch]

Post your predictions below.

Also, offer your predictions for how the factions involved will react to your predicted result.

[T_i_B]

1. Corbyn will win easily

Thanks to the massive influx of new members.

[LeftishBrit]

2. Corbyn will win. I don't think anyone seriously expects otherwise.

[RogueTrooper]

3. 65% -> 70% for Corbyn would be my guess.

[T_i_B]

4. Corbyn got 62%

Commiserations to Owen Smith. His campaign was not without mishap, but ultimately I don't think Mahatma Ghandi could have taken on Momentum and won with the Labour party in its current state.

[RogueTrooper]

5. Indeed

10 Things about Gandi's time in South Africa YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE! (You'd be surprised about his racism). I could well imagine The Canary printing that article.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Petition calls for Gandhi statue to be removed from Ghana University

Ghanaian professors are calling for a statue of Mahatma Gandhi to be removed from their campus because they claim he was racist and considered Indians to be “infinitely superior” to black Africans.

A statue of the Indian independence leader was unveiled at the University of Ghana in June by the Indian president, Pranab Mukherjee, who had delivered a speech calling on students to “emulate and concretise” Gandhi’s ideals.

More than 1,000 people have since signed a petition calling for it to be torn down, saying that not only was Gandhi racist towards black South Africans when he lived there from 1893-1914, but that he campaigned for the maintenance of the caste system in his own country.

“We can do the honourable thing by pulling down the statue,” read the petition, which was delivered to the university council on Thursday. “It is better to stand up for our dignity than to kowtow to the wishes of a burgeoning Eurasian super-power. Some harm has already been done by erecting the statue. We have failed the generation that look up to us, namely our students.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/22/petition-calls-for-gandhi-statue-to-be-removed-from-ghana-university

[Ken Burch]

9. All Momentum is is a since, democratic, grassroots group of activists for change.

Owen should never have demonized them.

They aren't Trotskyists...they're "normal people"...it's just that they're "normal people" who want to change things for the better.

If it hadn't been for the mass vote suppression(I assume you'll agree, as a fair-minded and democratic person, that there was never any justification for the outgoing NEC and McNicol to deprive 120,000 people of a vote in this contest and that all of those people should be immediately reinstated...it wasn't a crime to use the term "Blairite" in social media, for God's sakes) Corbyn would have been closer to 70%

It's time for the PLP to accept that it has lost its war against the future.

[T_i_B]

7. The real divide in Labour

Owen Smith won among people who were Labour members before 2015, but had no chance against Corbyn's 83% support from new members.

https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/779650027836833796

Corbyn's next task is to get these two groups working together, and to get the new members involved in Labour activism beyond internal infighting.

[Ken Burch]

8. Corbyn got almost 60% of Labour members overall, though.

And without the completely unjustified mass voter purges, he might well have won among pre-2015 members as well.

The pre-2015 members have got to stop acting as if it's a disaster to have new people entering the party.

They need to admit that Corbyn's support is real, grassroots, and non-sectarian(it was always absurd to ascribe his 2015 win to Trotskyite entryists-Corbyn's supporters are sometimes radical, but their radicalism is derived from Occupy, not the People's Front of Judea-The Judean People's Front(splitters!)-The People's Popular Front of Judea.

Corbyn is here to stay, he is willing to work with the PLP and the old guard, and they now have an obligation to work with him.

[RogueTrooper]

10. Ironic that

Seeing as Occupy has its spiritual roots in Israel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Israeli_social_justice_protests

[Ken Burch]

11. Corbyn doesn't hate Israel(OR Israelis). He's against the injustices visited on the Palestinians...

Last edited Sat Sep 24, 2016, 08:03 PM - Edit history (1)

None of which are essential to Israel's survival.

And a lot of people admire the small progressive minority in Israeli politics.

[RogueTrooper]

14. The irony was your Monty Python reference

[Ken Burch]

15. "The People's Front of Judea" was actually the Pythons' satirical take

on 1970's British Trotskyism(the kind of divisive, sectarian politics Corbyn's supporters are falsely accused of promulgating.

"The Life Of Brian" was no more about the history of ancient Israel than "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" was ever meant to be an accurate depiction of medieval English history.

[LeftishBrit]

22. I think RT realized this and was joking about it

[T_i_B]

12. The Trotskyite thing is actually a bit complex

Labour itself is not overrun with trotskyites. There are many checks to ensure that trots don't get through the door.

Momentum on the other hand is a different matter. It's not actually affiliated to the Labour party, anyone can join and many from TUSC, Respect, SWP etc have done just that. And through Momentum they are starting to exert some influence, mainly in agitating for deselections and the like.

I can understand why Corbyn formed Momentum on those terms as the Corbyn insurgency has its roots in the anti-Iraq war movement, and the Stop The War Coalition is run by the far left. However, the challenge for Corbyn now is to move beyond that and lead his supporters into the messier and more complex world of Labour activism instead.

As for the Labour old guard? Again, they need to try and get new members working with them, going out canvassing and talking to voters. If they do that they might just realise that the far left has its limits.

[Ken Burch]

16. The best way for the old guard to get the Corbynites working WITH them...

...would be to stop trying to drive the Corbynites away.

It's time that the old guard admit that Corbyn's supporters have just as much right to be part of Labour as Progress does.

Momentum is simply a group of committed democratic activists. They want to REVIVE the Labour party(a party that has continuously lost ground since 2005)not to destroy it.

The only way for Labour to recover is to stop treating socialists and left-wing campaigners as the enemy. Nobody really WANTS Labour to be viciously anti-Left in the Blair style anymore-at least not anyone who would actually consider voting Labour.

[Ken Burch]

23. At most, there are 2,000 Trotskyites in the entire UK. They fight against each other

with more passion than they ever expend fighting capitalism.

During the Eighties, when Labour was furthest left, MOST of the Labour left despised the Trots. People whose politics was informed by Occupy have no use for them.

"Trots" aren't capable of taking over anything. And they can't destroy anything...other than themselves.

It's time for everyone to admit that it's ridiculous to imply that everybody who supports Corbyn is a Trot. Or that anything but a pathetically tiny sliver of the UK left ever was.

Corbynism(if we can call it that) is sincere, grassroots, democratic, and legitimate.

It's just that it threatens the section of the Labour old guard who think history ended in 1983 and that the party must never again deviate from sectarian Blairism.

Labour's losses in the Eighties were caused by the inability of the Labour Right to accept that the majority of the party had the right to disagree with its views-not by any of the actual policies the Left supported.

[T_i_B]

24. Trots ran the anti-Iraq war movement!

The Stop The War Coalition is full of Trots top to bottom. I was part of that myself back in 2002/3. I took part because I considered the invasion of Iraq to be wholly unjust, regardless of the ideological purity or otherwise of whoever else was marching against that war.

And to be honest, they worked together well enough to organise a huge protest movement, even if they were always too fractious to be able to build on that.

[Denzil_DC]

25. I was one, among I think many,

who was involved in that movement, but haven't had much time for Stop The War as an organization since then. It was a means to an end.

In Scotland, at least, there was enough momentum (!) that all you needed to do was provide basic co-ordination and people were only too eager to turn out for demos - it led to the largest demo I've ever seen in Glasgow, around 130,000 on the same day when folks were demonstrating elsewhere in the UK.

CND has also suffered from the same problem at the top, but still staggers on.

[Ken Burch]

26. Even if they ran that, so what? And is it a crime for an antiwar movement to be well-organized?

The Stop The War Coalition didn't do anything insidious. And it's not as though an activist campaign should have to be a chaotic shambles just to prove its sincerity.

What matters is that the overwhelming majority of Stop The War were nonsectarian people of democratic intent.

It would serve no purpose to set up an anti-Trot update of McCarthyism in UK politics.

Why is it so hard for some people to accept that Corbyn's victories are simply what they appear to be on the surface-a good, decent person winning by speaking the principled truth and embodying what the people he speaks to actually WANT?

Why don't the anti-Corbynites give at least some thought to engaging and actually trying to work WITH Corbyn's supporters? To accepting that it's a GOOD thing for new people to enter the party? Or, if nothing else, to trying to recruit new people who agree with THEM rather than trying to kick as many Corbynites out of the party?

And why do some people think Labour can only win if it is led by a dismissive, elitist, anti-left cynic like Yvette Cooper?

I have a lot of respect for Andy Burnham at the moment-he has concerns about Corbyn, but he chose not to be a wrecker?

[T_i_B]

27. The origins of the Corbyn insurgency...

...lie in the movement against the Iraq war, not to mention the abominable attitude of the people at the top of the Labour party back then, who took us into that war and who thought that they could take the left for granted.

I've made this point before now, but it's a very important one. The Iraq war was a pivotal moment in British politics. It became the start of the long term decline of New Labour.

[Ken Burch]

28. I agree with you absolutely on that.

And the way forward for Labour involves finding some way, whoever leads it, to include and empower the people whose politics are grounded in that moment(and, I'd also argue, in Occupy when it occurred a few years later).

At the moment, what you have is the newcomers, still having to fight to defend their very presence in the party(and not always behaving with total nobility, as is to be expected from any movement that is a situation like this)and an old guard, grounded in an old-style "Cold War" mindset towards anything and anyone to the left of its comfort zone)that cares more about delegitimizing not only Corbyn(who is simply one decent but somewhat flawed man)and silencing or driving away his supporters than they do about doing anything at all to revitalize and renew the party at a time when the politics of 1997 simply no longer work.

Labour can ONLY win if the Corbyn supporters are kept part of the party. Momentum is not Militant 2.0 and there is no possible political benefit for the party in doing unto them as Kinnock did to both Militant AND the non-Militant Labour Left after 1985(there actually wasn't that much benefit to Kinnock himself for doing that...he only managed to get Labour back up to about 34%(from 26% in 1983)in his second blown election, and it's likely that Labour's vote share would have increased that much simply due to David Owen's sabotage of the LibDem merger and the anti-centre party trend that Owen helped caused by doing that-I'm pretty sure that, as a LibDem, you are still furious with his Lordship for not only splintering the alliance, but splintering his splinter when he endorsed the Tories in '92).

[Denzil_DC]

13. YouGov ran an "exit poll".

I can't speak to the methodology or any shortcomings in it (for instance, the sample size was tiny), but here it is:

Jeremy Corbyn wins among all Labour members except 18-24 year olds, Scots and those who have been members since before the general election

Jeremy Corbyn has just been re-elected as leader of the Labour party, beating rival Owen Smith by 62% to 38% - exactly the figure given by YouGov in our survey of the Labour selectorate.

YouGov also conducted the equivalent of an exit poll* of Labour members in the days between the ballots closing and the result being announced for Election Data. The results of the poll – 59% Corbyn, 41% Smith – also exactly matched the result among Labour members. Please note, this was a poll of members only – the results do not include those members of the Labour selectorate who were registered supporters or trade union affiliates.

Jeremy Corbyn wins among 17 of 20 demographic categories we measured against. He performed best among more recent members, where he held a lead over Smith of 68 points among those who have become a member since he was first elected leader, and 49 points among those who became a member during the last leadership election.



Corbyn also secured far more votes among those who did not vote Labour in 2015 (a lead of 57 points) and Leave voters (a lead of 52 points - hardly surprising given Smith’s second EU referendum pledge).

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/09/24/labour-members-exit-poll-corbyn-wins-all-except-yo/

[Ken Burch]

17. You'd think they'd be happy that someone was causing Labour membership to increase.

No party anywhere has ever gained ground by driving membership down.

[T_i_B]

18. Blairites might disagree...

Their solution to many of the problems inherent to a voluntary organisation like a political party was to make things a whole lot more professionalised and to sideline the party grassroots.

The result was the creation of an out of touch careerist Westminster clique at the top of the party, who became increasingly remote from the voters they are meant to serve. This has been a major factor in Labour's decline.

My current gripe is that the recent upsurge in Labour membership has not translated into an increase in Labour activism. A massive potential asset for the party is being wasted.

[Denzil_DC]

19. Brace yourself, T_i_B,

but for once I'm completely in agreement with you!

Even before the, for me, unforgivable Iraq adventure, Labour made it plain that activists like me - who bust a gut at local level trying to get Labour candidates elected in a pocket of Scotland that untypically wasn't strong Labour territory - were neither valued nor needed. They could rely on media outreach and mailshots and the newly developing communication technologies to get their message to the voters, so they didn't have to pander to our agendas - in fact, they could make a great show of bashing us publicly at every turn, to prove to the right-wing media and the public at large just how much "Labour has changed".

The likes of Derek Draper (where is he now?) said precisely as much, to great media fanfare, and that was echoed by other senior figures as they chased the centre-right vote. Is it any wonder Labour started shedding support from the day Blair got his first landslide, and is now in the doldrums locally?

The New Labour intake couldn't make up for the decrease in membership, and certainly weren't prepared to suffer the indignities of sitting through interminable meetings dominated by blowhards, lowering themselves to tallying canvass returns in some seedy temporary office, driving speaker cars round the local housing schemes or doorstepping to beg for votes from the plebs they wouldn't be seen dead near for the rest of the election cycle.

For all the talk of a "Corbyn cult", the New Labour experiment was a cult centred on one man - Blair - and the careerists who got on board with him. It's no accident that when he left office, New Labour imploded without him as a figurehead, and was already veering toward unelectability before there was any prospect of Corbyn taking the leadership.

[T_i_B]

20. Oh, I would never deny Blair's personality cult

He had vast swathes of the British media buying into it as well, which made it even more insufferable.

In my case, I spent most of the Blair years in a very Tory leaning part of the home counties and it was clear during that time that they were in decline at grass roots level and unable to compete effectively with either the Lib Dems or the Tories. The end result of this has been the complete, and extremely unhealthy dominance of the right wing in places like Essex.

Ultimately, all politics is local, and grassroots politics matters a lot more than media talking heads will care to admit.

[Denzil_DC]

21. This was the problem with New Labour's courting of and reliance on the media.

They were famously absolutely craven in the face of Murdoch and his ilk. Still are.

If you rely on the media for your messaging, they end up dictating policy. And that's what's turned our political discourse into even more of a shambles than it was already. Witness the Brexit referendum. Nothing could compete with and break through the unremitting torrent of bullshit from so many outlets over so many years.

[white_wolf]

29. So as an American reading this thread...I'm profoundly jealous.

The US needs a party like Labour and a leader like Corbyn. Congratulations to all his supporters on your hard work and victory. Best of luck in the next general election. And if things get bad at least you can take comfort in the fact that Cameron is gone. I don't even live there and I kind of want to punch him.