Differing views on the Labour leadership election

I have been following the Labour and Lib/Dem leadership elections because which candidates are successful will affect the positioning of all parties in 2020. We cannot assume we can just re-fight the 2015 campaign, things will change based on a whole raft of things not all of which can be predicted in July 2015.

Interesting however to see how different the perceptions of some candidates are.

"Political Betting" had an interesting post here inspired by a tweet from Stephen Bush, editor of the "Staggers" blog at the New Statesman, suggesting parallels between Ken Clarke's bids for the Conservative leadership between 1997 and 2005 and Liz Kendall's current bid for the Labour leadership.

I do think he has a point, And although I do not believe Ken Clarke or any other alternative Conservative leader could have won the 2001 General Election, the selection by the Conservatives of IDS over Ken Clarke in the leadership election which followed has to be up there with Michael Foot's defeat of Denis Healey in 1980 as one of the two most disastrous leadership choices made by the two largest British parties since World War II.

The New Statesman also published a survey comparing the views of Conservative councillors about which Labour leadership candidate they think would be the most formidable opponent with the views of Labour councillors about who they want to see as their leader, which you can read  at

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/liz-kendall-and-caroline-flint-are-team-fear-say-conservative-councillors

I am fairly certain that the Conservative councillors polled were mostly saying what they really think and not answering in hope that Labour would listen to the results of the survey and do the opposite.

A straw in the wind about how Labour's leadership election will actually go can be seen from the fact that the Blairite MP for Copeland, who initially floated the idea of standing himself and who I didn't see on any of the published lists of who backed whom as having nominated anyone else, has now come off the fence and backed Andy Burnham, arguing in a remarkably sycophantic piece that

Andy Burnham isn't continuity Miliband, he's Blair mark II.

To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, I can't claim to have known Tony Blair or worked with Tony Blair, and Tony Blair is no friend of mine, but Andy Burnham is no Tony Blair.

If I said "David Cameron is no Tony Blair" it would be meant as a complement to DC. Saying the same thing about Andy Burnham is not.

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