Labours voting system

Establishment Labour seems to be getting it's knickers in a twist about the voting system for the selection of leader. The suggestion seems to be that by opening up the vote to all supporters (and infiltrators) rather than engaging the public in an open and meaningful process to pick a future Prime Minister, they are hastening the arrival of their new marxist overlord. I can see one simple way that this situation could have been avoided:

Don't put fucking idiots on the ballot in the first place.

 This is harder than it might sound what with this being the Labour Party and so being almost entirely composed of fuckwits, but remember that Corbyn is only on the ballot because some morons "lent" him their votes in order to "broaden the debate".  Had they not been so monumentally stupid as to rig the nominations to get him on there in the first place  Cooper and  Burnhurm would now be having their own halfwits jamboree,confident that whoever won would be representative of mainstream, slightly less insane, Labour.

Quite frankly if you offer people a choice between four different shits, don't be surprised if they pick the shitiest shit.

Thoughts about the Labour leadership & Jeremy Corbyn.

Sometime during the last Labour Party leadership election I was at my sisters house for a cup of coffee when the post arrived. She received a ballot paper from her Union asking her to cast a vote for one of several candidates. This surprised my sister, as a non political person she did not know that she paid the political levy (she had no idea what it was or that its was optional), she had no idea that she had a vote and she had no interest in casting one.

 We had a discussion about who it would be best to vote for . Though not a member of any party I've a long-standing believe that Labour are the worst of the bunch. I therefore suggested that she cast the vote on the basis of which candidate would damage the Labour party the most. (a bit of a fore runner to Toby Young's "Tories for Corbyn" campaign)

 From memory I think I dithered between this candidate being Diane Abbot (whom I've always quite liked even if she is a bit of a loony) and Ed Milliband whom, with the best will in the world, came across as the sort of mouth breathing weirdo who couldn't win a running race in a car. I considered that from a field of candidates that made David Milliband look good (something that still amazes me) either of  these two would provide the best entertainment/chance of keeping Labour out of power. In the end I think she went for Ed. The bacon sandwich wrestling scourge of Murdoch went on to win and achieved several things:

Firstly, just to get it out of the way, he carved his own Ed Stone and turned himself into a national Joke.

Secondly, despite his problems with the media, awful image with the public and incoherent policy rantings he managed to hold the Labour party together and increase the number of seats in England. We shouldn't let the collapse of Scottish Labour distract us too much here- those seats are still held by a bunch of leftwing nutters from the Celtic fringe, the only difference it makes to the Conservatives' ability to govern is the colour of their rosettes. The SNP will not be voting for a Conservative agenda- it is conceivable that they would have voted for a Milliband one.

Though the Conservatives won the election, and have every right to be proud that they did- we were not that far from a Milliband Minority government with the SNP keeping him off the straight and narrow. This nearly happened despite a Labour leader whom those who didn't confuse him with his " batshit mad brother" considered him  to be a weirder looking, left wing version of Harry Enfield's Tory boy.

Labour were forced to defend the record of Gordon Brown, arguably the worst prime minister this country has had for decades, to simultaneously try to woo SNP voters whilst attempting to convince people in  England  that they considered the SNP  the devil incarnate and they wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. All this against a background of economic growth, falling unemployment, and falling petrol prices.  With ED BALLS leading the charge for economic credibility. They still scored over 30% of the vote, with David Cameron only just scrapping a majority.

Finally and most importantly Ed managed to shift the terms of debate to the left. If Margaret Thatchers greatest achievement was Tony Blair then some of the credit for George Osbornes 2015 budget- £9 per hour minimum wage, 45p tax rate still present,  abolition of tax relief for buy to let, must rest with Ed.

 These popular but possibly damaging polices owe a lot to Ed Milliband managing to shift the Overton Window to make polices that were once considered an absolute joke a matter of legitimate debate. Rent controls, price controls of utilities, state press regulation, nationalisation of the railways, all of these were  put back on the agenda either directly by Ed or as a consequence of his ability to move the terms of debate leftward and all have been taken sufficiently seriously by Osbourne for him to try to counter them. Though he did not win the election Ed Milliband did have an effect on the political discourse of the country and from the perspective of someone who dresses to the right, it's not been positive.

This brings us to the current Labour Contest. Once again the Labour Party have managed to pick a field of contenders who make Milli Senior look impressive but this time he's not running.

Liz Kendal appears to be principled, moderate and electable and, If I had the best interests of the Labour Party at heart (I don't), I'd like to see her elected, It seems clear that out of all the runners and riders she'd make the best Prime Minister and would probably have the best chance of making it into Number 10. However as the Labour Party are still in melt down about their most successful leader of all time it doesn't seem likely that they will vote for someone who might gain them the "wrong sort" of success. The rest of us can hope that one Blair every 40 years or so is about all they can stomach.

The "Andy Copper Burnham Yevette thing" is the sort of indistinguishable political parasite that gives members of Parliament a bad name- they don't appear to have any principles that they wouldn't sell for power, speak almost entirely in platitudes and cliches and are followed around by the odour of hypocrisy and failure wherever they go. They typify everything that is wrong with paternalistic nanny knows best Labour. In the Event of Burnham winning expect the Tories to hang Mid Staffs around his neck and if Cooper wants to paint her towering achievement of the introduction of  HIPS as a qualification for the top job then good luck to her. Either of these two would probably be the most appropriate choice for leader of the Labour Party as both of them exemplify the political culture it has spawned.

Finally we have Jeremy Corbyn, the unlikely vested messiah of the Labour Left, victory for whom would, depending on who you believe, either have the Tory Party laughing all the way to election victories right through to 2050 or have CCHQ quaking in their boots as all the works of the blessed St Margret of Thatcher are destroyed.

 If I had the world view that more government action was always the answer, or if I was the sort of Idiot who would call myself an Anarchist and then protest about government cuts it's probable that I'd pay my £3 and have a vote. If I was this sort of person I'm fairly sure that I would vote for Corbyn.

He seems principled in the way that only someone who is wrong about nearly everything nearly all the time can be, he's not polluted by the success of Tony Blair and, despite being in Parliament for longer than Big Ben, as most people have never heard of him he comes across as a fresh face. Just like a "right on" six form humanities teacher, he's not afraid to answer a direct question with a  direct, if simplistic and probably wrong, answer.

The fact that his answers are wrong, need not be an impediment to them doing damage to the Country. Just because something's been tried before and failed it doesn't mean that it won't be suggested again, to an increasingly large section of the electorate horror stories about the 1970's are just that- horror stories. Though it's likely that Cameron will have reversed some of the pro Labour bias in the electoral system before the next election can we be sure that the Circumstances facing Corbyn in 2020 would be any worse than those Milliband faced in 2015? Reversion to the mean might suggest that a Labour Party with a different offering from the Blair/Brown era, a new- principled- leader, new (old) policies and no ED BALLS might get a better hearing from the electorate.

In all probability a Corbyn run Labour party would be an open target to a hostile media- It's unlikely that his cuddling up to  Gerry Adams or his "friends" in Hamas will be forgotten and if his election leads to all out civil war in Labour then so much the better. It is far more likely that Corbyn will be the Labour Parties equivalent of IDS than Attlee reborn. However we should not make the mistake of the Morons who nominated him for the leadership in the first place by failing to take him seriously as an opponent.

To do this ignores the fact that he does have the potential to pull public debate to the left and though his election would give the Conservatives an opportunity to kill hard left politics in this country for the foreseeable future, the stakes are high, with the consequences of a Corbyn win dire. This means that if he does win, It can't be assumed that the electorate will find Corbyn as amusingly off putting as his opponents do.

Those  who oppose socialism must treat the threat seriously and as well as laughing at his struggles they will have to defeat his arguments. Though the chances of a Corbyn led government are remote, the consequences of one could be devastating. Corbyns brand of politics was supposed to have lost 40 years ago and so the opportunity to beat these ideas again is of limited value compared to the risk of their resurgence.