To be fair, Labour usually struggles to produce anyone who commands sufficient respect among the backbenches and the electorate to become leader. It’s like an entire party of backbenchers.
It is a tricky one. I hate quotas as a general principle and couldn’t care less about the gender of my political representatives and yet, now that you have listed out all those major parties with women leaders we can see that labour is conspicuous by it’s absence. Do they now run the risk that, if they do choose a woman, qualified or not, it looks like some form of conscious bias has been applied. Not good for labour and not good for the woman involved. It looks doubly suspect if the woman chosen is one of the current front bench crop who I think are deeply unimpressive but seem to have the good fortune to be a) female, and b) very loyal to the hands currently pulling the strings.
Labour have a huge amount amount of talented politicians, men and women alike, but alienation from the Corbyn sect means I don’t think their talents will be recognised in the current environment,
This is the bind they are now in, and it not ever going to go away. Shying away now from picking a qualified woman because it might look like her gender was a factor in her selection just means that you have the same problem only worse next time round.
But to be honest I don’t think this is a big risk. Having a woman as leader is not really a big deal in politics now, and while it would be notable that this was Labour’s first female leader, it wouldn’t be epochal. If the candidate makes it through the typical leadership campaign, they’ll be pretty obviously qualified.
Counterpoint - if they’re so talented, how come they’ve allowed themselves to be so alienated by the Corbyn wing? Why can’t they make the case for their brand of leftwing politics sound remotely appealing to a left wing party?
That’s a very disrespectful way to speak of the party of Chris Mullin, Owen Smith, Andy Burnham… ah.
Because Corbyn has a cult that’s even more fanatical than Bernie Sanders’ cult. Several other people would make good leaders but the screwy way Labour picks their leader makes it impossible until Labour gets slaughtered on Thursday.
I think Corbyn is basically Corbyn-McCorbynface with no-one able to say “yeah, very funny, we’ll choose something more serious”
Oh for me it’s just despair.
I can’t even really tell if it’s dull anymore, like the frame of reference is now Boris Johnson and I don’t know if that’s what “dull” means? Despair seems right, though.
I lurk here, because at least that way I have you guys holding my hand through this. But I don’t really have anything to say.
I can’t even. This is my country? I’m at a loss.
The US seems to be working on correcting the embarrassing mess they landed themselves in, while we’re just digging in deeper by the day. You can get rid of Cheetoh in Chief, if you want to. And then you can pick up the pieces. There are some promising people who could lead the US, people who have plans and who could regain some lost international standing.
But where would we even start? Look around. Good grief. Brexit doesn’t have a term limit. And there’s no-one to fix this mess we’re in.
But I do hope some of you can continue to say something every now and then, it helps with the despair. Or if it doesn’t, it makes it less dull.
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It’s of no comfort of course, but I feel similarly despondent. My Facebook feed’s full of buoyant Labour supporters touting catty anti-Tory memes - and the crude fakery coming from Dominic Cummings’ team is just right there, and should be scandalous. But seeing Boris on that face-off with Corbyn last week really brought it home to me; the simplistic three-word mantra (‘Get Brexit Done’), the smirking and literal eye-rolling to the audience as Corbyn tried to come across as a relatively sane adult. We have our own Trump now, and he’s going to fuck our country further because half the populace can’t resist a cheeky character, even when he’s clearly the front for the usual cabal of super-rich establishment self-servers.
The latest YouGov MRP model has come out. Forecasting a Tory majority (339 seats) but with hung parliament within the margin of error. However, the point of MoE is that it’s +/- kind of deal. It’s just as likely based on this that the Tories get 15 more seats than predicted rather than 15 fewer. If the prediction is accurate based on polling at the time, then only way the Tories don’t get a majority is if there’s a significant shift towards anti-Tory voting. A lot of the predicted Tory gains are really close (e.g. 1% winning margin) so it might not take much - but it will take something.
It has seemed like Johnson has been slipping over the past few days. He’s dodged a few interviews, and also tried to dodge a question about a sick boy sleeping on a hospital floor. In that incident, Johnson stuck a journalist’s smart phone in his pocket, rather than look at a picture of the sleeping boy. Stealing a phone is not really a good campaign technique.
I’m surprised Johnson hasn’t been more nationalistic. He’s brought up the SNP during a couple of the debates, but unless I’ve missed it, he hasn’t been hammering at them. I expected him to have a slogan like “A vote for Labour is a vote for a divided Britain.” and be repeating it every time he gets on camera.
And this morning he hid in a fridge. Avoiding scrutiny (e.g Neil) has worked up to a point, but there are ways and ways of doing it.
This is where we are as a country now.
The furore about the boy on the hospital floor continues to expand:
[duplicate post deleted]
What the everloving fuck.
Just in general, or anything specific? 
It’s a bit odd that this thread had so view responses, but then I don’t go into this forum much either so I’m part of it, but I don’t post much in general.
The Tories are likely to win and life for me will be much, much harder. And they’ll win partly due to outright lies and stuff that would have been banned a few years ago.
Let’s watch the world burn.
Most people don’t go into elections. They figure if something important comes up somebody will mention it in the Pit or GD.
Hospital floor thing.
As I said in the other thread, I’m not a current Tory voter. But as an extremely privileged, white, cis-male, straight, married, professional, (not wealthy by any means but comfortably off) I’m very insulated from a lot of the issues other people experience, and as such can find it hard to relate. Are you able to elaborate on this at all? I totally understand if you’d rather not, for whatever reason.
I’m physically disabled and mostly depend on benefits and depend hugely on the NHS, under which I’ve witnessed privatisation first-hand (my heart tests were conducted by a private company and a lot of ambulances are now run by private companies). My daughter has autism and, while I’m hopeful that she will be able to work (she’s at uni now), she’ll need a safety net.
Universal credit makes life very hard for a lot of my friends, because it doesn’t come close to covering rent; for example, one friend who works full-time at a decent job still doesn’t earn enough to pay private rent (partly due to childcare costs), and universal credit leaves her with a c.£100 shortfall. Another friend who has disabilities has a huge £180 shortfall, leaving her with hardly anything to live on. Universal credit desperately needs reforming, and private renters need more rights. I’m not personally affected by private renting but so many people I know are, and it makes a big difference to their happiness, which affects mine.