This is how the MP for North Ayrshire and Arran ranked the leadership candidates in her vote -
1. Diane Abbott
2. Ed Balls
3. Ed Miliband
4. Andy Burnham
5. David Miliband
I'd have placed the younger Miliband ahead of Balls, but other than that, spot on. Any Labour MP capable of spotting that the emperor has no clothes and that David Miliband was worthy of last place (she was one of only four MPs to rank him fifth) deserves some kind of medal.
Showing posts with label Diane Abbott. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Diane Abbott. Show all posts
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Labour leadership debate : Burnt ham
When Michael Crick mused that it was very difficult to tell who had won the Newsnight leadership debate, I couldn't help wondering if what he really meant was that Diane Abbott had been the most impressive, but it felt odd to say that out loud when we know (or we think we know) that she can't win the ultimate prize. I certainly agree with Crick, though, that the one definite conclusion we can draw is that Andy Burnham lost tonight. His delivery was wooden, and the content of some of his answers was distinctly peculiar, especially on Iraq. How precisely has the invasion of Iraq made it easier to deal with Iran now? Surely the polar opposite of that statement is true. And in the unlikely event that Tony Blair was watching, his jaw would have dropped to the floor to hear Burnham advance the eccentric argument that Hans Blix's weapons inspectors couldn't be allowed more time because it might have triggered a domestic uprising against Saddam Hussein. That drives a coach and horses through Blair's perennial excuse for why it had still been justifiable to invade in the absence of WMDs - namely that Saddam would otherwise have been certain to remain in power to this day.
It also became painfully obvious tonight just what a cynical campaign Ed Balls is running, and that there's almost nothing he won't now say in an attempt to neutralise his biggest perceived weakness - ie. his closeness to Gordon Brown. Dredging up the Gillian Duffy incident just to take a swipe at his old political mentor is a tactic that thoroughly deserves to backfire, and I suspect it will. Declaring Tony Blair his favourite Labour leader was a fairly obvious affectation as well. He also coined a phrase that may one day be cited as a textbook example of how not to wriggle out of responsibility for something - "In retrospect, as I said at the time..."
The other Ed was the slightly stronger of the two Milibands, and there were plenty of signs that he is indeed consciously tacking a little to the left - by denouncing the invasion of Iraq, by pledging to tackle the gap between rich and poor, by calling 90 days detention and ID cards a mistake, and by suggesting the 50p tax band should be made permanent. As always in leadership elections, the $64,000 question is - just a tactic, or does he (to use Blair's irritating phrase) "actually believe this stuff"? If the latter, there may be just a glimmer of hope for the progressive strain of opinion in the Labour party, for the first time virtually since the day John Smith died in 1994.
It also became painfully obvious tonight just what a cynical campaign Ed Balls is running, and that there's almost nothing he won't now say in an attempt to neutralise his biggest perceived weakness - ie. his closeness to Gordon Brown. Dredging up the Gillian Duffy incident just to take a swipe at his old political mentor is a tactic that thoroughly deserves to backfire, and I suspect it will. Declaring Tony Blair his favourite Labour leader was a fairly obvious affectation as well. He also coined a phrase that may one day be cited as a textbook example of how not to wriggle out of responsibility for something - "In retrospect, as I said at the time..."
The other Ed was the slightly stronger of the two Milibands, and there were plenty of signs that he is indeed consciously tacking a little to the left - by denouncing the invasion of Iraq, by pledging to tackle the gap between rich and poor, by calling 90 days detention and ID cards a mistake, and by suggesting the 50p tax band should be made permanent. As always in leadership elections, the $64,000 question is - just a tactic, or does he (to use Blair's irritating phrase) "actually believe this stuff"? If the latter, there may be just a glimmer of hope for the progressive strain of opinion in the Labour party, for the first time virtually since the day John Smith died in 1994.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Pulling an Abbott out of the hat
"This is a stitch-up," said Ken Livingstone in 1992 when he failed to receive enough nominations from Labour MPs to reach the ballot paper for the leadership contest. "They're not content just stitching up who wins, they have to stitch up who comes second as well."
I found myself thinking back to those words last night, because almost every sentence on Question Time and This Week relating to the unexpected last-minute route by which Diane Abbott made the cut featured the words "stitch-up" at some point. That's as maybe, but there can hardly be a more telling sign of just how 'unfit for purpose' the absurdly high nomination threshold has become that it necessitates a kind of "constructive stitch-up" simply to give the wider party the full spectrum of ideological choices in the leadership race that it ought to have had by right. And for all that Katie Hopkins sneered about how David Miliband's helping hand to Abbott was the equivalent of giving a Wimbledon wildcard to any British player who can "just about hold a racquet", in truth Abbott is a more talented politician - in the sense of being more articulate and telegenic - than any of her four opponents, with the possible exception of Ed Miliband. The only reason she was struggling to receive enough nominations was that parliamentarians nailing their colours to the mast in public want to be seen (ideally) to be supporting a winner, and (at an absolute minimum) not to be supporting someone who is bound to be an ideological opponent of whoever ends up as the winner.
If Mike Smithson's theory is to be believed, David Miliband may live to bitterly regret his "strategic magnanimity" of nominating Abbott - but that seems highly unlikely. However, I wonder if Abbott is playing a long game, which might lead to her emerging from this process with the senior frontbench post her talent always warranted. And with her uncompromising views on unilateral nuclear disarmament and civil liberties, that can only be a good thing for progressive politics. She is of course an unreconstructed supporter of first-past-the-post...but nobody's perfect.
I found myself thinking back to those words last night, because almost every sentence on Question Time and This Week relating to the unexpected last-minute route by which Diane Abbott made the cut featured the words "stitch-up" at some point. That's as maybe, but there can hardly be a more telling sign of just how 'unfit for purpose' the absurdly high nomination threshold has become that it necessitates a kind of "constructive stitch-up" simply to give the wider party the full spectrum of ideological choices in the leadership race that it ought to have had by right. And for all that Katie Hopkins sneered about how David Miliband's helping hand to Abbott was the equivalent of giving a Wimbledon wildcard to any British player who can "just about hold a racquet", in truth Abbott is a more talented politician - in the sense of being more articulate and telegenic - than any of her four opponents, with the possible exception of Ed Miliband. The only reason she was struggling to receive enough nominations was that parliamentarians nailing their colours to the mast in public want to be seen (ideally) to be supporting a winner, and (at an absolute minimum) not to be supporting someone who is bound to be an ideological opponent of whoever ends up as the winner.
If Mike Smithson's theory is to be believed, David Miliband may live to bitterly regret his "strategic magnanimity" of nominating Abbott - but that seems highly unlikely. However, I wonder if Abbott is playing a long game, which might lead to her emerging from this process with the senior frontbench post her talent always warranted. And with her uncompromising views on unilateral nuclear disarmament and civil liberties, that can only be a good thing for progressive politics. She is of course an unreconstructed supporter of first-past-the-post...but nobody's perfect.
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