The Student Room Group

Who do you want to win Labour leadership?

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Who do you want to win Labour leadership?

Yvette Cooper 12%
Andy Burnham 14%
Liz Kendall 12%
Jeremy Corbyn62%
Total votes: 658
Just wanted to get a little flavour for what people think, i'm not sure if this has been done already, I couldn't find one so i'll just make a poll now

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Reply 1
Corbyn's an absolute ****ing nutter, so anyone but him would be a relief. I could only vote for Labour though if it was led by Kendall, or at least someone from the moderate wing of the party. Burnham is literally just Miliband with a northern accent and Yvette Cooper is an empty shell with no policies so there's no love from me there. Kendall understands what works and speaks quite well to me, but she is a too inexperienced so that's a whole other problem as well. Either way, Labour is in a bit of a hole if it hopes to occupy the centre.

Still Corbyn is on a completely different level. He's a man who's clearly spent his entire life surrounding himself in a far-left bubble and has no understanding of the real world or modern people. Everything he says sounds like the ramblings of a teenager who's just read his first bit of Marx and thinks he has an idea for everything. It's just so amateur and lacking in any solid reasoning other than pure ideology. Here's a man who say's "We don't have enough money to fund our ridiculous policies? **** it, WE'LL PRINT MORE MONEY". You really can't make it up :lol: Sensible QE is something I can deal with but not that.
Reply 2
Figured.

Say goodbye to the 2020 elections, Labour. :frown:
Voting for corbyn so labour fail, so a guaranteed tory win
Reply 4
Vote Corbyn if you want to ensure the conservatives are in for the next few elections.
Most people on here have grown up in a time when they have never experienced any democratic Socialism. You say the Socialist word and they run and hide under the bed.

I'll tell you what a vote for the 3 stooges is. Kendal, Burnham and Cooper.

1. Keeps QE money flowing into the financial assets mean while increasing housing prices for everyone.

On the min wage in 2014 you could afford to buy a house in Hull Yorkshire or Mountian Ash in Wales. Sadly now no min wage earner can afford to buy a house any where in the UK because they simply will not get a mortgage!

2. The disabled in society will be hounded to the point where they simply will not exist in society.

Labour claimed to be even harder than the Tories with people who claim benefits.

3. You won't get a say on anything and chances are if your at the next Labour conference you might even be man handled out the building if you disagree with the leadership.

Remember this?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4292342.stm

Or what about this?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/disabled-labour-delegate-asked-to-move-to-make-way-for-partys-bright-young-things-9754437.html

FACT of the matter is if you vote for the 3 stooges all you are doing is keeping the dinosaurs in power and allowing them to make sure no one with a democratic ounce in their principles liberates the Labour party for ALL members & supporters.
I think Corbyn will perform better against Cameron, and any of the main contenders for the throne after Cameron steps down, than most people expect, especially at PMQs.

Furthermore his PQE policy idea is just an idea, an idea that has attracted the support of 41 economists, one of which use to work at the bank of england, and saw warning signs before the crash and was ignored, and another one is a noble prize winning economist, but nevertheless just a policy suggestion, and one he suggested as a possible alternative to borrowing to fund growth in infrastructure. It has also attracted around 50 saying it'd be awful, but, and correct me if I am wrong, I don't see a noble prize winner for economics among them.

But we do have to remember a lot can change in a couple months, let alone five years, the policies being suggested now by all of the candidates could be redundant by the time the manifesto is launched in 2020.
Reply 7
Yvette. Her policies aren't wildly exciting, but they're plausible and heading in the right direction. She's arguably the most experienced candidate, and she could easily take on Cameron at PMQs. I think she's also the candidate who is most likely to unite the party, whereas I fear that Jeremy Corbyn or Liz Kendall would cause deep divisions (though not necessarily a split). Hopefully, Yvette can also take on board Liz's desire for further devolution and propose a federal UK, because our current system of devolved parliaments is a complete mess.

I could tolerate Corbyn, because he's clearly a likeable figure and has some good ideas, but I think his policies need some tweaking if Labour wants to win next year's elections and in 2020. "People's Quantitative Easing," for example, is a nice idea on the face of it, but could be difficult in the long-run (and it also violates a few EU laws). I also think that Corbyn and the other candidates should simply be less scared about proposing public investment funded by taxes and/or borrowing.
Yvette Cooper got my vote. She's got the best set of ideas that actually work and is, I believe, the most intelligent AND personable of the candidates.

I wonder, out of the people voting here, how many are actually Tory or other right wing party supports who never have any intention of voting Labour? Out of these people, how many are selecting Corbyn? Same with the super-left wing people? How many are selecting Corbyn here with no intention of ever voting Labour in a real election?

Could be swaying the vote substantially in Corbyns favour. But then the question is, what proportion of the leadership electorate are in the same position as the groups I've just mentioned?
Corbyn, without a doubt. He's the only hope we have of preventing the political centre from continuing to drift towards the right. Perhaps he doesn't have the greatest chance of winning Labour the election (although who knows what will happen in 5 years time) but it's not just about winning elections. A Corbyn-led Labour party would actually pose a meaningful opposition to the Conservative Party in opposition for the next 5 years and might help the British Public to remember that Corbyn's policies are not, in fact, extreme. The principle reason why there's so much rabid hatred against Corbyn is that he is a direct challenge to the leading political and financial establishment of the last few decades which has ingeniously managed to persuade the public that anything other than continuing to sell public property to private initiatives is economic suicide - which is a complete and utter lie.
Reply 10
I'm in broad agreement with Jeremy Corbyn on policy issues. Bringing the railways into public ownership, scrapping Trident, opposing austerity, and so on, are policies I agree with. There is more than one way to oppose austerity, though, and I'm unsure as to whether I agree with every aspect of Corbyn's economic plans. But, opposition to austerity itself is a position held by many, if not most, economists, including Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz and other Nobel Prize-winners. There's a political consensus on austerity, not an economic one.

As for electability, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper aren't going to win as Labour leaders, because they're making the same mistake that Ed Miliband did trying to appease both the Right and the Left of the Labour Party, meaning that,as a country, the Left complained that his policies were watered-down and the Right was calling him a Marxist.

As a country, we should also oppose Liz Kendall, because she's not doing our democracy any favours by simply taking the same stance as the Conservative Party on a wide range of issues. And, why would Conservatives vote for Conservative-lite policies when they can vote for the actual Conservative Party?

Jeremy Corbyn's strategy, by contrast, is just as likely to win Labour the election as Kendall's, in my view, because he'll be appealing to SNP and Green voters, who abandoned Labour precisely because they weren't left-wing enough. Labour aren't going to reverse their wipeout in Scotland by becoming even more right-wing, after all.

Furthermore, by trying to win back SNP voters, Labour may also benefit in England, because the evidence demonstrates that many Liberal Democrat and UKIP supporters voted Conservative because of the rise of the SNP - they were scared that the SNP, which wanted to break up the country, would influence a future Labour government. The media can't exactly peddle this line when the SNP aren't a major player anymore.

He'll also appeal to many UKIP voters in working-class areas, who switched from Labour because Labour weren't seen as the anti-establishment party at the 2015 election - again, the polling evidence we have backs this up. And, he'll appeal to apathetic voters, particularly the young, who see no difference between the main political parties, and who see no passion from politicians. Whether one agrees with Jeremy Corbyn or not, he's passionate, principled and consistent, both when it comes to his views and when it comes to his actions he claims the least in expenses out of all MPs, for example. He's a human being first and a politician second, and doesn't change his mind just because it's politically convenient to do so. Sure, he may make compromises, but he won't pretend that he doesn't believe in something.

People from both sides of the political spectrum can appreciate this: conservatives, who are angry at David Cameron for accepting un-conservative principles such as gay marriage simply because it's become politically convenient to do so; and liberals, who are angry at Harriet Harman for failing to oppose welfare changes that will leave working families £1000 worse off a year, just because it's politically convenient to do so.

And, even if the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn loses, he'll likely have shifted the terms of the debate, just as Ed Miliband did. Those on the Left can continue to talk amongst themselves about how they think we should be clamping down on tax avoidance, or how austerity is both unnecessary, according to many, if not most economists, as well as cruel. But, unless a leader of a major political party actually promotes these positions, the terms of the debate won't shift. Would the Conservatives have outlined plans to tax non-doms to a greater extent if it wasn't for Ed Miliband? I doubt it.

Lastly, I like Yvette Cooper, and I think she's quite strong when it comes to economics. She does say things that are appealing to me, but so did Ed Miliband, especially towards the beginning of his time as Labour leader. Eventually, a lot of it was watered-down, and glossed over with the words "fiscal responsibility", which, in reality, means "political responsibility... to ensure, on behalf of the powerful, that those who had nothing to do with a financial crisis have to suffer because of it".
(edited 8 years ago)
nobody tbh :indiff: they are all as bad as each other (just as every mp and pm is imo)
Original post by RK
the most intelligent


I don't think so she married Ed Balls.
corbyn purely so there's no chance for them in 2020
Reply 14
Original post by CoolCavy
nobody tbh :indiff: they are all as bad as each other (just as every mp and pm is imo)


Not really, whatever you think about him and his policies, at least Corbyn stands out from the rest of the bland, careerist politicians in the leadership race, like viddy9 says in his excellent post, he actually comes across as an honest and decent human being and not just another generic politician.

Sure, I find some of his policies a bit too extreme and feel his beliefs that terrorists can be negotiated with naive to say the least, but I certainly don't see him as the nutter he's been portrayed to be in the media and while I was initially not keen on him becoming leader because of the obvious worries in electability, I actually now would like to see him given a chance as Labour leader and see him stand up to Cameron and his cronies in the HoC. I just hope the majority of the other MPs can put their differences of opinion aside and unite behind him, a divided party would be the last thing they need at this point.
Original post by Olie
Not really, whatever you think about him and his policies, at least Corbyn stands out from the rest of the bland, careerist politicians in the leadership race, like viddy9 says in his excellent post, he actually comes across as an honest and decent human being and not just another generic politician.

Sure, I find some of his policies a bit too extreme and feel his beliefs that terrorists can be negotiated with naive to say the least, but I certainly don't see him as the nutter he's been portrayed to be in the media and while I was initially not keen on him becoming leader because of the obvious worries in electability, I actually now would like to see him given a chance as Labour leader and see him stand up to Cameron and his cronies in the HoC. I just hope the majority of the other MPs can put their differences of opinion aside and unite behind him, a divided party would be the last thing they need at this point.


Yeah i agree with what you say, at least Corbyn is taking the Labour party back to it's intended purpose rather than trying to appeal to the conservertive electorate as well as the labour voters. :smile: :h:

yeah i think the media blow up everyone out of proportion tbh, after all they sell more papers that way :colonhash:
Original post by bobbybob12
I don't think so she married Ed Balls.


Ed Balls is actually quite an intelligent chap. He was let down by consequence of being so closely associated with Milibland's unelectable ticket.
Definitely Cooper, her speech in response to the refugee crisis was amazing!!!
Original post by bobbybob12
I don't think so she married Ed Balls.


Does that have anything to do with it??
Corbyn should have been given 2 options, one for right wingers wanting him to screw over 2020 Labour, and one for people who genuinely want him to win.

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