Labour Leadership 2016

I think that if an MP defects from one party to another mid term then a by-election is needed. Can anyone confirm this? Is it true if you are going form a party MP to an independent?

I think that if an MP defects from one party to another mid term then a by-election is needed. Can anyone confirm this?

It's not. You elect the candidate; party is incidental.

yeah, though so too. but

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochester_and_Strood_by-election,_2014
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clacton_by-election,_2014

Reckless and Carswell both defected to UKIP and had to fight by-elections.

Did they need to resign or did they resign and get reelected as a show of strength

By choice. A smart choice as well. (It would have looked bad on both Ukip and the candidates if it was construed they'd got Ukip seats in parliament through the backdoor).

Yes, good politiking there then.

Disagree quite strongly here. Abusing them drives them further into the arms of the racists and leads to a bunker mentality - I think that's what we saw with the referendum and what we're seeing with Trumpism in the US.

Absolutely. If you want to win a general election, you need to take people with you and win hearts and minds.

Writing people off is a shortcut to electoral failure and time in the political wilderness.

He could throw them out of the party but as @ said he can't throw them out of their seats. They'd have no reason to call by-elections unless they were being super principled, and could stand as independents in 2020 if it came to it.

This is why a Labour party which has a leader without the PLP's backing is untenable - if Corbyn is re-elected there will effectively be no opposition until 2020, which is petrifying, especially at such a critical juncture (Brexit negotiation).

Brexit will be as much of a walk over for the right regardless of which tit is in charge (or not) of the labour party.
the people responsible for negotiating this have a background in releasing PFI into the wild.

Brexit will be as much of a walk over for the right regardless of which tit is in charge (or not) of the labour party.

Given the amount of division in the Tory party, an effective opposition could have real sway - particular if it allowed May to win a vote against the Tory eurosceptic flank.

But we don't have an effective opposition, and given Corbyn's apparent disdain for Europe, I'm not sure he'd allow the party to vote that way.

It seems everybody agrees (or at least in lip service I don't trust the Tories) wealth needs to be distributed better, but somehow it all ends up being blamed on other things rather than the local gov. [immigrants/EU...]

But it will be higher taxes/less disposable income/working for longer, no matter what. Who wants to stand up and say that knowing they will lose votes? :)

The PLP is not a united force on Brexit, either, however. And if the goal (of the PLP) is to regain electoral power through supporting finance, planting themselves in the (ever-shifting to the right) middle, and courting the anti-immigration/Brexit vote, I'm not sure what their opposition will be. That Labour - third way Labour - is no enemy to PFIs, for example.

The SNP are the real opposition the Brexit. May does seem concerned with the break up of the union (unlike Cameron), so that's something. And if Labour can get over themselves and recognize that working with the SNP is not treason, we may get somewhere.

Here's another response to Owen Jones' questions yesterday: https://medium.com/@rob_francis/answers-for-owen-jones-bb4524458e3e#.kw4uyqwx9

Does an infinitely better job than the angry dude

^this

lols, excluded.

Another response to Jones:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/manuel-cortes/owen-jones-jeremy-corbyn_b_11303870.html

And an interesting piece which, I think, helpfully, if at times superficially, handles the reasons people support Corbyn:

http://www.newstatesman.com/2016/08/explaining-love-jeremy-corbyn

^ I thought an interesting point from this was:

If Sarah had taken her disenfranchisement and her sense of a middle-class elite running the world without reference to her, and channelled it towards Ukip - essentially, turned it into resentment - she would get a far more sympathetic, understanding reaction from most political commentators I know on the right and on the left. Instead, she took her pain and isolation and put it towards a politics that prioritises inclusion and solidarity. Reacting with kneejerk cynicism to that isn’t really helpful, however much it might make you (ok, and me) feel sophisticated.

I think, unless a split is what you're after, discussions of this sort are what's necessary.

What is not helpful is this faux-nostalgic naval gazing madness:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/03/new-labour-brought-hope-jeremy-corbyn-has-brought-despair?CMP=twt_gu

Can anyone summarise the original article and the best of the responses into 2 tweets please?

All this reading makes me tired

1) trade unionist eloquently mocks Owen while engaging with his points in a largely serious and helpful manner.

2) non-Crobynite tries to explain why people support Corbyn without once calling them cultists.

3) person claims that we must embrace New Labour, and dismisses the left as brick throwing, anti-Semitic, dictatorship supporting, agitators out to destroy the NHS(?!). Ignores recent history (rise of SNP, coming constituency changes, economic collapse, skepticism of neo-liberalism by even neo-liberal organizations), as well as what New Labour did to the world and to its own base, and concludes:

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer retro Labour from 20 years ago as my model of what a “social movement” or a political party should look like. I won’t be taking any lectures about socialism from people who are busy destroying, demeaning, diminishing, eroding the only social movement that can ever, and has ever, delivered it in this country: the Labour party.

thanks

Also, this is interesting:

Just heard Owen Smith on the radio. Sound bite politics again. Awful fool. Hope he loses heavily.

What does that diagram mean - it's not clear. the colours are who you would vote for, but who did they ask?

A sample of British voting public, I would assume. It has results for all parties, so it's not just Labour supporters. Which is interesting because the sum of the "two" parties is higher than the one. Unity would result in a bounce, presumably. Also interested that the right is the weaker of the two sides, the Tories get a bounce regardless, Ukip loses regardless, Lib-Dems lose regardless.