Labour Leadership 2016

Some of the last few days' stories, featuring plenty of unelectability, superciliousness, infighting, and whatnot.

Corbyn's clearly deeply unpopular in his party, considering 16% of Labour constituency parties don't back him (apparently, these nominations are meaningless, though, in view of 'one member, one vote').

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/15/jeremy-corbyn-wins-backing-84-per-cent-local-labour-parties

Now we know that Corbyn's an 'innocent little saint'. I look forward to other Labour grandees further upping the insult stakes, and I can't help but feel that every time one of them comes out with choice quotes like that, they build Corbyn up a little more (at least within his party, since every child knows that he's completely unelectable outside of it):

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/15/labour-split-risks-handing-tories-unfettered-power-says-margaret-beckett

Beckett is really rather wonderful in saying that the leadership contest is not a personal attack on Corbyn while at the same time personally attacking him:

But she cautioned against viewing the contest as a personal attack on Corbyn. “This is not
about persecuting some innocent little saint who happens to have become the leader of the
Labour party,” she said.

She may well claim that she didn't actually mean to call Corbyn that and was speaking in an ironically-assumed voice of a Corbynista, but I don't think that attempted irony, if it is that, works at all.

Also, an appeal against the Appeal Court's decision is not going to be brought by the five original plaintiffs, who appear to have raised enough money through crowdfunding to at least pay off their debts from bringing the first court case:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/14/labour-party-members-leadership-election-challenge-supreme-court

While I can't claim to really understand what's going on there, on superficial inspection I thought that the NEC's use of 'freeze' dates normally meant to be applied shortly before such a contest was rather fishy, as in that they set one six months before the contest, but I haven't seen it explained properly anywhere, so that may be nonsense.

Disclaimer: I like Corbyn personally and really mainly find the flak brought against him quite irritating, although I also do take the (so far unevidenced) claim seriously that he wouldn't win a general election. I just find it quite an interesting process that's going on at the moment, and I'm intrigued about what the final outcome of it all will be.