The perennial issue of Labour running candidates in Northern Ireland has popped up again. From the Daily Mirror:
Keir Starmer is being pressed to allow Labour to field candidates in Northern Ireland elections.
The move could give the Labour leader the few extra MPs he might need in a tight general election.
Labour currently backs its sister party, the nationalist SDLP, which has two MPs and 12 assembly members.
But shadow trade secretary Emily Thornberry said: “We should be offering Northern Ireland voters an alternative.”
And former Northern Ireland minister Sir George Howarth added: “A Northern Ireland Labour Party could provide a home for both unionists and nationalists. The Labour Party is at its best when it takes ownership of the future. And we should take part in the future of Northern Ireland.”
Even if they did run candidates I do not think they would do well. Labour are all over the place these days. Even with Boris stumbling from one disaster to another Labour are still behind in the polls. Their only hope would be if they got a big name like Claire Hanna to run, but the chances of this ever happening are very slim.
It's now clear that Labour Conference had precisely zero effect on Labour's standing with the public.
Attacking the left and avoiding policies that will change people's lives is not a vision and it's not a strategy.
And it's not working. https://t.co/9oGcpUZQQF
— Momentum 🌹 (@PeoplesMomentum) October 14, 2021
On paper, Keir Starmer seemed a good leader, a working-class lad who worked his way up to a Knighthood. The law Courts are part performance so you would expect an experienced QC to have some kind of presence but he really is a charisma-free zone. Andy Burnham seems to be the favourite to be the next leader.
Exclusive polling of Labour members by YouGov for Sky News shows an overwhelming majority (69%) think that former MP & Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham would be a better Labour leader than Keir Starmer 1/8
Read more here 👉 https://t.co/xgKjSoz5Lw pic.twitter.com/AmOdVt0pun
— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 30, 2021
As a measure of the irrelevance of the current Labour Party, I just released we managed to miss doing any posts around their conference a few weeks back. So feel free to use this post to discuss the general state of the Labour Party.
I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not a member of any political party. Oddly for a member of the Slugger team, I am not that interested in daily politics, preferring to write about big ideas in society. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
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