Wasn’t Harriet Harman accused, rightfully, of saying what she needed to to get the deputy position?

Interesting how quick to accuse her of plotting some people are. There seems to be a whiff of sexism at work here…

Lee, you mean you’re shocked a politician is appealing to the base in order to get elected?

The Tories I assume would be happy with HH?

I’m not shocked, just like I’m not shocked that some politicians that don’t agree with her personal politics would start whispering campaigns.

Oh pleeeeeeeeeze

Sunny, some journos would rather write about ‘court politics’ than, say, the economy. Harman goes against official policy? Far more interesting than the credit crunch – oh, and can we run a puff piece on James Purnell as a future Labour leader while we’re at it? Throw in lots of unattributable briefings, a bunch of columnists wither their own axe to grind (whether pro-Blair, anti-Labour or pro-Harman) the predictable accusations of sexism (in what would Harman’s ‘plotting’ be any different to, say, Miliband’s last summer? is Harman’s gender her USP or her get-out clause?) and…well, it beats doing investigate reporting, that’s for sure.

Is this the same Harriet who claimed to have been against the Iraq war all along – despite all evidence to the contrary – to get elected during the deputy leadership campaign?

Then, once she was elected, performed another u-turn, claiming she was, after all, in favour of it.

I struggle to think of a worse man to replace Brown; God help us if she ends up leading the country.

Hardly a whispering campaign when it is just a complete rehash of the comments made during the election campaign for the deputy leadership.

Anyway, nice to see all this navel-gazing and speculation when there is a job to be done and no vacancies in the position.

Is this a serious discussion? No sane party considers replacing their leader in the run-up to an election except as a last roll of the dice to limit the losses, as it only risks dividing the party and magnifying any internal differences.

Is Harman really considering positioning herself for the caretaker role to claim the task of reassembling the scraps of the party after their looming defeat? That’s a massive joke, as no candidate who failed to challenge Brown when there was an chance can be seen as a break with his regime.

I reckon they’ve all missed their window of opportunity and scuppered any chance of leading the party out of the electoral wilderness. The best they can hope for is to keep the party together and retain sufficient parliamentary strength to be considered a realistic challenger.

The best they can hope for is an influx of fresh blood, but that’s more than unlikely considering the cull of Labour MPs which is almost upon us.

She’s not the brightest of sparks and her “support for proposed anti-discrimination legislation to “embed” considerations of social class, alongside sex and ethnicity” will probably go down like a lead balloon outside of the Labour Party. Definitely who the Tories would want as leader.

I don’t see her as a future leader either, but I’m glad she’s in the cabinet and I find the bile directed at her from all quarters massively disproportionate.

personally, I suspect part of the reason why many don’t see Harriet Harman becoming the next Labour leader is because the party deeply discredited itself launching an illegal war justified with a bunch of lies.

anyone who voted for the war has the possible escape route of saying they were gullible enough to beleive the stuff about WMD. however, they would have to feel outrage and want to know how and why they had been misled.

Anyone – like Harman – who voted strongly for the war and yet against any inquiry is a devious toad who places loyalty to a discredited cause above integrity.

If we’re talking about the iraq war or ‘who the tories would prefer’ then frankly they’re all as bad as each other. Besides, Labour will lose the next election – the question now is who can steer them to some intellectual renewal. HH is way better in that regard then the other choices there are on offer right now. The Indy is playing up Ed Balls! I mean, honestly…

Harriet Harman seems to be emerging as a long-sighted and very competent politician (which surprises people, including me). She wanted the Deputy Leadership as an unsackable base for a leadership attempt. She got it. She is being fully loyal in a way which raises the leadership question – at a time which suits her. In the column inches (paper and electronic) discussing possible candidates, she is now way ahead. Clearly, she will not supply intellectual renewal; but as Sunny says she may well be capable of steering the Labour movement towards it.

“To the irritation of colleagues, she signalled her support for proposed anti-discrimination legislation to “embed” considerations of social class, alongside sex and ethnicity,…”

So the privately-educated scion of the establishment is happy to disallow privilege for future generations.

This woman will “signal her support” for anything that she thinks the morons who clutch their NuLab memberships will approve of. A plague on the lot of them.

@8 Shamik Das: Is this the same Harriet who claimed to have been against the Iraq war all along

According to TheyWorkForYou, she voted very strongly for the Iraq war. So if you want the next Labour leader to be someone whose words say one thing and whose actions say the opposite, she’s clearly fit for the job.

She also voted strongly for introducing ID cards and voted strongly for Labour’s anti-terrorism laws. Therefore on the most important issue currently facing this country, she’d dead wrong, and I hope her political career nosedives.

Harman is not the worst member of the cabinet, but that’s not saying much, is it? Perhaps some fraction of the criticism she receives is unfair, but there again let’s not forget there are plenty of wholly legitimate reasons for disliking her, which aren’t picked up on as much as they might: one major one being her plain dissimulation, and willingness to say anything for advancement and then to renounce her earlier utterances, or even worse deny she ever made them…
Remember her appearance in the Labour Deputy Leadership debate on Newsnight? Jon Cruddas said that Labour should apologise for Iraq to which Harman could very loudly and firmly be heard to say “Yes, I agree with that!” She drew a huge number of second preferences on the basis of that comment and consequently she won the deputy leadership only to outrageously and bare-facedly deny that she’d said what she did say and assert that she fully supported official government policy on Iraq .

Well, I think I’ve said before that she’s our own Hillary Clinton.

What Labour’s next leader will have to do first of all is to offer reasons for people to rejoin the Labour Party with a view to winning the election after the election after next, i.e. in 2019 or thereabouts. I don’t see how anyone in the Cabinet is qualified to do that.

Well, I think I’ve said before that she’s our own Hillary Clinton.

You mean incredibly divisive and a bit annoying?

Harman is not terribly likeable, so it’s little wonder that she’s somewhat disliked. Personally I find her old-skool bitterly partisan politics a turn off. It’s the same reason I dislike shits like Osborne.

Speaking of Jackie Smith I have just seen her neighbour who reported her to David Cameron for house expenses. What a pompous, supercilious little man he was. I smell Tory through and through.

You may be right about Smith’s neighbour being a Tory, or Tory inclined, sally, but Smith really should not have got herself into the position she has. She didn’t have to claim such a lot of money, nor resort to legal niceties over main residence status…you shouldn’t give your enemies easy supplies of ammunition with which to attack you.

You may not approve of what she has claimed, and most people would agree, but I don’t think she has done anything wrong according to the rules . In fact she asked for advice from the House of commons.

And of course no Tory mps are claiming silly expenses for their houses Alasdair? They are much worse in my opinion because they always banging on about people living off the state. Biggest welfare queens are Tory Mps.

Sally, I’m not saying she’s done wrong by the letter of the law, nor that Tories are any better, but that a holder of one of the great offices of state really ought to be a bit more f*cking sensible, and not get in a position where their integrity can be questioned. She shouldn’t do things that on the face of it look like sharp practice, albeit legal, and really ought to try and abide by the spirit of the law: that’ is actually what the vast majority of citizens do (and god knows there are enough new laws to obey) because they don’t have the time nor the means to ‘game’ the system.Only the rich and/or powerful can really play the system, much as only the rich and powerful can avoid/mitigate tax, and it sends out completely the wrong image and message.

Er, AC, wouldn’t you say that being Home Secretary made you powerful? After all, she can have any of us banged up as terrorists on no better grounds than she “believes” we are…

Err, yes, Mike, that’s exactly my point: only the rich and powerful can game the system. When they are elected to be powerful though, they really shouldn’t because it sends out the wrong message, and might just lead to then not being re-elected. Redditch is pretty marginal…her position allows her to game the system. I didn’t say she can’t, but said that “She shouldn’t do things that on the face of it look like sharp practice, albeit legal, and really ought to try and abide by the spirit of the law”. Like I said before, there was no need to make such claims as she did:she plain can’t be hard-up in any terms accepted by voters and so it was absolute folly (being charitable) or greed (being less charitable). Again, you shouldn’t give your enemies easy supplies of ammunition with which to attack you, and by goodness the mail, the Tories etc have used that free ammo.

Re. Smith’s expenses – all Labour (or the LibDems) have to do is get a bunch of bright-eyed underpiad young wonks to research the Tories, and the parties can play nyah-nyah-nyah all day long rather than come up with a system that’s less open to abuse.

Mike Killingworth – if Harman is ‘our’ Hillary Clinton: (a) she’d have challenged Brown rather than settling for being his ‘political wife’ (remember: Clinton wasn’t running for VP); (b) it probably means David Lammy will be the next Labour PM (I’m talking figuratively, if we’re going to run the analogy into the ground)

Sunny:

Besides, Labour will lose the next election – the question now is who can steer them to some intellectual renewal. HH is way better in that regard then the other choices there are on offer right now.

That’s fine, if you’re entire strategy is to claim ‘The big boys did it and ran away’ (see the commentariat response to Sigurdardottir as Icelandic PM: never mind policies to fix a bankrupt nation, she’s not a bloke – and that’s all that matters). Hell, it worked in the deputy leadership race – why not for Leader of the Opposition/fourth term New Labour PM? (Oh, and you can sack Darling and replace him with Yvette Cooper rather than Ed Balls on the same principle)

Redpesto, yeah I agree. My only point was that I just consider HH better than most of the alternatives (other than perhaps Ed Miliband).

Now, what we need is a more serious discussion on the Labour party and how we approach it with the assumption they will lost the next election. Ergo – what are the big upcoming battles? Where should the party be headed? Who is the person to guide them through that? etc etc…

[26][27] I agree that the Clinton analogy only works up to a point. That point being that she has positioned herself way ahead of any other woman in her Party, and has supporters who are more than willing to play identity politics (whether she does so herself or not).

More generally, I think the Labour Party is irrecoverable. Sunny assumes that it will, throughout the next Parliament, continue to run at least as far ahead of any other Party as it lags the Tories. I see no grounds for this assumption.

The social conditions that created the Labour Party no longer apply. Its 30- and 40-somethings are all techocratic geeks with no “feel” for what works politically. It is an exhausted volcano.

HH is hungry for power and is entirely unprincipled in her pursuit of it. She has moved up the Labour ranks because she has absolutely no conscience about playing the party game with a straight face and pushing the equality button regularly.

However most colleagues realise she is an intellectual lightweight that blows with the wind in a particularly nasty way. If you have any doubt on this, re-watch the Paxman interview regarding her support for Michael Martin over the Damian Green affair.

Toe curling.

Mike – other than Beckett (who was briefly leader of the party) and – shudders – Blears, Harman’s not had much by way of competition.

Sunny – you could have all of those ‘upcoming battles’ in relation the next manifesto, unless it’s too late (which is a reasonable assumption) or it must be the case that New Labour will have to learn the hard way that The Project Is Over before it can begin to renew.

[30] Quite so: but whyever not? Why have the women in the “class of ’97″ turned out to be so dismal? If it’s harder for a woman to get selected, as everyone says it is, you’d expect their average calibre to be higher than that of the men. Doesn’t seem to be the case.

23 and 25 Excellent comment Alisdair Cameron. If Smith cannot understand that her actions undermines the respect for politicians , then she lacks the judgement to be Home Secretary. A good Home Secretary needs wise judgement particularly at the moment . Smith’s actions fuel apathy amongst many voters or worse encourages support for the BNP. The BNP can say here is another Labour middle class politician who has lost touch with low and middle income voters. No company or council would draft such rules on expenses which would enable such practices to occur.

28. Mike Killingworth. Excellent summary of why many voters do not emotionally connect with Labour MPs and the lack of clear drive and direction.
The social conditions that created the Labour Party no longer apply. Its 30- and 40-somethings are all techocratic geeks with no “feel” for what works politically. It is an exhausted volcano.

My concern is that if we have a prolonged depression and massive unrest lasting 5-10 years , a Cromwell type figure may be very attractive . By that time, most voters could consider most MPs to be tarred with the same brush and may be very happy to have a strong leader uncontaminated by sleaze with a clear and strong message for this country. Modern day communication makes the rise of a charismatic leader who has less need for a political party than before , far more likely. When politicians had to gain the support of a base within a party before they can rise to power it acted as a break on them. Liberals may be swooning over the rise of Obama but there is no reason why an authoritarian politician could not be even better at using technology in order to become elected. Labour has no MP who has broad experience, proven leadership abilities, an ability to emotionally connect to lower and middle income people and who is charismatic. If the BNP came up with someone who has these qualities, after 5 years of depression and civil unrest, they may not win an election but they could act as the kingmaker. In France in the presidential election before last , the Socialists fell apart and it was a contest between Chirac and le Pen . The socialists are still in a mess. As Newmania has said many BNP voters are former Labour voters. Is Harman the British version of S Royal. I cannot see Harman’s equality agenda doing much to encourage people in the old industrial heartlands of the UK to vote Labour but I can see them drifting into the arms of the BNP.

[32] Precisely what I fear too, Charlie.

Sunny, you ask what are the big upcoming battles?

Most important one which seaps right through certain elements of the party from the cabinet table (“with nothing to go on other than that she spoke out against banker bonuses and therefore must be plotting”) right through to the grassroots (who’ve been climbing the greasy pole, but can see the Westminster career vanishing from their eyes) are the mindsets.

Given the right of the party are becoming more and more bitter & vicious in their attacks, the second battle, is why would people want to join the Labour Party, there’s no point fighting over a hollow shell

Mike Killingworth @ 31: If it’s harder for a woman to get selected, as everyone says it is, you’d expect their average calibre to be higher than that of the men.

I wouldn’t – but then I try not to be sentimental about innate female virtue masquerading as feminism these days. It also depends on whether the selection criteria was based on talent or loyalty to the party line. That said, I’ve read the occasional article attesting to the sexism within the Labour party that would make it difficulty for more outspoken (i.e. talented) women to make it.

[35] I agree. I might even ask: why would a talented man or woman want to be a NuLab MP?

Name one Labour MP born after 1970 who has shown evidence of independent thought…