Standing on the podium, he is an Eddie the Eagle of social justice; launching himself headlong into the Labour leadership race – not necessarily to win – but to promote and protect the values he holds dear. “But that does not mean walking away, but staying to fight together for a better Europe”.
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Although their reasons for supporting, or not supporting, any given candidate were not given (and I suspect many other Suffolk Labour members are backing Corbyn), the main reservation for most people I have spoken to is the issue of electability.
The paper’s poll will be treated with caution because it declined to name the organisation which carried out the survey. In the final round, after the redistribution of Cooper and Kendall’s second preference votes, Cooper beat Burnham by 53% to 47%.
Bookmaker William Hill made Mr Corbyn 11/8 favourite, ahead of Mr Burnham on 6/4, Ms Cooper on 5/2 and Liz Kendall on 50/1.
Ms Cooper warned that Labour members face “a choice of two futures”. It also emerged Mr Corbyn was “embarrassed” by a number of the mothers who use the website suggesting he was “very sexy”.
But it is seen as a blow to Andy Burnham, who had hoped for union backing for his campaign.
However, his embarrassment did not prevent him from appearing later alongside fellow-candidate Liz Kendall in a webchat on Mumsnet, in which he agreed that she and Yvette Cooper had been subjected to damaging sexist attitudes during the leadership campaign.
Labour’s new leader will be announced at a special conference on 12 September. They should only join and register as supporters if they are genuine supporters and become genuine members of the party. Foot won, and then presided over a disastrous election defeat for the party in 1983 on a manifesto described by one Labour lawmaker as “the longest suicide note in history”.
Burnham will say the current Labour Party lacks the courage and capacity to champion major reforms like the creation of the state funded National Health Service under Attlee in 1948, saying his party has become “frightened of its own shadow”.
Harman said she had been seeking reports on the integrity of the process before the weekend allegations of entryism by the hard left, and calls for the process to be suspended. But now Corbyn is leading in constituency nominations, which the new registered supporters have no influence over.
The bearded 66-year-old left-winger’s blushes came as he launched his policies on gender equality with a promise to have a 50% female shadow cabinet and “work towards” ensuring half of Labour MPs are women.
“The position in relation to the Lib Dems is interesting with the election of Tim Farron, who will undoubtedly shift the centre of gravity of the Lib Dems to the left and appeal to the many voters lost to Labour in 2015”.
“It seems plausible to them that they just need to have a very firm anti-austerity argument” to counter Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s program of spending cuts, Fielding said.
A focus-group based analysis of previously loyal Labour voters by Alan Barnard and John Braggins of BBM Campaigns found that many of those who switched to other parties at the general election are never coming back.
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Asked why his union was supporting him, Mick Cash, RMT general secretary, said: “What we want is a society that we could all be proud to live in, and we want to be able to have money in our pockets, enjoy our lives, and what not, and not have all these austerity policies attacking ordinary working people”.
