Best possible Socialist Campaign Group leadership candidate

Meadow

Meadow

Leaving aside how well Jeremy Corbyn's leadership may or may not be going (and I mean that - you want to talk about that, use the various threads in Chat), who among this hard-left group in the Parliamentary Labour Party, founded in 1982, would have made the best leader of the party at large?

Assume they can win whenever, we all know the circumstances in 2015 that led to Corbyn's victory and the hard-left takeover were pretty unique but that's not what this is about. Who, either in the current grouping or over the years, had the qualities to lead the party well, both as a party leader and a politician addressing the country?
 
Comisario

Comisario

John Cryer would be my guess at a genuinely good party leader, though I can't quite say if he's got the chops to put forward a democratic socialist alternative to the country. Maybe he has, but I couldn't say either way.

On leading the party, he doesn't seem the sort to make winks at deselection or alienate those who may oppose some of his strident left-wing views. Instead, I could see him taking a much more careful management role with regards to the PLP. Rachel Reeves being his sister-in-law would help bridge some of the gaps, I should think, and help get those who wavered on supporting Corbyn back in 2015 to sign up to the Cryer project of TTL.
 

Politibrit

Margaret Beckett was a member till 1988, but she is probably a bit of a cop out answer. Ken Livingstone in his prime, from what I gather, was somewhat popular, due to his whole straight talking persona (before he became downright unhinged), and probably had the most experience of any member.

Chris Mullin is also a possibility, he has a strong pragmatic streak that isnt really common in the Labour left, he literally wrote the book on holding a left wing administration together. He also had good relations with the right of the party in the Blair years.

To add a more contemporary suggestion that might be a bit early, Clive Lewis? If one was to write a life story for an ideal leader from the Labour left, it would look something like his.
 
Gorrister

Gorrister

McDonnell is an interesting alternative, though I think that his aggressive personality could turn people off in a similar manner as Corbyn's passiveness has.
 

Alexander the Average

spookyscaryskeletons said:
McDonnell is an interesting alternative, though I think that his aggressive personality could turn people off in a similar manner as Corbyn's passiveness has.
Click to expand...
I'd argue that the aggressiveness might be a boon in terms of public persona, allowing him to take on a more populist approach, but at the same time the PLP despise him even more than Corbyn.
 
Techdread

Techdread

My money would be on Livingstone, at least when he was seen as a more experienced politician circa '90s rather than the version we have presently, or Mullin. Mullin would have frontbench experience, a little anyway, and seems to have a sense of reality about him as demonstrated with his portrayal of a left-wing Labour government in A Very British Coup.

Or perhaps Michael Meacher for similar reasons to Mullin? Sans A Very British Coup, of course.
 
Gorrister

Gorrister

Techdread said:
My money would be on Livingstone, at least when he was seen as a more experienced politician circa '90s rather than the version we have presently, or Mullin. Mullin would have frontbench experience, a little anyway, and seems to have a sense of reality about him as demonstrated with his portrayal of a left-wing Labour government in A Very British Coup.

Or perhaps Michael Meacher for similar reasons to Mullin? Sans A Very British Coup, of course.
Click to expand...
Meacher was a 9/11 truther, which could prove...problematic.
 

Politibrit

Another suggestion I would have would be Jon Trickett, he was PPS to both Peter Mandelson and later Gordon Brown when he was PM, he chaired Compass, and ran Jon Cruddas' campaign for Deputy Leader. He was apparently the first to tell Ed Miliband that he would be leader of the Labour party one day and then the one to actually persuade him to run in 2010. He has served in the shadow cabinet under Miliband, Harman, and now Corbyn, who he played a key role in getting elected. By all accounts, he has had a fair amount of behind the scenes influence on Labour in the last few years, and before Corbyn threw his hat into the ring in 2015, it was Trickett who was urged to do so. One snag though is that he seems to be the only genuine eurosceptic in the shadow cabinet, which could sour his good relations with the moderates.
 
shiftygiant

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
Tech has already mentioned him, but Michael 'Tony Benn's vicar' Meacher always strikes me as the kind of candidate who could have done well in a situation where Labour, for whatever reason, lost in 2005, or somehow worse in 2010. Granted, his Theorist streak would haunt him in any race post-9/11.

Perhaps without 9/11 he could do better and be a real possibility.
 

Alexander the Average

JDrakeify said:
Another suggestion I would have would be Jon Trickett, he was PPS to both Peter Mandelson and later Gordon Brown when he was PM, he chaired Compass, and ran Jon Cruddas' campaign for Deputy Leader. He was apparently the first to tell Ed Miliband that he would be leader of the Labour party one day and then the one to actually persuade him to run in 2010. He has served in the shadow cabinet under Miliband, Harman, and now Corbyn, who he played a key role in getting elected. By all accounts, he has had a fair amount of behind the scenes influence on Labour in the last few years, and before Corbyn threw his hat into the ring in 2015, it was Trickett who was urged to do so. One snag though is that he seems to be the only genuine eurosceptic in the shadow cabinet, which could sour his good relations with the moderates.
Click to expand...
The only problem with that is that I don't think he's a member of the Socialist Campaign Group.
 
Meadow

Meadow

shiftygiant said:
Tech has already mentioned him, but Michael 'Tony Benn's vicar' Meacher always strikes me as the kind of candidate who could have done well in a situation where Labour, for whatever reason, lost in 2005, or somehow worse in 2010. Granted, his Theorist streak would haunt him in any race post-9/11.

Perhaps without 9/11 he could do better and be a real possibility.
Click to expand...
AH.com: where we butterfly 9/11 in order to explore Michael Meacher's leadership of the Labour Party.
 

Politibrit

Alexander the Average said:
The only problem with that is that I don't think he's a member of the Socialist Campaign Group.
Click to expand...
Those who are on the frontbench cannot be members, so at present there are only three of them, Ronnie Campbell, Ian Mearns, and Dennis Skinner. But you're right that Trickett has never been part of it. Still, he holds pretty much the same viewpoints as its other members, so I figured he complied with the spirit of the OP, if not the letter.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top