Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Thin Lizzie?

The Guardian reviews Labour's great white hopes for 2020. Of Dandy Andy Burnham;
His weakness lies in whether he has switched his politics from being a Blairite special adviser to developing a more leftwing pitch as shadow health secretary. He was Treasury chief secretary, briefly overseeing the 2007 spending review before the great crash, and had to pick up the mess after the mid-Staffordshire health scandal. But he has also been a consistent advocate of integrating health and social care.
Then there's Yesterday Yvette Cooper;
For all her experience in Labour politics – she was an economics researcher to John Smith in 1992 – she is still not as widely known, and yesterday in an opening speech she spoke of being the granddaughter of a miner, the daughter of a trade unionist, and marching with her dad on the People’s March for Jobs in the early 80s.
Jeremiad Jeremy Corbyn;
A stalwart at any leftwing demonstration and platform speaker at any left rally, Corbyn has made protest his life. There is no international campaign – from the Iraq war, to nuclear weapons, to Palestine, to Guatemala – to which he has not signed up. Domestically, he has been a regular attender at anti-austerity rallies, and has won friends in the Green party for his environmentalism.
Finally, Maggie-lite Liz Kendall;
... the shadow health minister, has quickly won the brand of the change candidate, and consequently the endorsement of many centre-right newspaper columnists, as well as favourable coverage in the Sun. .... Her chief danger is her inexperience and thin knowledge of subjects outside her intellectual comfort zone. With a first from Cambridge, she needs to learn fast, and also prevent being defined by her opponents as a kamikazi Blairite ....
That would be the Tony Blair who rescued the Labour Party from irrelevance in the 1990s. To the Guardian that's a problem. She's dangerous because she might appeal to the UK's electorate.

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