Daily catch-up: a week is a short time in politics, and other unexpected truths
Divided parties win elections; plus a new Labour leadership candidate
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Your support makes all the difference.Another fine column by Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times today. "Labour could become a play that nobody wants to watch," he says.
Politics is full of truisms that are not actually true. A week is not a long time in politics; much more stays the same than changes. People do not vote for hope and vision, but for the lesser evil. And nobody really minds a divided party. Division, managed properly, can convey vitality while draining opponents of a reason to exist. There is no solace for Labour in the Tories’ coming strife.
Professor Tim Bale agrees with him: "If anyone can show me research which proves division harms parties' electoral chances, there's a prize."
• Jess Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley elected in May, continues to be refreshing:
Dear people with faces like eggs on Twitter and anyone who endorses anything George Galloway has said: I ask you to politely do one. The fact that I didn't support Jeremy Corbyn to be the leader of the party seems to have been taken, by some, as if I tried to steal their first-born child and sell it to an elf with a golden spinning wheel. It's not just cyberspace where such pearl-clutching sensitivity goes on. At a recent meeting of Birmingham University Labour Students, a bunch of people who had done none of the work to build this active group, decided to hijack the meeting with their negativity and poorly-printed flyers with old Russian men on them.
Do you know who doesn't like what you are doing? No, it's not me, I loves me a good Twitter spat. It's Jeremy Corbyn, that's who. Do you know who you make look good, clever and reasonable? Yep, that one is me. You make Jeremy look terrible. I suggest you look at your model, seems flawed to me.
I said I thought she should be Labour leader. She replied: "Thanks John, think you may be a little ahead of yourself there....oh why not, I'll give anything a go at least once." Jess We Can.
• Utterly predictably, the Mail on Sunday fictionalisation of Blair hate-fulfilment on which I commented yesterday has gone round the world. The further it spreads, though, the more its unintended comedy becomes clear: "Memo 'reveals Tony Blair support for US in run-up to Iraq War'," reports the Sheffield Star. Well, that's going to mean a big re-write of my book, which contains a balanced account of Blair and Iraq, if anyone in Sheffield is interested.
• Thanks to Tom Freeman for this:
"People who type 'tho' make me go 'ugh'."
• And finally, hats off to Moose Allain:
"I prefer to watch like no one's dancing."
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