This email - originally written on a parliament.co.uk account - has been widely circulated across the left this evening, so presumably I’m breaking no confidences by reproducing part of it here. The best part is, it’s all totally unofficial. Totally unofficial, you understand:
I write to you today in a strictly personal capacity. I have not discussed this with John or his parliamentary office.
It is clear that Gordon Brown's leadership is swiftly drawing to a close. It is also clear from recent local elections, parliamentary byelections, opinion polls and the total disintegration of party membership that the Labour party faces ones of the gravest crises in its history. We face the nightmare prospect of a generation or more of Tory rule.
It has been reported that various New Labour figures are preparing to stand as soon as Brown is forced from office. All supported and voted for the policies that landed Labour in its current catastrophe – such as the Iraq war, privatisation, attacks on civil liberties and cuts to public sector pay.
In the coming leadership contest, we need a candidate to stand who will fight for policies supported by the labour movement and millionsof our supporters across the country - such as fair pay for public sector workers, public ownership of our services, a progressive tax system, an emergency council housing programme and an independent foreign policy. We need someone who is not compromised by voting for the very policies that have alienated our supporters.
John McDonnell (pictured) is the only candidate with a consistent record, who has opposed all of New Labour's unpopular policies, who has a coherent alternative policy vision, and who has widespread support right across the labour movement.
I am therefore asking you to pledge your support for the letter below. Over the coming weeks, I will be collecting the names of a huge number of party activists, supporters, councillors, NEC members, PPCs, trade unionists and community workers and campaigners. The letter will be published in a national newspaper. Please state which CLP and/or trade union you are a member of and any relevant position you hold. You will be included in a personal capacity unless you state otherwise.
I’m minded to sign up. At least Harriet Harman will no longer be able disingenuously to insist that she hasn’t heard of any potential leadership bid. But is this tactically the right move for the left? Thoughts, please.
Comments (29)
Good news, obviously. But the question is, can he get enough nominations?
"who has widespread support right across the labour movement."
Just not in the country where it matters.
what planet are you people on???
Great news. I hope it comes off.
This is just the right move for the Left.
It's probably the last chance to try to get rid of the New Labour gang.
But there'll also probably be another letter flying around from the New Labour Blairites.
I hinted at all this on Sunday here:
http://theorangepartyblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/time-for-true-labour-fightback.html
and today here:
http://theorangepartyblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/labours-summer-of-discontent.html
But it needs a cabinet minister to break ranks and speak for True Labour.
Any thoughts who?
Mike mate you have that down Pat, not the first remark with the planet joke.
I doubt anyone from the left will get enough support from within Labour, to many MP's have been put in place by Blair, local parties have to get that sorted by removing the people who were dropped into Labour with women only slates. I do not mind a women representing me so long as she is picked by the local party.
But sadly I doubt we have enough real Labour MP's as for Blair the sooner he gets old and dies the better.
In a YouGov opinion poll of more than 1,100 Labour Party members on their preferred choice in the leadership contest, McDonnell received 9% support, and was ranked second to Gordon Brown who led with 80% of the vote.
That would mean a Glasgow East x 5 swing for him to win.
The best he can di is a stalking horse for another MP that he believes could adopt at least some of his platform.
Who that would be I have no idea.
More importantly, what %age of Labour voters would prefer a Cameron premiership to Brown ?
I think the Guardian was saying this morning that it was 1 in 5.
Now there's a damning statistic.
I have to say, in all seriousness, that if GB does end up resigning, it's got to be Ed Balls - solely on the basis that the rightwing press will be tied in so many knots about how to use his name best in witty-but-damaging headlines that they'd completely lose editorial focus, and voters will elect Labour in with a landslide just for a laugh. It worked for Boris.
changing Brown for Balls (and that seems at least as likely as anything else) wouldn't 'fix' anything, New Labour has taken the Tory agenda stripped it of the meat and implemented whole chunks of it.
imho, New Labour are going to be completely fucked at the next election, the working class has had enough
even, even if McDonnell had almost Rasputinal power of persuasion and got the leadership (an almost biblical miracle) how would he change things? (surrounded by a New Labour party)
nope, Labour/New Labour's fucked either way you look at it
As the initiator of the email, I can promise you that John McDonnell had nothing to do with this campaign. I currently work full-time for Alan Simpson MP (who, as some will remember, was Michael Meacher's campaign manager). The email was sent in a strictly personal capacity.
However, in the space of a few hours I have been sent nearly 300 messages in support. Along with other comrades in support of this campaign, it is our intention to gather thousands of names and publish this letter in early September to demonstrate the breadth of support for a candidate committed to the mainstream policies of the labour movement.
What a joke - let the corpse rest in peace.
When this dies through engendering the support of maybe 5 MPs, will 'Lefts' in the Labour Party see the light and leave.
Will they hell, let them go all sink together.
Glug, glug.
U being your usual grouchy self then dad :p
Of course its tactically the right thing to do.
John McDonnell hasn't called for Brown to go but has consistently said its about policies not personalities.
Owen is right to take this initiative if (when) those right wing tossers who fawned over gb stab him in the back we must have a democraticly decided leader and a debate about where the party goes, further the left must be part of that and of course McD should be our candidate.
If Gordon hadn't of leant on his toadies a year ago to stop John from getting on the ballot paper we would have had the debate by now.
As I said if (when) there is a right wing coup John McD will I'm sure have no part of it he has entirley to many principles (which is why he's such a good MP and why the left should support him) it will need the grassroots (that's us) to show John he has our support to finish the job he started last year.
Owen/Marshajane
be realistic, John McDonnell hasn't a snowball in hell's chance of winning
and suppose, just suppose he did, what then?
John McDonnell couldn't change much, Labour is stuffed to the gills with fawning brownite and blairite zombies
it will take more than re-arranging the seats in no. 10 to beat the Tories
"Balls to Number 10" has a certain ring to it...
Talk about re-arranging the deckchairs - this is appointing a new captain on the Titanic after she's been holed
The point of declaring support for a socialist candidate in the forthcoming (yes it is) election for Labour Leader is not whether or not the candidate can win.
The point is how do socialists who recognise the inevitability of activity in the Labour Party use the prospect of a "coup" against Brown from within New Labour ranks to try to advance the cause of socialism.
The idea that we might do so by abstaining from the contest for leadership of the movement of which we are a part is absurd. The idea that we should organise support for someone from the "soft left" (Cruddas perhaps) who might be perceived as having a better chance (as a social democrat) of gaining votes and nominations than a socialist candidate is less utterly daft but still fails to persuade.
Our best course of action is to identify, and campaign for nominations for, the best socialist candidate most committed to building the organisation of the rank and file in the Party and the trade unions. Through this campaigning activity we can seek to build precisely those rank and file organisations which will be the best and most lasting legacy of the campaign.
Of course (I address now the cynics among you) were I seeking to commence a fight for socialist politics in this country I would not start from here. Nevertheless, here we are.
So, let us do what we can to create a John4Leader 2008 campaign!
good luck John, still I suppose after this you'll be doing the twelve labours of Hercules? as an encore?
they'll be simple by comparison!
bonne chance :)
Out of interest, Modernity - what do *you* think should happen?
Presumably you want to sit and wait for the Cameron Government to be elected and then puff contentedly about how you told us so, safe in the knowledge that your mortgage is nearly paid off and the contents of your Building Society account will cushion you from the hard times to come? Some of us aren't so lucky.
for those without the ability or wit to reason out the politics of this topic, they can hear it from old John McDonnell himself:
http://unknownconscience.blogspot.com/2008/07/john-mcdonnell-mp-labour-faces-wipeout.html
what should happen, good question:
renationalise the railways;
stop all forms of privatisation;
double pensions and benefits;
national training grants for all;
expand the educational network;
extend public transport and fully co-ordinated;
repeal all anti-trade union laws;
increase the national minimum wage;
stop nuclear power, greatly expand renewables;
remove all of the management "consultants" from the NHS;
control MRSA, etc by following Norway's/NLs methods, etc;
fully resourced literacy schemes and a national-wide libraries;
organise a full funded exchange international schemes for young people;
implement more fair trade policies;
re-start the OU on the TV.
seriously limit copyright laws.
repeal the blasphemy and associated laws;
fund international development schemes to at least 10% of GDP;
language classes from the age of 8;
lower the retirement age to 60;
oh, and keep a decent Left Labour govt in power for at least 20 years (these thing take time) emulating the best bits of Scandinavian Socialism
well, that's for starters.
PS: make it compulsory for all Left groups to have at least 50% of the leadership made up of women, ethnic minorities, the rest to be working class and the remainder can be the usual suspects (in proportion to the society's socio-economic/population breakdown)
although I appreciate that the latter might be a bit unrealistic!
And which trade unions are you talking about in terms of supporting McDonnell. The best ones have long since waved goodbye to the Labour Party. What's left are the right-wing shits and pseudo-Lefts who gave Brown a standing ovation at Warwick and, more importantly, gave that odious little shit Purnell's 'let's screw down the powerless even more' reforms. Do you really want to cultivate'friends' like that in a completely doomed leadership tilt?
I forgot to add:
a national quality house building project;
a scheme to remove the stigma of vocational work amongst the slow witted middle classes;
reduce utilities standing charges to nomional values;
provide Phone/ADSL and other services as a basic to all homes and locations;
do away with costly IT projects, implement small scale co-ordinated pilots and use open source nationally.
free training in programming languages;
nation-wide but locally managed computer re-cycling schemes;
dramatically expand mental health and drug rehab provision;
a limit on Oxbridge graduates in any profession in a accordance with census related figures.
compulsory purchasing of empty and under-utilised properties, for use as social housing, after quality refurbishment.
I'm sure there's a lot more, but that's a beginning.
Given a choice between the MacDonnell & Cameron ?
I'll back Cameron any day.
Come back Tony all is forgiven.
GW
^ What we suspected all along about the Blairites ^
I define my politics not as Labour or Tory but as anti-Brown. it would be good to see a Labour leader who truly believed in Labour values and a proper election battle between a true labour party and a conservative party. I firmly believe that a Labour party led by either John (McD or Cruddas) will re-engage with millions of voters and will do significantly better than a Brown led party. John McD has been calling for a leadership battle for ages. Here he is in April 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClgyX9-JPbc
Maybe I'll pay my subs for another year to vote for John.
Hang on - that's what I said last year!
'In a YouGov opinion poll of more than 1,100 Labour Party members on their preferred choice in the leadership contest, McDonnell received 9% support, and was ranked second to Gordon Brown who led with 80% of the vote.
Well , as JM began to get more media exposure, etc, many people including LP members started to warm to him and see that he made sense and had the qualities and the financial acumen to deliver them. He didn't attack individuals, but challenged the NL paradigm/ideology and he outlined basic decent democratic socialist policies which overall would be popular in the country.
Through his UK tours he empowered lots of disolussioned activists, etc and especially was liked and respected by young people: just look at his facebook entry or the amount of young folk at his rally, cynical but talented artists like Rob of The Rub don't do gigs for shysters , young people can see integrity and idealism when they see it.
In the last YouGov poll taken McD was actually on 20% v Brown.
Modernity,
Nice work - I agree with every single point in yer manifesto :)
I suppose now I'll have to stop writing you off as a grumbling doom-monger ;-P
further, I'd have:
greater secular space in society;
disestablishment of all religions, espec, CoE
integrate the Six Counties into the Republic;
have a full written constitution and bill of rights;
full dentistry service on the NHS, using new techniques;
joined up national freight on the railways with investment in line renewal;
national water network;
I'd like Labour to win at the GE, but I am just a bit pessimistic about Labour's chances, I think Blair and Brown have handed the next election to the Tories on a plate.
if it ain't plain enough if there is never another Tory govt, then that will be too soon for me
"integrate the Six Counties into the Republic"
Also known as "start a new war".
Howe about integrating Wales and Scotland into the United Kingdom ?