Let's dissect Rebecca Long Bailey's leadership pitch in Tribune just a little. "Labour needs a socialist leader..." Err... not particularly. That's what it's had for the past four years and it led to the worst parliamentary representation since 1935. Thread 1/18
2/18 "Many candidates in the leadership election say they will not return to the triangulation and Tory-lite policies that held our party back before Jeremy." Hmmm. The party was so held back by its triangulation when it won three elections in 97, 01 and 05, wasn't it?
3/18 "I don’t just agree with the policies, I’ve spent the last four years writing them." Look at me! I'm the one who devised the programme just rejected by the British public! Make sure you vote for continuity.
4/18 "It is true that one reason we lost the election was that Labour’s campaign lacked a coherent narrative. But this was a failure of campaign strategy, not of our socialist programme." People loved the socialism, but in the absence of a narrative, voted Tory.
5/18 "Labour’s Green New Deal... was consistently and tragically undersold." OMG. That could have been it! If they'd sold the New Deal more effectively, then people would have ignored the nonsense on Brexit, Corbyn's incompetence and the endless spending pledges.
6/18 "Labour’s Green New Deal... was most popular in those deindustrialised regions where we suffered our most devastating losses: the North West, the West Midlands and the North East." Words fail me on this one. Give me a couple of days to get my head around it.
7/18 "I developed these policies with every part of our movement, working with trade unions, grassroots campaigners, school climate strikers, and countless party members." How about speaking to some people outside your leftist bubble? You might discover why @UKLabour lost.
8/18 "There is nothing our movement cannot achieve. I truly believe that." You've managed a record-breaking defeat in post-war history, so this is one statement we probably can endorse, Becky.
9/18 "... you’re part of a courageous movement of millions of people who are ready to stake everything for a better world." Sadly, you're not. You're part of a divided movement of people who have failed to connect with millions of voters.
10/18 "Under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn we’ve..." Let me stop you right there.
11/18 "We must defeat Johnson and the nationalist right, never pander to them." You handed them #GE2019 on a plate. That's the tragedy.
12/18 "We’ve also, at times, been too close to the establishment we are meant to be taking on – whether cosying up to Rupert Murdoch, joining forces with David Cameron in the Better Together campaign in 2014." Let's blame our two defeats on previous leaders.
13/18 "To win, we need to rebuild Labour as an insurgent force..." No, no, no. People are not looking for an insurgency or a poundstore Podemos. That's what you offered them last year. They want a responsible party of government.
14/18 "I haven’t rushed to announce my candidacy because I wanted to take time to reflect..." But after reflecting, I discovered I still believed the same nonsense I believed prior to the election.
15/18 "I’m not a millionaire or a landlord, and I didn’t go to a posh school." Same goes for Jess Phillips. And she writes more sense in a tweet than you bash out in 1,000 words in Tribune.
16/18 "You’re as likely to see me on a picket line as you are at the dispatch box..." Can't think of a better way of winning back the Tory voters you need to impress.
17/18 "We must begin organising in communities now, and resist the Tories every step of the way — in parliament, on the streets, and in our workplaces." The only people interested in this 'resistance' are a proportion of those who *already* voted Labour. No one else.
18/18 "We have a mountain to climb comrades, and the crises we face are stark. But we have our socialist vision, a path to victory..." Armed with our socialist vision and the inspiration of our spiritual leader Jezza, we move forward, comrades! Victory is now in sight!
