Who's backing Cruddas?
Well at my GC last night the speeches in favour of Jon came from:
this MP: http://www.dianeabbott.org.uk/, who is a prominent member of this organisation: http://www.poptel.org.uk/scgn/
a member of the editorial board of this magazine: http://www.labourleftbriefing.org.uk/
supporters of this organisation: http://home.freeuk.com/clpd/ and maybe this one: http://www.socialistaction.org.uk/ (though it's a bit secretive about whether it actually exists)
a comrade who helps write this blog: http://labourleftforum.blogspot.com/
and one who contributes to this website: http://www.workersliberty.org.uk/
I'm sure I'll be accused of sectarianism (unlike one of the above who used 95% of their 3 minute GC speech to attack another candidate in highly personalised terms) but either these comrades are muppets who have been conned into backing Cruddas and will get nothing in return, or they are expecting him to deliver part of their agenda. You can read their websites to check out what their agenda is. Of course, he can't vet his supporters, but one has to ask what's really going on.
posted by Luke Akehurst at 12:28 pm
15 Comments:
But even if you take away your own CLP who nominated Cruddas, the unknown backbencher from nowhere still managed to pull in twice as many nominations as the chair of the party. Strange isn't it...
1:32 pm, June 01, 2007
But is it worth getting to be Deputy Leader if to do it you have to espouse policies that will lose you the General Election? It's the mistake the Democrats keep making - not realising that candidates who please activists in primaries often scare voters.
Let's reserve judgement a while until we see OMOV results rather than activist ones.
1:59 pm, June 01, 2007
Ah, so when it's nominations for Deputy, it's just the judgement of activists is it? A contrary fellow!
Anyway, I don't think the so-called 'hard left' have many illusions in Mr. Cruddas. But it's interesting that the Guardian reckon he's profiting from the absense of John McDonnell's campaign...
2:03 pm, June 01, 2007
But thanks for the link to Labour Left Forum!
6:11 pm, June 01, 2007
What you seem to be saying is that Cruddas may be a sinister hard left-ish figure in disguise, and that the support of others on the left is evidence for this. But imagine you are one of these leftists choosing a DL candidate to support. Isn't is possible that you might choose Cruddas essentially on the basis that he is least associated with the present Government, as the only non-Cabinet figure? The only real 'outsider' (Hain might have very little support, but he is a prominent Cabinet figure)?
I think you are looking too hard for an 80s style right-left fight with the DL contest and it just isn't there.
For the record, I am a Cruddas supporter and firmly in your wing of the party.
6:57 pm, June 01, 2007
sounds like great fun in Hackney North. more factionalised than Islington North I'd say.
still I don't think these backers say much about Cruddas, just that they don't have their own candidate and backing the best in their view.
7:05 pm, June 01, 2007
Following on from "golden brown" I am firmly not in your wing of the party (as you know!) and the only thing that might make me contemplate for a second voting for Cruddas is blog entries like this one!
7:23 pm, June 01, 2007
Can anyone smell McCarthyism?
11:07 pm, June 01, 2007
Ever heard of a broad church?
Unity is strength?
Factionalism gets boring sometimes!
11:39 pm, June 01, 2007
Luke, much as i respect your usually acute political analysis, you are fundamentally missing the point here. The Cruddas campaign is not a softish left trojan horse for hard left nutters to set the policy agenda and take over the party to make it unelectable.
It is a cynical conspiracy by a handful of former new labour insiders and apparatchiks (Watson, Cruddas etc.) to re-start their flagging careers by positioning themselves to pick up left support in the faction fight which will follow our inevitable at some point electoral defeat.
They calculate that after a parliament in opposition, during which the we collectively commit ourselves to a program that makes us unelecable, they can then emerge as saviours of the party by ditching the leftish rhetoric and policies that they once espoused and returning us to a sensible and moderate social democratic position where we can win power.
What arrogance.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry about the fact that so much of both the soft and hard left seem to have been taken in by such blatant and cycnical careerism posing as principle.
12:35 am, June 02, 2007
Luke
Cruddas is no trojan horse, and he's hardly said anything to "scare the voters" (odd infantalising of the voters there.)
You may want to check Cruddas's voting record. It pretty New Labour, although not of the headbanger variety.
3:09 am, June 02, 2007
Anonymous 12:35, your analysis of the Cruddas campaign is faulty as well. It is not a conspiracy based on career calculations - it is obviously a conspiracy involving MI5, the CIA, and the Duke of Edinburgh, and it leads right to the top of the international fraternity of Masons! I don't understand why you can't see this...unless the Cruddas-Compass-soft left masons have got to you too?
12:36 pm, June 02, 2007
As a CLP chair and "soft-ish left" on the spectrum, I'm amazed that you (or anyone) have the time to try to formulte a hatchet job on Cruddas. For once, I thought we'd got a contest where all of the candidates were eminently electable (to the Party and the public) and we'd get a real debate around issues, organisation and strategy. I'm sure that anyone wanting to paint any DL candidate as a creature of the Hard Left could find the material (Hain=ANL/CND, Blears: Hard left past, Benn=Benn Snr. etc,) If the left are backing Cruddas, maybe it's because he's not a front bencher, and why not ? New face could be interesting ! Incidentally the left of my CLP were agitatintg for Harman....
11:44 pm, June 02, 2007
Your constant vitriolic attacks on Diane Abbott is tiresome. Shame you lot in Hackney have spent years doing this and never had the guts to de-select her. Everyone knows shes a self seeking media groupie. Always worried about 'how it would look' to de-select a black woman?
11:56 pm, June 03, 2007
I've voted to trigger/de-select her each of the 3 times I was given the opportunity, so I don't see how that equates to having "never had the guts to de-select her". Had the guts, just never had enough votes ...
8:52 am, June 04, 2007
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