Leadership nominations
The news that Unison has decided to back Ed Miliband must make it very likely he can beat his brother as many insiders had assumed Unison would back Burnham.
Current state of play on unions and affiliates is as follows:
Unions - ranked by size of affiliation:
Unite - not nominated yet
Unison - Ed Miliband
GMB - Ed Miliband
USDAW - David Miliband
CWU - Ed Balls
Community - David Miliband
UCATT - Ed Miliband
TSSA - Diane Abbott
ASLEF - Diane Abbott
MU - not nominated yet
BECTU - not nominated yet
BFAWU - not nominated yet
NUM - not nominated yet
Unity - Ed Miliband
NACODS - not nominated yet
Of course, not all union members vote the way they are recommended to by their national leaderships, but about 40-50% did in the 2007 Deputy race.
Of the socialist societies I have only heard about NULSC (Burnham) and SHA (Ed Miliband), this leaves 13 or 14 nominations going spare (I can't remember if Co-Op have nomination rights, and the Fabians I think don't take sides), but in any case these are very small organisations compared to the top half dozen unions, and their members are mainly party activists who will vote their original preference rather than be swayed by a nomination.
On the CLP side, labourlist's unofficial tally seems to suggest Ed Miliband has started to catch up with David in the last few days:
David Miliband - 112 CLPs
Ed Miliband - 94 CLPs
Andy Burnham - 24 CLPs
Diane Abbott - 16 CLPs
Ed Balls - 9 CLPs
posted by Luke Akehurst at 1:24 pm
9 Comments:
Could an Ed Milliband victory over David be the start of another Brown/Blair type hate relationship and vendetta? David should have been heir apparent and he could have wiped the floor with the rest without the Cain and Abel scenario. Not sure about feelings invoked by someone who usurps his older brother but bet the right wing press will milk it to the 'n'th degree.
2:43 pm, July 21, 2010
I'm sorry but I really cannot see why people think Ed Miliband looks like a Prime Minister. The british public haven't got a clue who he is! He's another caretaker waiting to happen. We will lose at least the next two elections with him as leader while ordinary working people suffer. If that;s what Labour wants to happen then they should vote for him. The generation of MPs coming after him must be laughing. It is one of them who will be Britain's next PM if he wins.
2:54 pm, July 21, 2010
I'm not sure I see the value in counting CLP nominations.
Leaving aside those that have declined to nominate (including mine), there's still one major problem in using them as a metric: there is an immense difference in membership between some of them. Taking Ed Miliband as an example, having the endorsement of Tooting is fairly useful. Having the endorsement of Guildford is all but meaningless.
Indeed, I know of one CLP which apparently made its endorsement on the basis of a 4-3 vote at its GC.
There's a certain amount of value in expectations setting, and certainly the ability to hoover up CLP nominations shows that a candidate has organisation and momentum. But it's not binding and some campaigns are clearly trying more than others. Balls may not be the world's most popular man, but it's fairly clear he falls into the latter category, to pick the obvious example.
3:28 pm, July 21, 2010
I will probably do an analysis by membership size when the final list is in. I've already looked at the 20 largest CLPs - 3 have backed David, 2 have backed Ed, 15 haven't nominated yet.For the record Guildford isn't a particularly small CLP - last time numbers were published it was number 349 out of 637. Generally the South East has quite a lot of members considering the low Labour vote there.
4:36 pm, July 21, 2010
Are the numbers of membership publically available then (or at least on Membersnet)? Where would I access such information?
7:08 pm, July 21, 2010
Old numbers from 2008 are on membersnet.
8:30 pm, July 21, 2010
Copeland CLP hasn't got around to nominating - mainly because *COUGH* events involving a taxi driver took over....
In a way, I'm kind of relieved that we haven't. Our MP has nominated DM but I'm not convinced the CLP would've followed suit. AB and EM also have strong support amongst members and it's a GMB consituency and they have nominated EM.
Since the MP is genuinely popular amongst the membership, I don't think any of us would have wanted to undermine him by nominating someone else.
I'm sure we're not the only constituency where opinions are divided. In that respect, I wonder how accurately CLP nominations reflect opinions in the party.
12:06 pm, July 22, 2010
I persuaded Broxtowe CLP to nominate you tonight, Luke - said you were our ambassador to the
21st century (new media and all that).
We nominated David M for leader - Ed M was second.
Nick Palmer (Lab MP for Broxtowe 1997-2010)
10:10 pm, July 22, 2010
I have really enjoyed this blog and I hope that new posts are made. I keep looking back and find no new updates. Hope you're able to keep posting with great insight on album art.
1:02 pm, July 26, 2010
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