Rules for the election

Just as the Grauniad predicted, see it might have been prescient, Bridget Phllipson goes head to head with Lucy Powell for the title of deputy leader of the Labour Party. Number 10 favours Bridget while Lucy is still licking her wounds after being dumped from the Cabinet. 175 MPs voted for Bridget while 117 backed Lucy. That Bell woman failed to make the cut in as clear an example of racism as any of us have ever seen.

Now comes the really confusing part, how they get to the result on the 25th October.

Well there we were thinking the contenders only had to get a minimum of 80 MPs to support them. Far from it. They will also need nominations from at least 5% of constituency parties and this means about 30 of them or a least 3 affiliated bodies, two of which must be unions. As clear as mud so far.

This second stage, mud slinging, takes place between the 13 and 27 September followed by an electronic vote of party members, they must have been in the party for at least 6 months, and this runs from 8 to 23 October. It seems there is no £3 membership and if there was you still couldn’t vote. That tramp could teach these people a thing or two about rigging an election.

One MP who objected to the “get 80 votes” rule was our friend the panda who breaks wind, yes Richard Burgon; long-time friend of the CCP. He called it a stitch up, presumably on the basis that he has zero chance of getting that number of MPs to support him …

To add insult to any injury, there is no obligation for the Prime Minister to appoint the winner to a Cabinet post, it is more a kind of tradition. Imagine Keith having sacked Lucy Powell then being forced to promote her again. He would look even more useless than he does already.

I assume the next stage will involve kow-towing to as many constituency parties and unions as possible. This will be followed by both candidates trying to kick lumps out of each other as they try to appeal to the members. Don’t forget, these people are socialists, they don’t do “be nice to others”.

Rather them than me, the socialist world is a minefield of what you can and can’t do. No doubt one, or even both, will transgress these impenetrable rules that gradually change over time.

I wonder if either will advocate policies that are at odds with those of our dear leader. He would not like that but if they agree on everything how can you distinguish between them. I can see a lot of “tolerance” and feelz coming up.

With the sacking of Mandelscum comes a more intriguing possibility. Will the two candidates for deputy leader realise that the only way to improve their party’s position is to remove Keith and actively work together to remove the rot from Number 10. If they have an ounce of sense between them it would be the perfect outcome but then we have to face the fact that any kind of sense is and has been in very short supply in the Labour Party.

The Grauniad is running a story about a plot to oust our useless PM. It quotes the three envelope story about Stalin. The version I heard was that on his accession Stalin was handed 3 envelopes and told to open them in order only when things looked really bad. The first one said increase tractor production and things did improve. The second said create a new five year plan and again things did improve. The third said write three letters. The joke now is that some Labour MPs believe Keith has already opened the first two, in fact it is said to be next to impossible to find a Labour MP who says this government is anything but a disaster.

Most of the Prime Minister’s problems are of his own making and none more so than the appointment of Mandelscum as ambassador to the US. He was warned off by MI6, the septics didn’t want him but Keith as usual knew best. MPs are asking if the man in Number 10 has the ability to get the show back on the road and the answer they come up with is no.

The next big flashpoint will be the November budget followed by the May local elections. The elections are going to be catastrophic for Labour, assuming he can hang on until then. With potentially more revelations in the Mandelscum affair to come and no doubt many more self inflicted banana skins to slip on my money would be on him being removed before the end of the year.

Satan Blair rewrote the Party rules as he feared his own backbenchers. You now need the support of 20% of the MPs, again that magical 80 number, to trigger a leadership election and Keith would automatically be on the ballot if he wished. One of the drawbacks to Keith’s defenestration is who would replace him and even among Labour MPs the consensus is they don’t really have anyone who would be significantly better. Plenty have ambitions but could they deliver. The best and tastiest part is that Ed Militwat is apparently open to the idea of failing yet again. The bad thing about that is that he would then be PM and in a position to really implement all of his daft ideas as opposed to being a useless leader of an opposition.

Mr Andy eyeliner Burnham, the arch Blairite, jealously eyes the throne from his perch as Mayor of Manchester but he needs to get his backside into a safe Labour seat. If somebody resigns so he can stand there is no certainty in today’s situation that he would win a by election and if he lost that would be his chances scuppered. There are reports on Saturday that Mr eyeliner will be denouncing Keith at the Party Conference. Could this be on the lines of Kruschev’s speech at the 1956 Congress denouncing Stalin ? Probably not but it will be more mud slinging.

I think Sad Dick’s chances may be better, he just needs one of the members for Gaza to stand down and he would be a shoo in. However that would only be step one. Would enough MPs support him as leader.

With growth of 0% to quote the Caledonian Cyclops and a £50 billion and rising black hole , Rachel from Complaints is going to be introducing a horrendous budget in November. It is certain she will be sacrificed to save Keith’s sorry backside but even this may not be enough. This may prove to be the final undoing of the most uncharismatic Prime Minister ever. He will be very unlamented.

Harold Macmillan famously said “Events dear boy, events”. Starmer’s epitaph will not be events, it will be his own stupidity and arrogance. I am sure all puffins will agree we can’t wait to see the back of him and the Tories should not celebrate, our memories are still full of their own disasters.

I remain convinced that World War I robbed us of our best men, any who were left were chewed up in World War II. Only the snivelling toadies have been successful since 1945, the likes of Gove is a good example. How else are we to explain the dearth of talent in our political life. Even though we have been under communist assault since the USSR was created, surely it cannot be the only reason.
 

© well_chuffed 2025