12.37 – I have been gripped by my twitter timeline, the news, facebook. The fact is that much of the commentariat now believe Labour is now unelectable as does my non-labour member friends on social media. I have thousands of friends/ ex constituents. people who voted and supported me in a marginal seat but wouldn’t normally have ever voted Labour until 97. I care what they say and think and I don’t have response for them at this moment. I need to go away, play some sport and come back with a clear head before blogging here again and working out what to do next…
11.58 – I have always liked Jeremy personally. But the people around him are not quite so pleasant. I will have to reflect on how to respond to this historic day. I am not and never was a Blairite/ New Labour but I do fear that we have just lost the next election already. I know I should be excited because II support some of the causes promoted by Corbyn but his 1980s politics is not attractive to the electorate.
11.47 – JC doesn’t realise he has a microphone and is shouting his way through this speech. It is now when the full sense of what is happening takes hold. Corbyn has a massive task ahead. I am not sure he will survive to 2020 but we will have to see. Quite righty he is praising the role of the other candidates. Looks like Corbyn got 84% of the ‘new registered’ supporters. Let’s see ho many now get involved and pay full membership..
11.43 – chaos as Corbyn figures read out 251,000 – 59% of the votes. I feel numb,, certainly not excited. I feel fearful for the future of the party. However, this is an amazing win for him. I can”t argue with that. I will look at the figures in each part of the electorate. But we know he has no support in the PLP
11.40 we finally get to the Leadership. All my twitter feed shows JC with 60% on first round with 422,000 voters.
11.38 Tom making a long call for Unity.. he is going to have a tough job holding together the Labour Party between now and 2020. I need to hear from him and how we win with Jeremy as leader.
11.33 – Tom Watson gets it. I first got to know Tom when he was minding Brian Moore on a campaign visit to Loughborough to support me in 1997. I am pleased for him. I helped him on his first rebellion!
11.26 So Tom Watson gets 39% so we go to 2nd round. I love this tension but can’t we just annouce the winner and then publish the figires for each round and how they got to 50%
11.25 – wow over 408,000 votes cast.
11.24 we finally get the Deputy Leadership results. I’m calling it for Tom Watson.
11.23 Sadiq gets a quick go.
11.11 Chance for @iainMcNicol making a few pointed remarks about expecting to see our new ‘£3 supporters’ out on the doorstep instead of click & pay for a vote… let’s see.
11.05 BBC Norman Smith speculating about the shadow cabinet – his options are really limited and his lack of leadership will sadly be exposed very quickly
11.00 Live TV coverage of the ‘conference’. Lots of familiar faces in the crowd
10.54 – Kevin Maguire would know the ‘secret signals’ so there you have the result!
10.51 – Political pundit Brain Moore
10.48 – Strange knowing the candidates already know. It has been a hard graft for all the candidates in a marathon campaign. One lesson we must learn is not to create this tortuous process again….
10.39
Of course if the 76% turnout is correct that is a massive bonus for the Labour movement.. now with over 600,000 members and supporters which dwarfs the Tories at about 100,000. But of course the Tories rich friends and businesses and hedge fund managers pay into the Tory coffers so their moribund Associations don’t matter to them.
10.36
10.33 The candidates will be told the results soon and well before they are announced to the Conference. Whilst they are all sworn to secrecy they and their campaign teams will have secret signals to let their supporters know how to react. At the last election one team had a glasses on or carrying signal to note that their candidate had won or lost!
10.15 – speculation about who will and won’t serve in a Corbyn Shadow Cabinet. It’s a genuinely difficult one for most colleagues. Walk away and be accused by Corbynites for being a traitor and ignoring the democratic will of the party (and leave shadow cabinet to the Corbynites) or sit around a table and squirm in every interview about the policies that emerge and whether you think he can win the next election and become PM. For those of us who think we should have acted sooner on Ed Miliband when it was obvious he had no traction with voters this would be a nightmare situation. Personally I would do what Corbyn himself has done – fight from the backbenches for what you believe is right.
10.10 – It’s like Cup Final Day as the live coverage includes the candidates leaving their homes and arriving at the special conference.
The journalists and pundits are all calling for ‘Corbyn by a mile’ whilst some friends are still hoping that the ‘shock’ is anybody but Corbyn, I have looked through their various scenarios but ‘clutching at straws’ springs to mind.
9.00 Quite rightly most of my regulars ( yes there is such a thing!) will not be glued to live coverage of the Labour Leadership today on BBC2. Whilst I have managed to move on from full time politics you can’t eradicate the total absorption I feel on big days like today. This is not just an announcement about a post that nobody cares about (the annual battle for the conference arrangements committee for example). But today for me will decide the next historic fate of the entire Labour Party and who governs Britain for the next generation. There will be plenty of time for reflection when we know the result. But this morning is a chance to build up to the 11.30 announcement.
I have posted intermittently over the campaign so you will know that I eventually backed Andy Burnham, whilst feeling very torn with a vote for Yvette. In fact I thought Yvette finished the campaign much stronger and I am glad our household did vote for her! I put her as me second preference with enthusiasm.
I have also been pretty open at my despair at the electoral prospect of Corbyn winning today. I feel after 20 years of frontline politics in a marginal key middle england seat I know what it takes to win an election. Despite many of my own values probably being closer to Corbyn than all those Corbynites calling anybody who doesn’t think he is the messiah as ‘Tories or Blairites’ I realised the electorate are more centre left/ centre right and we need to win their votes not hector them about being wrong and shouting our views at them.
So it means I am not really looking forward to the result – unless of course we are now going to have the biggest upset in political polling and betting. With just about 2 hours to go I will post some more random thoughts as I read articles and tweets.
9.20
View from the Margins 
Know you never were a Blairite but a lot of the damage was done to our movement and principles by both Blair and Brown. You may not agree with me and that is my opinion. We left labour and only rejoined when Ed was elected. Unfortunately he was shackled by the do gofers in the higher echelons of the party and couldn’t openly pursue a socialist agenda. May be the country was not ready.
This time it feels different and I think the Tories have gone too far and we need a straight talking man who can take them on and expose them for what they are.
Let’s fight this war together.
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