Don't you know? All right wingers in the Labour party are dogmatic, whereas all the left wingers are enlightened pragmatists, basing all their views on empirical evidence.

;)

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Objections to McDonnell:

He will lose - he will lose very very badly.
In losing very very badly he will discredit the ideas he is standing on, some of which actually have mass appeal in the Labour Party.
He won't be able to build the left opposition machinery that he's hoping to build because it's clear that he's going to lose.
Even if he didn't lose, he would be unable to unite the party.
The media would massacre him and even on a moderate centre-left platform, he would easily be portrayed as more of an extremist than IDS as leader of the Tory Party.

If the campaign group had, instead of looking to promote its own candidate, gone to some of those centre-left potential candidates and said that they would get their MPs to support him or her for a centre-left platform, they could have really made a difference. They haven't thought and it's a missed oportunity.

It's going to go about as far as Ken Livingstone's bid for the leadership in 1994 (remember that?). Speaking of whom, he's not supporting John either.

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I can't think of many at the moment to be honest.  John Smith, or perhaps even Jim Callaghan would probably come under that bracket.  I would also have probably included Roy Hattersley as such a person, although people probably think of him as left-wing now!!  There must be some pragmatists on the right!  (I'm not advocating pragmatism per se, by the way - in response to JM - just if you have to have a right-winger a pragmatic one is marginally preferable!)  There are quite a few examples in labour history where leaders from the right (not just national party leaders but labour movement leaders at various levels) have either chosen or felt the need to be more inclusive and pragmatic than leaders who appeared to emerge from the left but then shoved their flag firmly in the land of the right.  Their 'origins' were seen to be an alternative to compromise of any sort - Kinnock is an example, and I would expect Hain to be very similar if he ever emerged as a candidate.

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I agree with the premise of the orginal question, and am intending to write something lengthier about this shortly.  From my admittedly limited knowledge of Labour MPs, it is my view that McDonnell will not get the 51 signatures he needs, so I think the question about whether he would pull out in favour of Hain/Denham is ultimately academic.

I think that in terms of political positioning - anti-war, sceptical on the Reid agenda, progressive on social policy but still broadly credible on economics - Denham is the obvious candidate, but he lacks the necessary public profile.  The only person on the left with this sort of profile is Ken, and he isn't currently an MP.  As for Hain...he hasn't really carved out a distinctive enough position.  If he had resigned along with Robin, I think he'd have emerged as a Heseltine figure by now.  But Hain has consistently chosen the path of compromise rather than the path of principle in all his dealings with New Labour.

So the short answer to this one is:  there's no easy answer.  But for what it's worth, I am still convinced that Gordon the Leader will turn out to be more progressive, both on social policy and the constitution, than Gordon the candidate.

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Hi - I don't think I was treating you as being hostile.  It's hard to convey tone of voice in an email I suppose, but I was merely trying to underline why I disagreed with the idea of finding a tainted centre-left figure and splitting the left around them.

If I can make it quite clear - if left groupings in the Labour Party had decided that they did not believe there was a Campaign Group parliamentarian who could launch this campaign, I personally would have found it quite easy to support someone like Michael Meacher or Glenda Jackson (despite the former's tardiness in leaving the Cabinet and the latter's slightly dubious positions earlier in the government's history).  Despite once having been quite a fan of Peter Hain and advocated him as a potential future leadership contender, nothing now could induce me to support him.  

But it would now be a disaster for the left to champion a 'centre left' figure for these purposes.  Why?  Because hundreds of activists have - in my view quite rightly - declared (and, in the LRC, voted) in support of John McDonnell and far more damaging than 'losing and losing badly' (though as I have said elsewhere I don't concede that will be the result at all) would be a divided left.  One of the reasons the left have shied away from leadership/deputy leadership contests for nearly twenty years (and indeed have been very unsure about them for 25 years) is the damage they CAN do.  Think of the enormous hostility that the Kinnockite abandonment of Benn bred in 81.  Not only did it determine the result of the election, it led to a complete realignment of the left.

This is a fantastic opportunity for the left and, I would argue, for all socialists in the Labour Party, but the left has to hold its nerve.

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