Uncut predictions for 2017: More moderates will rejoin the frontbench

They may not agree about the destination, but more Labour moderates will return to frontbench duties in 2017.

They will come to two inescapable conclusions.

The first is that its essential Labour improves its woeful performance in holding the government to account. The party – actually, the country – deserves a functioning Opposition. The current offering is decidedly Sunday League.

The second conclusion is more personal.

Moderate figures will eventually realise that only someone who has shown they can work with the grain of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership will succeed him, probably after the party loses the 2020 general election, or perhaps earlier Corbyn if calls it a day before then.

They will look at Keir Starmer and see him edging ahead of the pack, using his role shadowing David Davis to good but not spectacular effect (imagine what Robin Cook would do with the job…)

How much longer can figures like Dan Jarvis, Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt afford sit on the sidelines and allow their leadership chances to wither?


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5 Responses to “Uncut predictions for 2017: More moderates will rejoin the frontbench”

  1. Dave says:

    Dan Jarvis, Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt would be better off just coming clean and joining the Tories. They look quite out of place in today’s progressive Labour party – bouffants, suits etc – and they are too right-wing for the Lib Dems.

  2. Malc says:

    Keir Starmer seems a nice enough guy but he has all the personality of a cold wet trout (a problem he shares with Angela Eagle). The other three would be more at home outside politics and in big business. They aren’t really socialists. They’re sort of Tory-lite careerists with no concrete belief system.

  3. paul barker says:

    More fantasising from Labours Centrists. You are not getting “your” Party back, not in 2017 or 2021. Labours Centrist MPs who want a Political future should defect to The Libdems. They have no future in Labour & most will lose their seats in 2020 anyway.

  4. John P Reid says:

    Paul barker, before the orange book liberal took over when you had Social democrats,there was room for non Blairites who didn’t want labour to be too left wing, but, if anything, the Social democrats to quote David Owen,(who’s been back supporting labour for 20 years might repeat what he said in 1992 Hold your nose vote Tory
    It would be intrestung if Atul has red this (below)and what he makes, can you reality see, non Blairites, non corbynistas, voting for the libdems,if the views in this book, suit them
    http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/books-in-brief-the-politics-of-virtue

  5. NickT says:

    I can’t help laughing at the Corbynites and their delusional belief that they have a party forever. They’ve wrecked Labour and pulled their own house down around their ears. The future may be unclear in many respects, but two things are obvious: Corbyn and cronies are electoral poison and Brexit will make Britain poorer, angrier and ever more prone to lashing out at the people it desperately needs to save it from the disaster unleashed by Cameron, Corbyn, Johnson, Gove, Farage and May.

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