Winners & Losers

Derek Simpson was the Kingmaker – Jon Craig
The Dignity of David Miliband – Speccie
Britain’s Labour Leaps Leftwards – Forbes
LibDem MEP Pictured Holding Penis – LibDemVoice
Lord Mandelson Still Paid £8,600 a Month by EU – Telegraph
Those Leadership Odds in Full – Mr Eugenides
Knocking on Betjeman’s Door – David Allen Green
New FSA Regulations Will Increase Insider Trading – Capitalists@Work
Obama Isn’t Even as Good as Carter – Washington Examiner
LBC Must Show Ken the Door – Dizzy
A Moment of Unity – Crick
Leadership Hand Signals – FT

Sunder Katwala of the Fabian’s predicted…

“Ed Miliband would face hostile media attention if he were to trail his brother among MPs and party members yet still get elected Labour leader as the strong choice of trade union levy payers and other affiliates. That would be enough to give him the electoral college 50.6 to 49.4 – along with a headache with the newspapers and the Tory party, who would challenge the legitimacy of a Labour leader elected primarily on union votes. While not impossible, such scenarios are rather unlikely…”

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2010

Winners & Losers

Besides Red Ed and Derek Simpson there are a few others who won big. On the blogosphere LeftFootForward did well, Mike Smithson bravely called it for Ed, enhancing his reputation for sagacity, YouGov rang the bell with polling granularity that was impressively predictive and punters did extraordinarily well. Yesterday morning punters’ favourites for first round elimination, to win overall, to win the membership, MPs, union sections and overall allcame true. The predictive wisdom of crowds…

The losers were the Blairites. Mandelson should have stayed out of it, his intervention was counter-productive and irritated many. Mandy’s analysis was correct in that Ed was running against his own manifesto and was crowd pleasing the Guardianistas. Blairite pundits Rentoul and Aaronovitch are already mourning the electability of Labour. Labour friendly media did particularly badly, both the Mirror and the Guardian backed David Miliband to no avail. Clients of lobbyists Roland Rudd and Tony Bailey wasted their money, as did David Sainsbury, not that he’d notice.

The polling of Labour members shows that they thought David was the more effective leader, more likely to lead them to victory and would make a better PM, still they chose Ed. Tony himself of course dropped hints that David was really his heir and a disappointed Bad Al Campbell hit the nail on the Ed, saying he’ll make ‘the party feel OK about losing’. The Labour Party has chosen to lose the next general election and seems happy about it…

Charlie Whelan Wins by a Whisker

Unite’s massive effort to persuade disinterested union members to vote for Ed Miliband paid off. Ed won 50.65% of the vote. He lost in the MP and membership sections of the electoral college but took so much of the union vote it didn’t matter. The unions bought the election, endorsements and incredibly heavy promotion of their chose candidate paid off. Charlie Whelan and Derek Simpson can justifiably claim it is their victory, they got Red Ed the job…